Athens: Day 1 (aka Thanksgiving day)

We didn't do a whole lot on the first day, since we didn't get to the hotel until 3am the night before. We headed out sometime around noon, and decided to just spend the day getting a feel for the city and trying to figure out what sites we wanted to see and when to see them. We ate lunch at a little outdoor cafe that was right next to the ruins of the Ancient Agora, with a great view of the Acropolis. The weather was perfect the entire time, sunny and always in the mid to high 60s everyday.

We also went into about 347 souvenir shops, many of which had all the same crap, except that it was all pretty damn cool crap. There were a ton of solid brass Spartan helmets of various sizes that were so friggin' sweet that I knew I would not leave the country without one. There were also some small warrior figures that were really cool looking that I wanted. And even though most of the shops all had a lot of the same stuff, the difference in pricing was all over the place. The Spartan figures I wanted were 22 Euro at one store, 17 at another, and 12 at yet another. That's a difference of 15 bucks per figure! The pricing on the helmets were pretty much like that, too, but they were way more expensive. The tiny little ones were as much as 80 or 90 bucks, while the life sized ones were around 1000 bucks.

The guy at the reception desk at the hotel gave us the name of a great restaraunt to have dinner at, and it was so good that we ended up going back a couple nights later. Souvlaki is now one of my favorite dishes and we're going to need to find a Greek place somewhere around here. And the Greek beer "Mythos" aint too bad, either.