Greece - Day 7 (Athens and heading home)

For some reason, this last Greece post seemed to take forever to come together. One little snippet at a time, it came together, though, and 5 months after our trip the last of the photos are finally being posted.

In all honesty, our final day in Greece came much quicker than we anticipated.  But since our flight didn't leave until the afternoon, we decided to take full advantage of the small amount of time remaining to us.  We set our alarm the night before so that we could get ourselves ready and enjoy a quick breakfast before heading out to see a little bit more of Athens before heading to the airport.  Our main objective was the Roman Forum near Monastiraki Square.

On the way there we passed this really interesting campus - the Technolopolis.  It's an industrial museum that's a popular venue for local events.  

Unfortunately, upon arriving at the Forum gates, we realized we were a little too quick getting out the door - the Forum was still closed.  With about half an hour to kill, we walked down to the Square just as stores were starting to open.  The walk there skirted the perimeter of the Forum and we got a great view into it from some of the walkways outside its walls.

Our view of part of the Forum from outside the walls.

A perfect morning for a walk-about.

View of the Acropolis.

More of the Forum from outside the walls.

The most scrumptious spanakopita we tried during our entire stay in Greece.  Just enough pastry, just enough spinach and goat cheese.  YUM!

Certainly the BIGGEST bougatsa we tried while in Greece, and also one of the best.  Both from our favorite bakery in Athens.

While putting around Monastiriki, we had a few epiphanies about Athens.  In some ways, Athens seemed like two worlds living in parallel.  On one side you have the ruins of millenia that millions of people come to visit, take photos and proudly say "I've been there".  On the other side, you have a modern society fighting to not be driven to a similar fate.  The photo above is just one example to us of this dichotomous parallelism.

After a very scrumptious second breakfast of bougatsa and spanakopita, we were finally able to enter the Roman forum.  At first we were the only ones there, which made the visit that much more special.  Most of the actual forum has been restored, and it truly is magnificent.

Looking down the corridor of pillars on one side of the forum.

In pictures like the one above it's really easy to see where some of the restoration work was done.

Atticus posing - what else?

Atticus, cool as a cucumber, posing with Milayla.

The wooden beam roof structure is amazing!

Pillars, and lots of them!

More pillars, yay!

After we left the Forum, we walked around the site. Below, Laura and Atticus pose along one of the trails.

The remains of pillars from the original forum site.

One of several ornate sculptures recovered from the original Forum site.

Above the Forum on a small hill sits a temple.  It was a bit of climb up there with the stroller, but we managed alright.  Totally worth it, though, as the view was incredible.

Daddy and the kiddos in front of more ruins.

Mommy and Atticus with a great view of Athens in the background.

Of course, before leaving Athens for good, we had to stop in one more time at our favorite bakery, and to our absolute delight, they had our favorite little Cretian cheesecakes.  They were a perfect way to finish off our stay.  Afterward, we hurried back to our hotel and headed to the airport.  Greece, in general, was an amazing experience.  We got to see so many perspectives of life there (perhaps more of some than we cared to!) but we were grateful for the experience.  If asked again whether we would go back, the answer would be a resounding "yeah!".  There's still so much more to see, and if we're lucky, someday we'll get back down there.  

Greece - Day 6 (Athens)

Day 6 in Greece, Sunday as it turned out, came much quicker than expected. It always amazes us how fast time can go when you're busy having fun exploring new places.  With it being Sunday, our first objective of the day was to head to church.  Having already located the chapel a couple days before, we were confident in finding our way, and looked forward to attending the services in Greek for the first (and probably only!) time in our lives.   Unfortunately, what we didn't know was that the services had been moved to another location (that we could not seem to find an address for) because of planned demonstrations at Syntagma Square that afternoon.  So, when we got to the chapel's address, all we found were shuttered doors.  How disappointed we were! In the end, though, we were able to take advantage of a truly gorgeous morning and take a nice walk through the heart of Athens, first visiting the base of the Acropolis.

Apparently, we were not the only ones with the idea to go for a Sunday stroll as there were many families out for a Sunday morning walk. It was beautiful!

Daddy and Atticus soaking up the sun near the Acropolis.

Since we weren't able to get our weekly dose of church, and still had our scriptures on hand, we decided to take a break from our walk just below Mars Hill, and read Paul's sermon.  It was pretty incredible imagining the spot two millenia ago with Paul preaching to the local Greeks.  

Nearby the Acropolis are the ruins of the Roman Forum, essentially a giant outdoor mall. We got a chance to go inside the ruins on our last day in Athens.

A shot of Jason and the kiddos in front of the entrance to the Roman Forum.

As always, Atticus was more than happy to pose for a few pictures.  What a ham!

After touring some of the ruins we headed to Monastiriki Square.  The square was particularly busy today.  Interestingly enough, we saw a Native American performing some music and dance.  A lot of Greek people passing by stopped to watch and listen, intrigued by the novelty of it all.

Atticus pulling down the stroller sun cover just because he can...and because he was utterly exhausted.

That evening, after our feet were tired and sore from so much walking, we treated ourselves to some delicious galaktoboureko.  It was fantastic, and well enjoyed.  As we began to look back on our trip to Greece, we realized just how much we had been able to do and see.  Only one day to go!

Greece - Day 4 (Athens) - Second Half

After a busy morning, we had planned a more relaxed schedule for the afternoon (we're never quite sure how much the kids will enjoy skipping naptime). From the New Acropolis Museum we headed through the Plaka to the Temple of Olympian Zeus. 

We took a picture of Atticus pointing to a sign with his name on it. He was really excited about it, can you tell?

Since we were going to be walking past the area that our church is in (for attending services on Sunday) we figured we better make sure we know where it is so that we wouldn't be late. It was a smart thing we did locate it today as we got lost a couple times trying to figure out where the street was.

And right across the street from the church was the the Arch of Hadrian. According to our friend, Wikipedia, it spanned an ancient road from the center of Athens to the complex of structures on the eastern side of the city that included the Temple of Olympian Zeus, which we went to see afterwards.  It has been proposed that the arch was built to celebrate the arrival of the Roman Emperor Hadrian. There were two inscriptions on the arch, facing in opposite directions, naming both Theseus and Hadrian as founders of Athens. See all those black marks on the structure? That's all that car pollution making it's mark on history!

Next, we walked over to the Temple of Olympian Zeus where the Stiles Olimpiou Dios or "Pillars of Olympian Zeus" still stand today.  Very cool. In the middle of a metropolis, taking in these gigantic ruins can have an interesting effect on a person.  On one hand, it's hard to drown out the hustle and bustle of the city all around you, but on the other hand, you can really lose yourself trying to envision what life would have looked like when these ruins weren't ruins at all, but edifices of grandeur.  In the end, we enjoyed it most by finding a balance between these two worlds.

The weather was simply fantastic that afternoon.  We could not have been more fortunate. Off came the jackets and out came the sunglasses - at least, for part of it. 

It would have been pretty amazing to have been able to climb around on these a few ruins years ago.  For some time now, however, they've been off limits in order to preserve them from excessive wear and tear.

With Laura and Milayla in front of some of the pillars you get a much better idea of how big these things were.

More pics of the Zeus' pillars.

Just had to get one of these shots in.  Corny and cliche, but why not?

After we finished up hangin' with Zeus, we walked down to the Olympic Stadium.  Yep, this is THE Olympic stadium. 

Without a doubt, it is just plain incredible walking around a place that hosted sporting events some two milliennia ago that are still today the epitome of athletic achievement.  Granted, the stadium has seen its fair share of restoration, especially with the more recent Olympic games being held once more in Athens, but all the same...

Our original plan after leaving the Stadium was to walk up to Syntagma Square, but as we got closer we started to hear quite a bit of noise from the parliament, a good indication that the protesters were a little restless.  So, not wanting to get ourselves too close for comfort, we opted to walk through the National Gardens, and we're glad we did.  They were beautiful!

The church below, if we heard correctly, has been undergoing restoration work for YEARS!  Not sure exactly how long, but according to the locals, it sounds like it just never stops.  Apparently it is the most important of the Greek Orthodox churches in Athens.  There wasn't anything particular noteworthy about the place, except that some young Greek guy that spoke English came up to us as were looking at the church and wanted to know if we were interested in buying a brand new iPhone for 130 EUR.  Hmm...let me think about that one for a second...uh, no thanks.  Anyhow, it was pretty cool to see it in any case (the church that is, not the hot iPhone).

Anyhow, it was a pretty amazing day, well spent roaming the streets of Athens in gorgeous weather along with who know how many other thousands of people.  We were thoroughly enjoyed ourselves. On to day FIVE!  Woohoo!