Day 9 - Monday, June 19th - Athens, Greece - Part 2

Day 9 - Monday, June 19th - Athens, Greece - Part 2

Once we felt like we saw everything we wanted to see, we made our way down the mountain & decided to walk to the Acropolis museum.  As we walked through the line, we showed our Athens City Pass again & once again they would not let us in.  We were 3 different families traveling together & one of the families city passes worked fine, but ours & the other families did not.  They refused to let us in.  We ended up having to call the City Pass company to figure out why nothing was working.  They had forgotten to email us the actual QR codes for our tickets.  So they emailed them to us again. . . They did it wrong AGAIN.  After about 40 minutes of back & forth with the company, we finally got the QR codes & they let us in the front door of the museum.  After that we needed to go to the ticket counter to show our QR codes so we could get our tickets to the actual museum.  The adult tickets worked no problem, but again we had issues with the kids’ tickets.  They wanted us to pay for each kid to get into the museum again, even though we had already paid for the their city pass tickets which included entrance.  It was such a mess.  The one family with us got their tickets for their kids no problem again.  We could not figure out what was wrong with our passes.  We refused to pay another entrance fee for the kids (it was a large amount of money) when we already paid twice at the Acropolis & for their passes to begin with.  So, we left the museum & decided to go find some lunch instead. 

We walked about half a mile & found ourselves at the Hard Rock Cafe, Athens.  It was right next to the remains of Hadrian’s Library which was super cool to explore.  We were all starving & couldn’t wait to eat lunch.  The kids were pretty excited about that & they had a large area set aside for our group of 18 people.  We had a blast.  The kids sat together, the teens sat together, & the adults sat together.  It was great food, great fun, & a wonderful rest with LOTS of ice water.  I have forgotten how wonderful ice water is.  It’s been 4 years since I’ve had ice in my drinks.  It’s wonderful.

After lunch, we made our way to the hop on hop off bus stop where we made sure our City Passes were working for those & they worked great.  We were SO relieved.  We hopped on the big yellow bus & the kids were SO excited to go to the top & watch the sites of Athens together while the adults listened to the historical commentary.  Everything is exciting with friends.  We rode the bus almost half the entire route, then Trek, me, Canyon & Craiger got off to go pick up our luggage from the storage place & check into our hotel while the rest of the group finished off the entire bus route.  We grabbed all 3 large suitcases & SEVEN backpacks & walked the half mile to our apartment.  It was comical watching us carry it all.  I had 1 suitcase & 2 backpacks on, Trek had 2 suitcases & a backpack, Canyon & Craiger both had 2 backpacks on their backs.  It was 90 degrees outside & we were dripping with sweat by the time we found our apartment.  It was in a seriously sketchy part of Athens (pretty close to the Acropolis), but the apartment itself was very nice.  The elevator scared me half to death because it was an open elevator with no door so as you go up you can see the floors pass as you go up.  Then the actual door you push on to get off of it got stuck & I couldn’t get out.  Trek rescued me from the hallway of our floor, but I vowed never to ride it again.  But our apartment was great.  We had a hard time getting the key out of the door, but we eventually figured it out.   It had a nice bathroom with a washer, a good kitchen with a fridge, sink, & dishes, plenty of space for all of us to sleep, & wonderful air conditioning.  We felt spoiled.  We rested for a few minutes enjoying the cool air, then made our way back down to the street so we could walk the 1.5 miles to where everyone else was getting off the hop on hop off bus.

We met up with everyone again & a really cool ice cream place in the city center.  You got to pick all your ice cream’s ingredients including mix ins, then they make the ice cream right in front of you on a freezing cold metal plate.  They mix it all up as it freezes on the metal plate, then they roll it up into little ice cream rolls.  It was incredible.  I had coconut milk, peaches, & pineapple.  All of it was SUPER fresh & delicious.  It was probably my favorite dessert on our entire trip. 

After ice cream we took a walk through a huge park in the middle of the city.  The kids enjoyed climbing trees, feeding ducks, & watching the turtle pond.  It was shaded & cool here which was wonderful. 

As we came out of the park we passed the Athens Presidential palace where we watched the guards do their in synch march back & forth in front of the palace.  The guards have really interesting Pom Poms on their toes & the way they move is almost like slow motion.  It was really interesting to watch them. 

We ended our day at the Olympic stadium where our friend Ethan ran a full lap around the Olympic track.  It was really really cool.  We did a lot in one day. 

After that we said goodbye to friends for the day, walked back to our apartment, washed some clothes, took showers, & went to bed.  We didn’t have a dryer so we hung our washed clothing all around the apartment which was hilarious.  “Mom, don’t hang my underwear where everyone can see it!”  We HAD to.  While I was helping get the kids settled, Trek went on a 5 mile run (with his broken toe) because it was ATHENS!  He ran up to a great lookout point & was able to fly his drone around the acropolis at night for some spectacular pictures.  It was a busy, hot, but wonderful day.