ATHENS, Greece — Consider this brief blog post a critique of one of the world’s great cities.

I am near Athens for the fourth time in my life and I have concluded something important about this city of about 3 million residents. I depart from the city’s airport in the morning, heading for my house near Dallas.

It isn’t very pretty.

I have had the pleasure of seeing some marvelous cities around the world. Nuremberg, London, Copenhagen, Taipei, Tokyo … to name just five. They’re all different. Yet they all celebrate their personalities by offering beautiful streets lined with homes that sparkle.

Athens? Hmm. It offers crowded streets, not a skyscraper to be seen anywhere … and sone of the best eatin’ one will find on this good Earth.

It also offers something else that lends to its personality: ancient antiquities. One can walk around virtually any street corner in central Athens and find a nearly 3,000-year-old ruin. I am not going to sell that quality short. The ruins are worth seeing and their age puts into huge perspective just how old sone civilizations are compared to what we have in the U.S.A.

I only wish that Athens could boast of a tree-lined boulevard. It they’re out there, I haven’t seen them.

All that said, I love coming here. Athens is the capital city of the country of my ancestors. When I walk among the horde of people, I feel as though I am among family members. They all look like me.