Day 34 - Sistine Chapel On Saturday, we headed for the Vatican. Our scheduled time at the Vatican Museum was 10am, so we slept in a little, ate breakfast, and walked through Rome (down side alleys, of course). From the group meeting spot to the entrance to the museum was a half-mile walk with very little shade. Therefore, we were more than happy to spend a lot of time walking slowly in the crowded, but air conditioned, Vatican Museum on our way to the Sistine Chapel. The museum’s pieces were incredibly preserved, and some of the best we have seen at any museum. It is not surprising given the influence of the Catholic Church and the fact these pieces have been in private collection for hundreds of years. There was an express path to the chapel ... read more

Days 30 to 32 - Rivers and Royalty Tuesday, after recovering from Kinky Boots and doing some laundry, we ventured out to explore more around London. We have heard good things about Canary Wharf, so we headed that way to eat lunch and walk around a bit. Tony and Anne are checking out different areas they might want to consider when potentially moving to London in a few years. Canary Wharf was a nice place, but was very close to too busy. There is a lot of construction going on right now (opportunity for investments, so the signs say), so we will plan to return later. The new Elizabeth Line (Cross Rail) will make this area very convenient. There are some other nice looking neighborhoods across the river as well. Instead of taking the Underground back ... read more

Days 26 and 27 - To Scotland, by Train and Car Our train to Edinburgh left a little after noon so we had time to relax in the morning, get packed up and make our way to the station. We decided to try a place claiming to have authentic mexican burritos and check out their claims. While the burritos were fine, they didn’t have quite the same flavor of home, definitely a European twist on burritos. We opted for First Class tickets of this train since it was over 3 hours and not too much more expensive. This meant we got to wait in the First Class lounge instead of the noisy, crowded, unairconditioned station, a real bonus. They also had free snacks and drinks and comfy chairs. Once on the train they fed us lunch ... read more

Day 22 - Below and Above Ground We were able to get our airport transfer to swing by the caves on the way to the airport so we planned to leave Athens after lunch. We filled our morning with one more set of ruins and a bit of shopping. The Temple of Hephaestus was part of an area called the Ancient Agora. This area shows evidence of habitation as early as 2000 BC. The temple was one of the most complete temples found in Athens. It makes sense that the Greek god of the forge and engineering had a pretty sturdy temple. It also helps that it was turned into a church at one point. The area below the temple was a big meeting place for locals and was where citizens could go to view decrees ... read more

Day 20 - Delphi We decided to only take one tour outside of Athens on this trip. Delphi is one of the more important historic sites outside of Athens. We booked a tour with George’s Taxi for a full day private ride and tour to Delphi. The driver, Stratos, drove us to the sites, gave us a bit of history and tips for the locations, booked us lunch, and even let us sleep on the way back. The price was very reasonable and over all we think it was the best way to do the trip. It was about a 2 hour drive to Delphi so we started out at 7:25 AM. Stratos had a 30 min video to watch on the way that gave us a bit of background on the site. It was very ... read more