Athens Day 3 and The Acropolis Climb

Another scorching hot day in Athens and we will be following our tour guide to The Acropolis. The ancient place of theater, philosophy and basically all things ancient Greece. To visit this mountain for a second time in my life is a gift but to visit with my mom for her first visit is of course…historical. What a time! This post is more about the pictures with her below, my outfit and my slender figure. LOL. This would be my last summer before I would become a mom for the first time. Ahh…my children, but I digress.

So off we go with my uncle to see the origin of everything we are as a culture and here is what we learned along the way. As we approached the foot of the mountain and began our ascent mom was taking it all in and I was enjoying the view as well when my uncle decided to dip out and wait for us at the bottom. I thought “no problem, he can’t leave us here after all.” So we continued our climb to the top. It’s a moment when you get there. We stood in silence just thinking of what was in front of us. History surrounding us. It was everyone that was moving around us that made us take note of the conversation, which was about us. Here’s the thing people…we are FLUENT in Greek so when you are making fun of us “Americans” wearing socks with our sneakers, we understand EVERY. SINGLE. WORD. We just laughed as we looked around at everyone’s feet and yep…only the Americans are wearing socks. First thing on our list when we are done with this field trip day…ditching the socks for rest of vacation.

After spending hours at the top and taking pictures when we were done marveling at everything we began our descent down the mountain back to our uncle. Guess who was nowhere to be found?! Yep! Only slight panic set it. I looked at mom and said “He has to be hear somewhere. He did not just leave us to die on the mountain.” It was in those next few minutes I realized, I’m going to have to play this game of hide and go seek with my uncle so I found a place for mom to sit and looked at her and in my firm voice of a 25 year old I said “Do NOT leave this spot.” I then took those steps back up the mountain. I arrived once again at the top. Surveyed the area and thought “Hmmm, he is winning at hide and seek but I spent 3 months of my life with this man, so I need to think like him.” Back down the steps to find my mom still in her assigned spot. I took a sip of water and said “I’m going back up.” She laughed and I explained I will have had my fill of these damn steps for maybe a lifetime. This time I moved slowly up. Every few steps I would stop and really look anywhere I could see. There is nothing to the left but a steep slope, but to the right was entirely fenced off with signs that said “Stay out, keep off the ruins” as they were in the middle of preserving much of it. Another group of steps up I look to the right and there he was defying the signs. Perched on a large stone with a pipe in his mouth and looking like an ancient philosopher. I yelled to him and he smiled and said he knew I would find him. I honestly still laugh about this day. My uncle the billy goat philosopher. Needless to say, mom was happy I returned back down the mountain with our awful tour guide. LOL.