Geiá sou from Athens! After a 10 hour flight, during which James and I did not sleep, and Juliet and Erica only did a little, we landed in Athens yesterday and immediately commenced to vacationing. I've insisted on us bringing our gear in backpacks, mostly for aesthetic reasons, and we schlepped those bad boys through the Metro and then over to our rental apartment. We arrived at about 2pm, dropped our bags, then headed out to a grotty souvlaki place I'd got a recommendation about. The food was incredible, and the very sweaty owner who served us was charmed by our kids (he ended up giving us free shots of something and 4 bottles of water on the house). Afterwards, we hoofed it back to the Metro and took it to the funicular station at the base of Lycavettis Hill, which promised 360 degree views of the Athens megapolis from the top.
The funicular was not particularly fun, per se, being just a slow incline train up an unlit tunnel, but it got the job done of delivering us to the top of the steep hill, which would otherwise have been impossible in the 95 degree heat. The views were indeed excellent, with smog only slightly obscuring the farthest away bits. I didn't realize you could see the Aegean Sea from Athens, but there it was, shimmering away in the heat. They've even built a small chapel up there dedicated to Saint George. It looked well-used, though I'm not sure who's trudging all the way up to it for mass.
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| There's the Acropolis over my hat, and beyond that, the sea! |
We downed some refreshers (i.e., ice cream and Aperol Spritz), and headed back to the condo, arriving around 5:30. That seems lame, ok, but we're talking about kids on no sleep. We were all abed by 7:15 and, despite a 3:00 AM full family wake up, for reasons relating to body time and Juliet's frightening run-in with a cockroach in the bathroom, we all managed to get about 9 hours of shuteye. (Cockroaches in your apartment aren't ever good, but apparently, like New Orleans, they're just here and you'll inevitably spot them occasionally even in the nicest places. Shrug emoji.)
This morning we high stepped it down to the Acropolis museum, where we met up with Effie, our lovely and knowledgeable tour guide for the day. The tour is meant to capitalize on the Percy Jackson books, which, if you don't know, are a powerhouse YA series about a modern-day kid who discovers he's the son of Poseidon. James is obsessed. It turned out to be less about the Percy Jackson stories, and was mostly a regular tour, just with a guide who's good with kids and knows how to handle frequent bouts of inattentiveness, which Effie did with grace (she's a mom, she gets it). James wowed her with his command of Greek mythology. Juliet mostly spun in circles and drew in the dirt with her finger, but she did chime in with some Greek mythology knowledge of her own every once in awhile, proving she was paying more attention than she let on (she sometimes listens to the National Geographic podcast Greeking Out with her brother). Despite getting there early, it was hot and bonkers crowded, but man, is it a stunner. The walk up features a number of historical curios, like the world's first theater(!). Once you're through the entrance portico at the top, everything opens up, revealing the full glory of the Parthenon.
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| Christmas card front-runner |
After heading down, Effie guided us through the excellent Acropolis museum, where many of the restored sculptures from up top now permanently reside. Every guide here goes hard against the thieving British, who looted many of the finest treasures in the 19th Century and still display them in the British Museum. (The truth is somewhere in between. Yes, the British stole a bunch of important artifacts from the Acropolis (and everywhere else they held sway), but in doing so, they preserved them at a time when many of those places couldn't or didn't care to. So, without the furta sacra, we wouldn't have those artifacts today. But it's also 2025 now. Time to give them back.)
Effie recommended to us a local restaurant she likes, and after we parted we had a long, giant lunch dining on various meze (Greek tapas, basically). We're now at the apartment, siesta-ing while a rare afternoon storm passes through. I'll post more tonight if there's time.
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Ok, I'm back. Kind of a bust, to be honest. We were going to go tour the Panathinaikos Stadium--an ancient Greek stadium reconstructed for the first modern Olympics in 1896. But then Juliet started experiencing a return of her erstwhile tummy troubles, necessitating a finding of pharmacies and various pharmaceutical products (James learned a new word today--"shart.") Once procured, we set out again for the stadium, but then James' stomach started bothering him and...we just came back to the apartment. Is this just a normal reaction to different food? Is this the bug Juliet had the day before the day before we left, now rearing it's head? Who can say? Hopefully tomorrow everyone will be back on solid ground. Until then!
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