Athens

Hey everyone!

We arrived here in Athens about 3am Monday your time.... which was some time Sunday afternoon for us... I can't remember anymore. Time is passing in a blur at the moment! Today is Tuesday and we are heading out of Athens to our first Greek Island "Paros". We'll be there for a couple of days then will head to Naxos, then Santorini. After that we will come back to Athens and fly out to Turkey and spend a week there. Not sure what the rest of our journey will be like after that but we shall see!

It is beautifully hot over here and (obviously) we have hit the markets already.Apparently with the Euro becoming the new currency in all the European Union countries has caused massive inflation. :P Oh well.Found a random greek instrument I'm keen to buy. Kind of looks like that mandolin that...is it Greg or Jeremy?...hasplayed in church. Except bigger. And very very cool :D (and expensive.... erm... *cough*) We shall see though... am going to check out the shoppping in other places first.

Feels like I'm living in a dream. We have all been suffering hideous vertigo (sp?) from the time zone changes...

I visited the ruins of the Parthenon and Acropolis yesterday! And I'm going to do some more exploring of other ruins today while my mother and sister return to shopping :P (figures, eh?)

...Not sure what they'd do without me though... as I predicted, I've become the official map-reader! LOL It took me awhile to figure out how it worked though, because streets etc are in a haphazard sort of format, with names stuck on sides of buildings rather than poles pointing down the correct street like we have in New Zealand... so I couldn't figure out if the name was referring to the road we wereon, or the one around the corner... quite confusing!

So far we've been in a youth hostel in Athens and we will be glad to leave today... for the money paid for our room, it's been pretty shoddy- with shared, co-ed bathroom facilities! EEP! We also got screwed around the first day because when we arrived they said we have only booked for two people rather than three, which wasn't true! But it's all worked out which is good.

Miss you all!

=^_^=

[edit] fixed spacing