I woke up in the morning from perhaps the best sleep I have ever had.\u00a0 The kind of deep, rich sleep that you experience only on holiday.\u00a0 Where it is possible to get up, but you don\u2019t really have to.\u00a0 It was pretty hard to roll out of bed, but we managed to do it, and go downstairs have a light breakfast in the hotel dining room.\u00a0 The hotel had an interesting feeling.\u00a0 It was an older building but not old – maybe a popular destination in the 50s and 60s.\u00a0 The decorations were a little dated, there were little cracks in the cement here and there, but it was absolutely clean and the service was top notch.\u00a0 I couldn\u2019t explain it – a little bit of a lonely feeling, but also comfortable.\u00a0 We certainly couldn\u2019t complain about the location – soon we were walking up to the entrance of the Acropolis area.\u00a0 We were there right at opening time, and there were already some tour groups assembling.\u00a0 A tour group went in first ahead of us – about 50 people, and then we went in next.\u00a0 Other tours were still getting organized down the hill, so it was just us and the tour ahead of us.\u00a0 They stopped soon after entering so the guide could explain something, so we jetted past them and we were officially the first (and only) people on the Acropolis.\u00a0 Good morning, Parthenon!<\/p>\n
I\u2019ve always wanted to see the real deal, especially after working at Glen Ellen and Benziger wineries for so long.\u00a0 At the top the sun was just coming up, and it illuminated the structures in a pretty dramatic way.\u00a0 I went crazy with the camera, and I didn\u2019t have to worry about waiting for tourists to move out of the way.\u00a0 It was a good way to experience that area.\u00a0 I finally stopped taking pictures and instead just kind of breathed it all in.\u00a0 The hillside had a beautiful panoramic view of all of Athens – the Greeks who built the Parthenon had picked a great location.\u00a0 Up there we also bumped into a lot of cats who had made homes among the ruins.\u00a0 So cute!\u00a0 As we left there was a flag-raising ceremony attended by some Greek soldiers.\u00a0 I guess it is a daily event, but I think we were the only ones to observe it that day.<\/p>\n
Our next stop was to journey across town to see the NationalArchaeologicalMuseum.\u00a0 We decided again to walk it instead of taking the subway, and again it was a good idea.\u00a0 The streets and neighborhoods were a little dirty, a little old, and full of flavor.\u00a0 I stopped now and then in shoe stores but still, no luck.\u00a0 We walked by huge street market filled with vendors who looked like they had never seen a tourist.\u00a0 I took pictures of graffiti and we both stood outside bakeries and oohed and ahhed at all the delicious breads.\u00a0 I bought a Fanta flavor that was apparently an Orangina rip off, but it was refreshing.<\/p>\n
Finally, we made it to the museum, and after an initial wrong turn we found the entrance and went inside.\u00a0 The museum was much more interesting than I expected.\u00a0 There are way too many museums in Athens, and we decided to try to narrow it down to one visit. I\u2019m glad we picked this one.\u00a0 It was quite large.\u00a0 We walked through several wings, each divided into different periods of Greek history.\u00a0 We couldn\u2019t cover all of it, but it was very entertaining, and really a beautiful collection.\u00a0 It made me want to re-watch the movie \u2018Clash of the Titans\u2019.<\/p>\n
After a quick toilet break (no seats!) we walked all the way back to our hotel, and had lunch at a small caf\u00c3\u00a9 nearby.\u00a0 Fried cheese, souvlaki, meatballs, and some ice cold Mythos beer.\u00a0 Again, sitting in the caf\u00c3\u00a9 spacing out was one of our primary activities.\u00a0\u00a0 We wrapped things up at the caf\u00c3\u00a9, and went back to the hotel where Kuniko did an excellent job packing our suitcase for the last time.\u00a0 Our secret was that our suitcase contained an empty duffel bag, so we put all our smelly dirty clothes in there, and used the suitcase to protect our souvenirs and other valuables.<\/p>\n
We cleaned ourselves up, and then went downstairs to check out.\u00a0 Our stay in Athens was over, and even though we had less time here than we had originally planned, I think we both felt like it was the right amount.<\/p>\n
The taxi ride to the airport was pretty long, nearly 40 minutes.\u00a0 It was a flat rate, since it was arranged by the hotel they probably got a kick-back for setting it up.\u00a0 Once we left downtown Athens the scenery really changed – it was much cleaner, and I think we were traveling through the high rent district.\u00a0 We passed the US embassy among others, and there was a dramatic drop-off in the amount of graffiti.\u00a0 At the airport we had to kill about four hours, so we did that by patronizing a bar and drinking plenty of white wine. \u00a0Once you kill 12 hours doing nothing, 4 hours is a piece of cake.<\/p>\n
When we finally checked in there were all kinds of problems in the line.\u00a0 A guy in our line had eight or nine big heavy cardboard boxes that we wanted to ship as luggage, and that took forever to process. There was a big Chinese tour group checking in, and they were loud and pushy, and littering everywhere.\u00a0 A little kid from the group apparently had to go to the bathroom, but his mother didn\u2019t want to leave the line, so she sent him over to piss in the wastepaper basket near the desk.\u00a0 American tourists – maybe I was being too rough on you earlier.<\/p>\n
Finally we got through the security gates, did some final souvenir shopping at duty-free, and made it on our plane.\u00a0 It was a short hop to Istanbul, but apparently there was some kind of problem at the Istanbul airport.\u00a0 Our plane took forever to taxi in, and then we took a bus ride all the way to the terminal, went through security, and then took another bus ride to our connecting flight to Osaka.\u00a0 We barely made it – and I was sure at that point that we\u2019d never see our luggage again.\u00a0 But remarkably, they made it through this leg just fine.<\/p>\n
The flight was very smooth to Osaka, and we breezed through immigration and customs, caught a bus right away to Sannomiya, caught the next train to Nishi Akashi, and we were sipping sparkling wine and eating cheese and crackers right after we arrived.<\/p>\n
This trip was definitely the longest and most ambitious yet.\u00a0 Every day was fun, and we could only laugh at the few problems that we had run into.\u00a0 At some points it felt like we took three separate trips back to back – it didn\u2019t feel like one cohesive journey at all.\u00a0 Maybe because we used airplanes so often.\u00a0 It was a great trip for both of us, and the last long journey for a while.\u00a0 I can\u2019t wait to start planning the next one.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
I woke up in the morning from perhaps the best sleep I have ever had.\u00a0 The kind of deep, rich sleep that you experience only on holiday.\u00a0 Where it is possible to get up, but you don\u2019t really have to.\u00a0 It was pretty hard to roll out of bed, but we managed to do it, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2728","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pOpl7-I0","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/bryan.fredricks.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2728","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/bryan.fredricks.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/bryan.fredricks.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bryan.fredricks.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bryan.fredricks.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2728"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/bryan.fredricks.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2728\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/bryan.fredricks.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2728"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bryan.fredricks.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2728"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bryan.fredricks.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2728"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}