Greece was awesome - beautiful weather, tons of great stuff to see, and getting to be with my parents again was great. We did tons of stuff, but I'll try to keep this brief. In general, there were tons of cats everywhere, especially at archeological sites. Lots of dogs running around loose too, but that was mostly in Athens. There is also a rule throughout all the museums of Greece that you can't pose with any of the statues. Part of this is to keep people moving, but part is also due to a woman a couple of years ago who took off her top to pose with a bare-breasted statue.
Saturday I woke up at 4:20 am to make it to my 7:30 am flight, which worked out despite almost not being able to buy an RER ticket at the station. Once in Greece I chilled with my parents for awhile and took a walk around the Acropolis. Dinner that night was fun - traditional style food with a performance of traditional songs and dances, as well as some not so traditional dances (there was a belly-dancer later on). People from the audience were occasionally encouraged to participate, and the tour guide told one of the guys to take my mom up - he literally lifted her out of her chair and pushed her into the group of dancing people, it was great.
Sunday morning my Dad decided he wanted some Greek coffee, but to get some he would have to either ask a waiter to make it for him or make it himself. (the process involves heating the water and coffee grinds in a metal cup over very hot sand). Being the guy that he is, my dad decides to do it himself and ends up making a cup of hot water and sand instead. He got a waitress to show him how it's done and then tried to get rid of all evidence of the sand coffee. Also that morning we met the couple that had missed their plane, and it turns out that the husband (Raleigh) had an even better camera than my Dad's. From then on it was war - who could take the best pictures the fastest.
Later we toured the Acropolis and surrouding markets. We got to the House of Parliament just in time to see the once a week big changing of the guard. We also saw two guards later on changing posts and got out to watch. In the middle of the process (funny march and all that reminded us of Monty Python) one of the guards hit his gun on the ground too hard and it broke into several pieces. I was amazed he didn't react, though of course he's trained not to. They both had to just stand still until another guard had found another gun for the guy.
Monday we had the morning to ourselves and headed out to the Temple of Zeus after breakfast, to find that everyone else from the tour group had decided to do the same thing. We walked around the temple together and went through the national gardens, where my family and I separated from the group. An artist in the park tried to get our attention, and it worked on my mom. He wasn't trying to sell us anything, just talking about all the planes flying overhead (a major Greek political figure had just died the day before). He ends up asking us why we're in Greece, and when my Dad tells him we're there for a solar eclipse and that he's a solar scientist, the artist in the park turns into mad scientist guy. He asks my dad all these questions about photons and magnetic fields and ways to create a sort of levitation using spinning metal disks. We tried to walk away several times after my dad finished telling him something but he'd always come after us with "one more question". He told us a recipe for making a strong magnet, which included having to gather some material from a volcanic island of Greece. When my dad told him he was with NASA, the guy whips out his plans for an anti-gravity machine and tells us that it is being patented right now in London and asked if he could attribute some of his success to my dad, who carefully said that he could mention that they had discussed physics in the park. With not much of the morning left we went to see the metro station. When making the new metro system for the Olympics, the workers discovered tons of ancient artefacts and left them in the station in a small museum fashion. The one we went to had burial remains of pets from the 6th century BC, among several other things. After that we met up with the group and headed out to Cape Sounion to see the Sanctuary to Poseidon.
Tuesday we started with the Corinth Canal and continued onto Mycenae, one of the most ancient cities of Greece. There was a bee theme to this day, starting with the so-called bee hive tomb, both because it is in the shape of a bee hive and because it is inhabited by bees. For those of you who know me pretty well you know that I HATE bees, so I was happy to be done with that place pretty quickly. As we toured the nearby ruins of the ancient palace, my dad wanted to get a shot of my mom and I under the famous lion-gate while no one else was around. We hurry down there, and on my way I feel something fly in between my sunglasses and my face and realize pretty quickly that it's a bee. I drop my purse and rip my glasses off of my face as fast as possible, but too late - I had already been stung (luckily on my cheek and not my eye). I start crying, more so because it freaked me out than because it hurt, and my dad directs me to get out of the way of his picture (photography is the number one priority). Throughout the trip that day my mom kept pointing out statuary places and the bus stopped at one for her finally. Inside there was a group from the Texas state bar (they had been at our hotel that day and I recognized some of them) and I realized I was wearing my "Run against Bush" t-shirt. At first I tried to hide it, but then with some encouragement from people on our tour I walked around the shop, making sure to look people in the eye as I did so. No one said anything to me, but they sure did look away pretty quickly.
We finished the day with the Epidaurus Theater which has nearly perfect accoustics and is based on the golden rule. My dad and I raced up the steps together and got a great view from the top out of it. We had the hotel to ourselves that night in Olympia. Olympia was beautiful, tons of wildflowers everywhere. We of course saw the original Olympic stadium and all the ruins around it and then crossed back onto the mainland by their newly constructed bridge. We got out to take pictures of it and were nearly blown over by the wind - good thing we didn't take the ferry like we had originally planned. We found this great little road side shop with more desserts than I've ever seen in one place so we bought some to take with us and headed on to Delphi. We had some time to ourselves once we got there so we walked around the town and got a little lost looking for this church we had seen on the way up. We found it though and got some nice pictures.
By the seat of the oracle at Delphi there used to be vapors that came out of the ground that elicited her hallucinations, but they aren't there anymore. We walked through the site and up to the stadium, where my dad and I raced across the 200m of it (he won). We saw the famous Chariotier statue in the museum and washed our hands and faces from the waters of the Castalia spring, which is suppose to keep you young for as long as you live. I decided to try Uzo (sp?) at lunch, and wow it's strong. After 3 sips I was done, but the guy in charge of the tour not only drank half of his (then spilled the other half) but also drank the rest of mine and seemed fine. I know I have a low tolerance, but wow. I left my parents at the airport and came back with the bus driver and tour guide into Athens. They dropped me off a block from my hotel right before it started pouring down raining.
That night I walked up to the top of their largest hill, though I had meant to find the cable car and found the stairs instead. There was a great view of the entire city of Athens from the top which made the climb worthwhile. The next day I got up early to visit the national archeological museum where most of the treasures of famous Greek sites are kept. On my way back I noticed that there was an odd lack of traffic on a major road. As I continued I realized there was a parade that was about to start since the next day (Saturday) was Greece's independence day. I checked out of the Hotel and watched the parade for awhile before heading to the airport. Paris greeted me, as I expected, with rain, but I think I brought the warm weather with me because it's beautiful now. There's a huge protest tomorrow including labor unions and a transportation strike (buh), so I'll go to that if it all possible and post about it later.
The next day I did the top of the duomo - 470 steps later I got to the top and it was definitely worth it. I did two other pretty famous churches and then went to Pisa. Besides the tower, a church, and a few museums all in the same square there's nothing to do there. It was 15 euro to go up the tower, so I decided to just admire it from the ground instead. On Tuesday I went to the Uffizi, the most famous museum in Florence. I was very glad to have made reservations the day before and only waited maybe 5 minutes to get in instead of 3 hours. The museum was nice, but the best part was the special exhibit on DaVinci's works. I met some more cool Canadians in the Piazza Michaelangelo and they told me all about this church and the Gregorian chant that was about to happen, so I stayed for it. It was nice, though the lady next to me decided that she wanted to sing along so after a few minutes I had to move. That night we went to a really great restaurant and I had one of the greatest fillets of all time.