Athens

Pardon the title--it's 12:30 AM and I am still awake! So I got ready to blog about Greece and made the list of the pictures I need to resize and upload. There are over 40 pictures I want to share. So I am going to post our Greece trip in parts. I'm not very good at condensing and eliminating pictures...unless you consider that we took over 200 while we were there.

We left Cairo at 4:00 AM on Friday morning. It seems that all flights that aren't operated by Egypt Air leave at ungodly hours of the morning. Since we left for the airport around 2:00, Jason and I had hardly slept and Luke had gotten about 5 hours of sleep. The flight to Athens was 3 hours. It wasn't too bad, and Luke slept for part of it. When we arrived in Athens, we took a taxi to our hotel, which graciously agreed to let us check in even though it was 7 AM. We put our bags down and resisted the urge to go to sleep. The hotel also let us eat breakfast for free.

Jason had planned an hour-by-hour itinerary for us that hit the highlights of Athens. We went straight from breakfast to the National Archaeological Museum, which was pretty near our hotel, so we were able to walk there. The weather was sunny, cool, and beautiful. Here we are outside.

And here is a picture of what was mostly inside...naked statues. I told Jason we could've made a game up for Luke to play called "count the genitalia..." (You didn't know this blog was rated R, did you?)

The museum might have been more interesting had we not had such minimal sleep and had we not had a tired 2-year old with us. There was some really cool pottery, jewelry, and golden Minoan masks, but there's only so much of that one can truly appreciate.

So after the museum we headed toward the parliament building to see if we could catch the changing of the guard in front of the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier. It happens on the hour, and we arrived at 11:15. We decided not to wait for it, but we stopped in a park across from the parliament building to plan what to do next. While we were there, Luke made friends with this little Greek boy named Arris.

The park was really pretty and Jason wanted to take a nice picture of Luke and me--here it is:

Luke threw a fit because he didn't want to stand by me for the picture. Lovely. (I'll blame it on lack of sleep, not on any lack of affection for his beloved mother.)

We decided to leave and walk to a part of town called Plaka. It's a really pretty part of town with nice shops. It felt so far removed from Cairo and very clean and westernized! I was instantly happy. Here's Jason near the Hotel Adonis on a very pretty street.

We searched for a restaurant mentioned in Lonely Planet called Byzantino. Just before we reached it, several different restaurant hosts began vying for our business. They approached us with menus, told us the specials, offered free wine and dessert, and disparaged the other guys' restaurants. We liked one of these guys better than the Byzantino host, so we ate at another place. (Can't remember the name.) It was our first chance to eat Greek food. We ordered spinach pie, fried zucchini balls, and maybe fried cheese. I had soup, and I can't remember what Jason ordered.... It was all pretty delicious. We drank the free wine but didn't eat dessert.

The restaurant was pretty close to the Acropolis, which is where the Parthenon is. We walked up a pretty steep street to get to it, only to discover we were at the back side of the Acropolis. We had to walk all the way around the place to reach the front entrance. We walked through a neat little village, though, so it was actually really fun.

I loved how they paint the buildings white to reflect the sun. Everything looked so fresh and bright.

Luke fell asleep in the stroller while we were walking to the Acropolis, so we decided to sit down and let him sleep for a while. I didn't want him to sleep through seeing the Parthenon, since he'd been saying all morning, "I'm going to go see the Parthenon!" I decided to lie down too...the stones were so cool and inviting... Jason was the only one who didn't nap.

Also, they don't allow strollers around the Parthenon (why?) so we eventually woke Luke up to go inside. It's such an impressive place--temples everywhere, and then the actual Parthenon itself, which unfortunately is covered in scaffolding and you can't walk around inside it. I was a little disappointed. I guess Egypt's monuments and temples have spoiled me--you can climb right in the Great Pyramid and walk all around the temples in Luxor. Anyway, Jason was great--he kept Luke busy and let me see everything. I was really probably more fascinated by the Parthenon than he was. Probably because in 6th grade when we had to dress up as a Greek god or goddess, I was Athena, goddess of war and wisdom. We have this great picture of me in a silver war helmet wearing a white sheath (which I think Kari used later to be She-ra for Halloween) holding a silver javelin and a shield with an owl on it. My teenage attitude had hit long before, and I had this spectacular scowl on my face. (Mom--if you know where that picture is, scan it and send it to me and I'll post it!) Here I am reenacting the picture in front of the Parthenon:And here is precious Luke (in a better mood since his nap) showing us how BIG it is!



These are the Caryatids, which are part of the Erechtheion, a temple in which Athena and Poseidon-Erechtheus were worshipped. The figures you see here are actually concrete casts of the originals, 5 of which are housed in an Athens museum. The other is in the British Museum.

After the Acropolis, we walked to the Roman Agora and the Ancient Agora, which were ancient marketplaces. They were interesting, but didn't take too long to see. Inside the Ancient Agora was the Temple of Hephaistos, which was cool because you could walk right up to it and see inside. It had some neat (but decayed) carvings on the front depicting the feats of Herakles. It reminded me of the buildings in DC that have the sculpted figures on the front, and made me wonder about the eventual decay of our own civilization... Anyway, here's the picture of that temple:

We were pretty wiped out and ready for dinner after seeing all of that stuff. Jason did a great job of organizing our itinerary and had planned dinner at a nice restaurant facing the Acropolis. Unfortunately, the restaurant wasn't open, so we were FORCED to eat at this restaurant called Chocolat. Twist my arm, really! We sat outside where we had this view of the Acropolis:
We ordered hot chocolate, but then had to move inside to warm up because the weather had gotten chilly. After that packed day, we crashed back at the hotel, grateful for the hot showers, comfortable beds, and the fact that the busiest part of our trip was already behind us.

Tomorrow....Crete!