June 11, 2019: The Acropolis and Museum

Tuesday. GT2 Day 3. Athens, Greece.

Dominica made us all get up at eight this morning. Way too early. But my watch says that I managed to get some real sleep last night. So that is not too bad. Dominica was the first one up and showered before she woke me up. Then she woke up the girls who were definitely not ready to get out of bed.

As expected, it is really hot today. The weather was calling for it to be 82F but the sun is bright and the humidity is high. And we have a lot of walking to do.

Madeline ate a croissant and we were off. We had to walk back up the hill that we walked up yesterday, and a long way beyond it. It was blazing hot and we were feeling pretty awful long before we even got to the entrance to the Acropolis. But it really was a short walk from the apartment, this is an amazing location.

We got to the Acropolis and got our tickets. Madeline was half price, Emily was free. We had to leave the camera’s microphone behind for whatever reason. That seemed a bit odd to me. I guess that they want to discourage people making noise or spending extra time up on the hill since there are just so many people up there already?

The hike up to the top was incredibly hot. There was almost no breeze and there is never any shade there. There was no way not to be covered in sweat.

We did the sites as quickly as we could. The girls did the Rick Steve’s Self Walking Tour that you can download. We didn’t stay long, they were going to expire in the sun.

We walked down, then went and found a cafe for lunch. We found a place near the Acropolis Museum. The girls both got Caesar salads, Dominica got a local brunch thing of bread with eggs and tomatoes on it, and I got a salmon sandwich. It was all very good. I got a beer.

The couple at the table next to us were from Baton Rouge and on their honeymoon. They are doing very much the same trip as us. They are just one or two days ahead of us. They flew from New Orleans to Athens. Doing the same three or four days in Athens as us, did the Acropolis and the Acropolis Museum. They are leaving today to fly to Santorini where they are doing one night, just like us. Then they are taking the ferry to Crete, just like us. They are staying around Chania, just like us. But they are only there for a few days. But like us, renting a car while they are there. Then they are off to Italy, just like us! But they are going north and down, rather than south to north like we are. They are using Rick Steve’s guides, too. They will be in the Cinque Terre, which we wanted to do but could not fit into our trip, again.

After lunch it was time for the museum, which was very near by. We walked there and did it relatively quickly, too. Definitely faster than we did in 2016 when we did it with Liesl and Luciana. It wasn’t cool enough inside to recover from how hot we had been. That did not help. But it is such a great museum, it was still good to see it all again.

From there, we walked back to the apartment. We were burnt out and needed a rest. Everyone but me napped for a while in the heavily air conditioned bedrooms. I backed up the camera from the morning’s picture and video taking and starting uploading what I could to Flickr. The Internet is not very good anywhere around here, which is likely to be the case all across Greece, so uploading videos is just impossible. Even just uploading photos to Flickr is proving to be decently challenging. It took hours just to upload the ones from today! I did some writing on SGL, I posted on MangoLassi. I got the devices ready for this evening.

This morning’s activities surprisingly only came out to 10,300 steps, according to my watch. But that was almost all hill climbing. Very rough going with rapid altitude changes. So that seems about right.

But five, I was sitting around wondering what we were going to be doing this evening. Everyone was so pooped, but I was ready to head out for more sight seeing.

We ended up getting a thunderstorm this early evening. But only a few drops of rain, nothing of which to speak. But it was nice and overcast for a while.

It ended up being many more hours before we were ready to do anything. The girls were just exhausted. By eight we finally had them up and deciding what to do. Dominica talked them into a tapas style place, it is called mezes here. Small plates so that they can choose a variety of things. But no menu online. Not a far walk, though, and in a direction that we have not gone before so it will be good to see a little more of the city.

We walked down and had dinner at Karderina. The food was excellent and the ambience was absolutely amazing. Gravel floor, wide open walls, cool decor. We loved the place. Sadly, there was almost nothing for the girls to eat. Emily can’t have dairy without medicine so generally avoids it. Madeline is super picky and while willing to try some new foods, almost never likes them. The menu was very large and just loaded with things that we wanted to try, but the girls decided that all that they wanted were French fries. So after three days in Greece, a land of truly amazing local cuisine, they have experiences only pizza, croissants, Caesar salds, and French fries. Dominica and I did not hold back; we got zucchini balls, fried haddock with garlic sauce, some flaky pie pastry filled with savory cheese and covered in honey, and french fries with cheese and eggs. It was all really excellent, a great restaurant choice. I had the house ouzo with my dinner. The girls avoided trying it because neither likes licorice or anise or anything in that flavour family. They miss out on all the good stuff.

After our meal, the restaurant surprised us with chocolate cake and ice cream.

We walked back home. We were pretty warm, so we got the air conditioning running. The girls were pretty tired, so the plan was to grab a bottle of wine and chill out at the house. But the “OK Anytime” across the street was not as “anytime” as claimed and was closed. Madeline found a corner store not too far away that was open for another twenty minutes (it was after eleven thirty at this point) so Dominica and Madeline went to bed, and Emily and I walked to the other side of the subway tracks and found a little corner store and bought a bottle of moscato, the only sweet white wine that they had there. It was still hot and humid, though.

We got back to the apartment and sat on the balcony for about an hour or two having a glass of white wine and just enjoying the people watching in Athens and the cooler air and doing some posting and texting with people back home. It was after midnight when we went out and after one when we came in. I got to sleep somewhere around two in the morning.

End of day exercise: 15K steps and 7 miles of walking in the heat, much of that climbing hills. (Emily’s watch recorded 17K steps over a shorter distance, showing how much taller I am.)