First day in Athens

Even though I got in late last night, I was awake before 8. There’s an hour’s difference between Athens and Kazan. It doesn’t seem like much but it throws me off a little bit. I had a nice breakfast in the roof top restaurant of my hotel. It has a spectacular view of the Acropolis. Afterwards, Colleen from CycleGreece, the person who organized my tour, came by at 10 and and we spent an hour going over the material. She will accompany on the first day because she wants to ride, and then I will ride alone. A driver will always take my suitcase from hotel to hotel for me and occasionally I will hitch a ride when I have to be a certain places at a certain time. She has a great bike for me. It’s a brand-new Specialized and it is really sharp.
After we got done, I went right around the corner and got in line for tickets for the Acropolis. The weather was so beautiful, I could run around in my shirtsleeves. I spent a couple of hours there, then I walked around the pedestrian zone. I was looking for a place where I could get a new battery for my watch which quit on me this morning. I didn’t find one,  becuase of course it’s Sunday and lots of stores are closed, plus I’m probably looking in the wrong place. But then I sat down for an early dinner of moussaka and a salad, both of which were very good. I came back to the room pretty early because I was beat. I did some communicating and writing; now I’m just about ready to turn in.
Athens is a very impressive city. There are lots of stray dogs and cats running around. And I saw one woman bring little pouches of cat food to feed some of them. And the dogs seem more aggressive than the stray dogs in Kazan. These beasts were barking and chasing after tourists’s dogs. One nice thing about being in Athens in December is that the number of tourists is manageable. The Acropolis was not overly crowded. Tomorrow it’s going to be battery and grocery store search, then a couple of museums. I need to find out if anything’s open on Christmas. Otherwise I will just be reading in a park.