The Boat

The next day, we took a private bus (we were a group of 14 after all!) to our cruise ship, Celebrity's Infinity.

We had a great time on the boat all throughout the week, but I'll post all the boat pictures here on this post for simplicity's sake. We loved watching the sunset each night.

We really enjoyed having dinner together each night. We were split between two tables and mixed up the groups each night. 

We enjoyed the shows, including a magician and a couple of music shows, a silent disco that was way more fun than I expected it to be, an outdoor movie viewing of "Twisters" that was so windy it felt realistic, reading on deck taking in the views, and more.

This photo took some planning- Jason was on the dock and I was up in my mom's room on the boat!

Jason grew out his beard on the trip. It was apparently quite the topic of conversation with our kids at home as they watched it come in more and more as the trip progressed. They tried to convince him to keep it when we got back!

Athens

Our first full day in Athens was packed and wonderful. We went to the Acropolis Museum first thing in the morning. It was full of stunning artifacts found on the Acropolis as they excavated it. The museum building itself was cool; they found ruins beneath the spot where they were building the museum, so they built over the ruins, leaving the ruins accessible on the basement level and visible from the ground level through balconies and plastic walkways.

Midday, Jason (our Athens tour guide) took us on a walking tour of Athens.

We loved wandering through the spaghetti-bowl streets of a neighborhood called Anafiotika.

We stumbled upon this darling outdoor restaurant just as we were getting really hungry. It was in the middle of the neighborhood and so away from the Athens crowds, and was delicious. 

More ruins were scattered around town:

And lots of stunning churches.

We all spent an hour or two resting:

And then it was the main attraction: The Acropolis! The Parthenon was stunning, of course, and so iconic. But I didn't realize there was a whole complex up there! 

Last, but not least, we searched a bit and finally figured out how to get onto Mars Hill (of the Book of Acts and Paul's fame!).

And then, that evening, we decided to take one more trip back to town to see the Acropolis lit up at night. It was quite an amazing day!

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.