Day 14: Down day in Athens!
/WAHOOOOO! I'm typing this ON the day that it is for. All caught up again! if I get this done tonight. I say tonight, because it's 9:14. That means is 12:14 for family in Mountain time. So.WEIRD! I'm going to try to cut this short so I can call my friend, Shelby, on face time.
So, get got up and around today about 8 local time. We ate breakfast quick-like-rick and then buzzed out the door to catch the metro to the "Happy Train" that would take us around a loop to see all the ancient Greek ruins. It stopped at each place for 4 minutes or so and you could get off and stay off and catch the next train if you wanted to. We stayed on until we got to the Parthenon.
We hiked up the little hillside to where the hordes of sweaty bodies were standing in the parching sun and mulled over what to do. The heat is bad here but nothing like it was in Spain or Italy, and for that we are very grateful. It's really very tolerable in the shade. The boys and I sat in the shade while Josh, with Lukins on his back, stood in line for tickets to make the sunlit, slippery gravel climb to the ruins. The boys climbed trees and I had several women ask me, as I have had each location, "Are all those boys yours?!" We, as a family of 6, are quite out of the norm. It's been fun here in Greece because the folks seem to really admire the boys. They have other places to, in the other cultures, but it seems different here. The only reference I have for how Greeks feel about children is from "My big fat Greek wedding" when she says that Greeks marry Greeks and have a lot of Greek babies. That led me to believe that Greeks like children, so I'm going to go with that reason. :)
After Josh and Luke stood in line for quite some time, he waved me over. He'd passed the little shack that looked like the ticket box, but was in fact NOT the ticket box. The ticket box wasn't for a lot longer. We shaded our eyes and peered up the hill to see the ruins and gave each other that, "is it worth it?" look. We decided it wasn't. I'm sure the ruins are incredible, but seeing them wasn't worth ruining the mildly good moods our boys were in. We don't make a habit out of catering to our children's schedules/comfort, but we knew that this went beyond that. This went into the discussion about sanity. To stay sane meant to take a smaller bite and head downhill to the Acropolis museum. It was air conditioned and contained more than a fair share of sculptures and chunks of ancient chiseled marble. Very neat, indeed!
We headed back to our place on the metro instead of waiting for the happy train. My stomach was grateful for that, as the train bounces. A lot. It felt great to walk into an air conditioned apartment and collapse into bed after a quick lunch. After naps we stuck around here for a few hours to kill time before heading out for dinner. The boys watched "angry birds" cartoons on the tv here (never knew those existed) and Josh worked on folding our almost stiff enough to stand on it's own laundry while I did some blog work. I looked up restaurants within walking distance that have traditional Greek cuisine and we found one just a block away. It.was.delicious! HOLY SMOKES! We ordered a Greek salad, zucchini pie (which was off limits for me), grilled sweet peppers (YUM!!!!), grilled lamp chops, Chicken souvlaki and Pork souvlaki. Essentially the most delicious possible grilled juicy meat chunks on a stick. GOODNESS they were delicious! They came with lemon to squeeze on them and fries that were all soaked in the olive oil, salt and pepper and oregano they use to season the meat. YUM YUM YUm!
We were even treated (sort of - we paid him) to an old guy playing the accordion. He was beautifully talented at it and it was just perfect in the setting.
Luke got antsy after dinner before we had paid, so he and I walked a bit down the stairs and found a dumpster with some old windows in it. And what do you suppose I did? I wiggled a window up and out of the dumpster filled with things that would make any person grimace and hauled it back up the stairs to my husband, who was shaking his head and saying, "You have a problem, woman!" hahaha. I KNOW I do, I just don't care. The trick is to find space for the window. It's small-ish and long and skinny. I think it should have a good washing, though, before it touches anything we own.
We started our walk back from dinner on the quiet, quaint streets and I realized that of all the places that we've been on this trip I think of any this is the one I would like to be able to stay an extra day and night. Walking around it seems that the neighborhood knows each other well. I took the boys down to the park they'd played at last night while Josh brought Luke back to put to bed. The park was beautiful! It's nestled under towering high top pines that are wonderfully fragrant. It's all safety fenced in, with just one opening and I was delighted to see several couples there, both mom and dad playing with their kids. The couples were interacting with each other, laughing joyfully and enjoying playing with their children. I don't know that I have ever seen anything like that before. There were no smart phones in site. There were no distractions. Just parents enjoying their littles. It was beautiful. Between the meat being smoked at the nearby restaurants, the aroma of the pines and the laughter of children, it was easily one of the most relaxed and enjoyable parts of our trip so far for me personally. I would love to stay another day and just spend a good chunk of the day in that park, and eating at these little restaurants that are so far out of the tourist areas. It feels much more authentic Greek out here, away from the showiness geared toward tourists. It's beautiful.
Josh's addendum: Yep, Greece is awesome. We'd come back and stay longer in a heartbeat. Kind and welcoming people, good food, great place to stay. We feel recouped and ready for the last 20 hours of our trip! God continues to bless us with safe travels and times of growth as a family!
For fun, see below for a photo reel of Luke testing his limits. He is by far our most difficult child to date- he is independent and stubborn, and he's only 18 months old! We're excited to see how God grows us as parents through these trying stages! Fortunately for him, he's still cute...
