Day 9 - Monday, June 19th, 2023 - Athens, Greece - Part 1

 Day 9 - Monday, June 19th, 2023 - Athens, Greece - Part 1

We woke up at 5:30am & had everything packed up & ready to go by breakfast at 6:30.  We wanted to eat breakfast in the dining room one last time before disembarking our wonderful cruise ship.  It was delicious as always.  I loved that goat cheese vegetable bowl for breakfast. 

To get off a cruise ship you have 2 options.  You can leave your luggage outside your room the night before you leave & have the staff take it off for you, but you’ll be assigned a specific time to get off the boat. . . OR you can take it off yourself & leave whenever you want.  We opted for option 2.  If we had done option 1, we wouldn’t have been able to leave the boat until 9:30.  We were meeting 2 family friends at the Athen’s Acropolis at 9 so we knew we needed to check out on our own.  We got off the ship a little after 7 with all our luggage & began the 2.5 km trek to the subway station.  I didn’t think my kiddos were going to make it.  It was 90 degrees (at 7am), we were tired, & we had 3 large suitcases & 7 backpacks to lug around the city.  Athens is NOT an easy place to get around with luggage.  It was a miserable 40 minutes of walking trying to get to that subway station, but we made it.  Much to our surprise, train tickets were only $1.20 per person to get to the area where our hotel in Athens was (really close to the Acropolis).  We hopped on train & rode for about 30 minutes when we got off & realized we needed to go ONE MORE STOP.  We hopped on the next train that stopped & it was packed.  I felt like we were on a YouTube video where people are pushing people into the train to get them to fit.  I was SO worried about losing one of my kiddos, but we all got on okay.  We got off on the next exit & got on the red line to the acropolis exit.  Just down the road from that exit, there was a great little luggage storage place where we stored our 3 suitcases & most of our backpacks.  We couldn’t check into our hotel until 3:00 & we wanted to explore so this was the best option, but it closed at 6 so we had to make sure we were back to pick our things up by 6:00.

Finally we could meet our friends at the Acropolis.  It was barely 9:00 too.  We had made it just in time.  The Bourne’s had our tickets so we called them to find out where they were, & found them instantly.  There was a line to get in, but it moved quickly & my kids were just SO happy to have both the Bourne’s & the Bradley’s kids there to hang out with.  I swear to you, my kids could withstand 120 degrees in the most boring place in the world so long as there were friends there.  I was SO grateful we arranged to have friends in Athens or it would have been a tough trip.  We had an Athens City Pass which allowed us 2 days on the hop on hop off busses, & entrance into all the main sites & museums around Athens.  At the acropolis, they wouldn’t let our kids in with our Athens Pass tickets which was really strange.  After going back & forth with the employee showing our tickets, we kinda of gave up & wound up paying for the kids to get in, but once we figured that out, we were good to go.  They did random backpack searches as we entered in & OF COURSE Trek got chosen for a backpack search.  He had his drone with him & I guess drones weren’t allowed inside the acropolis (which does make sense).  He wasn’t planning on taking it out at all, we just couldn’t fit it into any of our suitcases so he had it in his backpack.  But they said NO WAY.  Strike #1!  They made him walk around the acropolis to the north entrance where there were lockers to store things like that so he stored it, got back in the long line, then got into the park again. 

We had made our way all the way to the top of the Acropolis where the Parthenon stood as well as the Temple of Zeus.  Mars Hill was off to the side, & you could see all of Athens from the top.  It was beautiful.  Trek was trying to get to us since he had to get back in line because of his drone so it we were separated, but barely.  They make you get up the side of the acropolis mountain in a single file line so we were barely missing each other.  Trek tried to squeeze around a large group of people by stepping over a few larger rocks so he could catch up to our group, but a guy blew his whistle at him telling him to get back in the line & not to “climb rocks.” 2 Strikes down for Trek in the Acropolis. 

We eventually were able to meet up at the very top & enjoy our time there looking at the amazing Greek ruins.  The kids were happy with their friends & we enjoyed learning the history of the Parthenon & Temple of Zeus.  We took a bunch of pictures, but of course Trek needed to get a picture in front of the Parthenon doing a “click his heels” photo like we do at all the major landmarks we visit.  We took the picture & were immediately chased down by another Acropolis employee. . . “Did you just jump & take a picture?”  We were SO confused!  “Yes.”  “You can’t do that!”  “We can’t jump?”  “You can jump, you just can’t take a picture of it.  I need you to delete that photo right now.”  We were SO confused.  No signs with rules were posted anywhere & it just seemed like such a bizarre rule.  The employee literally stood next to Trek & watched him delete the photo on his phone before they’d let us go.  (Luckily, the photo stores in the deleted folder for 30 days before it actually deletes it). Strike 3.  Athens officially did not like Trek, ha ha ha.