The Greece flag flies over the ticket booth for Keramikos. Here we bought our Athens pass with eight passes for city attractions.

Up until landing in Athens, our trip was pretty typical. Or at least for us. We stayed up all night, got on our early flight to Philly and then flew on to Athens. We didn't have any flight issues, but slept very little on the flight. Instead, I movied hard. Thank you, in-flight entertainment.

Once in Athens, we rode the metro into our hotel. The hardest part of that was getting Euros because we couldn't buy tickets with credit card. But watch out, Greece, with Euros in hand, we can play all your games. We're quite the duo when it comes to traveling. I bring the international experience and observation skills, and Cole brings research, common sense and calm to the team.

Around noon, we were all checked into the Arion Athens Hotel. The location was handy, and it was also handy to have one home base our whole time in Athens. We didn't have to waste time packing and traveling. That means go-go-go sightseeing.

So, let's do that.

The museum teaches us about the site before we go wander around amongst the ruins.

Our first stop was Keramikos, a place that was mostly a cemetery but also home to a wall and some festival importance. Sure, the Acropolis was calling, but we wanted to devote a whole day to it, so Keramikos. It was a good introduction to ancient things, like 3000 BC. Everything was just so old. It's just so different than battle fields on the East Coast. This ancientness left us just pretty amazed. Oh, and because we came here first and bought our Athens city pass, which has passes to things like the Acropolis, we were ahead of the curve when it came to visiting the Acropolis. More on that in the next blog.

We started in the museum, taking in stone slabs, statues and pottery. Those three words could sum up most of our Greece museum visits actually. I've never tried to carve something, but I can't even draw anything this detailed. They had skill.

After the museum, we roamed the entire site in the afternoon sun. It's safe to say California summers did not prepare us for 95-degree heat. If we look sweaty in photos, we were probably much sweatier, to be honest. The site had two gates, parts of an old city wall, and a Street of Tombs. Thanks to Cole's ability to read the less-than-straightforward signs, we navigated our way around all the different roads and paths.

Many of the stone slabs here are replicas, and the National Archeological Museum, which we visit later, has the real deals.

I love letters, especially old ones, even though I have no idea what these say.

Roar. The animal carvings were my favorite.

This giant bull stands inside the museum, not out on the site on a burial monument like it would have a long time ago.

This site dates back to at least 3000 BC.

In 479 BC, they built a city wall here, and chunks of it are still standing.

Cole tries to read and decipher the signs to figure out which walls were what. He was way better at that than me.

Important citizens were buried here along the Street of Tombs. Those giant stone slabs and statues would have marked the graves.

Cole explores down into the site, checking out more huge chunks of ruins.

Cats, cats, cats. Greece has a huge wild cat population.

Our first ancient stop was awesome, but we were also parched. We headed out and our feet led us directly to a cafe. We ate a little Greek food ... okay, fries aren't crazy Greek. I know. At this point, we were pretty exhausted from the heat and lack of sleep, so we wandered by a few other little sites and downtown before heading back to the hotel. Once we got back, we didn't last long. The beds were super stiff, but that didn't stop us from falling asleep in about 5 minutes. We needed to rest up anyway. We have a big Day 2: the Acropolis!

Ahhh. The feeling you get when you take a sip of a cold Coke after roasting in the afternoon sun.

Cheese fries, Greek style.

The Agios Eleftherios church, a little 13th century church, stands in the Mitropolis square next to the Metropolitan Cathedral of Athens.

I can't even imagine how long it took to build all these things and place all these tiles.

Just doing a little bird watching.