Greece- Island of Idra and Athens

We arrived at the Athens airport on Sunday afternoon to find one of our big suitcases was lost! It had all of our dirty clothes in it from our vacation in Italy. So we were quite frustrated and hoped they would find it soon. We met the apartment owner who helped us get all of our luggage to the apartment. On the drive we got the first look at Athens, it is a huge city! There are just buildings everywhere! The apartment is very nice with 2 big bedrooms 1.5 baths, a large family room and nice kitchen with a dishwasher (Yeah!) Later that night our doorbell rang and our suitcase was delivered!
Monday we settled in and went grocery shopping in Athens, food is still expensive here! I’m excited to get back to huge grocery stores with more reasonable prices and shopping carts! They have no shopping carts at the two stores I have visited so I have to carry everything in a hand basket and the rows are narrow so it’s difficult to navigate a stroller through the store…..then I have to carry all the groceries home (uphill both ways)! The Greek alphabet and language is going to be a challenge, some things are written with the Roman alphabet so that helps, and I have no idea what people are saying, it's all Greek to me! Brett takes the bus to work every day it takes him about 20-30 minutes. We didn’t rent a car while here because public transportation is much cheaper and gets us around during the week. Traffic and parking here is crazy. We will rent a car next weekend.
On Tuesday morning Brett headed into the Athens Intel office and the kids and I hiked the hill behind our house. It’s a big hill with trees and grass, and is a nice retreat from the city. On top of the hill there is a good view over the entire city. I'm not a fan of life in the big city, with so many cars, and people and noise. Athens seems to be the least pedestrian friendly city we have been in. Cars really don’t give way to pedestrians so I have to be very careful walking down the street with the kids. The sidewalks are usually blocked by cars parking on them and they are uneven and up and down hills.
Wednesday we found a park near our house so the kids were very excited! The kids adjust well to wherever we go and have been great sports about all this traveling.
It was a long week with Brett working late most nights so we were really excited for the weekend.
Saturday we went to one of the many Greek Islands, the Island of Iydra (Hydra). We were able to take the Metro to the Port and then we took a "flying dolphin" (a pretty fast ferry boat) to the island for the day.

(Brett & Allden waiting for our boat to arrive. Here it comes in the background on the right)

The inside of the boat was like sitting on an airplane. We got on the boat at 9am and got to the island at 11am. The weather was perfect, sunny and warm. This island has no cars and the form of transportation is by donkey. When we got off the boat they all wanted to give us a “taxi” (Donkey) ride, we let the girls have a donkey ride later in the day and that was their favorite part. The town is built around the port with cannons set on the hill on each side of the port to protect the town. We walked around the town and enjoyed the cobblestone streets and the beautiful turquoise blue water. We had lunch close to the port. We left the island around 4:30 and arrived at the Athens port by 6pm, what a fun day! Sunday we got on the metro to go to church, it was right near Hadrian’s Arch in the center of the old city. It was a small branch with just about as many missionaries as there were members of the church. We felt very welcome there with most people speaking English. We met another couple there visiting from Utah.

The meetings were translated into English so that was nice. The missionaries taught the girls primary class (only 2 other children in the class). It was a very diverse bunch of people from all over the world: Nigeria, Brazil, Iran, Phillipines, and Greece of course. The missionaries said there are only about 500 members of the church in Greece because Greek Orthodoxy is the state religion and the church was not allowed to enter here until 1992.
That afternoon we walked around the Acropolis. The Propylaea is the glorious entrance to the Acropolis and its monuments, erected between 437 and 432 B.C. The Temple of Athena Nike is the temple that was built around 420 B.C. to commemorate the victories of the Greeks over the Persians. The Parthenon is a unique masterpiece of the world. Work on the Parthenon began in 447 BC, and took just 9 years to complete, it was built primarily to house the Parthenos, an impressive golden-ivory statue of Athena. The Erechtheion was the part of the Acropolis held to be the most sacred; the place where the goddess Athena had caused her most sacred emblem, the olive tree, to sprout. This tree was destroyed by the invading Persians but when the Persians were finally driven off, legend has it, that the tree miraculously grew again. The Caryatids: the figures of maidens that you see supporting the roof of the porch of the temple are copies. Four of the original six are in the Acropolis Museum. Temples were the most important public buildings in ancient Greece, largely because religion was a central part of everyday life. After walking around and admiring the views of the city and the Parthenon we walked over to “Mars Hill” where Paul the apostle had preached.