Athens....

We left the ship early to go into Athens. I was looking forward to seeing all of the ancient sites. I loved learning about ancient Greece when I was in school. Please excuse these next few pictures - they were taken from the bus window. I just wanted to include them to show how the site mountains looked from afar. We boarded our private family bus and enjoyed a tour guide's knowledge of Athens. This is the view of the Acropolis.

Here is the temple of Zeus from far away. That guy got a lot of temples built for him!

Here is the Panathenaic Olympic stadium. It was the site of an ancient stadium that was rebuilt for the revival of the Olympic games in the 1870's. It is built entirely of white marble. We didn't really get great pictures as we didn't go in - we wanted to spend our time on the rest of Athens.

When we got to the Acropolis, we passed the museum of ancient Greece. It is really cool - the museum is built over an ancient civilization. Instead of moving the museum, they just built it over the site and you can watch them excavating the site underneath.

The Theater of Dionysos was built in 400 B.C. Many plays were enjoyed there. Most of the people had bleacher seats except the main guys who got to sit in the first rows - their seats were little thrones.

Not far from that is the Odeion, built in 200 AD. It was reconstructed in the 19th century and they still have performances there every summer.

We made our way up to the Parthenon area. It was crazy busy. And hot.

The Parthenon was really an amazing structure that was brilliantly built. It looks like the pillars and lines are all straight, but they are all actually built on a slight inward angle to provide more support. I can imagine how beautiful it would have been in the day!

The story goes that Poseidon and Athena were battling to see who would be the patron saint of Athens. Poseidon struck a rock and a stream came forth. Athena placed an olive tree at the site and won - and that is where it got its name. They say this was the site of the olive tree (maybe the very one!)

This is the Porch of the Cyclades. The columns are beautiful sculptures of women.

The whole gang. We loved being with our family!

This is a view down to the temple of Zeus and the stadium.

This is a view of the rock of Peter.

We went to the Plaka area afterwards and enjoyed the shops. We also very much enjoyed our Gyros. Our seats in the restaurant were above the kitchen. We enjoyed watching them prepare our food from above!

Mykonos....

Our stop in Mykonos was in the evening - from 7:00pm to 1;30am. I was a little disappointed, as I had heard the beaches there were wonderful. It turns out, it was a really fun time to visit. We left all the kids with the older cousins to babysit, and we had a night out on the town!

As the sun started to set, the scenery became surreal. I loved all the old buildings, the new and old boats and the colors. - Another place I couldn't stop taking pictures!

Fish and octopus - warm up that grill!

We walked around the town and watched the sunset. Beautiful night!

The winding side streets had fascinating shops and little restaurants.

We had dinner at a wonderful fish restaurant. I have decided I really like Greek food! We returned to our ship and were relieved to find out that the kids did great without us. Fun night!

Santorini....

I was really excited for the Santorini day, because I was the one who researched it for the family. (We all were assigned an island that we had responsibility for researching and planning activities there). We had to "tender in" from the cruise ship, because the ship could not get close enough to dock. So we all got on these little ships and made our way to shore. The boys were very excited to be on a real pirate ship!

After arriving at the shore, we rode a big cable car up to the town of Fira, which is at the top of the zig zag path.

The view from the top of the city was incredible! Santorini used to be a round island. A volcano went off 3600 years ago and basically blew a chunk of the island away. It also buried an entire city under volcanic ash. Many people believe this is the lost city of Atlantis.

I loved all of the white washed buildings - some with blue or yellow roofs. This is the town that you always see in advertisements for Greece. I loved being photographer here!!

I was particularly interested in this little place down an alley. I wish we had time to see the silence competition!

We had Nate with us for the day. What a great sport he was, helping Andrew with piggy back rides along the hike!

When we walked past this restaurant, with octopus tentacles hanging outside, we knew that is where Jon would want to eat.

It was a great meal with a great view!

The line for the cable car was way too long to wait for the ride down. So, we decided to walk. It was a long walk down winding, zigzag stairs. You actually walk side by side with the donkeys. With a little bit of careful walking, to avoid the donkey remains, we made it. Halfway through, a donkey came right up to my neck and bit me. I think he just bit my hair, as all I felt was wetness on my neck. It really was rather gross, and I kept looking behind me the rest of the way down!

We ended the day with a movie night in our room. We were glad to be able to hook our ipod up to the tv, as there were no English movies or shows to watch!