The wifey has been working her tail off from last year to finish her NP so we were fortunate enough to take a small honeymoon right after the wedding. Some camping would do the trick I said, so off we went to where the buffalo roam. A storm happen to blow through the day before we arrived and the temps took a nose dive. Our 30deg rated sleeping bags and three season tent didn’t stand a chance. We found ourselves at the Pony Express Motel – kinda joke of a name but believe it or not wasn’t actually decent for a last minute find.
A year later, D is pretty much finished with school with the exception of “the exam” – the equivalent of what the bar might be for lawyers that she will still find time to study while we are vacation but we now having another reason to celebrate. Baby Vitale will get a taste of Greece, minus the Ouzo of course, for 18 days. After spending the last two weekends moving, my Mom downstate and then us finally moving (if throwing boxes into our living is what you call it) into our new place within days of us leaving. This time it feels a bit too rushed and as of writing this the one thing that I thought I wouldn’t have time to go and get, our international drivers license, I found time and then needed up leaving it in the airport car park lock in the car (Begin the count – Trip Fail no.1)
Our connection was through Montreal so on the way there I was able to finagle our way into the lounge thanks to the Priority Pass card that I also forgot (Trip Fail no.2). Thankfully they let me in with just the number – although she didn’t seem happy about it. We didn’t have seat assignments for our 9.5hr flight so beforehand I went to ask an attendant to see if we could get setup before we go. The only two seats together – 49H/K, all the way in the back, last row. Yeah those seats that have limited reclining. Guess I’m spoiled with Delta but when tickets are about 1/2 the cost when flying out of Toronto, I’ll make the compromise.
Athens
We decided to make Athens our staging city since there was no way in hell we wanted to jump right back on an airplane to fly to another island. I realized as we were landing that I had told our AirBnb host the wrong arrival time (Trip Fail No.3 – Haven’t even arrived yet and not doing so hot) so we had to find some lockers to drop off baggage until 4pm. I had no idea how we were going to muster up the energy to walk around in 95deg heat until 3pm – but no choice. We scheduled 2.5days in Athens, I think just enough to see most of the archeological sites before we headed to Crete. Any of the sites offer the combined ticket for 30Euro which is well worth the price since Acropolis is 30Euro alone. Even more so, you will stand in line forever waiting to get in because you need to purchase a ticket. So this time, do the touristy thing and get the combo ticket.
The ticket gives access to Acropolis, Ancient Agora, Roman Agora, Hadrian’s Library, Olympieon, Kerameikos Cemetary and Aristotles Lykeion. I think its pretty easy to see all of this in the time we had, and we even walked to each site, but we met others that were planning on spending 5 days checking out all the sites. If I had to rank, I think something like this: Acropolis > Kerameikos Cemetary > Aristotles Lykeion > Hadrian’s Library > Ancent Agora > Olympieon > Roman Agora. Hands down the Acropolis offers everything – views, the Parthenon, there’s a muesum to cool down while wandering around in the heat. But from a historical point of view Aristotles Lykeion is also pretty amazing. Although the surrounding grounds near the muesum have been updated and there are cheesy speakers places in vicarious places to think you are wandering the grounds and having a conversation with the man itself, it was essentially the birthplace of modern physics and astrological science. For me it was kind of amazing – Diana sat in the shade and tried to understand my excitement.
Food
We took many breaks, which means many places (and opportunities) to eat. There are a lot of places to eat in and around Monastiraki station but we head just a bit north after going to Kerameikos Cemetary to an area called Psyri. There are still quite a few restaurants here but it moved us away from the crowd a bit. We found probably the best place we have eaten so far on our trip.
