Several years ago, back when we were still childless, Geoff and I talked about taking a vacation to Greece after only hearing and seeing spectacular things about it. For whatever reason, it didn't work out that particular year and we went to Hawaii instead for our annual vacation. Needless to say, when we moved to London and discussed all the places we wanted to travel to during our time here, Greece was at the top of the list. Definitely a must get to.
With Olivia on yet another break from school (seriously, she has breaks all.the.time.) and our summer window of travel opportunities shrinking quickly with family members visiting and other trips planned, we once again got out our passports, packed up our suitcases and jetted off to Greece.
Our main destination for the week long trip was the Greek islands. This trip was going to all about relaxing at the pool and beach. Well, maybe relaxing isn't the right word when you holiday with a 1 and 3 year old. But anyways, we didn't want the trip to be about lots of walking around with the girls doing touristy sightseeing. We've done a lot of that recently in Paris and Istanbul. However, all that said, we did spend our first day in Greece in Athens walking around in the hot sun checking out a few of the ancient sights there. We felt like we just couldn't go all the way to Greece and not see a little bit of Athens.
Temple of Olympian Zeus. Construction was completed in 2nd century AD
Temple with the Acropolis in the background
Arch of Hardrian
Enjoying a break before climbing up to the Acropolis
Who needs the Acropolis when you can play with sticks!
Theatre of Dionysus. Performances still take place here. How cool would that be??
On the stairs leading up to the Propylaea which serves as the entrance into the Acropolis.
Remains of the Parthenon
The Erchtheion Temple
View of the Acropolis from our hotel in Athens
The first of many amazing sunsets we would see on this trip
After our day of sightseeing in Athens, we hoped onto a small airplane and headed to the island of Paros where we would spend the next three days.
Paros airport. Yep, we're definitely in Greece!
Just chillin' at the hotel swimming pool
Bless my heart...these sweet girls
Our second day in Paros we rented a car and drove down to Golden Beach, appropriately named because of the nice long stretch of beautiful golden sand there. The water was calm and we practically had the beach to ourselves minus a few random sunbathers.
Ashton loved the sand. Especially eating it. And judging from the contents in her diaper for the next several days, she ate A LOT of it.
Here's a quick video from the beach to help you get a glimpse of how each girl spent her time there
All that sun, surf and making sand horse poo-poo will wear a girl out!
We spotted this little oil stand at a restaurant we ate lunch at. She was so excited!
That evening, we dined in the little town of Naoussa which was a five minute drive from our hotel. Quintessential Greece.
We sat down outside at a restaurant to eat, but it took us awhile to look over the menu and order because the sunset was unbelievable. We kept getting up from our table to take pictures of it every five minutes. As the sun sunk lower, the sky, clouds and water were continually changing and taking on whole new colors. Just WOW.
Someone was a fan of her pasta and rice
One our third and final day in Paros we headed to a different beach, this one called Kolymbithres Beach. While the sandy part of the beach wasn't very big, the beach was protected by these cool rock formations. The girls had fun and Olivia spotted her new friend Nayla, a little German girl who was also 3, that she had met at dinner the night before. Although they couldn't communicate with each other, that didn't stop them from building sand castles together.
Stay tuned. Next up: spectacular Santorini!
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