Theatre of dreams

After our late night hot chocolate excursion the children were quite tired this morning – everyone of them needed a wake up call, as opposed to other mornings where they’ve been up before us.  Mr. Whitaker and Mr. Suter told two of the boys groups as soon as they woke up that they would be going swimming again first thing – without batting an eyelid, they slowly groped for their swimming things which were still cold and soaking wet from yesterday’s swim, never mind how cold the water would have been this morning!  Thankfully we’re not that mean and instead everyone went downstairs – dry – for another filling buffet breakfast. 

The orchestra

It was obvious what was on the mind of some of the children today (“Will we get a chance to waste money today?” asked Cagla) but in fact we headed off to the theatre at Epidaurus.    We were joking with our paparazzi comments on Hydra, but upon arrival at the theatre we had several tourists break off their guides’ explanations of the theatre to come over to us to take pictures!  We’ve been quite an attraction.  We have to say here that the children have been absolutely impeccably behaved – our tour guide Anna was getting quite annoyed at the manners of other groups at the theatre.  It wasn’t possible with the numbers there for her to demonstrate the excellent acoustics of the theatre by dropping a coin at the bottom for us to hear at the top, but Ms. Thomas showed her theatre production prowess and threw together a 30 second Machiavellian drama with evil villains, beautiful damsels and operatic singing of the finest quality (OK, so ‘Happy Birthday’ in Arabic doesn’t really count as opera) featuring ten of our braver thespians (In fact, later on a couple who were leading another group came over to Mr. Suter just to tell him how well behaved our children were).

I see no ships...

How do you spell that?  E-p-i-d-...

From there, we wove our way across the Peloponnese to Mycenae, the ancient citadel of Agamemnon, leader of the expedition to Troy.  With the sun blazing down upon us, we explored the ancient ruins.  The children were completely fascinated by the idea of the cyclopean walls – of course a name given to the walls by later historians with a reference to the Cyclops being the only race that would have been strong enough to carry the five tonne stone blocks of the outer walls.  Our children have taken this literally and have come away with the idea of these one-eyed giants living and working at the citadel in ancient times.  Many of the children thought that the beehive tomb adjacent to the site (the Treasury of Atreus) was thus called because of the number of bees that were flying around on the inside!

Lion Gate

Treasury of Atreus

How many layers of stones are there?

From there we finally had lunch at the much anticipated restaurant in Mycenae – for the children, a combination of stuffed vine leaves, chicken and pasta, greek salad, omelettes and stuffed tomatoes for the non-meat eaters, and ice cream.  The staff get slightly preferential treatment – these four courses are supplemented with an additional three and almost everyone left the restaurant groaning at the seams.

After lunch, we headed to a local pottery shop that makes its own pots on site.  Downstairs, we met Jimmy Potter who demonstrated at his wheel how to make a pot.  In fact, he made a miniature vase (we suppose the recession has hit in Greece, after all) – that it was a good one was attested by Andy who no sooner it was off the wheel shouted, “How much?”  Arkady and Cagla got to try their pottery skills at the wheel – Cagla was a bit nervous at first but quickly developed to produce a perfectly symmetrical pot, while Arkady’s slapdash approach produced a ‘unique’ piece.  After the practical stuff, there was the usual shopping frenzy and the staff of the shop ended our visit with a lucky draw.  On hearing the number 70 called as a winner, Andy exclaimed, “Aww, I’ve got 69 – that’s not fair!”

The delicate touch



Biys will be boys

Poseidonsuter

With a combination of the sun and the food, needless to say there were a few snorers in the bus on the way to Corinth, where we stopped for a final break before Athens.  You’d have thought the children hadn’t eaten in weeks.  Despite a ‘no food on the bus’ ruling, it was simply amazing how much the children packed into their stomachs again!  There was slight disappointment at Corinth – this end of the canal rises some 80m above the sea, and at peak times they have a bungee jumping station.  Before you all start reaching for the phone, parents, it was Mr. Whitaker’s idea that he would do it if Mr. Suter did.  Much to Mr. Suter’s relief (headlines of “Children’s tour group leader plunges into sea” had been going through his mind) the station was closed. 

And so on to Athens, and back to the Atrium Hotel.  At dinner, we were joined by friends of Emma’s parents who reside in Athens, but we think Haruka got most pleasure from their visit as she was able to chat in Japanese to the younger of their daughters who is learning the language.  We suspect she was somewhat shocked at the quality of the English girl’s Japanese, but she enjoyed the conversation.  After a dinner of vegetarian pizza, mushroom omelette, beef in tomato sauce, greek pasta, greek salad and a warm honey cake (because after all we didn’t have much to eat for lunch!) the children have retired to their rooms and bed.  Surprisingly, we haven’t had any complaints of stomach aches!  The children all have their favourite parts of the day, but it has obviously stuck in Amin’s mind as, when asked his favourite part of the day, he replied, “I can’t really remember what we did!”

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