Lycabettus Hill, The Acropolis Museum, and many, many playgrounds in Athens


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June 15th 2011
Published: June 15th 2011
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Our travel day to Athens showed that we have finally gotten the hang of traveling with a wee toddler. We didn't spend multiple hours waiting at the airport nor did we have to do the mad dash to make our flight. Much, much better traveling. The 3 hour flight was perfectly timed for D's nap. Unfortunately they had sat another toddler right behind us and he was hell bent on making D look like a traveling angel. Eventually D managed to fall asleep despite the constant screaming. She was complemented in multiple languages on her flying prowess.

The warmth of Athens was a welcome relief from the chilly days in Brussels (since we both only brought one pair of jeans and a fleece). We found our apartment without any problems. We are in the Neapoli area of Athens, just to the West of Lycabettus Hill. It is about a 30 minute walk to the center of town or 3 stops on the subway. Our apartment here is fantastic. D has her own room with a crib, bunk beds, and an entire toy store worth of toys and books. She has fallen in love with the rocking horse. We're beginning to worry she'll be disappointed when she gets back to her comparatively barren bedroom at home. Pat was super excited to see a record player and a vast collection of vinyl records. Our host also gave us a chocolate cake, homemade marmalade, and homemade wine (though not suitable for human consumption, sadly).

Since we are here for almost a month, we felt no compulsion to immediately head to the Acropolis. We arrived on a Friday and try to stay away from tourist sites on weekends anyways. Our first day we walked to a nearby park and let D enjoy some time on the playground before heading to lunch. At lunch we gorged ourselves on tzatziki, Greek Salad (which has no lettuce, btw), a very tasty chicken salad, and some Alpha beers. D made friends with an entire table of elderly Greek men, one of whom gave her a set of worry beads. The Greeks love them some babies.

Later, we hiked up Lycabettus Hill to take in the city from the high point. We were stunned at how large Athens is! I'm not sure why, but we didn't expect it to look quite so large. We also got our first glimpse of the Acropolis.

The next day we headed to the Acropolis museum after grabbing a souvlaki on kebab street. The owner of the restaurant insisted on giving D a can of orange drink because she looked thirsty. She enjoyed her water while we drank her drink 😊 The Acropolis museum contains pretty much every piece of sculpture and pottery found on the Acropolis hill that hadn't been pillaged by the English. The building itself is very modern with most of the floors and walls being made of glass. Luckily our guidebook had warned against wearing a skirt. The third floor has a glass floor which allows quite the show for those on the lower floors. The first floor also has a glass floor allowing visitors to see the very large active dig taking place under the museum.

We had the same sense of sadness at the Acropolis museum that we had had at the Coliseum years before. It's too bad that we can only see a shell of what it once looked like because various churches or explorers felt it necessary to pillage the sites.

D enjoyed running around the third floor of the museum entertaining all the security guards and tourists. We had to wonder exactly how they determined what some of the original sculptures looked like when all they had was a foot or a knee cap. Still it was a nice intro for whenever we finally make it to the Acropolis itself (probably later this week).

The next day we wandered to a college area, Exarchia, near our home. We found a fantastic crepe place that served up one of the best crepes I have ever had. Of course, they had me when the crepe contained both cheese and cheese salad. After lunch we walked downtown to check out the market. I had been warned to steer clear of the meat market as they have very sad looking live lambs there and that would pretty much kill my love of lamb. However, the fish market was very impressive. We found huge grouper filets for dirt cheap and decided to grab some for a few nights of non-gyro dinner at home (every time Pat went out to grab dinner he came home with some version of souvlaki or gyro. We're beginning to feel that is all Greek's eat). We also grabbed some kalamata olives, aubergines, the saltiest banana peppers ever, sweet cherries, and some of the best strawberries we've ever had. The best part was that everything was dirt cheap. We decided the walk to the central market would become a regular part of our lives here. On our way home we got stuck in the most torrential downpour we have ever seen. We stood under an awning watching traffic barriers float down the street-turned-raging-river. It was impressive.

Yesterday we decided to walk through the Plaka area. We had a delicious lunch of crusty bread with tzatziki, another lettuce-less Greek salad, and mousaka (which D loved). Afterwards we just wandered the streets before D's second nap. After nap time we took her to the most graffitied playground ever (pretty much every inch of Athens has graffiti on it) before walking downtown for some chocolate amaretto gelato.


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15th June 2011

Pillaging
Damn Lord Elgin anyway!

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