Philosophizing with Socrates

Let's see, I left you as we were about to head for the airport. Let it suffice to say a lot has happened in between now and then.

My super-cool new backpack:


In the Doha Airport at 3:00AM! Woo-hoo!:


Abby's chillin':

We survived the flights, only because we flew Emirates to have Video-on-demand. Seriously, no other airway even comes close to matching Emirates high-quality service and entertainment options. (If this was an Emirates commercial, this is the part where the head dude would come on and say, "They're flying Emirates. Why don't you?"...

We got to Athens, searched out the apartment to drop off our stuff and then dashed out into the city for dinner. After dinner, we walked around our area.

Of course, one cannot stay in Athens without philosophizing:


Abby and I enjoyed pretending to be eskimos:


After getting some sleep, we started afresh this morning. Figuring out which direction to go can be difficult. Fortunately, however, we have several people looking at the map (and one guy in the backgroud doing something questinable??):


We finally arrived at the National Archaeological Museum:


We saw this amazing statue, which I remembered from my High School Humanities textbook:

So Dad says, "Do you know how we can tell these guys have been working out?" We reply, "How?" He giggles, "Because they have stone hard bodies...". Wow, Dad. That's all I can say, Wow.

Yay! I found Zeus's head!:


I said, "Mom, stand next to the head and I'll take your picture." Instead of just standing next to it, however, she started hugging it or something...the guard was like, "MADAM! STOP! DO NOT TOUCH THE STATUES!" Haha.:


Next, we headed to the Ancient Agora where Socrates would sit and philosophize. If Socrates philosophized there, we couldn't be left out... Here are a few of our shots in the Agora:



Emily found this interesting Corinthian column, which spawned the creation of her new theory on Greek columns, specificully columns of the Doric Order. Check out her interesting, if a bit specious, theory on her blog (emilykent.blogspot.com).


We then made the hike up to the Temple of Hephaestus, picured in the background of this shot:

While we were up at the Temple, my family basically tried to eliminate me from the picture. Emily and Mom dragged us into this wooded area, and I had a terrible allergy attack (I mean a serious attack here, people). They didn't even seem to care, but when I finally managed to lure them back out into the open ground, Emily "credit-carded" me right as I was on the edge of the cliff so I almost fell off. I think they were secretly trying to make me fall off while I was at my weakest as my eyes poured from the allergies...

Here are a few shots of us with the Acropolis in the background:



Finally, we diecided to grab dinner at a quaint, Greek taverna. I ordered a simple salad, nothing fancy. Soon after we ordered, they brought us a large salad, and Mom thought it was complimentary with our meals. My family quickly downed the entire salad. When our food came, however, there was no salad, and we realized they had eaten mine. Needless to say, I was less than thrilled. This picture shows us in from of the taverna with Emily and Abby grinning while I pout:


I think that's all the happenings so far. It's been amazing, and I've got to get to bed because tomorrow we're hitting the Acropolis!