Addendum - Cars Never Seen Around USA

There seems to be a much greater variety of cars in Greece (or anywhere in Europe) than we're used to in the USA. They come from all over! Mostly small. Greeks don't believe in parking lots or garages...just park wherever you can. You rarely see an American car - Chevy Cruze, but that's GM's "World Car". You hardly ever see an SUV.....they're just too big. And, all Greek cars are dirty!

Here's a sampling:

This Mercedes AMG CLS63S V8 bi-Turbo was seen at the airport. I big, nasty looking Greek guy told me not to take a photo!

I have no idea what model BMW this is - buts quite small!

SEAT is a Spanish company that makes many models.

BMW 116i

Skoda is a Czech company. Most taxi cabs are Skodas

Ibiza is a SEAT model

Little tiny Mercedes

Hyundai "Getz"

Stilo is a Fiat

Mercedes what?

Add caption

Polo is a smaller Golf

316i

Cascada is a Opel/buick

Ugly Peugeot

VW Fox

Bocanegra by SEAT

Megane by Renault

VW Sirocco - didn;t US used to have these?

Huge BMW monster car

Scoda Octavia

Mercedes make a nice looking van

Daihatsu Sirion- Japanese

Mercedes GLA200 - do we have these?

Skoda Fabia - believe it or not, a Athens police car!

Reflections

In spite of the fact that international travel really tries one's patience, our ten day trip to Greece, following in the footsteps of Paul, was great success!

• Our accommodations in the hotels and aboard the ship were just fine. We particularly liked the Met Hotel in Athens.We would recommend that to anyone visiting the city.
• Greek food is excellent but really is already familiar to us: olives, feta cheese, spanikopita; moussaka, excellent wine
• It was too bad that our schedule had us visiting Patmos, Mykonos and Santorini after dark.
• Greece is NOT a third world country!
• Using Euros is really easy. The exchange rate was about 1.15 - you pay $115.00 to get $100 Euros. The smallest paper currency is 5 Euros, so you end up with a pocket full of 1 and 2 Euro coins, which are hard to tell apart. There is no sales tax and prices seem to be in even increments of 1 Euro. Prices for things seem to be about the same as here, sometimes less.
• Continental Europeans and South Americans are noisy; Americans are courteous; Japanese are meek.....
• In the cities, particularly Athens, there is graffiti everywhere, mostly a reflection of frustration with their economy; high unemployment, etc; the rural areas were obviously in a depressed state with many abandoned buildings, closed up shops, litter everywhere.
• The "cruise" wasn't really. It was a boat to get us from one island to another.
• there will be many more as we digest!

Home, but what day is it?

Tuesday, October whatever


Wake up call at 3:30 AM. Ugh. The hotel provided us with a light breakfast and were on the road by 4:30 to the airport.  Our Lufthansa flight to Frankfurt was uneventful and on time. They even served a nice breakfast on this 2.5 hour flight.

Arriving at Frankfurt was the beginning of a very long day! Waiting in lines, passport control, security checks, waiting in more lines more security checks and passport controls. Then, there was something wrong with the plane that had to be fixed, so more waiting and waiting..........encouraging words from United staff.......lots of apologies.

Or flight was to have left at 12:15PM, to arrive in San Francisco for our connection to Boise at about 4:00PM; leave for Boise around 6:00 and be home by 9:00.

Well, the United 747 needed a small part for some emergency door which had to be flown in from somewhere else. We finally got off the ground at about 4:00PM, knowing that we'd miss the Boise connection. (Mind you, this is a ten hour flight of 500 people!). Then, since we'd been on the ground for so long, the pilots and crew didn't have enough time left on their clock to go all the way to SF so it was decided to land in Chicago and get a new crew.

We finally got to SF, then had go through customs which was actually quite efficient, and meet with the United agent to find out how we would get to Boise and where we would spend the night. Give some credit to United, they were expecting us and had already rebooked all 20+ of us on a flight at 10:00 next morning. They provided us with a hotel voucher for the DoubleTree and some meal vouchers.

From our original wake up call in Athens, to the hotel room in SF, we had been "up" for 30 hours. But no rest for the weary, we had to be up again by 5:00 to get the shuttle back to the airport. (Note: it was a blessing to be back in an "American" hotel room!)

We arrived back home in Boise by about 12:15PM on Wednesday. Took a taxi home, dropped off our stuff, and immediately went to Merritt's for a cheeseburger!

Athens and the Acropolis

Monday, October 26 2015

We sailed overnight and returned the the Port of Piraeus just as we were waking up. This morning was a bit hectic as we had to pack up all our stuff so it could be put on the bus and eventually be delivered to the Metropolitan Hotel- the same place we stayed a few days ago.

We were back on the road by 8:00 for a bus trip around Athens, with a new tour guide, who was very knowledgable but also long-winded. The weather today was spectacular!! Bright blue sky, temperature in the 70s - awesome! It turns out that during the three days we were away from this area they had huge rainstorms and flashflooding - we missed it!

Our tour this morning took us to the Acropolis, Mars Hill and the Parthenon. It was a long steep climb (more steps!) so Linda stayed behind with a couple of the other ladies (they went shopping and enjoyed a peaceful coffee!). The first stop was Mars Hill, with a fantastic panoramic view of Athens to the north. This is the place where Paul told the authorities about Jesus Christ. Most of them rejected the idea but a few followed. Refer to the Book of Acts.


Then the long slog up the hill to the Acropolis (every Greek city has one - it means high city). There we see the amazing Parthenon, built around 450 B.C. It is currently under restoration which will take more years than it took the Greeks to build it in the first place! The size, engineering and detail are hard to imagine.

After our tour of the acropolis we returned to our bus for another sightseeing ride around town and then to our hotel by about 1:00 PM. Just to check in and make sure our stuff was there. Then back on the hotel bus for a trip to "Old Town" for authentic Greek lunch and shopping for the rest of the afternoon. We ended up at a little cafe called "Acropol", as recommended by our guide Yiannis. The highlight was an appetizer called "Baked cheese", which was deep fried feta. Awesome!

After lunch we continued walking through the old town and down into what they call the "Athens Flea Market". Narrow alleyway, bustling shoppers and everything you can imagine to buy!

Back to the hotel for dinner and a closing "service" with our group. Next wake-up call will be 3:30AM to get to airport by 4:30 AM for our flight home.

Athens is the busiest port in the Med

Mars Hill

View from Mars Hill

Zeus Temple

Parliament

Athens flea Market

In the 1990s this church was badly damaged by an earthquake.Engineers haven't figured out what to do with it - all the scaffolding is to keep it from falling down.

Fried Feta

Crete, Knossos Castle and Santorini

Sunday, Oct 25

We awoke this morning at the Port of Heraklion on the island of Crete. It was a bit of an uncomfortable night as the sea was high the ship bobbing up and down. Heraklion is the largest city on the island with a population of about 200k.

Once again, an early start. Off the boat and into to our bus by 7:30. Our stop this morning was the ancient Knossas Castle. This was the Minoan civilzation dating back to 3000 B.C. Frankly, it didn't look much different from the ruins we'd seen from 100 B.C. Much progress had not been made! The place was crowded with many groups, all off our ship.This site wasn't particularly exciting. The Cretans do their best to make the most of this jewel of their tourism industry.

Our group is pretty much in agreement now. Enough of the ruins already!

We returned to our boat for lunch and a rest; the boat is still pitching about in the nasty looking seas. After lunch we sail south for about three hours to the celebrated island of Santorini. Unfortunately, by the time we arrived there it was nearly dark. Who visits Santorini in the dark?

Nevertheless, Santorini is quite unusual. Its a group of volcanic islands, with the village perched high on the cliffside of the caldera. Whitewashed buildings, blue roofs. One accesses the village from the dock by means of an incline - very cool! That whole operation looks fairly new and can accommodate lot of people very efficiently. Once up on the ridge, there are perhaps hundreds of small shops, mostly selling really nice, expensive looking stuff. Lots of jewelry. There are also many cute little cafe and small inns/B&B. There is a beautiful Roman Catholic cathedral that we were not able to enter.

While we were the only cruise ship in the harbor, our guide said that at the height of the summer season he's seen as many as 9 ships in at once!

So while Santorini is cool little place, it was a real shame that we couldn't be there in the daylight - and sunlight at that! We didn't get to see the picture on all those postcards.

Our weather today was like the previous few -showers around, but we never had any actual rain. The seas were pretty rough for sailing.

This is our last night on board. Tomorrow morning we should wake up in the Port of Pireaus (Athens), check into the Met once again and have a tour of Athens.

Knossos Castle

Santorini

Nope, didn't see that!