Friday and time for shopping again... the summer sales have opened! This means that Mummy drags Daddy out to Ermou Street so she can show him what to buy. And when they shop at Fokas, Mummy and Daddy are happy because they get bonus points on Daddy's credit card. Something like green stamps for the 21st Century. Daddy is wondering whether by 2030 there'll be a whole new spurious justification for banks to gently push people over the edge with impulse buying. That's just about the time when you'll have a credit card... what fun!
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.
On the Tuesday, Mummy walked to Platia Mavili with you in the sling to go meet her friend Anaita. She met Anaita at a guitar festival - did you know Mummy plays the guitar? Someday she might practice a little and play for you.
You spent the whole meeting asleep - which is quite typical of your behaviour recently, but then you woke up in time to sit up and watch everything that Mummy and Daddy did in the supermarket. That was nice, because most of the time, you are asleep and Daddy wants to show you all the vegetables and fruit and fish and brightly coloured things in stacks and rows, and he doesn't always get the chance when you are sleeping.
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.
On 14 June, Mummy and Daddy set off to go up to Hymettus. The idea was to go up and park near Kalopoula and to walk around from there. As always, even the best plans go in the bin as soon as they come face to face with reality. Kalopoula did not keep our attention too much so we went in the car up towards the tower of Anthousa.
The tower of Anthousa is a medieval building with a tiny or non-existent footprint on the internet. This means that Daddy knows very little about it. He thinks it's probably Frankish rather than Byzantine because there is little or no use of brick.
It's definitely pre-gunpowder because all the walls are flat. After gunpowder everything got built with slanty walls to make the canon balls bounce right off. So it was probably one of the funny Frankish dukes of Athens who built the fort, to keep an eye on the Northern approaches to Athens.
The funny Frankish dukes could be Burgundians, Catalans or Fiorentines, but it does not really matter. What matters is that they left this tower here and we can now visit it and play around. One day Daddy will help you climb up together with him onto the second floor and we can wave at mummy from the window on the top floor.
After all this excitement, with all the medieval stuff around us, you got hungry so mummy had to feed you out in nature again. You like eating in nature with all the leaves rustling and the bees buzzing.
Here we are all together, happy, at the picnic area on the mountain.
After you had eaten we stayed a little bit more as the sun got lower and made large shadows, and then we went back to the car.
And we set off for home after our pleasant adventure on the mountain. Mummy and Daddy plan to take you to Hymettus many more times.
When we all got home, Mummy and Daddy gave you your bath and noticed you had very silly hair after drying you. Look how silly your hair is here.
Here you are in the dining room - which will soon enough be your bedroom!
Here you are sleeping on the sofa.
Here you are on the bed with Daddy... he was reading to you from your book again, earlier. You are now four weeks old in these photos!
Silly little-one, there's no food in Mummy's nose for you!
Here you are all happy and set for your trip into town to go shopping! Mummy and Daddy took you to Zara and Notos Galleries at Omonoia and you had all sorts of new sights and sounds to enjoy! Everyone was looking at us and saying how small you are and they let us jump the queue to pay. It was really quite funny to see everyone's reactions to having you with us in the sling.
Daddy took this photo because he likes the way your feet and hands look when you are in the sling. on the way back from the shopping trip, we went all together all three of us to the supermarket to get some new nappies.
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...
You were meant to come today - but that's alright, only very few babies come on the day we expect them. Daddy was late, so it doesn't matter. We went for a walk all together with Erato, then we went for fondue at Elektra's.
.JPG)
.jpg)
.JPG)
.jpg)
.jpg)
.jpg)
