The Acropolis

"The world is a book, and those who do not travel read only one page." ~Louis-Charles Fougeret de Monbron?

This quote was recently featured in the president's message in the Whitworth Today magazine. Scott McQuilkin attributed it to St Augustine, but a little research told me that it was actually written by a Frenchman, though the wording is not the same. But I like the quote, and Thelma and Louise are out here turning pages! The Acropolis has been on my list since my art history days when I was trying to get the Parthenon and the Pantheon straight for a test. ;)  One of us had a very BIG birthday this year 🙌, and it seemed like the appropriate time to knock it off the list. 

Getting here is no small feat! After spending approximately 15 days on 7 different airplanes, we made it the Athens. 😂 We originally planned on going to the Acropolis on Thursday night, but once we arrived at our hotel, it was very apparent that it wasn't in the cards, so we changed to Friday morning. We stayed at this super cute hotel called Moxy. It's a Marriott property, super whimsical and fun. 

Moxy had a very cute pop art feel and they made a mean cup of coffee!

At this point I don't think we'd slept for at least 24 hours! 

Louise is the travel agent (always), and never leads us astray. We had an 8 am tour that got us in the front gates before the long line of people that assembled. It's unclear why there aren't pictures of the climb up the hill, but it's probably because both photographers were focused on survival! It's actually not a very long climb up, but the stairs are steep, and the walkways are mostly marble, which can be slippery. Oh, and the Grecians built this thing on the surface of the sun! Ha! All of these factors made for a very sweaty and red faced existence. It's also how I got separated from the group. 

I mean, I could hear the guide through my earpiece, but in order to protect my new knees (and my sanity!) I took it at my own pace. The result was that when I got to the top, I was able to take in the Parthenon mostly on my own. Getting there early is definitely worth it because you beat the crowds!

There is really no way to describe the sheer size of the Parthenon. Well, I mean I can tell you the dimensions, but until you are standing in front of it, it's hard to understand. Even more difficult to comprehend is the speed with which it was built. Construction started in 447 BC, and finished in 438 BC, with some of the finishing taking another six years. About 100,000 TONS of marble was mined from a mountain about ten miles away. No semi trucks were used in the making of this item! ;) 

As I mentioned I was separated from the group, and so when I got to the foot of the Parthenon, completely overwhelmed with the idea of just being here, and with being here on my new knees, I pretty much just sobbed. Until a nice lady asked if I would take her picture. Here is the one she took of me. Let's not focus on the color of my face, or my hair, or the liters of sweat coming off my body....look at those knees!!!

Don't worry, Thelma and Louise were soon reunited!

The Temple of Athena Nike was maybe what I was most excited to see. It features six maidens as columns. The ones in place at the Acropolis are replicas, the originals being housed safely at the Acropolis Museum, and at the British Museum. 

On the way down, we were able to also see Odeon of Herodes Atticus, which is an amphitheater that seats about 5,000. It's much newer than the Parthenon being built in 161 AD, and rebuilt in 267 AD. SO much newer. ;) I was pleased to see that it has a black and white tiled floor, just like Westminster Abbey, just like my kitchen (linoleum style!). 

There is so much history here; it is difficult to comprehend, and even harder to describe. Even if you don't buy into Athena and Zeus and their Greek and Roman counterparts, there is something magical about this spot.  This was a good day. 💗

After a loooooong nap, we wandered back out into the city, found an amazing restaurant where met the nicest people - shopkeepers, restauranteurs, and even tourists. This was a great day! 

 

Thelma and Louise have been to some amazing spots, and we are so grateful to have added this to our list. Next up, cruising through the Greek islands! 

Favorites

The onboard WiFi was barely strong enough for streaming NCAA basketball, so we shall see if it's strong enough to make a blog. Yes, T&L are headed home. Sigh. All good things must come to an end, apparently. We sure do love to travel with each other! 💗  Here are our trip favorites, which serve as a nice summary of our trip, and a tool of amusement for the two of us. PS From the editor: I see the formatting irregularities and have deemed them beyond the reaches of $8 WiFi. 

Favorite Cruise Food:

Louise: Can I just say breakfast? (When asked for more details…) There was everything I wanted right there: potatoes, frittata, bacon, sausage, croissants... Although the pizza on Coco Cay was good too. That’s cruise food, right? (BBQ chicken and guava pizza!)

Thelma: Why are those triangle hash browns so good? While I did eat my fair share of nachos, the mushroom risotto on Italian night was ridiculously delicious. Best risotto I’ve ever had. 

Favorite Drink:

Louise: Frozen watermelon margarita on Coco Cay.

Thelma: That was yummy. I had a couple good Shirley Temples, but I think my favorite was the Havanas Bananas at Margaritaville.

This was prettier before the first slurp!

Favorite Ice Cream:

Louise: Hmm. The gelato from al Bacio: coffee and coconut. 

Thelma: I’m not really an ice cream fan, but we did find a Baskin-Robbins, and my favorite is peanut butter chocolate. 

Is my phone full of ridiculous photos like this? You know it!

Favorite Non-Cruise Food:

Louise: I’m going t have to say Key Lime pie at Margaritaville. 

Thelma: How weird was it that I ordered the shrimp boil there?  My favorite though, was Chili’s. Yes, it’s a chain, and readily available, apparently, in parts of the country. But it’s not still open where we live! Old favorites are still favorites. I don’t even remember what we ate, but I loved it!

Favorite Place on the Ship:

Louise: It’s always Cafe al Bacio. ☕

Thelma: My answer is ANYWHERE when you’re not on crutches. When your mobility is a factor, a cruise is a great vacation. We’ve cruised three times recently where I have been on, or brought crutches. Walking up the ramp in Tampa on the first day was when I first felt victorious, and it just got better from there. 

Was I admiring the bend on the knees? Yup! 😆

Pieces of Unworn Clothing:

Louise: I think it’s 4. 

Thelma: 7? (Louise: that sounds right!) Are you even vacationing if you don’t over pack? 

Best purchase:

Louise: Definitely the $17.99 Aloha white sandals. (These were purchased after beloved Birkenstocks did not somehow make it into the shoe bag. Yes we have a shoe bag - you should too!)

Thelma: The mermaid purse in Key West. I don't know what the practicality of that item is, but it sure spoke to me! Oh, but wait! I rescind my earlier answer. There was the cutest shop in the Tampa airport in the A terminal. They had Rifle & Co and Ink & Alloy among other things. Pens and earrings? These are a few of my favorite things!

Favorite Random Information Gained During the Trip:

Louise:  Talking to Oyda, our stateroom attendant, and finding out that she was from Nicaragua. While she was from the Caribbean side and we were in the Peace Corps on the Pacific side, it was a fun connection for both of us to make. It’s such a small world. 

Thelma:  I LOVE anything to do with shipwrecks, so reading about the wrecking and discovery of Nuestra Señora de Atocha was pretty fascinating. Cliff notes: She sank in 1622 with an estimated $500 million worth of cargo (gold, silver, emeralds, pearls, and tobacco) on board. The Spanish searched for her for 60 years, but it was treasure hunters out of Key West that found her in 1973. Makes you want to watch Out of the Blue, right?

Lions and Tigers and Bears,  Oh My! Favorite Animal Encounter of All Time?:

Thelma: I can’t get over the mom manatee letting us swim with her and her baby; that was so special.  But my favorite of all time was when we were whale watching in Maui, and the whale came out of nowhere and swam right underneath our boat. Remember we were sitting on the netting towards the front of the catamaran and she came so close, just cutting underneath us. It was amazing. Oh! But I just remembered holding that penguin in Edmonton, and that was one of the most special things ever.  

Louise: The thing that came right to my mind was also in Maui. We were whale watching when you were little and two males breached at the same time right in front of us. I will never forget that. Also, Sting Ray city in Grand Cayman. We were bobbing in the water and the sting rays were just coming by, weaving in and out of us. However, I did decline to kiss one.

Thelma: I was just telling some of my students about this. It freaked me out how their tails just sort of wound around your ankle as they swam by, NOPE! 

Weirdest Thing You Saw in Florida:

T&L:  Does this whole blog exist so we can tell this one story? Possibly. 😉  On the way to Crystal River, we drove through an area where I was allergic to something. It came on fast, and I was instantly a mess. Couldn’t stop sneezing, even after many doses of Benadryl. That night we went to a Walgreens to shore up on Kleenex, and the person in front of us tried to check out with COUNTERFEIT MONEY! In 10s and 50s, if you want to know. It was the most bizarre exchange as the checker announced the bills were counterfeit, and the guy struggled to come up with a story about selling his car.  But he did not look confused at all. The rest of us in line were giving each other looks and thinking about calling the police. You know, dial 9-1 and wait? Being behind someone trying to push counterfeit money was bizarre enough, but then the checker just gave the money back and took a credit card.  What is happening????  Did he make a speedy getaway out of the parking lot? Um, YES HE DID! 

I took this meaning to show the million lanes of traffic, but it turned out to be a nice photo!

That's a wrap! Thanks for coming with us! 💕 ~T&L

Perfect Day

 We're not making it up - we spent today at Perfect Day on Coco Cay in the Bahamas. (The song choice for today, if you want to hum along is Perfect Day by Hoku, from Legally Blonde 😃)

Celebrity/Royal Caribbean own this little island in the Bahamas where they have created quite an exceptional beach experience. (Norwegian Cruise Lines is building something similar on Stirrup Cay "next door"). We will admit to being somewhat wary of this adventure. We've seen so many amazing things via cruising; a beach day seemed somewhat silly.  We're okay with being wrong on this one! 

The island is free to cruisers, but you can upgrade to certain experiences. There was a hot air balloon, water slides, wave pool, zip lines, and...an adult only beach! We bought the ticket for that "excursion" and had a delightful, and mostly quiet, day. There were two ships in port, but our beach was relatively empty. 

We read books (Thelma: Black Wolf by Louise Penny, Louise: Where Trees Touch the Sky by Karen Barnett), swam in the lagoon, and had a delightful lunch. I also obsessively watched an enormous pelican dive for fish. It was HUGE! And I'm pretty sure it was just messing with swimmers. There were fish in the lagoon, but he came up with very few of them, but continually came within feet of swimmers, splashing a few. I kept one eye on that guy! 

Watermelon!

Lunch at Slice of Paradise.

Checking for eyebrows post swim; you can never be too careful! lol

And that was our perfect day! Back on the ship, we sat on our veranda for a while and just soaked up the ocean. Until this guy showed up to fix an errant light on a lifeboat. You don't see that every day! ;)

Dinner and a show! 

Tomorrow is a sea day, and then we head to Tampa to fly home. We might have one more blog in us!

PS The curls came back (hallelujah!), and isn't this swimsuit just the cutest thing ever? 😁

The Last Mango in Paris

 🎶 I went down to Captain Tony's

To get out of the heat 🎶

First of all, there is absolutely no way that Captain Tony's has air conditioning.  However, it was extraordinarily dark in there, so maybe it was cooler? We'll never know, because this IS a dive bar. If you've ever used that phrase, you were wrong. This is it; everything else is a giant step up. But as the offspring of a Parrot Head, it was still worth several pictures and a little fan-girling. 

🎶 Our lives change like the weather

But a legend never dies 🎶

I mean, when in Rome, or Key West, what is one supposed to do? We headed down Duval Street, past Caroline Street (we did not see a woman goin' crazy 🎶), and had lunch at Margaritaville. I would say that it was a weird place, but after Captain Tony's it was like the Ritz-Carlton. HA! But the food was delicious, as were the frozen drinks we ordered (Havanna Banana for me!), and it was totally appropriate to sing along to the music. "🎶 I want my junior mints!" 😂😂 (And yes, we had Key Lime pie-yum!)

Key West, if you've never been, has a bit of a Lahaina feel. There are shops and restaurants, a chill vibe, and it's surrounded by beautiful scenery. We were just here for the day, but if it weren't so dang far away, it'd be a place I'd love to come back to. 

🎶 We shot the breeze for hours

As the sun fell from the sky

And like the sun he disappeared

Before my very eyes 🎶

I can't further these song lyrics any longer! 😆 Back on the boat I got my yearly haircut. Maintaining this wad of curls is so exhausting.  Cut and color and blowout, not in that order. Plus my eyebrows got a redo. There are no pictures anywhere of that disaster.  I looked like the love child of Frida Kahlo and a Romulan. We're accepting bets on how long it will take for my curls to return. 😉

Tomorrow we are off to Coco Cay, which is basically a beach day. The parent company of Celebrity owns a little island out here, and that's the destination for tomorrow. Swimming, relaxing, reading? Yes, please!

On the Road Again

Early in our Spring Break "careers" we went to Whistler to learn how to snowboard. After summersaulting down the hill all day, we woke up the next morning, neither of us able to move a muscle. This morning was similar. 😂 A couple things were in play: our backs were sore from trying to balance on the pool noodle while keeping our feet and (sometimes) faces out of the water, our arms were achy from the dog paddling we were instructed to do (less stirring up of sediment), and I was sore from sneezing from a  somewhat incredible allergy attack on the way from Tampa. (And no, we still can't snowboard!)

I feel like I was already feeling it in this picture from lunch yesterday. (I look a little cray cray!)

Yes, we ordered drinks! And no, I have no idea what was in mine. 😆 It had tropical ingredients and a fun name. It's Spring Break! ;)

The drive to Fort Lauderdale was not scenic, or short, but Louise is a champ of a driver, and we arrived right on time to return our rental car. Our plan was to Uber from the airport to the cruise terminal after turning in the car. We pulled up to Hertz right on time, with about 30 minutes to get to the ship. The guy that checked our car in asked what gate we were going to, and after we told him our plan about the Uber, he put us back in our rental car, and drove us to the port! It was such a kind gesture. If you need a car, choose Hertz!

We weren't late, but maybe we were one of the last on board? To that point, it was kind of nice to have a late check in time because we missed all the lines and waiting. We had lunch on the top deck, and watched as we pulled out of our slip, headed for open water. 

The first several hours on a cruise can be...overwhelming, as everyone is in the same place at the same time. Restaurants are crowded, elevators hard to get etc. And then it just thins out. We had a lovely dinner in a section mostly to ourselves, and soaked up one of our favorite things about cruising: cruising.  😊 The open ocean is beautiful, and it's hard to stop looking out the window. 

Tomorrow: Key West!