Corfu, Greece (and SOMEBODY'S birthday)

The day may have belonged to Greyson but the morning was all Quinn's.

We started the day taking a tour of Corfu's Achilleion Palace. The Palace was built by the Austrian Princess Elizabeth whose life itself could be a Greek tragedy. Her drama filled life started when she accompanied her sister on a trip to Bavaria where her sister was to be introduced to her future husband, instead it was Elizabeth who snatched the King's attraction leaving a bitter rift between her and her family for the rest of her life. Apparently, the husband stealing also caused a row between her and her mother-in-law her relentlessly tortured her throughout her life. Then against the advice of her doctors she took her small girls on holiday to Hungary and one of them died on the trip. Now alienated by her husband as well she fled to Corfu Greece where she built the Achilleion Palace as an homage to all the Greek Gods, but especially Achilles whom she felt was a kindred spirit. Her luck did not improve in Greece as soon after her son was killed in an apparent murder-suicide pact with his lover. She spent the rest of her life in isolation until she was assassinated.

Now of course all Quinn got from this story was "Princess, are we really going to go to a real Palace where a real Princess lived??" She was hooked. She danced through that Palace telling me everything the Princess did. "This is where the Princess danced. This is where the Princess took a bath. This is where the Princes slept." You get the general idea.

The Palace was everything you would have imagined a Palace to be, and frankly if I had to live in exile from my husband and mother-in-law this would be the place I would go.

This is where the Princess walked up the stairs!!

Hard to see but that is Greyson peering down from the top of the stairs. He was less enthralled with the Palace.

Little Greyson, big Achilles.

Yet another statue of Achilles.

The Princess and the Queen Mother

The garden was filled with statues of all the Greek muses so we spent some time being muses ourselves....

Quinn as the muse of dance

The muses of comedy

Raif and I (along with Greyson's thumb) with the muse of love and marriage.

The other drama of the day, aside from the tragedy of Princess Elizabeth was that the taxicab drivers in Corfu were on strike. Apparently they were upset about the EU imposing their own taxicab laws on Corfu (I don't quite understand why the EU would be interested in such things so there is probably more to the story then we were told). In any event, the taxi drivers had initially expressed their anger by blocking all the tourists (including cruise ships) from coming onto the island. Well, that pissed off a lot of locals who made their livelihood off tourists like us so thankfully the day we arrived they switched their tactics to blocking the ticket booths of all the major Corfu tourist attractions thereby letting everyone in for free. Here is the sign they posted at Achilleion Palace:

After our royal adventures we headed out to a private villa on Corfu Coast where we had an amazing home cooked authentic Greek lunch. Both Raif and I spoke with the lady who owned the house who said she invited people in her home like this because she loved to cook and loved to have company, now I am sure that the cash that we shelled out for the lunch didn't hurt her desire to house guests. The food was amazing - Moussaka, meatballs, taziki and pita, chicken kebabs, baklava and this amazing pomegranate liquor (I could go on but I am getting hungry). (And I will also say that as tasty as all this food was, the Turkish versions of these dishes are far superior!! ;))

When the owner of the villa found out it was Greyson's birthday she made a makeshift birthday cake for him out of Toblerone, had traditional dancers sing and dance for him and even gave him a little evil eye key ring with a G on it.


She was also kind enough to give us a tour of the house and let the kids pose with her Olympic torch from the 2000 Olympic games in Athens.


After that we spent some time swimming in her pool.


(Not a bad view huh? Amazing pool, amazing scenery, though the perfection of the day was taken away a smidge by the fact that outside of the Erim clan I think everyone else in the pool was on a daily Geritol supplement if you get my meaning)

Once back on the ship we celebrated Greyson's birthday again with a cake at dinner and Happy Birthday sung in Indonesian by the entire dining room.


He even got some origami soldiers made by a few of his favorite wait staff.


All in all not a bad way to spend a birthday. Though Quinn is already asking in what country she will be turning 6. We may have started a dangerous trend.

Olympia

This was the one site in Greece I was really looking forward to. I mean you can't get more historic then the site of the first Olympics. The kids were excited too as we had just read The Hour of the Olympics in the Magic Treehouse Series. Though I think they were more excited about being in a place where Jack and Annie were then the actually site of the Olympic Games.

The landscape was just as I imagined it, in a beautiful field surrounded by olive trees. The actual site however was far more expansive than I had envisioned. Unfortunately, due to a series of earthquakes and destruction at the hands of barbarians and Theodosius I (who was one of the first Christian Emperors and considered the Games Pagan worship) most of the site is in complete ruins.

However, there are a couple of pillars standing here and there to at least let you imagine how immense the buildings and temples were.



The Temple of Philippeion


The Temple of Zeus - the centerpiece of the entire site


Entrance to the stadium


How often are you at a site of such significance where children running is not only allowed but should be done as a part of the experience. We burned off a lot of energy being Olympic athletes. (Even I did a little running, though Quinn did edge me out at the end of our race by a nose)

After your first Olympics, of course, there is much celebration so off we went to eat some Greek mezedes and do a little Zorba dancing. Take note that of course my son latched on to the hottest dancer there. Such a ladies man.

Mycenae, Greece

We said Ciao (but only temporarily) to Italy and set sail for Greece, with our first stop being Mycenae.

Mycenae, was a 2nd century BC Greek city that was said to have been founded by Perseus himself and ruled by Agamemnon. Today it is a mostly ruins set high in the hills south of Athens.

Our first stop at the site was the impressive Beehive Tomb, a cone shaped tomb inside one of the many hills surrounding the city.

There is Dad standing at the outside of the tomb. As an engineer, I think this site impressed him more than anything else we saw on our trip. Do you notice the massive stone on the top of the entrance that goes all the way inside? That is one (insert your curse word of choice here) piece of rock. One. Single. Piece. The picture really doesn't do it justice, it is MASSIVE. How people with no more than rudimentary equipment and pulleys and fulcrums got that up there is amazing.

The inside of the tomb, with that big 'ole rock.

Another engineering feat that my picture really didn't truly capture was the ceiling inside, it went up hundreds of feet in a perfect co-centric circle.

After marveling at the Greek engineering we got our walking shoes on and hiked it up to Mycenae's Acropolis.


(The fun fact I learned this day is that most Greek cities had Acropolises which literally translates to high-city. It was the temple which they would always put at the highest point to have a look-out point and so it would be easier to defend from invaders. The Acropolis in Greece, because it is still intact has sort of co-opted the name so most people think there is only one in Greece.)

Once at the top the kids pretended to be locked in a dungeon and they explored spooky passageways that I was a little nervous would end some rock collapse or snake bite.


The adults sat on rocks, enjoyed the scenery and marveled at all the history they were seeing.



The other thing I learned this day is that my children MUCH prefer ancient ruins they can climb on and run through than quiet churches and museums. Imagine that.

We then skipped forward a couple of centuries (to the 17th century to be exact) and visited the Palamidi Fortress nestled in the hills above Nafplion.


The fortress was built by the Venetians to ward off the Turks and the Ottoman Empire (our tour guide not surprisingly had little love for the Turks). With the structure much more intact than the ruins at Mycenae the kids had a lot more fun exploring and hiding in various room and tunnels throughout.
(Note the three rocks VERY precariously perched right above my children's head. I thankfully didn't notice that until after this picture was taken)

Raif (and only Raif could find it) found this tunnel in the back of the fortress and proceeded to take Greyson down this long, pitch black shaft (MUCH to my dismay). They were so far down in whatever dungeon they found that I could barely hear them talking and the only light they had was from the flash from Raif's camera. But all my worry was for naught (as it usually is) and the day ended with all fingers and toes intact and all children accounted for.

Next stop: Olympia.

Taormina, Sicily

Frankly, of all the places we had planned on visiting while in Europe I had put Sicily at the bottom of the list. I had this stereotype of Sicilians in my head and I hadn't heard anything really about the island itself so I put two and two together and said "Meh" to our visit.

Well here I am, eating my words because Sicily and Taormina in particular, is exquisite. Taormina, is an ancient city that sits atop a steep mountain overlooking the Ionian Sea. The city itself is gorgeous, out of an old fairy tale book, gorgeous. The two main streets of the town are lined with quaint little shops where you can get anything from porcelain Pinocchios (yes I bought one) to a brand new Gucci bag (which I didn't). Taormina is the vacation getaway for the European elite and the bay below the city was filled with yachts and boats that made my husband drool.


And if the city itself wasn't spectacular enough the views were breathtaking.

(View from the Ampitheatre with Mt. Etna (yet another highly active volcano) smoking in the distance.)


At the highest point in the city lies an ancient Greek ampitheatre, one of the oldest and most celebrated ruins in Sicily. The ampitheatre is actually still used today for outdoor concerts, which is pretty cool in a way, but the plastic benches and modern sound system rigging sort of takes away from the ancient ambiance of the site. I tried my best when taking my pictures to avoid any of the modern "add-ons"


Also, at the top of the mountain was an olive tree orchard where Quinn decided she needed a photo shoot.

I will say, though, that one of my favorite parts of the trip was that we happened to catch a Sicilian wedding in progress. Let me tell you, the stereotype, in this case, fits. The bride was in a BIG dress and she had some BIG hair. All of the female guests looked like they stepped right out of my junior high school yearbook in the hair department. And the guys....big sunglasses, shiny shirts unbuttoned down to the their belly buttons and the shoes....fancy, shiny, outrageous shoes. I really, really, really wanted to take some pictures but the grown-up in me held back and so you will just have to imagine the Big, Fat, Sicilian Wedding.

I would have no problem wasting a week in Taormina, shopping, swimming and eating and drinking. Sicily, you have a new fan.