Amy's Travels: Brain dump

Goodbye, Athens!

Hello! I am back at work today and I feel little bits of my vacay slipping away as I catch up on two weeks' worth of work, so I wanted to go ahead and do a brain dump real quick before it all disappears. This might be random, but we'll start out with some semblance of order...

Hello, Alps in Austria!

Sunday was one of the longest travel days of my life. We left Athens at 8 AM, arrived in Frankfurt at 10:30 AM (turbulent landing, since there was a storm in Frankfurt), left Frankfurt at 1:30 PM, arrived in Newark at 3:30 PM, left Newark at 7:45 PM, arrived in Charlotte at 9:50 PM, and my dad picked us up and we arrived at my parents' house at 11:30 PM. All this is local time. 11:30 PM EST would be 6:30 AM Greece time. Since I got up at 5 AM Greece time Sunday, that means I finally got home at 6:30 AM Greece time Monday. That's a long day. I fell asleep in the car.

Police in Athens the last day

The good part was the flight from Frankfurt to Newark wasn't full, so I moved from the middle of a three person row to the row behind me, and there was a space between me and the girl at the window seat. So it was a very comfortable flight! I watched Side Effects and The Dark Knight Rises and the flight went by quickly. Woohoo!

The bad part was border control in Newark. The longest line ever. I'm always reminded during border control how nice it would be if my suitcase had wheels, but I've heard that just adds weight to the backpack part, and as I use the bag primarily in its backpack form, that would be silly. But man. It would have been nice in Newark, as I was dragging it along the ground.

Then I had to drive from NC to Nashville on Monday, and today I am finally back at work. Woo! Once I go running tonight, everything should feel normal again. Jetlag back is much easier to deal with. It's nice to gain 8 hours...

Free bread at dinner the first night in Athens

So now for the brain dump:

- Multiple times while we were in Athens we heard people yelling at people. At the Roman Agora, a man was screaming at someone on the phone. When we first got to Athens, a man was yelling at his wife. This leads me to conclude Greek people yell a lot.

The Roman Agora

- There was Greek yogurt at every breakfast. I like this.
- I felt very, very safe in Greece. Nothing got stolen, no one tried to rip us off. It's nice. A lot of the time people try to rip tourists off. No one tried that in Greece.

- I don't think I saw any overweight people, so maybe all that jazz about Mediterranean diets is true?
- There was some kind of race that went past us on Wednesday afternoon. Cops at the front, but no roads were closed. It was really random and I sorta wanted to join them.
- I didn't see any runners in Germany, but lots of walkers. But I saw quite a few runners in Athens!
- Greek people don't dress as...flamboyantly?...as Germans.
- I heard more British accents than American, especially on Paros.

Storage lockers at Monastiraki metro station

- I am leaving this open as I can add to it throughout the work day as things come to me.
- There were a lot of cops stationed throughout Athens on Saturday. Near the tourist spots, like the Acropolis and the Parliament, and pretty much all over. I heard someone on the bus say it's in case of riots. They did seem to be wearing riot gear (the shield and knee pads).
- There are large storage lockers at Monastiraki metro station. This is very handy when you don't have a nearby hotel and need somewhere to store your luggage while wandering around the Plaka.
- Every meal included free bread and most of them included a sweet "desert" wine in a shot glass. Nice touches.
- There were stray dogs everywhere. It was weird, though, because in Athens they had collars on. Do they tag the strays in Athens?
- I only saw goats once, on the way to Mycenae.
- Bathrooms in Greece were free, unlike in Germany. You couldn't throw paper in the toilet, unlike in Germany.

OK, now for some random photos. I'll post more from my nice camera once I edit them to smaller sizes. Right now they're too huge to deal with.