Marble and Marvels: 2 Days in Beautiful Athens

Xaipete from Greece!

This weekend is the official start of our “vacation” whilst we are on this little European adventure…Daddy and the whole crew could not be more excited. Our preferred transport method from airport to hotel is generally a van or shuttle; but in Athens at 11pm with no prearranged ride, we are out of luck. So we punt and two taxis it is…thanks mostly to the jogging stroller that pushes us just past fitting all our stuff and crew in a large sedan. It was a 45 minute drive ($$$) to our hotel, which meant a super late night. So goes a travel day!

We did sleep in a bit on Saturday, June 10th, for our bodies to recoup, but we started our morning right with a delicious breakfast made by the Greek family who ran the hotel. The owner, Mr. George (or Boss as they called him) was so kind to our kids! He especially took to Teddy. It was precious to watch them play together even though they shared no common language….paternal sweetness and play transcends speech! To get our bearings and gather a good summary view of the city of Athens, we opted for the hop off hop off bus. Yes, it is a total tourist move, but we’ve found this is always the best way to see the most in a short amount of time. City Sightseeing buses are all over the world and offer discounts if you bring previous tickets with you. Our first stop was to the Acropolis and Parthenon. You couldn’t bring strollers up but they had an easy and free stroller check available. As we walked up the slippery, beautiful marble to the top, I got teary eyed at the view. Wow! Standing where others had been so many hundreds of years before and worked so hard to build these unbelievable buildings with little resources was almost unfathomable! Talk about hard workers! Also knowing these sites had been here since the 5th century was hard to comprehend! We then headed to the Plaka area for lunch and window shopping then back on the bus we go. We selected a restaurant close to the hotel for supper called Alexander the Great which was so delicious and kid friendly!

On Sunday, the kids crawled in bed with us. That’s the best way to start a weekend morning! We taxied to Mt Lycabettus except we didn’t get close enough, so we had to walk up four big, slippery, stone stairwells; we felt like we were in San Francisco. Thank goodness for Cory hauling the stroller. We rode a cable car up to top to see a beautiful view! There was a chapel at the top where we went inside, lit candles and prayed. This is the best place to view all of Athens beauty from up high…and use the selfie stick!

We are loving Greece even more so because Greek people love kids! After breakfast, Teddy asked where was his friend (aka Me. George). As it turns out, he had gone to buy each of them a little toy! The receptionist gave it to them when we came in that afternoon and of course the kids loved it! Unfortunately, we didn’t see him again but what a sweet man. He surely made us all feel at home!

We had a restful afternoon and evening in the apartment to give the kids some downtime before we meet up with friends. Cory grabbed ingredients for supper at the market across the street for $10 Euros…cannot beat that price! The kids played and played. They are good buddies and it’s so very sweet to watch them play together!

Monday morning started part two of our vacation from a vacation! Our hotel arranged van taxi had two car seats! We haven’t seen car seats since we left the states. We also booked business class tickets to Corfu as the tickets were cheaper than paying economy prices plus baggage fees. So we had access to the Aegean business lounge, a whole row of six seats for four of us on the plane and breakfast on the plane even included espresso. The folks at Olympic and Aegean Air did it up right!

Next stop, the island of Corfu!

City Site seeing Bus