Today was a "getting there" kind of day, from Cairo to Athens. At 4am we took a car to the airport and headed for Paris, then connected to a flight for Athens.

Our son, Jason, is fond of complaining about the Charles DeGaulle Airport in Paris, and having experienced it a couple of times now, we'd have to agree that it's one of the worst airports we've ever seen. It was apparently designed to meet some secret French design goal that had nothing to do with passenger convenience.

The concourses are arranged sequentially, in a line, so to go from Terminal 2A to Terminal 2F, you must also traverse the entire lengths of Terminals 2B, 2C, 2D, and 2E; or wait for a bus to do the same thing. The signage is confusing and contradictory. The video displays only show the flights in the immediate vicinity, and sometimes show different gate numbers for the same flight. Apparently the video display that displays Air France Flight 1828 really means Air France Flight 2337. (I always thought that the numbers were the same in most Roman-based languages, but apparently I was wrong.) In some terminals the lounges are outside security, other times they are inside.

Even though we were only connecting to another Air France flight in transit, we still had to enter France, going through customs, then leave the country again at the security checkpoint. Oh, and don't even get us started on how helpful the airport personnel were (not). It's a good thing we had more than two hours' layover, because it took us most of that time to figure out where we were supposed to be.

But we got to Athens safely, just as the sun was setting. Riding in from the airport, it seemed that Athens is an interesting blend of old and new; simultaneously the classic cradle of civilization and a modern sprawl of concrete and traffic. By the time we got here it was too dark to do any exploring, so we're calling it a day. Tomorrow, we're taking a half-day tour of the highlights, then we'll explore on our own.