Greece, Italy, Spain

This was the first trip I've taken in which I sent daily email updates to several
friends and family back home. These emails have become the "trip descriptions" found
in all the following pages. So when you click on a date, the first thing you will see
is the email (or portion of an email) which relates to that date. This is then
followed by the thumbnail photographs taken on that day. Please wait for all
thumbnails to load before clicking on any one. That will make coming back to the page
after you've seen the first fullsize picture faster. Some pages have up to
80 pictures in them.

In the case of December 31, 2002, I've split that day's pictures into three sections.
I took more pictures on that day than I did on any day of this entire trip (and quite
possibly any day so far on ANY trip). There were 145 photographs taken on that day
alone, so to make the pages load faster, I've split them up in three separate pages.

The emails were also not sent on every single day - only when I had some free time
and felt like a break. Contrary to what some people have told me, sending
those emails was NOT a higher priority than the sightseeing! So I've also done some
shuffling around of the text in the emails to match the days they described!

And finally, after coming back many people have asked me how much this whole trip
cost me. The airfare going to Europe was free - I had a mileage award on American
Airlines from San Jose to Athens and back from Madrid to San Jose. I stayed in hotels
everywhere, and those totalled just under $1600 for 16 nights. Next biggest
expenditure was the cash I spent on attractions, food, metros, taxis, busses,
internet cafes, etc -- totalling less than $800. Next was the internal flight
tickets -- Athens to Rome and Florence to Madrid -- totalling $600. And finally,
internal train tickets - $400. So the total cost of the trip: approximately $3400.
If I had paid for my flight from the U.S. to Europe, the cost would would have
been $700 more.

If I had gone in the summer like most tourists, the total cost would probably be
a few hundred dollars more (primarily hotel and transportation costs would have been
higher.)

So let's get on with it.....