Last days in Athens

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After nearly a month in Athens, it was time to think about packing up and grabbing all those souvenirs we had been putting off. We took one last stroll to the central market to stock up on honey and sesame covered peanuts for the flight to Rome and to grab another round of Greek donuts. We also revisited the Cretan restaurant we found in Psyrri (after a month in Athens ANY variation on Greek food is much appreciated). We climbed up the hill one for one last look at Athens before walking back to the apartment. On the way, we walked through Syntagma square to see what the riot damage looked like. Amazingly, unless you knew there had been a 2 day riot just days before you would have never known anything had happened there. The only sign of damage was a boarded up post office that we had seen smashed on television, but you would have just assumed it closed if you hadn't seen the footage. We stopped at a famous sandal maker (they've hand made leather sandals for Sophia Loren, Jackie O, John Lennon...) and had some Greek sandals made for me and picked up more soccer jerseys for Pat. Delaney scored some Greek soccer sandals as well, but they won't fit for awhile (that doesn't stop her from wanting to wear them though).

Many people advised us against staying in Athens for a month....."it's dirty, there's graffiti everywhere, you'll get sick of the ruins, it's hot" Well, yes, yes, yes, and yes, but we still had a great time. When you are traveling with a one year old, you appreciate putting down roots for a bit. This is particularly true if the apartment you are renting is as baby friendly as the apartment we had. The long stay in Athens also gave us time to scout out our island options before just booking one of the extremely overpriced trips to the better known islands. We wouldn't trade that trip to Poros for anything! Despite being excited for the trip to Rome, I couldn't help being a little sad to say goodbye to our 'home' in Athens.

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