Amazing Athens

Before we went to Greece, I thought it might be a bit more boring than our other trips because it has a lot of old stuff (and I'm getting tired of old stuff!) and I didn't really know that much about the fun things I could do or cool things I could see there.

We arrived late in Athens because we had night flight and arrived around midnight and headed straight for bed. We were a bit tired the next morning, but nevertheless we got up and got going. That day we went on a walk and saw some guards at the parliament building, the president's house, the original olympic stadium, a fun park for me and Arya, the Temple of Olympian, Hadrian's Arch, and had a very Greek lunch!

Our first stop was Sygmata Square, the plaza where the parliament and other government buildings are. In front of the building were guards dressed in the wackiest guard uniforms I think I've ever seen! They had giant pom-poms on their shoes and were wearing skirts, but they were all men! And they had a funny walk: right leg up, swing down, left leg up, down. Trust me, it was funny, especially in their uniforms. They were guarding the tomb of the unknown soldier which is a memorial for soldiers who were forgotten in war.

Next stop was the Panathenaic Stadium, but on the way we passed the president's house (which by the way is much smaller than The White House) and prime minister's house. The stadium was huge, just like you would expect from an olympic stadium. This stadium held the first modern olympics in 1896, but was originally built in ancient times and held ancient olympics as far back as 565 BC! I don't think even my grandparents were alive back then! We walked around the top perimeter and sat on the throne where royalty would have sat long ago. We also walked through the "tunnel of the fates" to visit the olympic museum where they keep all the torches from previous olympics. The stadium was very cool and I can't believe it's all made of marble!

My favorite stop of all was next, the park! It was a decently fun park, but not quite as fun as some of the others we have posted about before. It was very fun and had giant trampoline things that didn't bounce, but they were kind of like that. I'm not sure how to describe it, but we have a picture. And it was fun.

Earlier that day we went to a Greek restaurant run by a family. That afternoon we were served by the wife who showed us what was cooking and gave us little tastes of everything before we decided what we wanted. In the end, we got cucumber stuff with turkey in a lemon sauce, some really good beef and rice, a Greek salad, and some stuffed peppers. I didn't think I'd like Greek food, but it was so good!

The next day was GrEaster, which is what we call Greek Easter, it's on a different day than our Easter. In the morning, we did one of my favorite things of the whole trip, a fish pedicure! You wash your feet in a little sink and put them in a big tank of water with lots of little fish it in, I'd say like 50 fish, but very small. You put your feet in and they nibble your feet! It doesn't hurt because they don't have teeth, they basically just suck the dead skin off your feet. I was a bit scared to put mine in, but it turned out to just tickle a lot!

For Easter that night, we went to a candle lighting ceremony where we each had a candle or lantern. the priest would like one person's candle and then that person would light somebody else's and so on until we had our candles lit. It was neat to have my candle lit by somebody else and was definitely an experience I wouldn't have in the United States.

We also, of course, went to the Acropolis. It was very, very big! Probably the biggest Greek temple I've ever seen...but then again I haven't seen that many. :-) We learned that the people before the current restoration team tried to restore the building in the early 1900's, they actually started putting pieces in the wrong place! So the current team has had to take most of it back apart now and try to put back together like a big jigsaw puzzle. The crazy thing is, the way the Parthenon is built, each part cannot be used in another place or it doesn't fit correctly because of the special curves the Greeks used. Did you know the inside walls of the Parthenon were actually colored in Ancient times? I always thought they were all just the color of marble! Also, did you know that in the center of the temple there used to be a 40 foot tall golden statue of Athena, goddess of wisdom and war, and the namesake of Athens.

Along with actual Acropolis, we got to go to the museum. It contains many of the artifacts that have been found on the ground or have been recovered from the ruins. On the top of the Parthenon there used to be huge statues of Zeus, Poseidon, and Athena along with many other gods and things. We saw the tiny pieces of what was left of them. One of the Athena and one of the Poseidon statues were never recovered, not even a small piece. Arya is standing next to a small version of what it would have looked like in the picture below.

That's most of what we saw in Athens, but there's one more little detail from our whole trip to Greece: there are a lot of stray cats in Greece. Everywhere we went there were cats. Many were friendly, some were scared. One particularly nice one was a calico we saw in Santorini who cuddled up with Dad while we ate our breakfast. My Grandma Lewis would love it there! :-)

Oh, and we saw a stray turtle! I loved it!!!!! :-D