Sheep Guarding Llama

We slept in a little this morning, it was nine thirty when we finally got up.  We feel pretty lazy getting up so late as this is a farming town.  We are probably the last people sleeping anywhere in town.

Frunza came by first thing in the morning.  I think that she thinks that she is part of our family now.  She is such a sweet dog.  She was around for much of the day.

Dominica went out and discovered that the farmers next door had left our milk and eggs on the back porch for us sometime this morning.  Ten eggs and two litres of fresh milk.

It is a gorgeous day again, just like yesterday.  Warm and sunny, not what we were expecting in Romania.  So far Romania is warmer than Crete was!  We had predicted that we were going to be going back to weather similar to our first week on Crete, but this is incredibly nice.

Dominica made breakfast this morning.  Scrambled eggs with a rustic frozen veggie combination from the grocery store.

We took a walk today up the hill behind the house which the girls have been asking to go and see.  It is a steep walk up a loose rock road that is just for tractors and horses normally.  It leads up past our orchard to the village fields back behind us.  There is even a small house back up there which surprised me.  Very remote indeed, no idea how they get to or from but they have a little gazebo!

We walked along the fields, it was a normal dirt tractor path up behind us with fields that if you were to only look at them you would never know that you are in Europe and not in New York.  We found the village cemetery as we walked as well.  It was a nice walk and Frunza, the little dog that hangs out at our house came along with us.  We had to cut the walk quite short, however, as Luciana had forgotten to use the bathroom before we had set out and we had to rush back for her.

This afternoon we stopped by at the farm to pay the farmers for the food that they had delivered.  It was fifteen RON which is something akin to four dollars American.  The whole conversation was difficult.  The girls came with us this time and they loved getting to meet the girls.  The girls got to play with the dogs and cats and had a good time.  We were offered several shots of plum brandy and some fried dough.  We were easily there for half an hour.

This evening I got the video game system set up for the first time.  We tried to set it up in the front parlour but that room has no blinds and is windows everywhere and extremely bright.  No way to use the gaming system except for late at night and it was be overly visible to everyone outside, especially from the church.  They might not appreciate a wall of video games shining into the middle of the street all of the time.

The only real choice was to set up the projector in Dominica and my bedroom.  There is lots of space and we have real blinds and Dominica likes to keep the room dark, anyway.  The girls were excited to have access to their Steam games again.

Dominica and I were both feeling super tired tonight.  I had a headache, too.  We laid down to take a nap around seven and slept until nine thirty.  Then got up, fed the kids (frozen pizzas) and got them set up with some video games on the Steam system.

Tonight’s game was Teddy Floppy Ears Kayaking Adventure which the girls have never tried before.  Luciana played it first until she was tired, then Liesl played it.  They both loved it.  It is easy enough that they really do not need any help with it and it is all spoken dialogue which is great.  It is a cute game really aimed at kids their age.  We have had it for a while so I am very glad that they have discovered it and decided to give it a try.

By the time that they were done gaming Dominica was already asleep and I was nearly asleep.  Liesl fell asleep while Luciana was playing a game and the girls both ended up sleeping with us because everyone was already asleep anyway so we barely even noticed.

Several days of continuous travel have really taken it out of us.  We had the adrenaline of travel keeping us going up until now, but that has worn off.  Dominica has been tired since the ferry ride when she really got no sleep and I have been tired since the last night in Athens when I pretty much go no sleep. Days of packing, moving, travelling, sleeping in new places, driving, getting settled… it all adds up and quickly.

I told Dominica first thing this morning about the amazing citadel that I had discovered last night and how important that I thought that it was that we go up and explore but expressed concern as to the hard walking and uneven cobblestones.  She felt that she could handle it and really did not want to miss it.

It took us a bit to get everyone up and ready and down to breakfast.  Since breakfast was included in our room we did not want to miss it and dinner last night had been quite good.  We got downstairs and were the only ones there.  We think that we were the only people staying in the pensiune last night so this is not a big surprise.  We got two ordered of scrambled eggs and two orders of fried eggs and loads of fresh tomatoes and coffee.  It was a nice breakfast and we asked and they said that it would be no problem at all for us to have a late check out (we are their only room and their only real dinner customers last night as well so we kind of earned it.)  This is perfect as we can go see Sighisoara without needing to give up the room before doing so.

We packed up what we could and loaded everything that we would not need into the Ford Focus that was sitting right out front and only saved enough so that I could shower and wash up before leaving the pensiune to get onto the road.

We walked with the girls back the same way that I had walked to the citadel last night.  It is a gorgeous day, bright and sunny.  The air is a little cool but the sun is warm.

We walked up and spent about an hour walking around the citadel complex.  It was great.  The views from last night which were neat in the dark were even better in the bright sunlight.  We really had a great view of the city and the river valley.  We did only light walking around the citadel and had relatively limited time.  We really wish that we had a day or two to spend in town without needing to be anywhere, there is a lot to see.  Getting a room actually in the citadel proper would be so cool.

It was a very nice morning but our time was limited and we had to go before we saw all that we wanted.  Back down the hill to the apartment where I showered, we loaded up the car with the final items and we were back onto the road at one in the afternoon to continue our journey north.

We had roughly two hours left to go to get to our new village.  The drive was not too exciting, but got better as we made our way north.  The drab villages got more and more character as we went.

We drove north to Reghin, our local city that we know we will be using for groceries and such, and turned west to find our village, one so small that there is no road sign for it, even at the turn off for it!

When we turned off of the “main road” onto the tiny little country road that led back to our village, I think that Dominica had a little bit of panic.  We have seen some pretty remote and tiny little Romanian villages so far but this is the first that we turned off of the highway.  The road that we turned on to was paved (partially) but just drove off on winding turns into farmlands, no houses or buildings in site, just a silent country road devoid of anything but surrounds of grass.  We are going to be epically remote.

It was another several kilometres down this empty road and then through a tiny village and then some empty space and then we came upon Baita, our home for the season.

It is always weird coming into a new town and looking for your house.  It’s not like finding the hotel that you booked for the weekend.  This is our new home, in a country we have never been to, where they speak a language we do not know at all… we know nothing about what life in this village is going to be like.

We had to spend some time looking around to figure out where our house was.  All we knew was that it was “across from the church”, but there is more than one church and more than one house that could be described as being across from it.  We did pretty well, though, and were able to pull right into the house.  The owner’s mother was at the house still working on getting it ready and was outside when we arrived which made things very easy.

We got moved in and I got set up right away with my laptop and was online by three with a meeting that I needed to be ready for at four thirty.

Our host finished up with the house and poured us a round of shots of tuica, local moonshine plum brandy that everyone has here with every meal.  It is a major component of the local culture.

I had my meeting at four thirty, that lasted under an hour as people did not show up so I just ended up chatting with Abby for an hour talking about travelling.  Her husband is from Ukraine, not far away.

After my call Liesl really wanted to go for a walk so we did.  We walked most of the way to the north end of town.  It was a very nice walk.  Lots of people out walking, working in their gardens, driving horse carts down the street.  We stopped on the way back at the little store in town, a magazin mixt, as they are called here and what would be a pulperia in Latin America.  A very tiny store, but they had bread and bananas.  That’s what we really needed.

We also took a walk up to the orchard behind the house to see what farm lands are associated with our house.  We have a house, a large barn, a shed, a real outhouse, a garden, an orchard and, as far as I can tell, fields behind.

We got back home and explained to Dominica that the store was not the one hundred metres away as we had been told but is actually just three doors down so she walked down there with us again and bought a few more supplies, but there is very little there.  The language barrier is going to be huge, no question there.  No one understands us and we cannot tell what anyone else is saying, either.

Our host had left but said that she was going to be back later to introduce us to some people.  So for a while we just hung around the house as we did not want to miss her.  She returned after seven and took us over two doors to the farm that will be supplying our milk and eggs and introduced us.  They speak no English at all so this is going to be fun as we try to work these things out in the future.  But they are super friendly and we worked out how much dairy we will need tomorrow.

Then we got introduced to the priest who lives directly across the street.  He speaks a little English from his school days and can help us if there are any needs for translation in town.  He’s very friendly and has kids that are in their late teens.  He said that things are super safe here and that the air and water are very good.  He recommends life here.

She also dropped off home made crepes for us, filled with raspberry of course as that is the big fruit here (neighbouring Serbia is the world leading in raspberries producing one out of every four raspberries in the world.)  Raspberries and plums are the dominant fruits in Romania.  This is perfect for me, I love both fruits.

As soon as she left we bundled into the Focus and drove to Reghin in the hopes of finding a grocery store that is open.  Our host told us that there is a Lidl and a Kaufland there that we should look for, but that likely they would be closed.  So we were racing to get there in the hopes that something would be open because there are no restaurants in town and no grocery stores there so until we get to a grocery store that is open we will have nothing to eat!

We made good time and got to the Lidl at eight thirty, thirty minutes before they closed.  So we raced around getting what food that we could find.  We did pretty well.  The selection here is not all that different from the selection on Crete, at least at the Lidl.  Lidl is a huge German discount chain so their selection is pretty uniform wherever they are.  The cereal choices here are very different, however.

We had a bit of an issue paying when we went to check out.  American credit cards are always a problem in Europe but this is a place that possibly has never even seen one before.  So dealing with them not knowing how to even take an American credit card (they expect everything to have a chip or a near field device) and no one speaking English made for an exceptionally difficult time of it.  That was a little stressful as the only line there was backing up and people were getting frustrated.

Once that was taken care of we loaded the car up and returned home.  We looked for a restaurant that looked possible along the drive but did not find one.  Not many restaurants in this country, cooking at home is the norm.

We made frozen pizza at the house instead.  The same pizza that the girls love from Crete, so we knew that they would be happy.

Today is our big transfer day from the Greek world to the Romanian one.  The alarm went off at four and we were under way.  We had to leave lots of extra time this morning because of the shared bathroom situation in the hotel.  This is one of those things that you don’t think about until you have a semi-panic moving situation and you do not have your own bathroom(s) and realize that all that it takes is someone in another room deciding that this is the exact how that they want to shower that suddenly you might not have access to a bathroom, shower or anything else before spending the entire day travelling.  I think that we will be far more conscious of this risk in the future.  If this was just a normal day seeing Athens we could absorb any amount of bathroom availability risk like that but as we have to catch the taxi and get to the airport on time there is no way for us to do that today.

Thankfully the other hotel room sharing the bathroom was asleep and we had free reign from four until five when we wanted to use it.  So we were ready quite early.  We were going to meet the taxi at a quarter after five but I started moving the luggage downstairs just before five and he was already waiting outside.  So I ran back up to room twelve and let Dominica know that the taxi was ready and already loading the luggage as I was bringing it down so we should get moving as we could leave as soon as we were ready.

Moving the luggage was a bit of an effort because each enormous twenty three kilo bag had to be lugged down the long flight of stairs, taken through the lobby, the door held open, moved outside, down the front stairs, then pulled all the way down the street and around the corner as the taxi was a big Skoda Octavia and could not fit down our street, and then the logistics of getting all of the bags to fit into the car was going on.  So this was not a fast or easy process.

We were underway in our taxi early, which was great.  We have so many failure points on a moving day.  Do we wake up on time?  Is anyone sick?  Did we manage to get everything packed correctly?  Did we miss something?  Did we get our taxi scheduled at the right time?  Do they show up?  Will we all fit into whatever vehicle comes?  Will everything be on time?  Will there be traffic?  Getting into the taxi is a big failure point that we worry about.  This one was scheduled a day in advance with information about what our luggage was like.  He was specifically selected as he has one of the rare Octavias available in Athens, it is the largest taxi available in the city and our best chance of only needing to take a single taxi.  What is great about the bit Octavia versus the slightly smaller Mercedes Benz taxies, the next biggest option in Athens, is that in the MB our luggage hangs out precariously and has to be bungie tied into place.  With the Skoda the trunk is bigger and has a different layout allowing everything to just barely fit inside the car and nothing has to be tied down.  That adds a lot of comfort.

The drive was nice and the taxi driver, that was a friend of the hotel, was great.  He really took care of us.

We got to the airport and got a luggage trolley and were checked in easily.  There were big groups of students arriving right as we got there, but because we are a family someone from Aegean Air ran up and stopped us from even doing the normal ticket printing process and took us to the empty family only line and they handled everything for us.  Athens is a very easy airport to deal with in general and Aegean Air is awesome to deal with.  This all went very smoothly.

We grabbed coffee and pastries on the outside of security because we were not sure what the food situation was going to be like once we got inside of security and we had lots and lots of spare time.

Security in Athens is super simple.  Shoes on, bags in tact, only laptops come out.  It’s very fast, very efficient.

Our one hiccup, one that we did not expect, came when we went to go through border control and our first agent spent some time with our passports and then passed us over to another agent who spent some time with them and then starting asking me if we had come in from Italy… which would imply that we had been living secretly inside of the Schengen for the last four years as our Italian stamps were from 2012!!  We had to explain that we had arrived from Turkey, not Italy, and after some examining of our passports we were allowed to go.  Odd that they found Italy but neither of our Spanish stamps. We have lots of stamps on our passports showing where we have gone in the time since Italy.

We got to the gate and had time to relax, do some posts and such.  By this point we could mostly relax.

The sun was just rising as we were waiting at the gate for our flight which was not until eight thirty.  It was a nice view from the airport with the sun rising from behind the mountains.  It was a pretty chilly morning for Athens.

We were in row four on our flight which made things very easy.  The flight was not full at all leaving us lots of room for luggage, too.  As always the girls sat with me and Dominica sat alone on the other side of the aisle.  This is only a ninety minute flight from Athens to Bucharest so not even going to feel like we are flying at all.  It does not get much easier than this.

What is amazing is that the locals say that you can get to the airport for an international flight no more than ninety minutes before you fly.  We, of course, being used to American flights and things going horribly wrong, aim for three hours.

The flight went quickly and well.  No issues.  We got lots of views out of the windows and could see the mountains of eastern Greece and Bulgaria as we flew over.  Bulgaria is very mountainous.  Coming over Romania things turn to a flat plain, more like Iowa!  I was quite surprising coming into Bucharest that we were flying over the flattest possible farmland for quite a long time with the city just there in the middle of it.

Landing in Bucharest is pretty easy since it is a large, flat plain and not even buildings or houses near the airport proper. Smooth landing and a super easy time going through the airport.  Bucharest is very easy to deal with and all signage is dual Romanian and English.

Getting our luggage took no more than five minutes, Europe does luggage really well.  Then we took what we thought would be a quick bathroom break before customs but it ended up taking twenty or thirty minutes due to one of the children needing to use it for a while and this caused a bit of a panic as we had someone from the car rental place waiting to pick us up outside and we did not want them to think that they had missed us or that we were not on the flight or something.

Thankfully, nothing went wrong and Payless rental cars was standing outside of customs with my name on a sign.  They helped us move the luggage through the airport, trolleys are free in Bucharest, and they had a large van ready for us into which we fit “easily.”  There was just one other person going with us so it was just barely okay.

Our rental car is a hatch back or fast back Ford Focus Eco five speed in silver.  It took at least half an hour to go through all of the car rental paperwork, but it was not bad.  I hate doing car rental stuff, especially on long rentals, there always seems like there is something going to go wrong.  But the process went smoothly and in no time we were pulling out onto the road.

The Ford Focus might be an economy car in America but this is a giant luxury car here in Europe.  After the Kia Picanto in Greece this thing is a cross between a boat and a sports car.  It is so easy to drive and comfortable, I had forgotten how nice driving could be.  It’s new and classy and totally clean.  Everyone has so much more room and Dominica does not have to lean over just so that I can shift gears.

We have a lot of driving to do today.  We have to drive north out of Wallachia where Bucharest is located and into the Carpathian Mountains and over to Transylvania on the other side of them (it’s naming literally meaning that land beyond the forests and the forests being in the mountains.)

Driving in Romania is very easy.  Our first stretch was flat, open farm lands with almost no population around.  Very easy driving.  Before long we had the faint view of massive snow capped peaks rising in the distance, our first time seeing the Carpathians in person.  The view here is very similar to driving west in the American West and seeing the first rise of the Rockies in the distance.

It is a long drive from Bucharest to our new home in Baita, which is much closer to Ukraine than to Bucharest.  Getting to the southern border of Transylvania did not take so long and the sudden climb into the mountains was very beautiful.  Right before we hit the mountains, literally less then a kilometre before, we stopped at a little roadside shop that advertised pizza but they said that they did not start serving until three and it was only one.  There was a tiny market (very tiny) attached there and we picked up some snacks for the car at least as we would not be eating a full meal for some time, clearly.  We had seen restaurants along the drive but none had people eating at them.  Too early for food, I suppose.

The drive thus far had been someone dull.  Very little to see.  Nice, but not interesting.

After our failed pizza attempt we immediately climbed into the mountains and it was gorgeous.  The Carpathians give a completely different feel than the Alps and even driving through them are much more akin to the Rockies in style.  You could easily film movies of the American West here in Romania with little problem.  Almost immediately the buildings became more interesting and larger villages started to appear and our first sizeable settlements were found along with apartment buildings and even grand hotels.

Driving through the mountains was slow going as the big highway is only one lane in each direction and many cars and trucks struggle to get up the roads quickly.  So traffic backs up a lot.

We saw our first wild castle in Romania.  As an American I wonder if I will ever get used to driving along and there just being a castle, unannounced, sitting on a hill.  They are just so casual in Europe.

We drove through Brasov and we got our first serious look at the famous communist era apartment blocks.  Kilometres of nearly identical, drab square apartment buildings.  No different from the “projects” in the US and UK, better in many ways I have heard, but the look in Eastern Europe is unique and this is our first time experiencing it first hand.

As we got deeper into Saxon country we saw many of the famous fortified churches along the road.  That was quite interesting.  That is a unique part of Transylvanian culture that fortified churches were commonly used to protect villages and they are very numerous.

By central Transylvania I was pretty tired.  I got very little sleep last night and the last few days have been extremely busy.  We knew that we could not get into our house today and so were going to be getting a hotel somewhere, we just had no idea where.  We talked about it and decided that it made better sense to get a hotel a few hours short of the house and save some of the driving for tomorrow rather than to push hard to get basically to the house tonight and have no driving at all tomorrow, which had been the original plan.

We spent probably close to an hour looking for a place to just stop for the night.  It was late afternoon so we had lots of time and options.  There were not many cities along our route but in Romania it is common to find hotels in the middle of nowhere along the highway, reminiscent of the grand western American highways like the Lincoln and Route 66 before the interstates came through.

We came into Sighisoara which, on the east side of the city, is nothing but the same drab communist apartment blocks that we had seen before, but suddenly halfway through the city it turns into a quaint ancient Romanian city with an old town and beautiful churches and such.  Dominica looked on Booking.com and found a few places that looked decent here.  So we turned around and made a few passes through town to see what we could find.  We looked for one place but it was too hard to find so we decided to try down by the river.  Dominica found a good deal at the San Genarro Pensiune which we had seen so I pulled into a spot where I knew that we could park and Liesl and I walked down to the San Genarro to investigate.

We managed to get a one bedroom apartment, yes actual apartment, for the night for two hundred RON which is more or less fifty or fifty five dollars US.  And at that price it included breakfast.  We went up and saw the room and Liesl was very impressed and demanded that we take it.  So we did.

We walked back and got the car and moved it to the sidewalk in front of the San Genarro which is the only place to park.  It is handy, though, as the car is right on the main highway as visible as can be and quite visible from the entire San Genarro dining room so about as safe as it can get.  The pensiune sat right on the main intersection of town so traffic could not have been heavier.

We got into the room and spent maybe an hour just relaxing.  The girls broke out their toys and had some play time.  Then we went down stairs to go to dinner.

Dinner was awesome, I got trout, Dominica got perch and we switched halfway through the meal.  It was very good and not too expensive.  I also got to try tuica, the Romanian plum brandy, for the first time which was served very warm with coffee beans in it.  Delicious.

It was dark by the time that we were done eating.  Everyone was ready for some down time.  So back up to the spacious room, which had a giant living room where the girls could play and would sleep, a big bathroom, a decent sized kitchen and a separate bedroom.  And the views were great.  We had windows on three sides and lots of light.  We were on the main corner and could see the river, the grand church on the far side, the hills, it was very nice.

Once everyone was settled in I went out for a long walk.  It was a nice night and perfect for taking in the city on foot.

I started by crossing the river and heading west to go see the big church that was there, all lit up.  It is a really gorgeous church.

I walked a long circuit around the north side of the river going up to see what the neighbourhood would be like and checking out the train station there.

From there I walked back over the bridge and decided to see what the old town behind the pensiune was like.  We had seen a block of it while driving but nothing more.

The old town was very neat and got better as I walked away from the main intersection.  I found a neat old archway leading into a courtyard and poked my head in to see what was in this very interesting place and discovered that this was actually the courtyard that I could see from one of our apartment windows, this was the back courtyard of the San Genarro!  I had seen pizza delivery guys running out to take pizzas into town on foot this way.

I continued up and headed uphill towards the city park and then around towards the lights on the hill, the citadel that we had read something about.

This area, near the park, had some really awesome looking hotels, cafes and eateries.  There were loads of people sitting outside having coffee or drinks at a number of places.  It seems like this town has good night life.

I climbed up the hill and found a vacant and dark cobblestone road leading up to an old archway to the citadel.  There was a light on but no one around.  It seemed like I was allowed to go into it but it was rather unclear and while there was a light this did not seem much like an intended place for people to be, here at the end of a deserted old street in the dark.

Walking up through the archway was amazing.  A twisted cobblestone road at a steep grade through an ancient defensive structure, this was the real thing and just… open.  Once I entered the citadel proper it opened up and there were lights and people and it was much as if I had just stepped into a real life version of Disney’s Cinderella’s Castle and Fantasyland, but without the rides, of course.

The citadel had big squares and loads of shops, restaurants, old defensive towers, cafes, bars, even the city municipal buildings.  There were homes and pensiunes all over.  The complex was immense.  I probably walked around for an hour or more, every turn more amazing than the last.  I have never seen anything like this in real life, it was really something.  There were a fair number of people about as well.  Many sitting out in the square just enjoying the atmosphere.  I could hear a bar or two that were pretty busy as well.

I wanted to explore all night but it was late and I needed to get back and walking around the citadel takes a lot of effort between the continuous changes in elevation and the cobblestones.  Had more things been open I might have stopped at a cafe to hang out.

I walked back more or less the way that I came up.  The archway that I had come up through was at the base of the clock tower and I managed to descend through it just as the hour stuck and I got to hear the old clockwork show get put on.  I could not see it from my position and in the dim light, however.

Back down the hill and back to San Genarro and off to bed.   I will have to bring the family up here tomorrow, they are going to love it.  What a find for our first night in Romania!

Day two of our two day stop off in Athens, Greece.  We saw the Acropolis yesterday so today we get to see the next things on our list.  We decided that today would be a museum and the Temple of Zeus, those are our big ticket items not to be missed.

We were up but not as early as we had expected.  We must be tired.  We set out to get waffles for breakfast but it turns out that no one had been paying attention yesterday and was not aware that Greek waffles involve ice cream and no one wanted that – I guess that I always assume that people are paying more attention as we had seen a lot of waffle places yesterday.

We ended up just going back to the same coffee and sandwich shop that the girls had loved yesterday.  They got the same sandwiches as yesterday and additionally Dominica and I got veggie burgers.

From there it was up the hill to the New Acropolis Museum which is at Stop 3 on the City SightSeeing bus tour schedule and nearest to our hotel at the Marble House.  This made things easy and from all of our research this was the museum to see.  Athens has many but this one routinely gets ranked the most important to see and in the top in the world.  We really did not want to miss this one.

The museum ended up being totally awesome.  It is a collection of the artefacts found in the New Acropolis when they was excavated and is really well done.  It is laid out quite well and easy to get around.  The had a “find the Athenas” game that the girls played that kept them engaged for the entire time that we were in the museum.  It is not a tremendously large museum so it only took around two hours to see.

We had a very nice time and are quite glad that we chose the New Acropolis Museum over some other choices in Athens.  This was a great use of our time.  We hit the gift shop and found some cool books.  It makes us sad that we cannot have a place to store memorabilia from places that we visit because that would be so nice.  We always find a little something that we would like to keep.  Here it was mostly books, but there were many that we would like to have had.

After the museum we caught the City SightSeeing bus again, they do a buy one get one day free thing that works out great, so we were able to use them as transportation around the city.  Next stop: the Temple of Zeus.

The Temple of Zeus is just huge.  It is a site down below the Acropolis in the main part of the city.   The site is not in the same kind of shape as the Acropolis is, but there are still some columns standing and some on the ground.  You can get a good sense for how big the original temple was and it is incredibly impressive.  We walked around, took some pictures but Luciana was getting ready to be done for the day so we had to move quickly.

Instead of taking the bus again we walked through the main city park which was pleasant and fast to get to the parliament building as the last thing that we wanted to see before calling it a day (and a trip to Athens) was the famous changing of the ceremonial guard at the tomb of the unknown soldier which we have seen on Rick Steves’ Europe many times.  On the walk we were able to stop and get some street food, some muffins and popcorns, to keep Dominica and the girls going.

We timed the walk well so that we arrived in time to beat the crowd, get a picture of the girls with one of the soldiers and be ready for the changing ceremony which happens each hour, on the hour, and lasts for about fifteen minutes.

From the guard we walked back to the nearest bus stop and caught the city tour bus again which took us back up to the New Acropolis Museum so that we could walk back to our hotel.  We decided that we would eat on the way back as we knew that once we were into the Marble House that we were going to be down for the night.  No one was going to walk to go back out again and our plan was to be asleep very early as tomorrow we have a very early tomorrow with our taxi coming to get us as a quarter after five in the morning which means that we are getting up at four in the morning!  That is going to be tough.  Early mornings with a lot to do are never fun.  So tonight needs to be early and relaxing.

The bus dropped us off and we walked nearly all of the way back to the hotel and decided to explore the pedestrian area near the hotel to see what we could find there.  We came up with a few options but Dominica was feeling like seafood so we went to Skoumbri and sat outside on the pedestrian way and ordered dinner.

At Skoumbri Luciana opted, of course, for calamari frito.  Dominica was brave and got cuttlefish on orzo which turned out to be black as it was prepared in cuttlefish ink which was a bit much for her.  Liesl went for grilled sea bass and I had a wonderful salmon penne in cream sauce.

Dinner was good and then it was back to the Marble House for us.  The girls watched YouTube on their Kindle Fires and Dominica read a book.  I went out for a walk for about an hour in the hope of finding gelato, but there was none to be found.  But it was a nice walk and I got to see a little more of the city on our last evening.

Bed early, probably around ten.  Going to be a very short night.  Our flight is at eight thirty tomorrow and we are due to land in Bucharest at ten.  On to our next adventure, today is the end of Greece.  Tomorrow… Romania and Transylvania.

Our alarm this morning was for about five.  The ship was set to dock at six in Pireas, the port of Athens.  The cell phone was working from the moment that I woke up so I have no idea when, if ever, it cut off during the night.  Coming into port the ferry goes along the shore slowly for a very long time so we could see the lights of mainland Greece going by all morning.

At the port we got to see the migrant refugee camp there. This is the very first that we have seen first hand anything of the migrant crisis here in Europe.  People ask us about that all of the time but Crete is not a part of the trail from Turkey to the EU so we have seen nothing of it.  But this was a small but real camp (and one that a few days later would make international news as a riot broke on there on the first of April while we were in Romania.)

Once into the port we took our time getting out of the room so that we were not caught in the throngs of people pushing to get out quickly (which, if I am not careful, is always Dominica who is impatient by nature with these things.)  We turned in our room key at reception and went down and collected our luggage.

This was the first that I really got to see how many full size trucks were on the ferry.  Now the ferry schedule and size makes sense to me.  The ferry is used as the main cargo ship going to and from Crete.  Because the ferry handles so much cargo there is little or no need for traditional cargo ships to go to the island(s) but they are still able to ship fresh produce to and from daily.

We managed to get a taxi that squeezed us all in.  Taxis in Athens are not large because the streets are so small is so many places that they cannot be.  He had to do a lot of magic with bungee cords and most of our luggage was pretty precariously hung out the back of the trunk but it did just fine.  The trip from the ferry port to our small hotel near the Acropolis was about forty minutes.  The driver had some difficulty finding the hotel as it is a small one on a very small street.  It was on a little dead end, actually, which made it extra hard.

It was seven in the morning when we got dropped off outside of the Marble House in Athens.  The front desk did not open until eight, which we knew, so we had planned on just sitting out front until they arrived.  Being on a dead end street made this very easy as they had a few cafe tables and chairs in front and were the last building on the street so we could just put all of our luggage by the tables and sit there out of sight and out of the way.  It worked out perfectly.  (We actually could have gone inside, Dominica forgot that we had been told of a way to sit in the lobby until the desk staff arrived and so we sat out in the chill morning air for a while.)

While we were waiting I went off in search of some breakfast.  I found a little coffee place around the corner that had coffee and traditional Greek breakfast pastries.  I grabbed one spinach pastry and one potato one and two coffees and returned to the Marble House.  The food was delicious – the best that we have had in Greece of this type of pastry, the girls declined to eat anything as they often do.  They sat on our laps covered in blankets to stay warm until the staff arrived at eight and we moved the luggage into the lobby.

Our room, number twelve, was on the second floor up a long flight of stairs.  The room was big and nice but we had to share the bathroom with one other room.  We hate sharing bathrooms, especially when we are on a tight schedule.  Sometimes it works out fine, sometimes it is a major problem.  Our room even had a nice balcony.  The room was not actually ready for us yet, but it was empty so they let us move the luggage up and drop everything off so that we could set out to see Athens as we are in a time crunch.

It was easily before nine in the morning when we set off on foot to head to the Acropolis, our number one sight to see in Athens.  It is a short, but uphill, walk from the Marble House to the Acropolis so was a little tiring with the girls in tow.

We went by a little coffee and sandwich shop and the girls demanded that we go in for sandwiches.  We wanted coffee so were okay with the stop.  Of course Luciana wanted just cheese and mayo.  Liesl wanted something without cheese, loaded with veggies and lots of mayo.  The two of them have different parts of my tastes in sandwiches, it is very funny.  I like my sandwiches with cheese, loads of veggies and mayo.  The mayo is the unifying component.

We finished up the walk and arrived at the Acropolis.  It’s not very expensive to get in, but even off season early in the morning it is pretty crowded.  We were not as early as we should have been, we should have pushed hard and gotten here at eight thirty, it was likely ten now and school groups were coming in by bus constantly.  It’s an insanely popular thing to go see, of course.  But we still go there when there was only a light crowd compared to the normal, which was good.

The hike up to the hill is not a minor one and the rocks are very slippery.  It was a hard walk for the girls but we made it up and, of course, the Acropolis was spectacular.  There is really nothing like it anywhere.  The buildings themselves are just amazing, but the view is really something too being on a high hill in the centre of Athens which is a massive, sprawling metropolis of just over three million.

We took a bit of time to walk around, take pictures, let the girls rest for a while.  The centre of the Acropolis is actually empty and there was plenty of space to get out of the way and relax.  It made it easier to take in the immensity of the place.  We are so glad that we managed to come here.  This is one of those top life bucket list locations but is still so easy to miss.

We did not actually stay long.  There is actually nothing to do on the Acropolis.  There are a few buildings, some amazing views and that is it.  You cannot go into anything and they need to move people through so nothing has been added.  It is purely a small archaeological site and nothing more.  So impressive, but does not require even an hour and that’s if you linger extensively.

We left the Acropolis and went along the Agora but there was little to see there and we got dumped into a side street in Athens a long way from the hotel which is on the other side of the hill.  So we skirted the hill with the GPS not working making it frustrating.  We were in a tourist area, of course, being near the Acropolis and we stumbled on the Hard Rock Cafe so Dominica ran in and bought a pin for Rich who collects those.  This, like Oslo, is a tough one to get.

We did a bit of a walk and found a pedestrian way.  We went down there and stopped midway and got gelato which was very good.  The tourist area of Athens is full of street hawkers which is incredibly annoying and makes you want to immediately leave. I suggest that Greece look into a tourist police system like Morocco and start cleaning things up because while Athens has some of the most amazing historical sites in the world, the street hawkers make the atmosphere horrible and make Athens only viable as an educational stop and no fun as a place to visit on its own.  The whole thing is too close to Venice with its “all for show” mentality and everything made in China and the whole thing just put on for the tourists.

On the way back we came to Syntagma Square, the famous main square of Athens, and there we managed to pick up the bus for the City SightSeeing Tour which we had wanted to do.  This meant no more walking for a while and a chance to see the bulk of the city.  We always do these tours when we are in a city like this, especially if our time is limited.  They are a good deal, provide transportation and let us make sure not to miss any of the big things.

We all appreciated the ride and the girls slept for a lot of it.  It was bright and sunny and warm.  I even dosed off for a few minutes.

The tour was nice and once we were back on Syntagma Square we decided to hit the McDonald’s there because it was close and easy, literally right at the stop, and because they have the Eastern Orthodox Lent menu there that is totally unique to this region and we have to try it.  I know how awful it is to eat at McDonald’s when in Europe, trust me I know, but this is our first of doing anything of the sort while in Europe (and we’ve been here a full three months) and this is for a special reason.  We really wanted to know what the lent menu was like!  Our entire meal was stuff we have never had nor even seen in America (or anywhere, for that matter.)  Eastern Orthodoxy takes Lent so much more seriously than any other Christian sect and does full vegetarian for over a month, so it is a big deal to cater to that.

Dominica got a shrimp salad, Liesl and Luciana each got an order of just shrimp and I went for a veggie burger (no kidding, they actually had this) and we all split some veggie bites.  This was rather a serious McDonald’s food adventure.

All of the food was okay but really was not very good.  One of the biggest issues was that all of the sauces were wrong.  Liesl got nothing to dunk her shrimp in at all, Luciana got sweet and sour sauce which was a good choice but not something that the girls like.  Dominica’s salad had something akin to a French dressing which wasn’t very good, but she thinks that it would have been good if they had had ranch, which is how this would have been served in the US.  My burger lacked anything but ketchup, I think, and should have had Big Mac sauce and cheese and it might have been decent.  The veggie bites also came with nothing.  McDonald’s food depends on the dipping sauces to be good so this was pretty bland.   Had we spoke Greek we could have discussed that stuff when we ordered but we had to take the defaults and they were not good at all.

From the McDonald’s on Syntagma we were able to jump onto the City SightSeeing bus again and ride it a few stops up to the stop near the New Acropolis Museum which was just above our hotel and walk down from there very easily.  Everyone was tired at this point between the ferry, taxi, hotel, walking, sight seeing, more sun and food that we decided that it was time to call it a day.  We have a busy few days coming up and we cannot be burning ourselves out all at once.  The girls really wanted to just relax in the hotel and play with their toys and use their Kindle Fires.  So that is what we did.

While the family was relaxing in the hotel as there was nothing else to do I went out for a walk to see a little of the city.  The area that we were in was not super conducive to walking but I was about to see some amount of stuff.

After relaxing for a while I got sent out to look for food.  No one felt like leaving again, they were all tired.  So I walked around for a while figuring out what the local options were.  We ended up settling on a pizza which I picked up and delivered back to the Marble House.

It was pretty much straight to bed after dinner for us.