It continued to rain the last few days of our time in Barcelona and got considerably colder, so saying goodbye to the city wasn’t too hard. On Wednesday Jonah and I spent the morning walking around the mall by the port to avoid the damp outdoors as we had the week before. We enjoyed coffee, milk, and a croissant before strolling through the mall. The second floor of the mall has a glass railing, and Jonah was hesitant to walk over to it while we walked around the top level. He smiled at me and looked at the railing, smiling back at me again. A few days before at the Picasso museum there was a railing on a ramp with just a metal hand rest. Jonah carefully put his arm through what he thought would have been a barrier under the metal bar and laughed each time he did it seemingly at the ridiculousness of there being nothing there. At the mall, I think Jonah wondered whether there would be a glass barrier or whether it would be like the museum. It was pretty funny to see his reaction and interesting to see him draw on his previous experience.
That afternoon, we had our second experience with the European health care system. We’d had a rough night on Tuesday with Jonah up several times, not able to sleep for some reason. Because he had a cold, we feared he might have an ear infection, which wouldn’t be good for our upcoming flight. We’d remembered passing a medical clinic by our neighborhood park, so we strolled over there around 3:30 pm. There was a special pediatric department, so Jeremy explained the situation, including the fact that we were from the U.S. and only in Barcelona for a short stay. A woman at the front desk went into the back room to talk to some folks in the administrative office and returned with the good news that we could be seen…for free! We waited in the area in front of room 4, the office of the doctor who would be examining Jonah. (Two doctors share a waiting area with a little table and chairs for kids, along with coloring books, crayons, and reading books. There’s also a private area for babies to be nursed if moms want privacy.) We only had to wait for about 40 minutes, during which time Jonah got on and off all four of the little chairs, rotating from one to the next in quick succession. He made friends with an older woman whom he kept handing crayons to from the tin container. He colored with another little boy whom he handed one of his crayons to and who later handed Jonah one of his own crayons to use. It was the sweetest example of two toddlers sharing I’ve ever witnessed. At one point, Jeremy walked to another waiting area to check it out, and Jonah asked me, “Daddy go? Daddy go?” Jonah definitely likes to keep tabs on both of us.
Once in the doctor’s office, Jonah wanted to check out the doctor’s collection of medical books in the cabinet. Reassured by me that everything was okay, he willingly let the doctor examine him while he lay on the examination table. It turned out Jonah had slight bronchitis for which the doctor prescribed the same medicine for an inhaler that he had used in London. I asked if he needed an antibiotic (hoping the answer would be “no”), and the doctor said it wasn’t necessary. Fabulous! Fifteen minutes later, we left the doctor’s office, paid not a dime, and headed to the pharmacy. I handed the prescription over and was told “treinta cinco”, which I took to mean 35 euros. I handed the guy a 50 euro banknote and started getting back a TON of change. He meant 35 cents!! Needless to say, I was floored. So, again, an amazing health care experience for less than a dollar.
Never in the U.S. could you show up at a doctor’s office, ask to be seen, actually get an appointment for 45 minutes later, and not have to pay! Of course, this was a public doctor’s office, which we don’t have. Those are called emergency rooms, which is exactly where a foreigner would be sent if inquiring about health care options, and I’m not even sure how the rest of the scenario plays out. Does the person get seen? If so, how many hours/days later? What exorbitant fee would the person have to pay?
That night as Jeremy and I put our heads on our pillows, Jeremy said, “If you need me tonight, you really need to wake me. Otherwise, I might get him dressed and take him outside or make him some eggs.” Needless to say, Jeremy is a tough one to stir in the middle of the night, and if I ask him to get up, he walks around seemingly awake but not awake at all.
Thursday turned out to be a gorgeous day, so Jonah and I headed to the last site on my list of places to visit before we left Barcelona—Monestir de Pedrales. A fourteenth century monastery on the outskirts of the Barcelona suburbs, Monestir de Pedrales was founded for the nuns of the Order of St. Clare. The nuns were kicked out some 600 years later during the Spanish Civil War, and the monastery was turned into a museum in the 1980s. The Clare nuns now occupy an adjacent convent and use the attached church. The monastery is simply beautiful, not to be missed in my opinion. Walking through the lovely three-level cloisters and admiring the inner courtyard with its beautiful fountains and plants, the place felt quite sacred. I was exhausted because Jonah again had been up quite a bit the night before. Having only gotten four hours of sleep, my brain wasn’t exactly functioning as it should. As a result, I ended up sending a couple of guys who work at the monastery on a wild goose chase trying to figure out how to open the locker that contained my bag because I couldn’t find the key that was in my front pants pocket. Yes, I had already checked this pocket twice but for some reason thought I was supposed to be feeling a larger object than the one I kept feeling in my pocket. The upside to this twenty minute detour was that it meant we ended up sticking around long enough for the beautiful church to open. Jonah enjoyed watching a woman play the organ, asking for “mo, mo” (more, more). On the bus ride home (about a 30 minute ride), Jonah sat in his own seat by the window and loved, loved it. He kept pointing to things outside and telling me all about them. He started with, “Our bus going!”
Jonah took a long nap on Thursday, and Jeremy stopped work a little earlier than usual so we could enjoy a last afternoon/evening in the Gothic neighborhood. We took the same route we had on our first day in Barcelona, past the church of Sant Pau del Camp. Jonah immediately started yelling out, “Playground! Playground!” This little guy has an amazing sense of direction and memory of his surroundings. I’m always stunned by how he remembers where things are located. We didn’t stop at that playground, but we did stop at the one in Gothic neighborhood, where he made the similar announcement with delight as we came upon it. We had a nice dinner out, picked up some gelato, and headed home. Tons of people were out that night, the first of many on which it wasn’t raining. In fact, there were more kids at the playground that night than there had been on any previous visit of mine to it during the day.
Friday was another day of rain. Jonah and I spent the first part of the morning at Raquel’s apartment with a couple of other moms and their kids, making the traditional pastry for All Saint’s Day (the next day, November 1). We met Jeremy outside of the MACBA (Museu d’Art Contemporani de Barcelona), where he and Jonah went to see the new exhibits so I could have some time at our apartment packing up our stuff. Jonah decided not to nap that day, I think because he sensed something unusual was afoot. Josh and Aya returned from Italy in the afternoon, so we met up with them at their hotel and headed to the Sant Antoni market to pick up shrimp, cheese, olives, vegetables, and other food to make dinner at our apartment. We’d planned to take Jonah to a Halloween party that evening, but that would have resulted in a major meltdown due to lack of sleep. Instead, Jonah wore his costume around our apartment, Josh and Aya’s hotel, and the Sant Antoni market.On Saturday, we left our Barcelona apartment in the darkness of the early morning hours, the taxi picking us up at 6:30 am. That we left the city without any of us having stepped in dog poop on a sidewalk seems like quite a feat. It’s taken the first couple of days in Athens to stop automatically trying to speak, respond, or think in Spanish.
Jonah was the little darling of our flight to Athens, with many passengers and almost all of the in-flight crew interacting with him in one way or another—a passing smile or wave, a quick chat, an exchange of cups and other plastic food covers, time together viewing a video on a little hand-held device. Aside from pretending to feed himself and the man featured on the Iberian Air magazine a muffin from the barf bag in front of his seat (the wonderful crew managed to get us an entire row even though we hadn’t paid for a ticket for Jonah), Jonah liked to walk up and down the aisle of the plane by himself, never straying more than 10 rows in either direction from ours. During his stroll, he carried two plastic coffee mugs from our lunch trays, which he liked to clank together and, later, set down on the tray of a fellow passenger three rows ahead of us. She didn’t seem to mind and, in fact, seemed pleased Jonah chose her.Unlike Jonah who seemed to be on his game, I was, yes, you guessed it, tired (I know, I need to start going to bed earlier). Not quite in Greek mode, I was thrown off by the Greek writing on the emergency card for the airplane (something I now read multiple times on any flight because Jonah loves the pictures and wants us to tell him all about them). The first thing I thought when I saw the letters ΣΑΣ was “Hmmm, I wonder what fraternity that is…”. Oy.
We arrived in Athens around 4:30 pm and waited around the airport for a while dealing with Jeremy’s missing bag. (That wouldn’t arrive until late the next morning.) We got to our apartment located just a few blocks south of the Plaka neighborhood (the 19th century old town) and immediately went in search of a restaurant. We found a nice Italian café around the corner from our place on a lovely pedestrian walkway. This was the location of Jonah’s first four word sentence—“Who’s that walking by?”—in response to a person passing by as we dined outside (with no sweatshirts in the 70 degree evening weather!). He said the sentence in two steps with a brief pause in between “whozat” and “wokng by”. From dinner it was back to our apartment and bedtime for Jonah.
Saturday night was another looooooooooong night with Jonah up for about three hours in the middle of it. This time it was because he’d been rudely awakened by a call on Jeremy’s cell phone at 12:45 am from the airline to confirm that they were going to deliver his bag to us the next morning. Ugh!! I think Jonah had a hard time falling back to sleep because of his new, unfamiliar surroundings. So on Sunday, we were exhausted! We took it easy that morning with a stroll around Plaka and a visit to the Roman Agora and Tower of the Winds. Plaka is pretty cute with its narrow streets lined with shops (mostly geared toward tourists with every type of chachka you can imagine). As for the Roman Agora, think back to your history of Western Civilization when the Romans conquered Greece in 150 B.C.E. A large square lined with columns, the Roman Agora was the commercial center of Roman Athens. The Ottoman Turks later used the Agora as their grand bazaar. On the same stretch of land sits the Tower of Winds, a 1st century B.C.E. building that combines clock, wind vane, and guide to the planets. Jonah didn’t care so much about the history of the site (okay, not at all). He just liked climbing up and down the huge stones and rocky pathways.
After lunch in Plaka and a nap for all of us, we walked to the Olympic (or Panathenaic) Stadium (first used in the 1896 Olympics in Athens and later for ceremonies and the finish for the marathon in the 2004 games); by the Temple of Olympian Zeus (the largest temple in ancient Greece that took almost 700 years to build, begun in the 6th century B.C.E.) with only 15 of the original 104 Corinthian columns standing; through the National Garden where Jonah scavenged the area for rocks to collect and put in a little yogurt bottle; and a couple of churches. After dinner on the west side of the Acropolis, we walked around the back side of the mountain and caught beautiful night views of the magnificent site lit up in the dark night.The next morning we headed straight for the Acropolis to beat the throng of tourists. We had to leave the stroller outside the entrance, so Jonah got to enjoy the site from the back carrier. The Acropolis is as spectacular as one would imagine with the impressive Parthenon dominating the mountaintop. I have to admit though that all of the ongoing construction work to restore the
Parthenon and other monuments took away from the experience for me. It just made it hard to sit and contemplate the enormity of the task of building the Parthenon—getting the massive rocks up the mountainside, piling them on top of each other, chiseling the marble, and creating a work of wonder. And although there weren’t nearly as many tourists on the Acropolis as there could have been, there were enough to make it impossible to find even a bit of solitude. Add to that Jonah’s increasing impatience at not being able to run around, and off the mountain we went. I think I was able to enjoy the Acropolis more from the bottom, looking up with awe (almost as if looking into the heavens) at this magical place created thousands of years ago.
After strolling around the Acropolis, we let Jonah out of the back carrier to run around a bit. From the exit of the Acropolis, he ran down to the room where we left the stroller and yelled, “Stroller!” Like I said, this little guy has an amazing sense of direction. Walking from the Acropolis, we headed to the Ancient Agora along a very rocky, dirt path, not quite suitable for the stroller. That’s not to say that the sidewalks here are actually suitable for the stroller. They’re very much not. In fact, we need an all terrain vehicle just to get from our apartment to Plaka a half dozen or so blocks away. It’s a slalom course with cars half parked on the sidewalk, random metal poles serving as additional obstacles, and stretches too narrow for proceeding even in single file. Not that Athens is pedestrian friendly anyway. The pedestrian signal (i.e., the little walking person that tells you when to cross the street) lasts for about 5 seconds regardless of how large the street is that you’re trying to cross, and even with the pedestrian signal in your favor, cars turn right in front of you as though you don’t have the right of way. I will give Athens props though for their specialty coffee. They have knock off Starbucks stores with caramel lattes, hazelnut coffee, you name it. I was smiling big at this find.
But back to the Ancient Agora, the heart of ancient Athens… From its creation in the 6th century B.C.E. until its destruction by the Herulians in 267 C.E., the Ancient Agora was the center of all political, social, and commercial life. Socrates spent much time preaching his beliefs there, and the apostle Paul stopped by on his way to Corinth in 49 C.E. The extent of the archaeological remains enable a person to really get a sense of what the place must have been like thousands of years ago. Few people were visiting the site when we were there, which was fabulous.From the Agora, we visited the Jewish Museum in Plaka before grabbing some lunch. The museum is beautifully done with seven levels filled with information and artifacts on the history of Jews in Greece. Unlike other countries we’ve visited where Jews were systematically expelled, killed, or forced into religious conversion in the 14th and 15th centuries, Greece became home to many fleeing Jews during this period. The influx of Jews from other countries led to the merging of customs among the new and existing Jewish residents. Tragically, 65,000 of Greece’s Jews (87% of the Jews in the country) perished in the Holocaust. Today, Greece’s population of Jews is only 5,000.
Jonah decided not to nap after lunch, so we headed out to visit Keramikas, Athens’ ancient cemetery with graves dating from the 7th century B.C.E. Unfortunately, it wasn’t open, but we were able to get some good views from above. We strolled past the Jewish synagogue in the neighborhood on our way to a small grass area, one of the very few we’ve seen in Athens, for Jonah to run around. There really are very few open spaces in Athens. And the green patches you see on a map are actually archaeological sites, of which there are many, some quite random ones with no markings or city protection. (As an aside, there also are very few trash cans around, unlike Barcelona where you couldn’t walk more than three feet without finding one. Nor is there the obsession with cleaning streets and sidewalks as there is in Barcelona. Definitely miss that. Can’t find the recycling bins anywhere either.)We had dinner in Plaka again at a restaurant where the Godfather chose to “adopt” Jonah and came over to talk to him, gave him a lollypop (Jonah’s first…didn’t like it so much), and had his employee waiter give Jonah a cookie. The waiter referred to his boss as the godfather. Made me nervous to tell the Godfather that our child didn’t eat lollypops or cookies. I’ve seen those movies. I certainly would not want to piss off the Godfather, so that night, Jonah ate cookies and lollypops. You do what you have to do to protect your family.
This morning we headed to the National Archaeological Museum with its amazing collection of ancient pottery, statues, and frescoes.
We saw the amazing bronze statute of Zeus (or Poseidon, no one is quite sure) cast in 460 B.C.E. and discovered in the sea off Cape Artemision in 1928, frescoes dating to before the 16th century B.C.E. found on the island of Santorini, and beautifully carved fourth century B.C.E. headstones from Keramikas, among many other pieces of extraordinary art work.
From the museum, we took the subway back to the synagogue we’d found the other day so we could take a look inside. (Visiting hours are only from 10 am until noon, so we couldn’t visit when we first found it yesterday.) Built in 1935, Beth Shalom Synagogue is a fairly simple yet lovely temple serving Athens’ roughly 2,500 Jews (50 or 60 of whom attend Shabbat in any given week). Across the street from this synagogue is another one, Romaniote Synagogue. Built in 1904, this temple is only used now for the high holidays and is closed to the public. There is a guard station with a police officer outside the main synagogue, which also has a large metal fence around it. The police officer on duty indicated that the reason for the strong security is because of the relationship with Israel and the United States. The officer had to translate for the man at the synagogue who only spoke Greek and Hebrew. If only I could remember some of my Hebrew from my four years of it in high school…
From the synagogue, we headed to our apartment with a quick stop at a sandwich place on our way home for lunch. After lunch and Jonah's nap, we visited the Theater of Dionysus and headed back to the Ancient Agora to see the Temple of Hephaestus (from 449 B.C.E.). This is the only ancient Greek temple with a completely intact roof because it wasn't plundered but instead used as a church for centuries after the fall of ancient Greece. It’s a spectacular site, quite amazing what remains of it. We took a different route to the Agora, one that had us winding our way through the narrow streets of Anafiotika. Built by people from the Cycladic island of Anafi who came to Athens after independence looking for work, this little “village” is made up of the classic white-walled houses, many with blue doors and shutters and cats lounging around them in the sun.
We enjoyed another dinner in Plaka with a view of the Acropolis on Adrianou (the street on which we ate dinner the previous two nights as well). Jonah loved watching the subway trains go by. He also kept snuggling up to another little boy who was watching the trains, trying to give him hugs. He got no lovin’ back, but I gave him kudos for being so sweet. Speaking of sweet, Jonah is back to smiling for the camera when you ask him to do so. When he was an infant, he’d smile as soon as he saw a camera because he knew that’s what he was “supposed” to do. That stopped a while back, and now he will actually pose momentarily before starting to run toward me asking for the lens cap.Tomorrow we head to Rhodes for the rest of the month. We’re quite ready to leave Athens. Without a baby/toddler, two days is plenty here. With naps and a slower pace, three days has been sufficient. We’re ready for the quiet and beauty of Lindos, however. When we wake up, we’ll also be turning on the news to the results of the election back home. Fingers crossed for a changing of the guard and guaranteed rights for all.
One final note: if anyone can send us a clothes dryer, that would be fabulous! That is the single possession I miss more than anything else without a doubt—even more than some of my organic products. Apparently, it’s more common in Europe not to have a dryer. Perhaps it is a space issue. Thus, we have to hang dry all of our clothes, which leaves everything quite stiff. We do hang dry quite a few pieces of clothing back home as it is (our pants, some shirts, etc.) and I detest fabric softener because it’s awful for the environment (let me know if you want more on that…), but underwear and socks!!?? I’m neither a fan of having clothes hanging throughout our apartment and having to shift and reposition them constantly to make sure they dry, nor a fan of stiff undergarments. We certainly can deal fine, and I feel a bit like a prima donna even mentioning this. But even I have my preferences. Having no dryer means a constant rotation of washing, hanging, and shifting. The cycle lasts about three days, and it is continuous. Once you get behind on loads of laundry, you never catch up. Really, who wants to spend every single day dealing with their laundry???
November 7: What a roller coaster of a day Wednesday was—Wednesday because that’s when we awoke 15 minutes before the west coast polls closed and called the election for Obama and, some 15 hours later, learned that the majority of the Californian electorate apparently doesn’t think gay couples deserve the same rights as everyone else. Our day began with elation as our country elected a truly inspirational man to lead our country out of the disaster created by our current president and ended with deep sadness for our close friends who are directly impacted by the passage of Proposition 8, the gay/lesbian community, and humanity. This election was a step forward at the same time it was a step backward. It’s hard to fathom how an electorate can vote to allow farm animals to have more space to roam and yet deny the right of committed, loving couples to spend their lives together with the public and legal recognition their relationships deserve. I guess I’ll leave it at that.
After a one-hour flight from Athens, we arrived on the island of Rhodes on Wednesday at about 12:15 pm. We got our rental car (this time from a local company that won’t charge me $200 for tiny scratches I didn’t make!!) and headed toward Lindos about 45 minutes away. The drive from Rhodes town to Lindos makes you think you’ve landed in a developing country with half-built construction projects underway at every turn. But when you finally make the approach to Lindos, you realize you’ve discovered perfection. Lindos is absolutely charming and adorable with its cobblestone streets and white homes dotting the hillside overlooking beautiful bays with clear, blue water and an acropolis perched on the mountaintop above the village. With roughly 1,500 residents and very few tourists, we have found ourselves in the middle of a sleepy little community in the most amazing house. There are no cars in the village. You can drive to the outskirts, but then you have to walk to your house from the car park or the little road that takes you to the edge of town. There are donkeys though. We may actually take a donkey up to the acropolis just so Jonah can have a ride.
We’re staying in the home of Ann and Guy Prothero who Jeremy knows from living in London back in 1983. (Of course, Rhona and Harvey are the ones who stayed in touch with them, but we had tea with them in London when we were there in September. They live in London most of the year and come to their Lindos home for long stretches a few times a year.) Lindos is known for its 17th century Captains' Houses, as they're called, with an exterior doorway that leads into a courtyard with a pebble mosaic floor. Rooms lead off the courtyard with the largest (sala) used for entertaining and sleeping with beds on raised carved platforms and brightly colored bed covers and walls adorned with decorated Lindian plates. With the exception of one room and the new part of the house, each room in our house is self-contained with a single door just off the courtyard. The sala has a couple of beds on raised platforms, but we're sleeping in the one on the ground level to be a bit closer to Jonah. A small room off the sala is where Jonah is sleeping, and it too has a door out to the courtyard. The room next to Jonah’s is a sitting area that we’re using to store our suitcases and such. Next to that room is the kitchen, and next to the kitchen is the bathroom—a wet bathroom with a shower in the middle of a little room with no curtain or any tub or enclosed area in which to stand. The new part of the house, which used to house a bakery, has been converted into a separate sleeping area with a little kitchenette, wet bathroom, and loft. That’s where my mom and our close family friends, Jen and Lee, will stay when they arrive on Sunday for ten days. So every room is situated around this absolutely charming courtyard with its long table at which we hope to enjoy all of our meals as we have so far. And Jonah just loves the courtyard, where he can run around, sit on the lounger with his buckets, shovels, and other toys, and go in and out of the different rooms situated off of it. I hope the weather stays as perfect as it is now—in the mid-70s—because we’re able to keep the doors open and basically live half the time in the courtyard.
When we arrived in Lindos, we met Peter, the man who oversees the house when Ann and Guy are in London, and he showed us to the house and around the village a bit. We enjoyed a sandwich at a local café, one of the few that remain open during the off-season. We spent the rest of the afternoon at the supermarket outside of town and unpacking and organizing our stuff.Wednesday night after we put Jonah to bed, we discovered the downside of Lindos—the overpopulation of cats. Now, I am a cat lover. There’s no doubt that. But this place may end my love affair with cats. As Jeremy and I were hanging out last night, two cats were getting into some kind of fight on the wall of our courtyard. I went outside to break it up, but the aggressor cat did not care in the least that I’m bigger than him and that I had a long stick to nudge him a bit. The two cats kept hissing at each other, and it seriously sounded like we were in the middle of a kitty war zone. Last night was better, but we are definitely living in the cat zone. There must be close to 15 cats or more that hang out and live near our house.
Yesterday we began the process of creating a new morning routine given our new home and surroundings. Jonah got up and joined us in bed with his milk, books, and a flashlight (he didn’t need the light to see, but he loves holding it and pushing the on/off button). We used the outside shower to get clean. Jonah wasn’t a fan at first, but he got into the spirit of things. The courtyard is a lovely place to take a shower. We’ll end up having to change the routine a bit when my mom, Jen, and Lee are here… But the important thing to note is this: it was warm enough at 7:30 am to shower outside! We enjoyed breakfast in the courtyard before Jonah and I headed to the little supermarket around the corner from our house to get some fresh fruits and vegetables and then to the café for a coffee and to buy some fresh bread.
At the café we had a nice chat with the woman who works at the place (Louise), a British woman who moved to Lindos in January after having visited the village over the course of many years prior to her move. After dropping off our groceries at home, Jonah and I headed to the beach. We walked through the main part of the village, which we hadn’t yet done, and passed the little shops of artisan crafts and tourist trinkets, the other restaurants/cafés that remain open during the off season, the donkey stand, and the main church of the village (took a peek—very nice). Jonah made bird noises along the way. He loves mimicking noises he hears—of animals, babies screaming, other random shouting. It’s pretty funny. We took a steep, rocky, dusty path down to the beach (the reverse commute serving as my major workout for the day) and found ourselves alone on a lovely stretch of beach on a beautiful bay.I can’t underscore how much Jonah loves the beach. We started with digging in the sand with Jonah’s now six shovels and two buckets. Another woman (Lucy) and her son (22 month-old Visili) came by where we were hanging out, and we spent the next hour together. Jonah and Visili got a kick out of each other but mostly played by themselves. Visili ran into the ocean, and so Jonah decided he’d give it a go. Well, once in, he was just the happiest little guy. He kept running in and out, laughing hysterically when he got drenched. He threw rocks into the ocean and loved seeing the big splashes they made (some of the rocks he threw were half the size of his head). He drank a little ocean water and ate a little sand. We had a fabulous time. It was so relaxing, so beautiful, and the temperature of the air was perfect. The water could have been warmer, but you get used to it enough to go in up to your knees if you’re me, completely if you’re Jonah.
We came home and enjoyed a lovely lunch with Jeremy in the courtyard before Jonah took a two and a half hour nap. It was already 4:30 pm when Jonah woke up, so the three of us just took a short stroll through the village before dinner. There were more restaurants open than we expected there would be—maybe 4 or 5. We had a nice dinner in our courtyard before putting Jonah to bed for the night and relaxing in our fabulous house.
This morning was much like yesterday morning with a trip to the pharmacy for hand soap (can’t find it at a supermarket, oddly), supermarket for matches and an onion (by supermarket I mean little store occupying about 250 square feet or so), and the café for a latte, milk, roll to nibble on, and bread for lunch. We chatted with Louise a bit before dropping our goods off at home and heading to the beach. We got down to the beach at about 10:30 am and noticed that Lucy’s stroller for Visili was on the road by the beach. Jonah and I played in the ocean for a while before they joined us. Today Jonah had fun burying rocks in his bucket full of sand and trying to find them. At about 11:45, we headed home for lunch. Well, that is after taking off Jonah’s clothes and diaper and rinsing all of the sand off him in the ocean. After a diaper change, new clothes, and gathering up our stuff, we headed home for a lovely lunch in our courtyard with Jeremy.
Jonah awoke from his nap around 3 pm today, so we headed up to the acropolis here in Lindos. It’s an impressive ruin with quite a bit of the original fortress restored. The walk to the top from our house is about 10 minutes, and the beautiful views of the bays and village below make pushing a stroller up the path and about 30 or so stairs well worth it. The political and social history of the acropolis dates to the 10th century B.C.E. when a wooden shrine was built on the acropolis to honor Athena. In the 6th century B.C.E., a stone Temple of Athena Lindia was built in its place with a statue of the goddess and a sacred grove dedicated to her. The Byzantines later built walls around the acropolis, which became a refuge for the inhabitants during the centuries when the coasts were ravaged by pirates. In the 17th century, the Ottoman Turks established a garrison on the acropolis and built houses below.We met up with Jeremy after our acropolis visit and headed to a different supermarket in the neighboring town of Archangelos.
It was marginally better than the one we’d gone to our first night in town just outside of Lindos. Their produce wasn’t impressive. I think we’re resigning ourselves to the fact that we won’t have much good produce this month. Another lovely dinner in our courtyard, bedtime for Jonah, and here we are.On Sunday, my mom, Jen, and Lee will arrive around 8 am or so. We’re very much looking forward to their visit. They’ll be here until the 21st, so I imagine I won’t be doing any blogging during that time. You never know though…stay tuned.
Picture descriptions: First three pictures are of the Monestir de Pedrales; Jonah walking the aisle on our flight to Athens; Roman Agora; National Garden; Temple of Athina Nike on the Acropolis; Parthenon also on the Acropolis; Jonah carries a rock around the Ancient Agora with the Temple of Hephaestus in the background; Beth Shalom Synagogue (note the guard house to the right of the temple); frescoes found on Santorini dating from before 16th century B.C.E.; inside Beth Shalom Synagogue; Temple of Hephaestus in Ancient Agora; view of the Acropolis from the Ancient Agora; Lindos with the acropolis lit up at night; the courtyard in our Lindos house; street in Lindos with the one open supermarket on the left (see the produce outside the shop); self-portrait at the beach; Jonah enjoys dumping water on himself at the beach; view of the bay from the Lindos acropolis; view of Lindos on our descent from the acropolis.
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