Greek Snow

After 9/11, being young and naive, my husband and I marveled at the plethora of cheap airline tickets. We snapped up two tickets from JFK to Athens for $250 each. We got on a plane January 2, 2002 (the same day I was officially confirmed pregnant with Claire) headed towards a snowy Athens. To young and naive midwesterners, snow is no big deal. To Grecian natives--snow stops life--they think of snow like "White Death". I have since seen headlines about the "Blizzard of 2002", funny considering it was maybe a 8 or 9 inches.

Chris and I have memories of workers scrambling to clear the snow covered marble steps to the Parthenon not with shovels--but garden hoses! Icy marble is very slippery! The museums were closed. The buses stopped. Tours were canceled. Restaurants closed. We played battleship in our hotel room in Athens--there was no place to go.

Overall, it was not the most pleasant trip. I had "morning sickness" during most days (the marble bathrooms were quite nice to be sick in). The currency had changed from the Dracma to the Euro on January 1st of that year--which made paying (at locations which were actually open) very interesting. My husband enjoyed many gyros and we saw some great icons, but it is not a place we for which we are longing to return. I am sure the Greek snow we experienced has something to do with that. My advice is to visit Greece in the summer--like most normal people do.

Apparently, they have gotten more unseasonable precipitation within the past few weeks. I saw this article. It made me smile.