Another night, another successful sleep for both Jordan and Kieran. So hopefully we are well rested for the day. And that’s good, because we had resolved to climb the mountain in our neighbourhood to see the Philopappos Monument and Prison of Socrates. So we fuelled up on Nutella Toast and out Kieran in the Minimeis shoulder carrier and headed out on our way.
Even the approach to the mountain within our neighbourhood was quite steep uphill, but we succeeded in this first trial and got to the very rough hewn stairs and rocky gravel path. This was certainly more stairs than any of us had faced in a long time, but we persevered and made it right to the top. Kieran did not like being on the shoulders in the end, so we freed him at the monument for a while. We took plenty of pictures there, as we had seeping vistas across all of Athens. Jordan lived her best Sudbury-child and jumped around the rocks at the base of the monument.
We swapped Kieran to the other carrier for the trip down, which was a good choice as he was much more settled. The rough paths were pretty tricky with him on my chest blocking the view, but we made it work. On the way down, we visited a nearly 1000 year old Greek Orthodox church. It was quite small but very cute and right down the path from the Prison of Socrates. Jordan like flexing her newfound archaeologist muscles here, examining the cells and noting the holes between them and the fact they opened up into a cave behind. Apparently, this is where the Greeks held treasures of the Acropolis during WWII which they cemented in to these cells.
The rest of the trip was uneventful except for Kieran falling asleep on me and getting super sweaty. We stopped at the bakery around the corner from our place and got some nice ham and cheese pastries for lunch. We then enjoyed an easy afternoon at home before it was time to go collect Liam from Syntagama Station.
Unfortunately for us, there was some miscommunication about the exact train he was getting from the airport due to the fact that his eSim he purchased didn’t work properly. Luckily, we did manage to connect and grabbed some coffees to take into the big park to relax a bit before making the final trek to the apartment to drop his bag.
After the Air Canada debacle, we decided a simple dinner at the pedestrian area near our apartment was best. The food here was similar to the Greek food we have been having, but there was *SO* much of it. All very tasty, and the most reasonable alcohol pricing we have seen at any restaurant in Athens thus far. We did call it an early night as Kieran’s hike up the hill had apparently taken a lot out of him.
So we just enjoyed an enjoyable evening on the balcony with a small bottle of scotch and the rest of our terribly cheap rose wine that got turned in into Sangria. Tomorrow, we fly to Crete which is very exciting. We are all very glad that Liam got here with time to spare and acclimate. Hopefully tomorrow’s flight works better than the ones we all took to get to Europe!
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