Adventures in Belgium: 2013

Wednesday, December 25, 2013

Christmas table waiting for people to come.

via Instagram http://instagram.com/p/iWyG9uMUVQ/

Friday, December 20, 2013

You know you've arrived in Denver when you see the baggage carousel for skis. #Home

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Wednesday, December 18, 2013

I wonder what it is? #sticker #tagging

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Monday, December 02, 2013

37°F, Clear, Sainte-Anne #weatherlive

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Pretty, but chilly, day today. #antwerp

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Thursday, November 21, 2013

Giant bowl of homemade jerky. I'll have 2 of the by the time I'm finished.

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Sunday, November 17, 2013

Cold a grey day in #Antwerp

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Monday, November 04, 2013

Athens, Greece — Cradle of Democracy?

This past week (October 27, 2013-November 2, 2013) Jan and I took a trip to Athens, Greece. Prior to leaving we were both rather excited to visit a place with so much history and so many monuments. We arrived in Athens at 1 in the afternoon on Sunday, October the 27th, and took the metro into the city. We found the journey into the heart of Athens to be nice and uneventful. The metro was clean and not overly crowded. All good so far. But then we got off the metro at Monastiraki Square and were immediately bombarded with sensory overload. The were too many cars on much too narrow streets all blowing their horns like the sheer cacophony of noise would blast its way through the snarled traffic like a blowtorch through ice; not the case.

Add to that the amount of graffiti that covered nearly every building in the tourist part of town. Not the monuments themselves, but every other building wore an outer layer of spray paint. As we wandered down Athinas Street to our hotel, things seemed to go from bad to squalor. There were dilapidated and run down buildings at every turn. It was almost as if the Greeks had made a conscious effort to avoid refurbishing buildings in a hope that maybe they'd turn into archeological relics that had been a boon for so many years. These weren't just your run of the mill broke down buildings, but buildings that you could just tell had, at one point in their lives, character, charm, and beauty.

We arrived at our hotel, the Economy Hotel, located near the Athens town hall. Being that it was the off season, the hotel was not busy at all, and we basically had the run of the place...not that we spent much time there. The free breakfast, was nothing special, but managed to do the trick. After arriving, we dropped off our bags, and set out to explore and to make our way to the Hard Rock Cafe. It has become a tradition of ours that the first day we are in a new city, the first thing we do is locate the local Hard Rock, if they have one. This gives us an opportunity to explore and wander.

We spend the next 5 days exploring and wandering what seemed like every inch of Athens. We went to museum after museum and from ruin to ruin. Snapping photos all along the way. We took one day to make the three hour bus trip to Delphi (or Delfi, or Delfoi is seems as if they can't decide on one way to spell the town's name). It was wonderful to see and the museum there was perhaps the best one of the entire trip.

Our final take away from this trip is this: we are very happy that we went to see what Athens had to offer, and we are glad we got to see the Acropolis, but that will be the last time we go to Athens. It in no way holds the allure of Berlin and Barcelona to us. The next time we go Greece it will be to one of the islands.

Here are some videos (watch them full screen in 720p or 1080p for the full HD experience) of the pictures that we (by we I mean mostly Jan, he's the photographer whilst I'm the navigator) took of our trip. I will post a link to a non-video slide show in a day or two if you don't want to spend an hour watching our videos, although they are pretty fun if I do say so myself. So enjoy! And do please leave comments.

Athens Days 1 & 2

Olympic Torches at the Panathenaic Stadium in Athens

Changing of the Guard at the Tomb of the Unknown

Athens Days 3, 4, and 5 and Delphi