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Published: August 1st 2017
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Julia and the Parthenon Temple
A 10-year-old who likes ruins - who would have thought that? A 10-year-old who likes ruins - who would have thought that?
Emma has two nieces, Jonna and Julia. When the girls turned five the birthday gift from Ake, Emma and Emma's sister Anna was a trip to Paris and Disneyland. We have written about those trips previously on Travelblog. To read about those trips, click here =>
for Jonna's trip and here =>
for Julia's trip. When Jonna turned 10 the three of us once again took Jonna for a trip abroad. That time we went to
London and Brighton.
Now Julia has turned 10 and it was her turn to go abroad with aunt×2 + uncle. Julia is less interested in shopping than her older sister and more interested in history and ruins so her 10th-birthday-trip went to Athens in Greece.
As everybody who has passed the advanced university course in algebra know the great mathematician von Platen in 1608 proved that "aunt×2 + uncle = fun", thus giving it the nickname the Hilarious Equation. To all of you who don't find mathematics in any way enjoyable and to you who think the joke in the previous sentence was terribly bad - what we try to say
Parthenon Temple
The Parthenon temple is an excellent example of ancient architecture and skilled craftsmanship. is that we had a good time in Athens. Here follows our story from there.
In Athens there are plenty of ruins. Those ruins have nothing to do with the financial crises Greece has suffered for the last eight years. They have all been there for several hundreds of years. For us visiting at least a few of those ruins was the main idea with this trip in the first place. We went to
•
Acropolis and
Parthenon - Acropolis is a citadel located on the top of a hill in the centre of Athens. The most famous of the ancient monuments in Acropolis is the temple Parthenon - an excellent example of ancient architecture and skilled craftsmanship.
•
The Roman Agora - main market place cum city centre cum centre of culture, public life and politics in Athens in the years when Athens was part of the Roman Empire.
•
The Ancient Agora - main market place cum city centre cum centre of culture, public life and politics in Athens in the years when Athens was part of the Greek Empire.
•
Hadrian's Library - We included this site on the trip only because we
Erechtheion
The Porch of the Caryatids at the Erechtheion temple at Acropolis last summer
spent almost a week at another monument
named after Emperor Hadrian.
There are many more ruins in Athens, both from the Greek Empire and from the Roman Empire, but after visiting the abovementioned ones we wanted to do something else. We went to
•
The Old Royal Palace - home of the Greek Parliament. Located next to the Old Royal Palace is the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier which is guarded by the
Evzones, the Presidential Guard.
• Lake Vouliagmeni Spa - a spa located at a small lake. The lake is naturally heated and therefore it is possible to swim in it all year around. In the lake there is fish which feed off dead skin. If you stand in the water you get a skin peeling. It doesn't hurt at all, only tickles a little.
Other things we did includes shopping, bathing in the hotel pool, randomly walked around the streets of Athens and we visited Likavittós Hill, from which there is an excellent view over Athens including Acropolis.
One of the nights we were in Athens we were woken up by the fire alarm at the hotel. We are still not
Cat at the Roman Agora
A cat picture to make this blog post a bit more interesting. "All ruins and no cats makes Jack a dull boy" as Jack Nicholson would put it sure if there ever was a fire or not. We heard both that there wasn't one and that there was a small one which was put out immediately. Anyway, we had to evacuate in the middle of the night and spent one hour on the sidewalk across the street until the firemen declared it safe to return to our rooms.
During this incident we noticed that many people, both staff and guests, made huge mistakes. Therefore we will here point out a few simple guidelines in case a fire alarm sounds.
• Always assume it is a real fire and that the fire is spreading rapidly
• Evacuate immediately and use the stairs and only the stairs while doing that
• Leave all your belongings behind
• If your only way out is blocked by fire and/or retreat and close the door
Emma and Ake have visited Athens once before. That was about a dozen years ago, a year or two before we started this blog. We enjoyed it then and we had fun this time as well. But during this trip we realised that although Athens has
Pillars at the Roman Agora
The Roman Agora was the main market place cum city centre cum centre of culture, public life and politics in Athens in the years when Athens was part of the Roman Empire. a few outstanding cultural sites there strictly isn't much else to see. We have therefore decided that next time we go to Greece we will not visit Athens at all. Next time we will instead explore what more Greece as a country has to offer us and we are sure that it's a lot.
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Rainyb
Lorraine Brecht
Love it! How big was it?