October 10 to 26, 2023 Athens, Crete, and Rhodes, Greece

None of us had been to Greece and we flew in to Athens with.... moderate expectations – I had read a few lukewarm reviews of Athens, but, everyone comes to Greece so I was ready to battle the tourist hordes as the place fits right in with the 7th grade social studies curriculum for 7^th grade.  Having moderate expectations can be such a blessing because we just loved it! 

In Athens, we had such a sweet spot right near the Acropolis and as we got into our apt, stray but tame cats emerged from doorways and from under cars to say hi, just like the kids had heard and had hoped would happen.  The whole area around the Acropolis is of course touristy, but in the enjoyable way that makes it such a magnet - everything is walkable, lots of no-car areas, outdoor dining everywhere, live music wafting from one street or another.  Walking around that first night, eating just a delicious and inexpensive chicken souvlaki, I wondered for the 10^th time, where are all the homeless or folks living on the streets with addiction?  Do they not have those problems here? Because that nice walking area - with shops and food and lots of visitors - transplant that spot to SF or Santa Monica and panhandlers and folks with mental health issues would be out and about and we would not be strolling late into the evening…

Digression!   After dinner, the kids and I took a walk to the big, City park - which I think was substantially improved during the 2004 Olympics - and we had such a great time unwinding after the flight from Rome.  We watched so many  people on giant playfields that were set into a little valley near the main road – adults playing basketball, sand volleyball, and taking part in an outdoor bootcamp/weights class – and right next to them, 9 year old kids with pennies on, engaged in a soccer scrimmage, all going on in the city center at like 8pm.   We continued walking about and realized it was too big to explore in the dark – We later came back multiple times because the park was home to two giant and fun playgrounds, botanical gardens, and other scenic spots, such a great space to have for down time for the kiddos, after long days of sightseeing.

 

First night in Athens, we were excited to see so much activity at 8pm, including this well-used park where adults and kids were keeping fit and having fun! 

Get out of town Athens, with all these cute cats!  This one was outside our door each morning, resting on top of car roofs or here on this scooter. 

Our first day there, we were ready for the main event, Acropolis.  We strolled over to the ticket office, waited in line for 90 seconds, got our half-priced kids’ tickets, and went right in, yes! Another great, warm day, perfect for walking right up a steep mountain and through 2,500 year old structures.  Fantastic walking up and even better on top. Unfortunately, that iconic, first sight of the Parthenon was a bit diminished by scaffolding on the front of the structure, but after a few minutes up there you sort of stop seeing the scaffolding and just see the marble. Scott and I enjoyed an audio guide we downloaded while Alex and Luke ran around playing “does this hurt?” and Katie examined stones. From the Acropolis, you can see one-third of all Greek homes (pretty cool, there are about 10.6 million people in Greece and you can see almost the whole metro area up there, about 3.2 million people).  In addition to marveling at the age of those marble stones, I thought more deeply up there about those ancient Greeks, about their religion, that they actually worshipped and explained their lives through what we call the Greek myths.  And they built these incredible places to demonstrate that devotion.  I don’t know why, but for some reason, that thought sort of made them come to life for me. 

Katie, loving getting a squeeze from Dad and Luke and Alex definitely NOT pushing and shoving each other at this ancient and hallowed site. 

Alex checking the view where you can see one-third of all Greek homes! 

Coming down from the Acropolis, in front of Dionysus's Theater.

Katie, showing off a little piece of the Acropolis that she brought home from the visit. 

 
We scheduled a bike tour for our second day (our third bike tour of the trip, every time we do one - we just love them- I feel such gratitude to Amanda von Moos for the bike tour suggestion that started it all for us, in London). Such a fun tour, our guide was charming, no one fell or got bloodied on the bikes, we visited several new locations (saw guards at the presidential palace in show-military garb and doing marches commemorating Greece’s independence from the Ottomans; visited the 1856 stadium where the first modern Olympics were held; and rode through some very charming parts of the City we had not seen yet).  Maybe most memorably, we were on the tour with only one other couple, they were Israeli and this was October 12; they had just fled Israel, having been in bomb shelters with sirens going the night before the bike tour of Athens.  Very sobering and put the tragedy smack dab to the front of our minds. We bade our fellow bikes a warm goodbye.   

 

Bike tour, in front of a beautiful event venue in one of Athens' great, City parks and right, on the bike tour and at a viewpoint to the Acropolis, see it there in the background! 

I love it when people offer to take photos of the five of us, so rare. Rarer still, that all five of us will be smiling, with our eyes open. 

In front of the Panathenaic Stadium, where the first modern Olympics in 1896 were held. 

Glad I have this photo from out bike tour but sad I couldn't get anyone into the photo and pose! 

That night, we sprung for a fancy dinner place, overlooking the Acropolis. It was so beautiful at night. I tried in vain to get a good picture of my dinner companions in that tough light. Sadly, only the feline variety were able to sit properly for their photo.

           My dinner partners made a valiant attempt at a photo, with the incredible, lite up Acropolis in
                                                                   the background.. good effort, but.....

 

... these two cats stole the show, I managed this fantastic photo that I could not replicate with human subjects..  

On our last day in Athens, we packed up and stored our bags at the apt’s management office until our overnight ferry and set out to make the most of the day.  We made it to the Agora (after some massive threats, cajoling, bribing of the three youngest members of our group), then had a long break at the City park, and finished up at the day at the Acropolis Museum (just as we needed bathrooms and drinks; great planning job, parents!).  The Museum is great; it has pieces taken from the Acropolis (where copies reside) and the top floor is a rectangle with the same dimensions of the larger-than-you-think-it-is Parthenon.  Lining the walls of that whole rectangle is the original frieze that encircled the area above the columns on the Parthenon telling so many Athenian tales.  It is a fantastic way to lay it out, in a giant glass area where you can look up at the frieze and look outside the window and see the Parthenon above you.  Made me think that those Athenian statutes (“marbles”) in the British Museum should probably come back to Athens!  (Sadly, I only have one picture from this last day as Scott and I were trying to preserve phone-battery like mad, for our overnight ferry ride.) 

I must have snuck this selfie, at the ancient Agora, on our last day when we were supposed to be preserving battery-life :) 

 It was finally time to make our way out to the Piraeus port for our (gulp) 11pm ferry ride, we hoped to keep the kids awake until we could get into our cabins.  On the metro to the Port, we noticed this young couple, in flip flops, carrying a surf board.  They got off at the Port metro stop too and caught up with us as we made our way to the escalator. The girl spoke English and asked if we were going to a ferry. It turns out we were on the same overnight trip to Crete and she asked if we knew where it was; we said we were just going to wander around to find it.  She asked if they could follow along with us. I thought this was odd as we were a group of 5, with 2 or sometimes 3 semi-uncooperative people in our group; I imagined Scott and I in their place (20+ years ago) and that we could easily travel much faster than present-day us..  We said of course and we wandered around the giant Port and found the bus to take us to the right berth; they then asked to hang out with us as we waited at this funny, outdoor seating with the smattering of other foot-passengers (most people had cars or arrived on busses).   Then we learned why we were a sticky group for them – they were Israeli; they had been vacationing in Sri Lanka when the violence started; they parents had encouraged them to stay away and they found a friend of a friend in Crete who was going to let them stay for a while.  Another sad story, the girl (who spoke more English) said that it felt safer to be part of our larger group.  While they were sometimes quiet and worriedly checking messages from family and friends, they were still kids and wanted to pass the time; while we were all waiting for the ferry, we are so grateful that they taught us a great new card game which they nicknamed (and now we call) the Sri Lanka game.  It will surely be sweeping through El Cerrito soon, as Katie is mildly obsessed with it.

                                                             Tired family arriving in Crete.  

 Our overnights in our cabins went as well as they could have (Alex, Luke, and I shared a cabin; Luke swore that as the ship docked at 6:30am that he had JUST closed his eyes a minute ago!).  But! I knew all would be well because we had decided back in Scotland that we were going to have one really easy week in Greece.  You see, we looked ahead and figured that we would need a break after traveling a bit hard in Italy, so prescient on our part).  I had spent many, MANY hours searching for an all-inclusive place on Crete that would be as perfect as possible for our group – It was a funny funny venn diagram – a place good for kids but not only for toddlers/little kids (meaning, it had to have a pool with some deep water, some pools are really just for little kids!); all-inclusive with good food reviews, a room for all 5 of us that had some kind of a table in it (for doing work and Mandarin calls); and it had to be close to Heraklion (one of the main cities on Crete) because the only ferry off of Crete that we could take left at 5am, so, we could not stay much farther than 30 min from Heraklion without having to move to another hotel the night before the ferry. 

So! I had scoured booking sites and finally settled on this place called Royal Imperial Belvedere.  Ah, our family will never forget our week at Belvie (as we came to call it, mimicking the staff’s nickname for its hotel-character. Yes, the hotel has a hotel-character).  We had a little, partitioned room with a bathroom and three twin beds on one side and a big bed on the other with a nice little balcony furnished with a table and a place for wet swimsuits to dry out.  The hotel had 4+ pools, minigolf, tennis, ping pong, and all you can eat and drink restaurants, heaven!  Mostly heaven.  The minigolf was hilariously difficult (all the felt covering was removed, so we were trying to putt hard golf balls over barriers and ramps made of concrete, Alex cried twice when we played, he was so frustrated; we made up a “mercy rule” of no more than 14 shots per hole AFTER poor Katie had taken FORTY-NINE shots on hole #1!  She made a roaring comeback after that hole, she had had so much putting practice!).  The tennis balls were all flat (which was great, because Luke lost two with some wild-hitting); the outdoor pools were unheated which is fine for a person of my body mass, but the kids got too cold and only got in if I cajoled them, otherwise they swan in the only indoor, heated pool; the alcoholic drinks were all watered down (which maybe was for the best); and the buffet food was hit or miss. 

 

Alex.  Because why would you drink one granita at a time when humans are blessed with two hands?

Katie, demonstrating the benefits of the Crete Dessert Tasting Club - You get to try so many desserts!. And Alex, enjoying his typical breakfast (pancakes, stacked high with Nutella, watermelon, and strong, coffee. Oh! Sorry, that has got to be hot chocolate:) 

Luke, in action. I swear, he won one of like eight games we played, but somehow, that ONE game was the most memorable and important when he tells the story :). 

For posterity - Sorry boys, I think Katie beat you two every time you played two-against-one!

The indoor, heated pool where our sweeties spent a lot of time rather than swimming in the large, numerous, and scenic outdoor, (unheated, in October) pools.

The dreaded minigolf course. 

But! Oh the fun we had, all you can drink granitas by the pool, while doing schoolwork; fantastic blue water view; lazy days with just games on the calendar; and the evenings… oh, the evening entertainment was nothing short of amazing!  It started with 8pm mini-disco which consisted of dozens of kids who went to the “kids club” during the day dancing onstage, the “animation” team (four, enthusiastic 18 to 25 yr olds) leading the choreography – this was sometimes the best part of the evening because it was the same each night so we got to know the songs and dances. Also, mini-disco always included a visit from the resort character, the giant, green, Belvie.  You always knew Belvie was coming because their theme music would come on – mysteriously – that music was the theme from 48 hours, yes, that catchy them from the 1980s Eddie Murphy movie. It would blare from the speakers and out would bounce that indefatigable Belvie.  Then at 9pm, rotating, theme-of-the-evening shows began; we saw:  Mr. Belvedere (poor dudes from the audience got pushed onstage by their family and then did embarrassing performances, like, lip synching and dancing with cross-dressing men with balloons between their bodies, and then were judged by audience-applause); trivia night; audience karaoke, and a magic show by a local magician that ended so oddly I will never forget it – After a fairly good set of illusions, the magician invited all the kids onstage (Luke and Alex reluctantly went up), then he had them all close their eyes and he told them – with great drama in his voice - that he was going to have them all disappear and reappear at Disney World (which news half of them took with bored disbelief and the other half took with horror) and then after an uncomfortably long build up - he had them all open their eyes and …. Lights and confetti and music went crazy and they all just looked at us from onstage like, huh?, and then the animation team joined them and tried to get them all to follow their dance moves while fantastic pop music played (favorite song: You are the Best!). It was so perplexing and hilarious.

These evening shows were also so strange because it seemed like EVERYONE in the resort religiously attended; there were hundreds of people in seats and we could rarely find seats together, yet the audience was so quiet, so very quiet.  The gregarious evening host or hostess would passionately call out: “Good evening guests, who is ready for some ent-er-tain-MEEEEEENT!?” to… no response. The music would play in the background, the animation team would jump up and try to get people clapping and joining a conga line without success.  Yet each night, we would arrive at like 8:05pm and there would not be a seat in the house!

 

Look at the crowd for the show!  They enthusiastically found and held seats for hours and then were largely quiet through the shows. 

Not a bad setup for homeschool, Alex! 

OK! So much fun at Belvie, we did go to a few important and interesting sights!

Knossos Palace – Reputed to be the oldest palace building in Europe – The excavated palace is dated to ~1,600 BCE and was a holy and royal place for the Minoans (so named from the Greek myth about King Minos, who kept a minotaur in a labyrinth beneath a palace; the hero Theseus slew the minotaur, saving Athenian children from being sacrificed to the beast).  A very special moment on the trip – When we first entered the Belvie resort, Katie pointed to a stained glass art piece in the lobby and said, “we learned about this art, the three ladies in class last year.”  I didn’t think a whole lot about it but then, when we all did some research into the Knossos Palace, we learned that the art pieces her teacher showed her class - Ladies in Blue and Dolphin Fresco… are were found in the Knossos Palace.  It is always fun to have something to search as we picked our way around the Palace, along with the hordes of people, and Katie was so delighted to see them! (well, replicas of “them”, we saw the originals a bit later when we visited the Crete Archeological Museum.)

Knossos Palace; Alex cannot BELIEVE he is standing in the oldest city in Europe! 

Katie, in front of some of the art in the Palace that she learned about in sixth grade. 

The three ladies painting! 

Stopping at one of the beautiful, Crete viewpoints on our drive around the sights. 

Zeus’s Cave. We visited Dikteo Andros, a cave located on Mount Sarakinos, reputed to be where Zeus was born and hid after escaping from being devoured by his father, Kronos/Saturn. Archeologists have found items from around 2,000 BC in the cave and some surmise that people have been coming to the cave to leave offerings or worship. Setting these stories aside, the cave was full of stalactites and stalagmites, facilitating a fun conversation about the drip-drip-creations. 

 Admiring and learning about how stalactites and stalagmites grow. 

Windmills. We visited ruins of windmills that date back to the Crete-Venetians era from the 1200s (Venetians controlled Crete after taking over when the Byzantine empire lost control around 1200 until about 1670 when the Ottomans took control). 

A great, restored windmill; most of the bases were in ruins. 

Agarathos Monastery. We visited this beautiful monastery; Scott and I contemplated whether we could have been monks, happily copying books on these beautiful grounds. One of us said “yes” and the other said “no”.

 Ah and a week later, it was time to leave Crete – The island was big, we will have to come back to see more.

 Trying to avoid flights, we took the dreaded 5am ferry from Crete to the island Rhodes (Rodos).  It was tough to get up so early and make sure we left nothing in the hotel room, but we made it, with our second, very good-natured-early-in-the-am-driver (we pretty much exclusively encountered such nice folks in Greece).  We made our way to seats on the ferry where Alex and Luke set up shop – they amazingly sat and played whatever games they can manage on their computers without internet, they only stopping during the 11 hour ferry when we forced them to eat and go outside on the ferry deck to get fresh air – such stamina!   Scott and I struck up a conversation with an American lady traveling alone. Turns out she was a retired teacher from WA, her kids were grown, she had given up her house and was traveling the world and returning back to WA periodically to see family, lodging in the state via housesitting gigs.  Fun retirement!

Ferry is.. sooo early!

Alex and Luke sharing computers to conserve battery for the looooon ferry ride. 

I forced them to stop computer-ing and come out for air. 

 We made it to Rhodes and walked 30 minute from the Port to our sweet apartment (comically, Alex eye-balled on this walk, and never let us forget that, while we were surrounded by delicious food, there was a Dominos Pizza two buildings away from us – he pouted like his life depended on it when we only had one dinner there the entire stay in Rhodes). 

 The island has an interesting history, we visited:

·       Palace of the St. John’s Knights of Hospitaller– The Knights were founded in the 1100s to provide healthcare to pilgrims (and crusaders) traveling from western Europe to the Holy Land in Jerusalem. Their headquarters moved from Jerusalem, then moved to Cyprus, then to Rhodes, then Malta, then St. Petersburg. The Rhodes HQ lasted from 1310 to 1522, when the great Ottoman sultan, Suleiman the Magnificent laid siege and eventually negotiated an end the Knights in Rhodes; they were allowed to leave and moved to Malta. Walking through the museum and watching videos about the history, the current Knights – which still a Catholic organization committed to healthcare – took pains in the video to distance themselves from the Crusading-history and to focus on the providing care to all travelers, pilgrims, and people in need.

In the Palace of the Grand Master of the Knights of Rhodes.

·       The site where the one of the seven wonders of the ancient world once stood, the Colossus of Rhodes which we know from historical accounts was a giant statute at or near the Rhodes harbor – It was built by the proud city to commemorate the city withstanding a siege from the Macedonians. 

In front of one location where the Colossus of Rhodes might have stood, built in 280 BC, of the Sun God Helios. Sadly, it only stood about 50 years before an earthquake knocked it down.

Some dreamers thought the Colossus stood astride the harbor, spanning from one plinth to the other but we agree with experts who think that is crazy-talk, couldn't have been that tall and balanced on just two legs. 

·       Tsimbaka Monastery, where we learned local people sometimes make pilgrimages to pray to have children (it was a fun long walk; as we scooted down the steps, I saw several older women, hopped-to-be-grandmothers, I mused, slowing making their way up the steps with giant candles to light to the Monestary’s for a grandbaby.

Tsimbaka Monastery - place of offerings.  

Killer view from Tsimbaka Monastery. 

                                    Killer view from Tsimbaka Monastery, part two. 

·       Lindos Acropolis and temple to Athena, completed around the 3rd century BC.

Preparing for that walk to the Lindos Acropolis, behind the group. 

We made it! Is that sweat on your shirt, Luke??  

Katie, deciphering the Greek. 

In front of a +2,500 year old trireme carving, faintly, behind us. 

After the walk;  needed to buy this water, on top of the two giant ones we carried and drained! 

Cooling off! 

 - And, after walking up and down the Port where dozens of cruising companies had booths set up to sell trips at great, end of season prices, we selected a swim-focused cruise.  We boarded the boat with maybe 20 other people and enjoyed jumping off a high-platform, snorkeling (not much to see sadly, but it was the first time the kids did it), and we stopped in a little swimming bay where the company had SUPs and canoes.  It was very fun to paddle around a Bay in the Mediterranean; unfortunately, while trying to switch canoe-ers, we flipped the craft and a snorkel mask fell into the water. It was too deep for any of us to reach – One of the crew members was going to go for it, but when we tried to bring him back to the spot where we saw it – clearly on the Bay floor – we spent +30 minutes snorkeling around fruitlessly trying to find it. Oh, I felt so badly about leaving that green plastic on the Sea floor, especially after I had spent the good part of the trip feeling very annoyed with more than one of our co-passengers who smoked cigarettes and then threw the butts into the blue blue Sea.  How could I feel holier-than-thou, having left that plastic mask to the underwater ecosystem??

Katie, enjoying the SUPs. 

Scott, Katie, and Luke or Alex, not sure where the other one scampered off to...

... ah! Here is Luke making the big jump (one that 4 of the 5 of us made!). 

Other important adventures – We met a cat in Rhodes, who looked just like our cat, Lion, who safe a home with my sister Monica. 

Our third city in Greece and we loved it – Beautiful scenery, interesting sites, yummy yummy food, such lovely people, normal-difficult driving conditions.. hard to think of anything negative to say about visiting Greece!