Athens and the Islands (so far)

We spent about a day and a half in athens and mainly just visited the acropolis. it was soooo hot and very crowded... i wouldn't say it was our favorite site ever, but we knew we had to see it!!

the ticket line was basically chaos - they need a much better system, which could also be the reason that a woman came out of the ticket office and posted a sign announcing that they were going on strike that night (and "sorry for any inconvenience")!! the pictures are pretty, it was a very clear day - barely a cloud in the sky - but other than that, it was just more of a good, we came, we saw, lets get to AC!

the islands have been beautiful! as much bad luck as we have had with weather this trip (rain almost every single day since madrid) we have had perfect, perfect beach weather
** knock on wood! **

we began in mykonos where we stayed at a wonderful hotel! it was expensive for us, but really reasonable (especially for a resort island like mykonos). it was family run and they were all so nice. there were only 18 rooms in the whole place and we had a room right off the pool, so it really felt like our own little house. we went to a different beach each day and enjoyed all the great greek foods!
* the picture is of our hotel... you can see michael coming out of our room right behind the pool : )

we are now in naxos, another island, and at another family run villa - recommended by our last hotel - and they are also great. whenever we ask a question or need anything they say, "oh yes, mama will get that for you" ... they call for mama and the little old greek lady dressed head to toe in black (think "my big fat greek wedding") comes scurrying over, takes my hand and leads us to get beach towels, or to serve us juice, etc.

this morning she sat us down, got us delicious oj (there must have been added sugar, it was just too good to be true) and then disappeared for a few minutes before coming back with a rose she had just picked from the garden to give to me. she is so cute! and she tries to talk to us in greek even though we clearly have No idea what shes saying. we love "mama"

we have been basking in the greek sun for 3 days in a row now and barely recognize ourselves.
i think the sun is brighter here or something...

Romania

We spent two short days in romania. The first was in brasov which is a smaller town but has more of the medieval type structures you think of when you conjure images of romania. we weren't too enchanted with it at first (lots and lots of poverty) until we found its charming little town square area. there were lots of shops and restaurants as well as little old ladies selling traditional romanian crafts. we spend most of our time in this square walking the streets and seeing ice cream stand after ice cream stand. apparently they love their ice cream! and then we realized how cheap it was!! about .40 cents (american) and then the trouble began --- we had three ice cream comes in one day!! two of them were literally back to back (we couldn't decide if we wanted hand dipped or soft serve... so we settled on both!) and the third cone was a double scoop for each of us. by the end of the day we felt sick and vowed to stick to a one ice cream a day minimum from there on out.

on to bucharest and there was a lot of the things we didnt like about brasov and even more of it. the train station (much like in brasov) is full of homeless children - with no parents to be found- begging and begging, very persistently, for money. most seemed around 7-9 years old, but some were as young as maybe 4. its very, very sad and hard to see.

we flew out of bucharest to athens on the 9th (our plane leaving at a very unpleasant 5am!).