First stop, Athens

We finally arrived at our first destination yesterday in Athens, around 5. After an extremely long day of layovers and and flights, it was nice to finally get to our hotel room and settle in. JOKE. That never happened. We were on the move asap. Peter would not let us sleep or allow us enough time to nap in order to beat jet lag. About an hour after we arrived, we split into groups of 3 or 4 and were expected to find selected important structures in the city, take a photo with it, then move onto the next one. There was a reward on the line for this one, first group to finish won $50 meals with the teachers. UMM? We're all broke. So sign me up for some of that.
So being born with a competitive spirits, we quickly circle the places on the map that we needed to locate and decided on a plan to hit the furthest place from the final destination. Yeah...and that didn't really work out. It was so far away that we kept turning around and going backwards because we couldn't find it. The locals tried to help us, "it's really close, just five more minutes." Twenty minutes later, we finally snapped a photo and off we went.
Having a scavenger hunt around the city not only forced us to keep our eye on the prize but it also kept our minds off of falling asleep at any moment. We also learned about interesting places in the city that we wanted to go again or...wanted to stay away from. Let me tell you. Some people really think American's are helpless and brain dead. Give me a break, my daddy taught me good. After the scavenger hunt we finally got to finish off the night with dinner...at 10 pm. That's at least 5 hours past the normal time I prefer to eat. Then, the best time of the day arrived. We FINALLY got to sleep in a bed for a change and not on the tray table connected to the seat in front of us.
Today, we started off bright and early with a tour of the Athenian Agora. I'm not naturally a history buff but it was pretty awesome to be in the presence of ancient greek historical figures. We broke for lunch and then enjoyed our afternoon hanging at the Acropolis and the Parthenon. It was an astonishing view of the city from where the Parthenon sits. Just unbelievable.

Here are some things I've learned so far...
1. Diet Coke and Coke Lite are NOT the same.
2. Europeans charge for everything...including ketchup and butter. That's a luxury I miss.
3. There is no rhyme or reason to the street systems... Avenues and streets? Probably not. It's a maize.
4. Everything is written in Greek.
5. You need to go somewhere? Put your tennis shoes on. You're going UPHILL. That's new to us.
6. People try to sell you the most ridiculous things...Even their compliments.
7. There are stray dogs and cats EVERYWHERE.

Off to Santorini in the morning. The ascending and descending in the plane is longer than the actual flight which is good. I'm seriously so tired of flying. Can't wait to finally settle in on the island.

Love.