Another day in Athens

Waiting for lunch

J wrote thoroughly about the places we saw on our second day in Athens on his blog; I’ll add the family bits here. The bus from Rafina was late so we had a delayed start to our day, and went straight to lunch in a café just off Monastraki Square. Lunch included moussaka (eggplant, potato, spiced ground meat, topped with a creamy béchamel sauce), a plateful of gyro and souvlaki (kebabs), tzatziki (yogurt and cucumber), bread, pita, and meatballs and potatoes for the kids. The generous portions of hearty food filled us well for a day of walking around Athens.

Sitting on the steps of the Stoa of Attalos in the Ancient Agora

Ancient Agora

We strolled through the flea market and the Ancient Agora, expecting L2 to fall asleep in the stroller. No luck, so we headed toward the Parthenon Museum, and L2 finally fell asleep on the way. One of my favorite parts of the day was walking by the Odeon Theater where a street musician (of which there are many around central Athens) played “Never on a Sunday” on a violin. The song won an Academy Award for Best Original Song in 1960 for a film of the same name, in which an important scene takes place at the Odeon. The weather turned blustery while L1 had his portrait drawn by a street artist. The artist took about 40 minutes to draw his portrait; have you ever tried to keep a 3-year old still and quiet on your lap for 40 minutes? Later, we passed another artist advertising portraits done in just 5 minutes; we’ll know where to go to get L2’s portrait drawn.

L1 having his portrait drawn 

By the time L1’s portrait was done, L2 was awake; the afternoon was wearing on, and the weather getting worse. We had promised to go to a playground at the National Gardens, and so we skipped the Parthenon Museum (for the moment). L1 was very tired, switched places with L2 in the stroller, and fell asleep. He awoke just in time for the playground. At the end of a good run around the playground, L1 found several bits of colored paper streamers and tied them together to make a “kite” which he proudly carried all the way home. We splurged on a taxi home instead of the metro because it was late and still chilly by the time we left the playground. L1 and L2 giggled and screeched all the way in the taxi. I don’t know if they gave the taxi driver a headache, but I figured it was better than crying, which was a distinct possibility given the late hour and how tired and hungry the kids were.

L2 in the National Gardens on the way to a playground

We have only seen a fraction of the things we planned to see; I'm looking forward to another trip to Athens next week.

Bits and pieces of daily life

Our neighborhood playground. We are usually the only ones there.

What is the kids’ view of Greece? They notice everything, but focus on the small details within their grasp and understanding. It is hard to take a walk with L2 because he wants to sit on every step, touch every wall, and pick up every rock. Rocks are great. Rocks, water, and a bowl to put them in are THE BEST whether in Greece or back home. Dogs and cats (of which there are many), and airplanes are exciting and merit an exclamation whenever they are spotted. Playgrounds don’t have to be fancy to be fun.

L2 with a bowl of rocks collected from the driveway.

Greek playgrounds (at least the ones within walking distance from our house) close from 2-6pm. For me, these are prime times when I want to get the kids out of the house to run off their energy. I understand this is the time people here take a break; most shops are closed. But come on! I have yet to figure out if Greek children follow this quiet afternoon and late bedtime schedule too. We’ve seen very few children at the playgrounds.

The Greek people are generally very friendly, especially toward children. Everyone we pass by smiles at them and says hello. Many old men have come up to pinch L2’s cheek. L2 is not impressed.

The Magic Garden, a nice playground and coffee shop just around the corner from our house.

L1 is picking up a few words of Greek: hello, thank you, and dog.

In Greek,  “good morning” is “kali mera.” Jim, passing an old Greek lady dressed in black, politely said, “kalamari.”

L2 is having an (English) language explosion. He has added a new word to his vocabulary every day for about a week. New words include “cold” (he knew “hot” previously), cookies, bath, hat, and keys.

Next time: another excursion to Athens.

Packing and travel

Early morning at Heathrow

It was a long journey to get to Greece and really tested the kids (and, we'll be honest, the parents). Because we have traveled domestically quite a bit with L1 and L2, I thought that the journey would be trying, but that we could handle it without too much trouble. Especially when L1 was young and we flew on planes, passengers getting off the flight would comment on how wonderful a traveler L1 was: they didn’t know he was there, or he was making friends with passengers around him. No one made those comments to us this time around, although several people commiserated with us about the difficulties of traveling with children.  

The flight to Greece was considerably longer and more complicated than any of our domestic flights ever were, and the dynamics between the boys were different than when only L1 flew with us. The kids fought for room in the window seat. They had meltdowns because they were overtired. For the final leg of the flight to Greece from London, I held a screaming L2 while the flight attendant took a very long time to check our passports and boarding tickets, carried him still screaming onto the plane, still screaming while other passengers boarded. L2 had barely slept the previous two nights and was simply past what he could bear.  He finally settled down and eventually went to sleep, and I will never see those people on the plane again.

On packing: My goal for this trip was to pack light. What that really means is being able to comfortably carry your belongings with you. We did not achieve that goal, and here are some of the mistakes we made. Jim pointed out that I should have had a bigger rolling bag, which would have solved many of our packing problems. I believe that a person will always pack to the capacity of whatever their* luggage will hold, and so packing light means restricting the space you have. But Jim was right. Since I wasn’t using my rolling bag as a carry-on, it could have been bigger without compromising the ability to comfortably carry it. The second mistake we made was to give each child their own backpack to carry their teddy bear and toys. What were we thinking? Of course the kids did not actually wear their backpacks for more than the walk from Grandma Jenna’s house to the car for the ride to the airport on the very first day. After that, J and I juggled our luggage (K: rolling bag, diaper backpack, computer bag; J: large frame backpack, computer bag) plus stroller, two kids and their backpacks, and stray hats (which the kids also rarely wore). The added conundrum of packing light is that with two kids you need more stuff but can comfortable carry less because you also have to also be able to carry the children. I’m already making a mental list of the things we can leave behind so that we don’t have to carry them home.

* For correct S/V agreement, I know “their” should be “his” or “her”, but see Grammar Girl for an argument in favor of the informal use of “their” in this situation.

A rare example of L2 wearing his backpack.

Asleep on the plane (finally)!

A day in Athens

Because the ferry schedule didn’t work out to take us to the island of Andros, we decided to spend the day in Athens. We took the bus there, and, not sure where to get off, we rode to the end of the line. This fortuitously put us just north of the National Archaeological Museum. Looking for a café to stop at for a morning snack, we happened to walk by the museum and took the opportunity to go in. Even though I hadn’t done my homework to really know what I was looking at, I thoroughly enjoyed my walk through room after room of statues and artifacts, from Neolithic Cyclades to Roman era and Egyptian artifacts.

Mask of Agamemnon, Grave Circle A, Mycenae, 1550-1500 BC

Poseidon, 125 BC

Greek funerary statues, Delos, 300BC

National Archaeological Museum

The Parthenon

We walked another mile or so south through Athens from the museum to the Acropolis and Parthenon (that most famous building atop the Acropolis). The Acropolis is awesome. I don’t think it is possible to take a bad picture because everything from the buildings to the view is spectacular. As a place for which I had high expectations and had long wanted to see, the Acropolis did not disappoint. We also saw glimpses of the Agora (marketplace or gathering place) and Roman Agora on our walk up the hill to the Acropolis. Another day, perhaps, we can more fully explore the Agora.

Odeon of Herodes Atticus, the Acropolis

L1 and J walking up the Acropolis to the Parthenon 

Accomplished: mostly figured out the bus and metro; saw the National Archaeological Museum, the Acropolis, and Parthenon.

The reality of sightseeing with small kids is that you see a lot less of the inside of museums, and a lot more of parks and places to eat.  We arrived at the Archaeological Museum right around L2’s nap time when he was more in the mood to alternately screech or cry than to docilely be carried through rooms of fragile artifacts. We made it through one room before J took the kids outside and left me in peace to wander the galleries. I had about 45 minutes to myself to make a quick walk through. A person could spend days there, but those 45 minutes were precious to me.  Luckily, it was a beautiful day outside, there was a large, treed, open plaza in front of the museum, and the kids were much happier chasing pigeons than they would have been trailing behind us in the museum. Before we left the area, I changed L2’s diaper and nursed him on a bench outside the museum.  Traveling with kids, you get used to doing what you need to in public places.

L2 outside the museum

The family on a crowded street in central Athens

Our walk through Athens involved carrying the kids, often on our shoulders. L1 refused to walk most of the way – something we will have to work on since we can’t carry both of them all the time.  L2 eventually fell asleep in J’s arms while we walked; we found a shady wall by a church and he finished his nap there among the throngs of people out in central Athens on a Saturday. We trekked up the hill to the Acropolis and the kids made it to the top with a promise of a snack. Later that night, L1 said his favorite part of the day was eating fruit snacks at the Parthenon. It was late afternoon by that time, but the kids made it through a ride on the metro to the suburban railway to the bus and most of the walk home before L1 had a meltdown. That was actually a pretty good day for traveling with the kids.