Cleaning out old pictures. These first four are still from our visit to Lycabettus Hill - Athens' highest point.

HAPPY MOTHER'S DAY TO ALL MOMS. Kim and I didn't do anything special today. She's got a cold and really didn't feel like walking around. We had a nice outing yesterday and are doing another tomorrow with Mark and Martha, so Kim preferred to just stay home, watch TV and play cards today.

The picture above is the church of St. George at the top of the hill. The chapel is rather small. You can see a vendor out in front of the church selling all sorts of little souvenirs: small wooden icons, worry beads, necklaces, etc. The square would generally be a lot more crowded but it was April and the weather wasn't perfect (but fine).

I've seen this phenomenon on all sorts of cactus/yucca plants. People love to carve their initials into the plants. I would have imagined that the plants would repair themselves. Just goes to show I know nothing about botany. Some of the carvings were dated from several years back.


A wider shot shows the relationship of the plants to the side of Lycabettus Hill. As was the case on the limestone cliffs in Delphi and Nafplion, the plants seem to thrive in this
environment. I doubt anyone planted them and surely they're not cared for.

Of course today also included lots of phone calls. I

called my mom, Kim called her mom, and both Anthony and Nicole called Kim.

Things have been pretty good for us since we got here, but we've hit our first major pain in the butt. The mosquitoes have arrived. We've both been bitten but because Kim is so much sweeter, of course she's been bitten more than I have. She's also had a lot more serious reaction than I have - not so bad as when she was bitten by tiger mosquitoes in Rome back in 2005 but she has had some redness and swelling. We're both itching.

I still had one more picture in my camera from the tram, so I'm using it. Tonight taking the tram home from church (about 8:45 p.m.) there were a ton of teenagers. It must be about the time they go out. The prices of cabs has gone up since we got here and is scheduled to increase again in a few months. They're trying to encourage more use of mass transit. They've lowered the price of tickets for senior citizens, minors and students of all ages.

Kim and I were wandering around one evening and saw this group doing some impromptu singing. Got a couple of short (7 secs) videos.
The audio quality is so poor you can't hear the bouzouki, you can just hear the clapping. And since it's night, the video quality stinks. Sorry.
As I've already mentioned, May 1 is a holiday for Europe. Officially in Greece it's Labor Day, but it's really a celebration of the start of spring. A day or two before the 1st, city workers built this star of flowers and greenery in the main square in front of the parliament building. I'm writing this on May 10 and it's still out there. I haven't any idea how long it will be there.

Back to the mosquitoes: Kim went to the pharmacist and was given a gel to put on her bites. We were also advised to get a repellent I've not seen before in the US (maybe we have it, but I haven't seen it). It plugs into an outlet (like one
of those room deodorizers) and has a liquid that's supposed to kill/repel mosquitoes. It's too soon to know whether it's working but we've been told by people here they're very effective. I sure hope so.

This picture is a wider shot showing the May Day floral star in the square with the parliament building in the background. The main square is a great place for sitting (free Wi-Fi), grabbing a koulouria on the way to work in the morning or buying designer bag knock-offs from immigrants.

Kim neglected to bring her camera one day when we stopped for lunch. She's been taking pictures of the food and posting them to Facebook, so she asked me to take the picture of our calamari rings and moussaka.

When we ate this meal, we learned that not all Greeks eat lunch after 2 p.m. We stopped at this local no-frills place about 12:45 p.m. There were locals eating. Of course they were all retirees and Kim and I probably lowered the average age 40 years, but still, some people do eat earlier here.