Greece, Part 1

Athens is a crowded, chaotic, vibrant city where people park their cars on sidewalks and oranges fall unpicked and uneaten from trees in front of cramped tenements.  This was the view from our Airbnb.  Click on it; it's the Acropolis! 

Athens feels like Paris and Douala had a love child... It's got a distinctly Mediterranean feel to it.  It's definitely Europe.  But there's a wild Southern Hemisphere vibe, too.

The religiosity of the place is everywhere, even though the Greek Orthodox faith is more claimed than practiced.

Here, let's just build all around this decaying structure where the shutters and doors are closed and rotting and trees are growing through the floor.

Check out the decorative flourishes on the tops of the buildings.

I loved the fact that most upstairs apartments have balconies.

The Acropolis made a nice uphill hike amid soul-crushing crowds and under a blazing sun.

As I said to my daughters, faiths are forever morphing and changing, dying and rising as something new, rebirthing and fading away.

A lesser temple at the Acropolis, which simply means "city summit."

Adjacent to the Acropolis is a lower hilltop known as the Areopagus, where the Apostle Paul preached a famous sermon in the Book of Acts about the unknown god.  This is the view of the Acropolis from atop the Areopagus.