He was up about 7:10. Carly was with him for awhile, then she got ready to leave. She was heading to the Ancient Agora today. He watched a few of the Rube Goldberg machine videos and I did a little work. He ate a couple strawberries and we both had a digestive. He watched a couple episodes of Hilda, and we played GarageBand. He asked about making a song, and we started to layer drums, bass, and a melody. He said, “It sounds like a real song.” Carly got back from the Agora. She had been the first person in. It wasn’t yet 10, and she suggested I had time to go for a walk.
So I downloaded the Rick Steves audio tour of downtown Athens (she had listened to the Agora tour and really liked it) and took the subway up to Syntagma Square and started there. I saw part of the changing of the guard ceremony across the street, with the funny stepping and skirts with 400 pleats on them, then walked west through town. I got a donut along the way, saw the church in the middle of the street, the cathedral and the older church next to it (with recycled pieces from the Agora and tombstones), walked to Hadrian’s Arch (which we’d been by before), then finally to the Choragic Monument of Lysicrates, where my Greek was good enough to realize that one of the stones somehow commemorated a year that Byron had spent there. Turned out it used to be the site of a Capuchin Monastery where he stayed.
I hurried back to the Airbnb place, getting there by 11:40. I had planned to eat a little, but the cleaning woman had already shown up and was waiting for us. So Carly ran the garbage down, we went up and grabbed our stuff, and took off before 12. While I was gone they had finished packing up. August had vacuumed for an allowance, earning a total of 45 agorot, aided by the fact that he ate some crackers and then needed to vacuum again.
As we left I suggested he say goodbye, and he said, “Bye Athens hotel. You’re pretty fancy…bye balcony things.” The second was as we walked down the stairs and he looked out the window one more time.
We went and took the subway one stop north to Acropoli and walked to where there are a lot of restaurants. Busy now as it’s as lunch time. We squeezed into a small table at Spezie. We only had two chairs, and August sat on my lap when we ate. Carly took him to play across the street and I ordered our food: the mixed pita, a Greek coffee, and a melon and other fruit juice that August had ordered. They came back and ate, then while they went to the bathroom I moved our bags across the street. While I stood there, a few students came up to me and gave me a survey about our trip, and rewarded me with a bag of pasta.
Carly and August came out, and we walked to the subway and headed to the airport. When buying our tickets, there were two teenage boys ‘helping’ people with the machines. We had to shoo them off, as our cards weren’t working and it was taking awhile.
Finally, we got going. We rode an elevator up one level when we transferred, and compared to the elevator where we had stayed, this elevator was huge. August said, “I liked that huge elevator. It could fit the Kerns in all wresting backpacks, right?”
We took the long train out to the airport. He liked looking out the windows. We made it through all the lines, and got to our gate, A5, at 3:30. August randomly asked, “If you wanted to full an airplane with chicken, would you need thousands of chickens?” Later, when we were getting off our flight, he asked if a peregrine falcon could git in an overhead bin.
I took him to the bathroom, then went to fill water bottles. He was worried I was taking so long and Carly called me. She went to the bathroom. August randomly said, “I love you. I love mama. I love you dada.” We got in a little love battle, loving each other equally but acting like it was a competition. They have Greek books tied to some of the seats, and I read him the first page of Nikos Kazantzakis’s Freedom and Death.
Carly went to Starbucks. He went with, then they came back. She went and got us an early grey latte. And a chocolate muffin. He as getting worried about her and wanted to go check on her, luckily she showed up.
We saw our plane, and it was a 777, bigger than the 737 parked nearby. She had him run around and do jumping jacks. They finally started boarding at 5:20.
We read more Nick and Tesla, ‘minor’ being a word of the day. He then watched a few episodes of Dr. Seuss and I finished reading Frogs. As we descended he did lots of talking about temperatures and how many lights and cars he could see. He kept talking about temperatures around the world as we got off and waited for the stroller, which took an amazingly long time. As we walked through the airport and I pushed him he asked for “Military speed” in the stroller. That comes from knowing that military planes fly faster than commercial flights. August’s expired visa was no problem.
We got a cab and headed home. He fell asleep at 8:45. He was impressed with the cab. He called it an SUV taxi, although it was really just a big hatchback. We were home at 9:05 and I tried to take him up and put him back to sleep. He tried, and was quiet until asking for mama at 9:20. I had her come up, but he got hyper, so after a couple minutes they came down. He went outside with her to see the plants. There is a flowering broccoli, but new one as well.
Inside I did some reading with him, reading all of the Dr. Seuss book about the Kwuggerbug.
We then went upstairs, and I left him with Carly after 10:20.
Our GarageBand song:
Changing of the guard ceremony:
Playing on the subway to the airport:
Stretching at the airport and “I’m a Boeing 747”:
A song:
Watching the plane take off:
