What Next?: October 2010

At the end of October...and into the beginning of November... I went on an awesome trip to Greece and Turkey with my friend Camille. Camille emailed me sometime around May of last year and asked "Do you want to run the Athens Marathon?" I said "sure, why not!?" and the next thing we knew we were signed up. [Kinda like what happened with Antarctica] oy.

Anyway - it was an awesome trip. Despite the foot setback (see post below).. It was still an awesome time.

I got to Greece as planned. Camille did not. I wondered around the city by myself just exploring... And taking pictures like this with my iphone front camera. Ha.

It was a lot of fun to explore without knowing anything about anything. I just wondered. I found the Olympic stadium:

This is where the marathon ends. Pretty awesome to run into the Olympic stadium at the end of the race. I'm sure it would have been even way more awesome had I ran in after completing the marathon. :(

Of course I found me an awesome Gyros place. The food in Greece is Amazing! Loved alllll of it!

The next day.. Camille wasn't getting in until later in the afternoon. So, I went on the tour that marathon tours organized. I was bummed she wasn't there. But I met lots of great people on the tour [More on that later].

We went to the Acropolis (above). Which had a pretty sweet view (below).

We went to Zeus' temple.......

And I think we went to the Olympic stadium which I had already seen the day before.

Finally Camille arrived!!! And she joined me and my new friend Andrew (met him on the tour) and we walked around the city some more. I basically showed them what I had discovered the day before.

We played with the helmets at the store...trying to embrace the culture.......

We ate more DANG good food! Check out this meat!!! Ha. Soooo good. We even made friends with the waiter....

And we found this awesome mini (and I mean mini) garbage truck thingy:

And yes, we just got in and took a picture while no one was looking.

Later that night, at our hotel, they had a little reception thing for all the marathon tours runners. We were able to meet Katherine Switzer [The first woman to run a marathon].

Her story is pretty inspiring. http://www.kathrineswitzer.com/ She entered the Boston marathon back when women were not allowed to register and run it. And somehow, they made a mistake and let her in. During the actual marathon, a race official, literally tried to pull her out of the race. But she kept going and she finished it.

The view from the top of the hotel:

And one more...

The next day we did more of the same stuff because Camille hadn't seen any of the things I had seen. So, Andrew and I went with her... And Lesley. Another new friend we met on the trip.