Visiting Granny in Paloumba, Arcadia

After the successful crossing of three different prefectures the weekend before, you were ready on 25 and 26 July to go further than ever before, one more time. This road trip would see us crossing Corinthia and the Argolis to reach Arcadia and it would also involve a sleep-over at Granny-M's house in the country. Granny lives in the village of Paloumba in the Gortys part of Arcadia.

We all woke up for your first feed and set off as soon as you had burped and headed off for the Athens to Patras motorway. This took a little longer than it usually does because the nice people in charge of the Attiki Odos decided that early on a summer Saturday morning is the best time to resurface the motorway.

You made it through the whole journey without needing to eat, so you had your second meal of the day in Arcadia at 750m above sea level. It happened to be the hottest day of the year so it was all a little awkward being in the country house. Here are some photos of you with Granny-M. Can you see Lara and the cats in some of them?






Here is a little video of Granny-M pushing you in your pram. This weekend was the first time you sat in the pram and the first time we used it for transporting you about.



Granny-M really enjoyed the opportunity the pram gave her to take you out for walks. When it grew a little cooler in the evening, we went out for a night-time walk round the village so she could show you off to the neighbours.



We wanted to test-drive the pram as preparation for the Naxos holiday we had planned so we took it up and down stairs and put a mosquito net over it just to make sure everything was working.






You liked eating out in the central square of the village - here you are having dinner on Saturday and lunch on Sunday.



On Sunday we took the opportunity to leave you playing with Granny-M and took the car out for Mummy to try driving it a little. There is a stretch of road between Pal and Sarakini which is perfect for driving as there is very nearly never anyone on the road. Look how in-control Mummy looks here.



Look at how many kilometers we did in the weekend!

Syd Barrett smiles

Hello little one!

I want to tell you a story.
About a little man.
If I can.
A gnome named Crimble Cromble...

etc.

First time to the beach!!

Hello little one. The plan for Saturday 18 July was as ambitious as it was difficult to implement. Daddy's oldest friend, Jockey, was going to be coming to Athens with Lisa, his friend and there was a great opportunity to meet up and see eachother. Lisa lives in the wooded areas around the old temple of Dionysus and we were all going to go up there and then go on to Marathon where the Persians fell foul of Miltiades' cunning and the marshy ground. There's a whole lot of stuff in this area for Daddy and Jockey to get excited about as archaeo-culture-vultures that they are, although Daddy was not so sure about whether they would overcome the inertia.

Before setting off, Daddy read to you about Neolithic stone tools. You had a lot to say about these and found the arguments in favour of specialised production (as opposed to each household producing its own) quite appealing.



After the insightful reading, Daddy played a little with Telonius - everybody's favourite robot turtle...







Daddy is still working on the definitive Telonius video - it should be coming soon. So, after playing, it's time to set off for Dionysos and Lisa and Jockey! When we got there Lisa's family went out of their way to make us feel at home. They have a very nice garden, much bigger than Daddy's with all sorts of plants - some useful some just pretty. We had a very nice lunch - a very nice homemade quiche. Although we didn't mention it, Daddy and Jockey both know that quiche is just another word for omelette pie...

After eating we set out for the beach at Schoinias. Daddy used to go swimming there when he was younger. The waters are nice and warm and the sea is shallow and the pine trees come down almost to the sea itself providing plenty of shade.

When we realised that we could not set up Daddy's camping shade without tent-pegs we folded the tarp over and put you under a tree with Mummy while Daddy went swimming with Jockey and Lisa.





The sea was nice and warm, but we didn't feel right about putting you in it to see for yourself. That has to wait for a different day at a different beach.



Here you are with your nice red hat that Daddy bought for you from that nice man, Johhny Boden.



Here you are with Daddy's friends Jockey and Lisa. Lisa used to work with Aunty Igor, although she knew her by her proper name, Aunty Annika. That was in the days when the Athynew was still a daily newspaper and still belonged to the charming Mr. Lambrakis.



Here are your first photographs near the sea! It's as close as you got that day and much closer than we got at Flisvos.





And here you are again on the tarpaulin with your toys. You had a really good day out. We all stayed out almost until the sun went down when Jockey and Lisa had to go. These were the first people you had met from the UK, where Daddy grew up and where Mummy spent some years. It was fun for Daddy to spend time and talk with Jockey, to remember old times and talk about how everyone from the past is doing now, even though Lisa felt a little left out when we talked about technical webby things like RSS feeds.

Some day, we'll all go together to the UK so you can see for yourself what things are like out there, on the edge of Europe, sandwiched between all-encircling Ocean and the savage tribes of the Hyperboreans.

The trip to Marathon worked as a "dry-run" for the next day's trip to Euboea. You worried us a little with your crying on the way back, but we think it was not so much because of the car but because you were tired and hungry after seeing foreign visitors and the vast expanse of the sea...



In all we covered about 94 km this day - quite possibly more than you have travelled in your whole life!

A visit to the new Acropolis Museum

On Wednesday 15 July Mummy and Daddy took you to the new acropolis museum.







The visit to the new acropolis museum was a very exciting proposition for Mummy and Daddy and they were very much looking forward to it. The museum has been hailed as an amazing piece of architecture and design and has been the talk of the town since the opening last month. It was really nice for Mummy and Daddy to see old friends again, like the Rampin horseman, the Kritias Boy and the Blonde Boy. It was especially exciting for them to see what the back of the Kritias Boy and all the other sculpture looks like. In the old museum they were all set up with their backs against the wall, because there was not enough space…



Daddy was very upset by the ban on photography which has been imposed by the museum. He is furious and will write about it in his normal blog. He had wanted to find a nice statue to stand next to it and take a family photo with you every year as you grow older and he grows greyer... it seems this will have to wait now.

You managed to fall asleep as we arrived at the Metro station. Here we are outside the building, all angular and glass and cement.

Inside, you woke up as we reached the top floor and had a look at the bust of Alexander and some of the Roman Emperors they have on the top floor. You liked the frieze of the horsemen as well. One day Daddy will tell you about the horsemen and Marathon and the girl with her bottom showing. The whole museum is made of glass floors, which is great for looking through the floor down to the basement when you are on the top floor.

It was very close to closing time, so we left after visiting the top floor. This is Mummy with the owl of Athena patron goddess of the city, outside the museum.

First trip on the Athens Metro

Hello little one.

Saturday 11 July was a big day for you little one.

Mummy and Daddy decided to go out shopping again, and although it was not your first time at the shops, it was going to be your first time on public transport and first time on the Athens Metro. The Athens Metro is a nice piece of engineering put together for the Olympic Games in 2004. Aunty Igor went on the Metro before it opened while she was a journalist with the Athens News (Greece's only English Language Daily Newspaper) together with the then prime minister Kostas Simitis. A lot of things have changed since then for everyone, but Daddy will not forget the excitement of watching the opening ceremony online and playing with the controllable webcam to look at the archaeological "section".



Here's a photo of you in your sling in the sun (see how it shines a little through the linen fabric) and here's a photo of you in the Syntagma station. Mummy is holding you so that Daddy can get the sling in order again.



In this last photo you are sucking your fingers in Ermou Street, the big shopping street of Athens. You can just see the Kapnikarea in the distance above your head. The Kapnikarea is a 11th Century church and Daddy uses it when he is taking guests around town to show how street levels rise and the basic concepts of archaeological stromatography.



Here are a couple of videos showing your first trip on the Metro: Going to Ermou and coming back…





In the evening we went to Granny Y and Grandad P. You sat while Daddy played Scrabble with Grandad P and Mummy helped Granny Y get the house ready for your cousins Alexandros and Esmeralda who are coming soon.

Gym time and the stairway to heaven...

When you were 35 days old, Daddy put you on the gym-mat that Penny his co-worker got for you. It's great! It has all sorts of colours, it plays music and has all sorts of textures to touch and chew on, together with a whole range of funny things hanging from the top. Look how excited you are with it all in these images:

We can see how much fun you are having in this video as well.



After you had played in the gym, Daddy decided to sing to you. He sang about a lady who's sure all that glitters is gold...



He then got all excited and put a CD on for you, 'cos you know sometimes words have two meanings…

Later on that day, Mummy's friends Alexandros and Lisa came to give us invitations for their wedding. This is going to happen on June 21 and it will be your very first public appearance in a pubic place and public function. Mummy and Daddy are very excited about this.



Lisa has a lot of nephews and nieces and knows exactly how to hold a baby. You were both very calm together, while Alexandros seemed a little surprised at how much Daddy knows about having a baby in the house. He doesn't realise that Daddy is picking it all up as it goes along and that he'll learn it all just as easily!

Hymettus II: The hill of the archangels...

Hello little one... Saturday is Hymettus day!

On Saturday morning, Kelly came to visit and held you a little, but she did not come with us to the mountain.



Saturday is exploration day and exploration means we go out into the verdant rolling foothills of Hymettus with you in the sling. We took Ismini with us and drove up to the Monastery of Kaisariani. It's all a little tense as there are some people who want to make more roads and tunnels through the mountain and there are others who want to stop them, so there is no way of knowing whether all the nice woods we walked through will still be in the same condition when you are old enough to tell us the differences between the Black pines and the Halepensis pines which the Friends of the Hymettus woods had so thoughtfully labeled for us.


Here you are in your sling...

You are beginning to smile more and more often, although you are not doing it consciously as a response to a stimulus.



In the end we walked up to the Analipsis Church and then walked down the botanical footpath which led us to the Hill of the Archangels, which we had first visited with Mummy the day before you were born. Ismini took some nice photographs of all of us together in both places - our first ones where all three of us are visible since the maternity hospital!


With Mummy and Daddy at the Church of the Analipsis - can you see the icons in the gloomy inside of the church?






Mummy and Ismini in front of the ruins of St. Mark of the Frankish Monastery. Daddy can't wait to tell you about the Franks and the all the groovy medieval stuff that happened. Daddy grew up amongst the Franks (in the broadest meaning of the word) and thinks he is well placed to "understand" western christianity.



This is a spolion! Daddy goes crazy for this sort of thing. It's a piece of ancient building block that has been reused in later times. The buildings on the hill of the archangels are full of spolia.





Here we are all three of us in front of the church of the Archangels which is still in serviceable state. You can see the old sculpture in low relief showing a bull to Daddy's left...

We stayed up on the Hill of the Archangels for a while and looked out as the sun got low in the sky and reflected off a myriad of solar water heaters making the city look almost beautiful in its concrete architectural cereal box splendour. While we were there we saw some partridges walking around and feeding. Daddy got very excited and took you up close to look at them, but you did not wake up. In fact, you spent the whole trip quite comfortably sleeping. It's ok to get your rest - you have a whole life ahead of you to see partridges.



Here is one of the Partridges we saw - just in case they are all gone by the time you are big enough to tell them apart from other birds...