Salmon and Souvlaki

 This past summer, after spending a week in England with my brother and his family, we flew to Greece to spend two weeks with Nik’s family.  Unfortunately, we lost most of the pictures that we took in Greece.  Thankfully we still have a few and because we didn’t do much traditional sightseeing, the pictures we do have are a pretty good representation of our trip.  If you want to see a full set of amazing pictures of Greece, check out my (12-part!) blog series about our 2008 Greece vacation.

We started our trip in Athens with Nik’s father’s family. It was really hot so rather than going to the Acropolis or any other archeological sites, we mostly stayed inside in the air conditioning during the day and ventured out in the evening.

One night we drove high into the hills above Athens.

and then went to the playground!

Another night, we drove south of Athens and went swimming in the sea.

After a few days in Athens, we drove north (about a 9-hour drive, with a baby involved) to Nea Kallikratia, the beach town where Nik’s mom grew up and where his relatives still live.  Yiayia was there on vacation also, so we had the fun of getting to be there with her as well as Nik’s uncle, aunt, and cousins.  We spent a lot of time at the beach!

Nik and I were really spoiled because Yiayia was there to play with Ellie.  So that meant that every day we were able to go snorkeling together, rather than taking turns.  We met a man from Serbia who was an amazing diver (putting our little snorkeling adventures to shame).  He and his wife both spoke English so we had fun getting to know them and having a friend to go snorkeling with!

cleaning the sand off of her feet

This was also the trip where we discovered Ellie’s talent for rapping.

One day, we drove to the peninsula of Kassandra and spent the day in Loutra.  Loutra has amazingly huge rocks in the bay. This meant that Nik and I got to do some really cool snorkeling while Ellie and Yiayia played.

Then we all took a nap on the beach. 

While in Kallikratia, we also got to see Nik’s uncle (his father’s youngest brother), aunt and cousins. It was great to see them too!

On our drive back to Athens, we stopped at the ancient archeological site of Dion, so that Ellie could at least begin to understand some of the amazing richness of her Greek ancestry.  We only scratched the surface of this site and I would love to go back.  My favorite part was walking on the ancient Roman road, with its original paving tiles. We also drove part way up Mt. Olympus before finishing our long drive back to Athens.

Back in Athens, Nik’s dad had arrived for his summer vacation and so we had the fun of getting to be with him too.  Ellie loved having three Pappous to pay attention to her (Nik’s father and two uncles)!

At first, Ellie was pretty confused about having two Yiayia’s (as in, we also call Nik’s grandmother, “Yiayia”).  But eventually she figured it out!

Four generations!

Our last night in Athens, we packed up, putting all of our warm-weather clothes into one suitcase, knowing that we wouldn’t be using them again on our vacation because…

we were off to England (again)!