Jesus and Nemo visit Greece

Before they knew we were moving, Florrie and Chris decided to take us all to Greece. It was a little crazy but we managed to squeeze our trip in between packing out and driving down to Sicily. Before we even got to our hotel we were told that Greece is the center of the world and that Chris was now Christos Anestasopalus.

We stayed in the Hotel Aeros where this nice man, Antonio helped us out with suggestions on where to go and how to get there. Everyplace was either convenient to the hotel or easy to get to on the metro. As we do in many places, we started out with a hop on hop off tour. Because this was off season we got two days for the price of one. Our driver Dmitri was super helpful and knowledgeable. He even got a friend to help Florrie out with buying postcards.

If you travel to Athens we highly recommend the Athens Hop on, Hop off tour bus.

 

From the bus we saw the Greek Palace Guards; do these uniforms look familiar Alex and Jessica?

We also saw Icarus, the boy who flew too close to the sun, at least that’s who we decided this was. If you haven’t read the Greek myths they are definitely worth reading. I like them because there are lots of Gods in the stories, and you all know I like stories.

We had some fantastic meals. We tried to eat authentic Greek foods.

Antonio directed us to a rather seedy but very interesting and safe neighborhood were we had moussaka for Christmas dinner.

We checked out a few cafes and had traditional breakfasts every morning at our hotel.

 

Our very favorite restaurant was the Trata Fish Tavern, where we all soon became ‘regulars’. It was in the same rather seedy but very interesting and safe neighborhood. We spent part of every day there and were never bothered. Here we are enjoying some of our meals at Trata Fish Tavern.

There was a lot of fishes and loaves! Good wine too. Nemo was rather distressed at all the fish eaten on this trip. He thinks Chris and Florrie should eat more chicken.

This is Nicholas, the cook, and George. They are all fine and talented people, check them out at Trata if you get the chance. You won’t be sorry. We did have one not so traditional meal, but Chris just had to try it.

 

Of course we visited the National Archeological Museum of Athens which was a short pleasant walk from our hotel.

Once again Nemo ran amok among the exhibits, and sad to say, I gave into peer pressure and joined him. 

We were interested to learn the reason so many of the old jugs we’ve seen in the Mediterranean area have such a funny shape. It’s because they are transport amphora and they were made that way to stack in ships

 

We also got to see the restoration process for one of the Caryatids, or as Florrie liked to call them, the six sisters. They are all being cleaned by laser. No matter how interesting the museum we were soon draw outside by the beautiful weather. Plus, we wanted to see the home of the Caryatids, the Acropolis.

Even though the Acropolis was an absolute ruin it was an amazing place to wander.

		Acropolis VIEW SLIDE SHOW DOWNLOAD ALL

After visiting the Acropolis we just wandered around the area for a while. We enjoyed some of the outdoor art.

One of the last places we visited was Poseidon's Temple. We took a city bus about an hour out of Athens along the coast. It was a beautiful sunny day with amazing blue skies.

As you can see we made friends. This is a young Chinese Couple. She works in London and he works in Germany. Once a month or so they meet at one of their homes or somewhere else. Well this is αντίο or antío for now. Next up, our move to Sicily.

Last leg of summer 2013 road trip, D-Day beaches

After the lighthearted first six days of the vacation our road trip became much more serious. We drove up to the north coast of France to visit the D-Day beaches. These beaches (in fact most of Europe) were the scenes of astonishing examples of bravery and tragedy during WWII. It’s too bad humans haven’t learned anything from all the wars we’ve  had except how to make more deadly weapons. Not even I am able to do anything about this. Everywhere Florrie and Chris take us we pray to the local gods for world peace, but it hasn’t worked yet.

Our hotel was on Juno Beach, there is still evidence of the battles there.

People from many parts of the world fought together on this battlefield. Here is the memorial build to honor all those who fought there.

Omaha Beach was another stop on the trip with still another memorial to honor the dead.

Every beach had it’s own memorial and almost everywhere we went there was a museum. We didn’t go into all of them. Here is a collection of museum pictures. Nemo and I enjoyed exploring the exhibits.

		D-Day Museums VIEW SLIDE SHOW DOWNLOAD ALL

This is part of a portable harbor built during the invasion.

There is a video on YouTube but I don’t know how to embed it; we didn’t have all this newfangled technology when I was walking the earth. Here is the link if you want to check it out: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fWO5wpZGG14

Parts of the cliffs above the beaches are still covered with bomb craters

and pill boxes.

We all imagine it was scary for the Germans looking out this pill box when they saw all the ships out there.

 

We also went to the American Cemetery which was very moving. There was a museum and personal stories of some of the men and women buried there.

We have been to other Cemeteries like this and are never able to leave with dry eyes, no matter who is buried there.

Chris was able to do some fishing (but no catching) one day.

We drove through some charming little towns on our trip.

One of the towns was Bayeux which is famous for  The Bayeux Tapestry.

Many of you know that we spend two weeks most summers at Pennsic, which is a two week medieval festival. The Bayeux Tapestry plays an important part in Pennsic life. In fact, do you see the blond centaur on the top border? Florrie has embroidered her in the Bayeux Tapestry style and she lives in our tent during Pennsic. 

Well, we must all say good-bye, or Ciao for now. We are about to start on a new adventure! Our next blog will be all about our rather sudden move from Germany to Italy.  We lived in Italy before we started this blog. We were in Gaeta which was on the Mediterranean, almost exactly half way between Rome and Naples. This time we will be even further south, all the way down to Sicily. We are hoping to find as cool a place as our last home in Italy, but this time with a view of the ocean and the volcano!

This is our 11th year in DoDDS and our 5th big move. Crazy!