Greece!

The end of May and the beginning of June brought a trip a year in the making: a once-in-a-lifetime trip with my parents, all my siblings, and their spouses, provided by my generous parents with the help of the inheritance my mom got after her parents passed. I still can't quite believe we got all of our schedules to align, that everyone found childcare, and that everyone made flight connections to make it all really happen.

We were the only lucky ones with a flight directly to Athens-one of the perks of living in Chicago!

The day we arrived, we checked into our hotel and met up with people as they arrived. Everyone else rested at the hotel, but we had a bit of sightseeing planned for that afternoon (can't waste a moment!). 

We took the metro to the downtown Athens area and saw the Temple of Zeus:

Got our first view of the Acropolis!

We saw the Panathenaic Stadium, built in 1896 for the first modern Olympics on the spot of the first Olympic stadium from the 4th century BC. 

We got to see how ruins are scattered all throughout town.

These kinds of amazing flowers grow all over!

We also saw that cats are everywhere in Athens.

It was a good first day, and but we were beat by the end of it.