Keeping Up with the Kumars: Greece & Lebanon

I have to admit that I've been a little afraid to start this blog post. It's a daunting task to begin organizing 30 days of vacation and 1600 photos, but I can't imagine not sharing everything we saw and experienced while we were away.

Nishant and I left for Athens, Greece on the afternoon of July 25th. To say we were excited is an understatement - the thought of getting away for an entire month without having to worry about work or our upcoming move was amazing. The flight to Amsterdam was long, but the following one to Athens wasn't as bad. We landed in Athens around 4pm on July 26th. After 16 hours of travel, we were looking forward to getting straight to our hotel. We spotted a line of taxis upon exiting the airport and made our way over to them in the hopes of quickly grabbing one. This was, as we would soon learn, wishful thinking - as it turned out, the cabs were on strike (which begs the question: WHY were they at the airport?) and we ended up having to take the train into Athens. While this doesn't sound so bad, "taking the train" consisted of lugging our baggage on and off three different trains while attempting to read the platform signs (in Greek) and adjusting to the stifling heat. It took us about two and a half hours to get from the airport to our hotel when it should have taken us at most 30 minutes by cab. Even after emerging from the underground train station in Athens, we walked 20 minutes in the wrong direction before realizing our hotel was on the opposite side of where we were headed. The only consolation was an amazing view we got of the Acropolis while running between train platforms.

The Acropolis

We were pleasantly surprised at how nice our hotel/room was (especially since we booked the best deals we could find online via hotels.com). After showering and napping for a bit, we headed to dinner at a nice spot called Alexander's a few blocks from our hotel.

Still pretty tired...

Nish is refreshed!

July 27th:
After a good night's sleep, Nish and I woke up bright and early the next morning. We were excited to get a move on and see Athens before it got too hot. We arrived outside of the Acropolis gates around 8:30am. I couldn't wait to see the ancient citadel through Nishant's eyes. He shares my love of history, but being so busy with medical school/residency/fellowship the past nine years has prevented him from traveling as much as he would have liked to. Needless to say, he was in awe - it's hard not to be - when we reached the top. Seeing such a monumental piece of history can be a little overwhelming. When you look at the Acropolis, you're witnessing the evidence of the rise and inevitable fall of even the greatest and most powerful of civilizations...it reminds you of how insignificant you are in the grand scheme of things and of how short and precious life is.

Me at the base of the Acropolis

The Theatre of Dionysus
(some of the front-row seats are still intact!)

The Odeon of Herodes Atticus
(concerts are held here to this day)

The Porch of the Maidens

The Parthenon

Our next stop was the Acropolis Museum, which is beautifully designed. Often in places like Greece and Lebanon, developers begin construction on buildings only to discover ruins underground. In many cases, they pick up and find a new location to build. The builders of the Acropolis Museum ran into the same problem, but instead of moving, they decided to continue building directly above the ruins and make sections of the floor glass, allowing visitors to look down and see the ruins right below.

Nishant in front of the Acropolis Musuem
(you can see the ruins below)

After the museum, we took in some more sights around Athens, including the Arch of Hadrian, the Panathenaic Stadium (which hosted the 1st Olympic Games of the modern era in 1896), and the ancient Agora (my personal favorite).