Gordo Running

 OK, I'm going to try and get through this since I'm caught up on homework.  Well friends, we last left off  with us arriving in Piraeus port in Athens late at night. Our ride into town to the hotel was informative. From far off we could see the lit-up Acropolis high on the hill. The streets were mostly empty and we could see that nearly every free surface was covered with graffiti.  And that's as far as I got during my first week of class. It's now been almost three months since we disembarked in Athens so my memory is fading on some of the details of these pictures. I'll be doing more digging this time around. On a positive note, I scored a 94% in my Theory of International Relations course. OK, here we go. Rick Steves opens up the pocket Athens guide with this passage:     "Most of Athens is a noisy, polluted modern sprawl: characterless,       poorly planned, and hastily  erected concrete suburbs that house     ...

Santorini, like Cappadocia , was a spot that Mila picked out. Pictures on Instagram are often enough to pique her interest. I need history or something culturally significant. I have to admit, I thought the pictures were really pretty too.  I interrupt this blog to say, well, the rest will likely be hurried. I started a Master's class on Monday and will likely not have the time to put in the research and editing I put into the Turkey posts . Sorry Jordan. Like Cappadocia, I didn't have a detailed plan drawn up. In fact, I had no plan at all. We looked at the map of Santorini and grossly underestimated its size. In our minds, we could rent some bicycles and be on our merry way. I had Mackinac Island in mind. As I wrote in Istanbul Part 3  we had an 8-hour layover in Athens where we crashed at a hotel close to the airport. The hotel employee dropped us off at the airport at the last minute, so we rushed through and hopped on the plane to Santorini. The Aegean airlines stewardes...