Athens

Yesterday, we arrived in Athens, as you can see on my World Trip Progress Map.

We finished up in Buenos Aires, after some intensive Spanish classes with Gustavo's friend, Ana, and some tango classes at various milongas.  We wanted to take sside trips to Colonia, Uruguay and Iguazu falls.  However, floods prevented us from taking a bus to the falls, and the ferry to Colonia was full on the day we wanted to go.

So, we had some extra fun, Buenos Aires style.  We ended up running into a tango instructor from LA who was in town taking lessons himself.  He pointed us in the right direction for some good instruction.  And Ana's classes were very worthwhile.  She believes in pure immersion, so she wouldn't speak any English to us, right from the very beginning.  If we'd had her classes before traveling all over Argentina, we would have fared much better linguistically, but we wanted to go south before it got too cold.  Hopefully, we'll retain enough to be helpful in Spain.

We flew back to NYC for the weekend.  My grandmother just had a heart operation (at 100 years old!) and she's recovering nicely now, so I wanted to visit her as much as possible.  We also got to spend some time with the rest of my family.

A couple of painfully cramped flights later, and we're in Athens.  We're staying in the old city, near the Acropolis, and it's very beautiful.  Last night we ate on the sidewalk at a nice little outdoor cafe on a side street somewhere.  We'll spend tomorrow seeing the sights, and the next day we begin island hopping!