Nothing additional to report from yesterday evening other than the fact that Kieran partied hard between 2 and 5am. Yes, it took the combined efforts of Emily and I a full 3 hours to get Kieran back to sleep. Luckily, that didn’t affect his mood for the day, but it did put us a bit behind the 8-ball for getting going in the morning.
Our Acropolis tickets were for 8-9am entry, so we aimed to get there for 8:45. I took the metro with Kieran while the rest of the gang grabbed a taxi. This all would have been fine, but as I exited the metro, my phone would not reconnect. And of course, their taxi had dropped them off somewhere different than the metro deposits you. It was a struggle to get the stroller up the hill to their entrance alone, but it eventually worked and I (finally) connected with them. So we dropped the stroller at the building for that and strapped Kieran up in the carrier to head for the entrance.
It was 9:15 at this point (having arrived to the metro station at about 8:50) and the ticket checker denied our entry as the tickets were now expired. WTF?! She sent is to the ticket office, who then sent us back to the gate to plead with a supervisor. The initial response was negative, that expired tickets were strictly done for. Luckily, my story about us being separated and how they didn’t give me a slip at the other side to prove my timing because I didn’t have the ticket (which was slightly exaggerated as far as the truth was told) with Kieran just starting up a very upset scream session on my back swayed him and he waved us through. Very lucky, as we would have just needed to buy tickets again. Absolutely wild system.
The walk up the hill was much easier than the first part now that Kieran was relocated to being on the front carrier. Only difficulty is that the places where it is rock and marble are quite slippery, so definitely had to be careful. Our first pitstop was the Odeon (Theatre) that sat 6000 people for musical performances and philosophical debates in ancient Athens. Then it was up many more slopes and stairs to the entry gate of the upper area. This was spectacular in its own right.
The other side, though, is of course the star of the show. The Parthenon was there in all of its glory. Fun fact that much like the Minoan palace, they tried reconstructing an amount of it in the early 1900s and the techniques they used actually damaged the original material more than if they had just left it. Great success! Also, most of the plaques would say things like “The Persians destroyed it in 480 BC, so the Athenians built it back bigger than before. Then it got destroyed in 1200. And again in 1607 when the Venetian army hit an Ottoman gunpowder storage in the temple which destroyed the whole roof and both long sides.” But then the last paragraph was “And the worst damage ever done to the Parthenon was Lord Elgin taking a bunch of statues and marble and putting it in the British Museum.” Way to be, Britain.
After some more gazing around the great views and dealing with another weekend at Bernie’s situation with Kieran asleep on my chest, we headed back down to the entrance and collected the stroller. While Kieran woke up and got a snack, Jordan and I headed up the neighboring Ares Hill, which was apparently the first place Christianity was preached in Athens in 51AD. And down more hills we went, checking out a small church from the 11th century along the way.
We then decided we had earned a beer after that walk. And really, we did! So we got one at a taverna and then delved into the shopping streets once again. Now that we didn’t have a round trip carryon flight to Crete to do and a much better sense of the prices, this trip was pretty fruitful in the end. But the shopping in the heat caused us to get pretty hungry. So we went to a restaurant that our friend Hilary raved about as the best food they had on their honeymoon. And they were right! Our kebabs were amazing, and they seemed to use way more seasoning than the average place. Good job, Hilary!
By this point in the afternoon, we were all exhausted. So of course we did more shopping and stopped in another church! But there was a method to the madness, as we then ended up at a bus stop where a bus would drop is off right at our building. Very convenient.
We had some afternoon chill time, then looked at out options for dinner in the area. Pretty slim pickings, as it seemed many places were closed for the long weekend still. Google told us that a Mexican place was open, so we walked there. Aaaannndddd it was not open. Oh well, a bistro was open next door serving not-Greek food which was fine by us at this point. Jordan, Kieran and I checked out one last church for the day on the way home while Emily and Liam soldiered on towards home.
Jordan read us all the story of the fight on the Acropolis between Athena and Poseidon for patronage of the city as a bedtime story. It took Kieran a while to go down due to a late nap during our dinner adventure, but eventually succeeded while Liam and I watched the Liverpool pre-season game on the iPad in our terrible sitting room. That has just ended with a Liverpool victory against Como. Probably time for bed, as Liam leaves in the morning back to Canada. We may go explore the coastal area. Who knows? That’s a tomorrow problem.
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