We are heading to Athens, Greece today but not from our usual airport. As it turned out our nephew, Shawn Bishop, the youngest son of my middle brother (Rick) was getting married in  Merrillville, IN on October 11. As this was the wedding of the last of our nieces/nephews we wanted to participate so we headed to Chicago a few days ahead of the wedding to visit siblings who still lived in the area and attend the wedding.

So that accomplished we are heading to Athens from Chicago this morning. We are flying on one of our favorite airlines active in the region of the world where we are headed-Turkish Airlines. Better yet, it is on a 787 ( the successor to the famous 747) and we will be in business class. Flight time to Istanbul is about 10  hours, with a short Istanbul layover (1.5 hours) before the 1.5 hour flight to Athens. The reliability of modern aircraft is astounding. Our plane arrived from Istanbul at 9:40 AM and by 11:15AM we were on our way back to Istanbul on the same airplane!

The flight was smooth and we arrived on time in Istanbul around 6 AM their time. I was amazed at how busy the airport was that time of the morning.

I was surprised that our short flight to Athens was also on a large wide body aircraft, a 777 in this instance. I was also surprised to see how many Chinese people were on our flight. There were multiple tour groups visiting Greece .

Greece has a population of 10.4 million and Athens has a population of 643,000 (urban population of 3.1 million). And as is common in most parts of the world they have severe traffic issues. It took us almost an hour to go the 33 km from the airport to the city. The one saving grace is that they are patient drivers and I heard very few horns.

Because of my status with Marriott I was able to get early (11AM)  check in to our room where we proceeded to catch up on the missed sleep on the planes. We limited ourselves to 4 hours so we would be assured we would be able to sleep tonight.

I commonly will ask hotel staff for restaurant suggestions and they came through with what turned out to be an excellent choice only a 10 minute walk from the hotel.

Initial reactions to Athens:  There is graffiti everywhere and the buildings are in disrepair, even the ones housing upscale stores like Nike. Sidewalks near the hotel need repair. Streets are narrow and clogged with cars. Surprisingly though, many of the streets are lined with healthy trees. So far what we have seen is not overly impressive from a visual standpoint.

We are scheduled to take a walking food tour tomorrow morning before meeting our fellow tour travelers later in the day when our formal trip begins. Now it is time to try to get a good nights sleep to get our bodies into the local time zone.