En Route to Delphi, Greece

Around Athens

Upon our arrival at the Athens airport, we were greeted with this race sign.

J.T., Mike, and Roger at the ancient, marble stadium where their marathon would finish. This stadium was refurbished for the first modern Olympics, in 1896.

View looking up into an olive tree as we approached the Parthenon.

We enjoyed the Parthenon Museum.

The glass man of Athens

There are many statues in Athens that were built for the 2004 Olympics. This one is one of the most popular. It is made out of slabs of "broken" glass stacked one on top of another.

The Parthenon

We hurried to eat dinner in the Plata area of town before zipping up to the Parthanon. With these clouds bearing down on us, we were certain we'd get drenched. A blessing- the rain held off until our drive home at 10 PM. We made a wrong turn and ended up driving home via a mountainous, foggy route.

Above, we're near the base of the Acropolis (the hill on which the Parthenon and several other buildings are situated).

Paparazzi Shots by Steve

Our Rental House in Marathon

The first thing I noticed about our rental house was it's stone facade and steep stone driveway. Next, I spotted this pomegranate tree. I love that fruit and I collected several of them to de-seed in a bowl of cold water one morning (photo below).

Julie found this great place for us via www.homeaway.com. Property #178814

Our First Dinner Out in Marathon, Greece

This hunk of feta cheese on my salad surprised me. Also, none of the salads we had in Greece contained lettuce!

Traveling to Greece

J.T. with our stack of electronics in Philly's airport. We traveled there with Roger and Julie. In Philly, we met up with Steve and Robin (also from Greensboro). In Athens, Bobby and Debbie kindly met us at the airport with our 9-passenger rental van. Bobby returned to the airport in the middle of the night to pick up Mike from Atlanta. They had a story to tell the next morning about having been stopped by the local police. Luckily, the police waved them on after they said they were in town to run the marathon. Surprisingly, the police cars did not look very official and they were not wearing uniforms. Even the official ID of the police looked like a simple college ID. The guys were relieved to not be robbed! The next day at the race expo, we met two Americans who work at the embassy there. They confirmed that although surprising, Bobby and Mike's traffic stop did sound like the work of the official police.

The Fabulous Alps. I'd love to visit/ski there someday.

We flew from Charlotte to Philadelphia (6-hour layover allowed us to ride the train to see Independence Hall and the Liberty Bell) to Zurich to Athens.

On our return trip, we flew from Athens to Charlotte via Munich (photo below):