GREECE! (and a little Madrid thrown in there too)

Eric and I went to the other side of the pond and ended up in Greece (after JFK sucked and we almost missed our flight to Madrid and lost our luggage) earlier this month. It was awesome. There was a deli 50 yds from our hotel that was super cheap (a loaf of artisan bread and a wedge of gouda was less than 3 euro), our hotel in Athens was super cheap (and had a view of the Acropolis), and I got a scarf that was super cheap (it was 5 euro). The primary purpose of our trip was to run a marathon... the f-ing original marathon that ended in the modern marble olympic stadium! The marathon went pretty well...I'll do a separate race report on that. Eric did the 10K and hauled it for an awesome time, too. After the marathon and all that we did some more sightseeing and then we were on our own for a couple days (we went with Apostolos Greek Tours for the first 6 days)... the first of our on our own days we went to Philopappos Hill to look for some alleged bouldering. We hiked all over this hill and were about to go back when Eric wanted to go just a little further. We went a little further and I saw a bolt. Followed by some more bolts, and then we saw spray painted numbers and decided we had found something. There was a pad stashed, but there were a couple other climbers there so we didn't borrow it, instead bouldering with Eric's jacket under our butts. Needless to say, nothing hard was attempted, but it was still cool climbing anyway.
After Athens we went to Madrid, which was more expensive but just as awesome. We hiked around all day and got comfortable with the metro system (which would totally be my preferred mode of transportation if we had one in Orange County). We got some sweet paella for dinner at our hotel of all places, after looking for a hole in the wall restaurant for 2 hours and not being able to find one.
Finally it was time to go home :( I had a lot of fun in Europe, and wish we could've stayed longer in Madrid, even though it was cold.
Short recap, but in conclusion I love international flights because they serve you actual meals.
I'll post some of the pictures later/tomorrow/this weekend (I have a thesis to turn in!), they'll do a better job showing our trip than I can explain in words!