Girls Pick-Greece! Day 1- Changing of the Guard & Acropolis Museum

The girls both really wanted to go to Greece, so we visited over February vacation.  We stayed right in the tourist district of Athens, directly across from the Acropolis Museum.  Our apartment had a roof top view of the Acropolis, and we went up a few times to appreciate it!

The weather was very cold for Greece, so we tried to be strategic and save the big outdoor sights for the warmer days. Our first full day was Sunday and there is a special ceremony for the changing of the guard at Parliment on Sundays.  They do a ceremony every half hour around the clock, but the Sunday one is special as it has a full band and a large group of soldiers.

We arrived with enough time to get a perfect spot to see the ceremony.  The Greek soldiers are famous for their uniforms, the skirt is said to have about 300 pleats and the flowing white blouse looked impressive when they marched- but freezing!!  They also have a pom-pom at the toe of their shoes, and we later heard a guide say that a knife used to be concealed within the pom-pom. 

Here are some photos & quick videos of the ceremony...

Not sure why this guy gets to wear a special outfit?

 

Greg's observation was that some of the guys were just mailing it in on the kicks, probably not the ones in front but more in the middle of formation, we will let you be the judge.  I later learned that Greece has a mandatory 9 month service, so maybe some of those guys were short timers!

It was a neat ceremony to see but we were frozen by the time it finished, so we made a beeline to the fancy hotel that was right across the street so we could peek around (I read it had a cool restaurant with a view).  We warmed up and had fun looking around.

Just a stairway in the Hotel Grand Bretagne!

We went onto another cafe for some hot drinks, then wandered through this really cool neighborhood below the Acropolis. It had tiny winding streets and little homes.  There were cats everywhere.  We later learned it was called the Anafiotika, and was originally inhabited by people from the little island of Anafi. There were a few posters on houses of the island, which didn't really make sense until we read about it later in our guidebook.

On the hill behind the neighborhood is the Acropolis!

Cute shutters on this house...

The kids liked looking around and even imitating the soldiers march...here they are...

Katie gets points for not being in the "mailing it in" category!

We found a charming place for lunch and had our first great Greek food. 

There were guys playing traditional music and a cat that came around and ate scraps.  

Charlie liked the cat!

Our next stop was the Acropolis Museum.  We had not read a ton about it before we went and boy were we impressed!!  I later read that according to Trip Advisor it is ranked the #6 in the world and I agree!

The museum had a kids sticker treasure hunt where Charlie had to find many different Athena statues throughout the museum. I was pretty busy helping find the statues, so I didn't take many pictures.  I did try to take one of this really cool Athena where she has snakes on her aegis (cape). They have a strange camera policy, some places you are allowed to take pictures and in others you can't.  I tried to snap one of this Athena but it was blurry because the lady yelled at me!

Luckily another visitor put this one on the internet for me:

Still tricky to see the snakes but they were really cool!

Here is the description of the statue from the Old Temple of Athena (not the Parthenon):
Large marble Athena from the pediment.  The pediment represents the battle of the Olympian gods with the Giants.  Athena is portrayed launching into battle with a wide stride, allowing her terrifying aegis with its snakes to billow as she stoops over an opponent to deliver the final blow.

I found this great video that shows the inside of the museum, it takes about ten minutes but really shows you what we got to see:
https://www.theacropolismuseum.gr/en/content/museum-history

Here are a few photos Greg took of the girls as they were not on the sticker hunt!

5 of 6 original Caryatids, we will see the replicas when we go up to the Acropolis...the 6th is in the British Museum...more to follow on this!

With the Acropolis in the background.

What was really fascinating about the museum was the top floor where you could get the views of the Acropolis like in the picture of the girls, but also to see the existing statues from the Pediment of the Parthenon.  If you might be rusty on your Parthenon knowledge, I highly recommend the NOVA video called Secrets of the Parthenon. Charlie and I watched it before we got on the airplane and it was the best primer we could ask for!  He loved pointing out things he learned from the video the entire week!  Here is the link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=toz7dqlU6Io

I also got a first hand appreciation for the missing statues that remain in the British museum, thanks to Lord Elgin's appropriation of them back in the 1800's.  Apparently Greece has been asking for the statues back for years and I agree that they belong back with the rest of their friends!

We are excited to go up to the Acropolis, but we need it to warm up first, it looks mighty windy & cold up there on top of the hill!  We finish our first day and feel like we have already seen so much!