Athens is Loco

Hello Friends.

I am sitting in our hotel lobby in Athens on our first evening in Greece. We've had a couple of days of brutal travel, so it is nice to finally get to rest for a couple of days in one place.

My first observations of athens...1) the Metro from the airport...super nice. 2) our hotel...meager accomodations. 3) the area we are staying in...kinda shifty. 4) it smells like a weird combination of smoke and b.o. everywhere we go.

Our time in NYC was awesome. We got to spend some quality time with Cath, and see a bunch of random sights. After our ridiculous plane ride--I couldnt get comforatble to sleep because there was a bebe's kid who kept kicking my chair, and then the lady in front of me somehow got like 4 airplane pillows that she kept shoving to the back of her seat and into my personal space. So irritating. However we finally got to NYC and strolled around. We went to check into our hotel, had a terrible breakfast at this really random place the concierge recommended...i think it was for the foreign tourists, so it was just kinda whatever food. So Rachel and I took to the streets and went to Times Square, ran into some street festival (brazilian day) and then we waited until the lottery for tickets to wicked. Howeer, in our time we posted up at a Starbucks (they have free bathrooms), chilled out in Central Park, and then went to the shops at Columbus Circle--they had a ton of Lenticular Art. It's all about lenticular in 07 apparently. Also I took a pic with another naked statue. haha. Then we were off to try and score Wicked tickets. Unfortunately about 200 other people also had the same plan and so we were denied. We got back to our hotel and took a mini siesta.

Cath swooped us up for dinner and we traveled to Williamsburg in Brooklyn--we walked around and looked at the "dirty hipsters" and then had a beer and some wings at this pub. After our snack, we went to Little Italy and had some amazing food. Finally we found Billy's Bakery, and I scarfed down a cupcake...or two. :) Very tasty. I liked it much better than Magnolia--the frosting was sweet without being able to taste the sugar granules.

The next morning we got up and walked the flea market on our street, then Cath picked us up and took us to some real deal NY pizza in Queens. The place was hilarious. Total old school joint complete with angry patrons.

Once we got to JFK the guy at the British Airways counter informed us that we were on the TSA watch list. Seriously??!? Ok i actually don't know if he was joking, but I don't like those kinds of jokes. Did I mention that I LOVE british airways? I had not flown them before, but it was lovely. The people were pleasant, there was ample leg room, and the food was decent. Good times.

I am still trying to figure out if i can post pics from this computer...I am thinking no because as it is, I am typing on a greek keyboard. What the hell....fortunately I am actually a better typist than i thought i was so i can figure out what it is I am spelling. Holla!

It's pretty warm here, but truthfully we've only seen our hotel thus far. We are both so exhausted from the travel that we are taking it easy today. We got in to our hotel about 4PM and right now i think it's only 7 or 8. The thing that is ticking me off at the moment is that my phone is not registering, so I can't call out. So if you don't hear from me in a few days via phone, you will know what happened.

Alright I better get back upstairs and see if we can find some dinner to eat. I took a walk around the neighborhood here to get some water, and it was not somewhere I would kick it on an ordinary day. However, we're in Greece, so it's definitely not an ordinary day.

I'll try and write again soon.

Until then...Always Log Out.