He was up about 7:10 as I took a shower. Full of energy from the start. He randomly said “Cock-a-doodle-doo” something. He saw a bug on the floor and said that bugs were generating power for him. As he ate strawberries for breakfast he asked for more points. I left at 7:35 for my own morning at the Acropolis.
I walked up to the west entrance and had about ten people in front of me. I had a lovely walk up. I was most impressed with the Theatre of Dionysius because of the birth of theatre. I spent my time there and with the Odeon of Herodes, then made my way up to the Acropolis. Still not very busy until I had made my way around the full Acropolis and got back to the north side. so I headed down, taking the west exit.
I then went up on Areopagus Hill, where Paul had preached, then walked over to the hill with the Pnyx (where Pericles spoke), seeing the small church along the way, then walked back east, climbing the path to the Monument of Philopappos and then finding my way down to the stairs on the east side, and took the straight walk back to our Airbnb place.
I was back by 10:40. He was playing Dragonbox Big Numbers and Carly was filing his nails. They had read a Skybrary book (Dizzy Dancing), watched a couple of the machine videos and an episode of Hilda, did a lot of imagining games involving his lab, and experimented a lot with the circuits.
While playing he sang a “One hundred and fifty apples” song. When he had enough apples to get rocks he said, “Enough for one rock feast.”
I helped him a little and he’s really working on his math. He then made a tape creation on the window, taping his shoe to it and filling it with leftover carrots.
Carly gave him challenges like touching his elbows and my toes before she let him in the bathroom. She then taught him how to use the key in the bathroom. He sang a couple of other songs he made up and kept saying “A bit dippy” from the Skybrary book. As we got ready to go he remembered buying his light up shoes for the archeological dig place last summer.
We walked to the subway and took it to Thissio, transferring along the way. We found a restaurant called Sin Athina and had lunch. We got a savory crepe with turkey and a wrap with salmon. We haven’t had a lot of success eating as much Greek food as we would like. Even though this place called itself Greek, most of that was the main entrees of lamb chops, etc. I got a mixed juice for August that was really good. He did some origami with the placemats before deciding to bite one.
We left about 2:15 and checked out the Herakleidon Museum. It didn’t sound very kid friendly though, and August didn’t want to go. He did, however, love playing with a rope between two poles outside, pretending it was a jump rope and having me pretend to jump it. We were going to take August to the Illusions Museum. I didn’t really have any interest in going there, so asked if I could go to the Ancient Agora. Carly agreed, so I took off for that. They played with the rope for a long time and he was really into it until a guy came out of the building to tell them to not play with it. August was upset and Carly scooped him up and took him away.
They went to the museum and had fun there. She sent me a photo of him standing on a ceiling. He really liked one of the spinning ones.
Meanwhile, I loved the Agora, and mainly followed the tour of it in the Rick Steves book. Again I particularly liked the remains of the old theatre, and also following in the steps of Plato, Socrates, Aristotle, Alexander the Great, etc.
I met up with them at Pagotomania. August had had bubble gum ice cream and they were reading Captain Underpants. They were at an exciting point and he wanted to keep reading so I sat down and read.
Before we headed home I walked him over to one of the stands along the roadway and let him choose a set of Greek coins or stamps. He chose the coins.
We headed home, ate spaghetti for dinner, and made a circuit. He was climbing on my back while I was doing something and falling off. We then all walked down to the grocery store. He found another tiny worm along the way. He had twenty cents, so got two gums: a hamburger gum (with red stuff inside that looked like ketchup), then a peppermint gum. He liked the hamburger gum, but the peppermint was too strong.
Back at the apartment we watched most of NextGen. He didn’t want to watch the denouement. He played a little Dragonbox Big Numbers. Carly was skyping with her mom, so August talked to Oma for a minute. I read some Skybrary with him. First a little book about Athens. We were talking about flags and national anthems, and he asked about the songs, so ‘national anthem’ was a word of the day. We also read the Nervous Noggin book.
We were going to wash his hair, but he got upset about his choices for the tree for washing his hair. I got him calmed down and gave him a bath. He had some cereal and milk, and I reminisced about odd 80s cereals. He told me he made a cereal that has 2888 cups of sugar. Carly put him to bed, and I left them at 9:30.
View from the Acropolis:
150 apples song:
Tape creation:
Playing with the rope:
Illusions museum 1:
Illusions museum 2:
Illusions museum 3:
Mama reading to him:
Musician on the train:
Circuit and song:
Just making the circuit smaller song: