Fantastic trip!

We are home! The trip was truly amazing & wonderful. I'm so glad I was able to go. I would recommend a cruise to the Greek Islands & Turkey to one & all! There are probably very few people that would be patient enough to look at the 1000+ pictures that I took during the trip, so I will just share a few highlights.

The first thing we saw out the window of the plane as it set down in Athens, was a huge blue building, with the yellow letters of IKEA on it. All of us that saw it burst out laughing.

The climate of Greece reminded me of southern California. Lots of palm trees & orange trees & olive trees. I also saw apricot trees. One of our tour guides told us that they don't eat the oranges off the trees in downtown Athens, because they are too sour and it takes too much sugar to sweeten them up. She said when she was little, her grandmother used to make jam out of them & she remembers her stirring in lots & lots of sugar.

The first night we stayed in Glyfada, which is a resort town along the coast. The beach was just a couple blocks from our motel. Some of the kids went swimming. I just took pictures. The water was the most beautiful blue color.


Here's what I learned about the Greek flag:

The blue in the flag represents all the water surrounding Greece & the Greek Islands
The nine stripes represent the 9 years it took Greece to win their independence.
The cross in the upper left hand corner is because Greece is a Christian country.

I took lots of pictures of the flora found in Greece. Here is a close-up of an olive tree:

I just thought it was way cool, because all the olive trees had little olives growing on them.

Here's Kimball and me standing on top of the Acropolis (Acropolis means highest point) in front of the Parthenon (the temple of the Greek goddess Athena whom the people of Athens considered their protector).


From the top of the Acropolis, looking down upon the temple of Hephaestus (Greek god of invention). Interesting that it still has it's roof. It is the best preserved ancient Greek temple.


Here's the Odeon of Herod Atticus. They still use it for concerts today. How cool would it be to attend a concert here? I could almost hear Yanni as I stood & looked down upon it.


Panathenean stadium. Also called Kallimarmaron (meaning beautifully marbled) stadium. This is the site of the first modern day Olympics held in Athens in 1896. It was also used for the 2004 Athens Olympics for the archery competition.


Here's a group photo of the 'Utah' EF tour group:


Boarding our floating motel, named the M/V Cristal: