McKinney Gypsy Caravan

Day 8 in the town of Ioannina started about the same as the other days recently- a rainy, cold mess. Lucky us, we had tried to wait on walking around the castle grounds hoping for no rain… and it was raining even harder than the night before. So… we did a quick car tour of the castle by driving all around it a few times and looking inside the gates and wall openings. ha

It was still raining when we reached Thermopylae but getting better. We started our visit at the visitor center.

Thermopylae, the “Hot Gates” in Greek, is known for the 480BC battle where Spartan King Leonidas and a small Greek force held a narrow coastal pass against Xerxes’ massive Persian army for three days. Using the terrain to minimize Persian numbers, they famously fought to the death after being betrayed, becoming a symbol of heroic resistance. This three day delay allowed time for all of the people of Athens to be evacuated from the city to the island of Salamis and then later the same year, the Athenian Greek forces defeated the Persians at the Battle of Salamis.

Herodotus wrote that Leonidas’ fate was foretold by the Oracle of Delphi. She said “Either your great and glorious city must be wasted by Persian men, Or if not that, then the bound of Lacedaemon must mourn a dead king, from Heracles’ line” – Leonidas being a descendent of Heracles. So, prior to the invasion of the Persians, Leonidas knew his choice would be to sacrifice himself in the battle or watch all of Sparta fall. In knowing this, he selected only Spartan soldiers with living sons to carry on their names and inheritance as he knew they would likely die.

Famously, there is the movie ‘300’ with Gerard Butler as Leonidas. It’s historical fiction at best… but its still a great action film based off a comic book.

The visitor center was just a small theater with a 3D screen about the battle logistics of the troops and explained their military uniforms and then a room with some touchscreens with all of the same info. ha

We took the opportunity in the cafe for some coffee and noticed they had a non-CocaCola cola -Vikos. Didn’t try one… maybe next visit.

Outside there were 2 memorials to this legendary battle. The main one of Leonidas – a bronze sculpture commemorating the Spartans with the inscription “Molṑn labé” or “Come and take them” on the base- a quote, according to the Greek historian Plutarch, Leonidas wrote to Xerxes in response to Xerxes saying “Put down your arms” and Leonidas said “come and take them”. Today we see this phrase used a lot is relation to gun rights and second amendment groups or military…

The second monument is a lot smaller, but I think is important, too in the grand context. We always hear about the 300 Spartans but never hear that over 700 Thespians ALSO stayed and fought to the death. In total there were over 5000 greek soldiers that fought the Persian army here… but 1000 that stayed on Day 3 and perished on the final fight. This monument depicts the god Eros (who was worshipped in ancient Thespiae) headless as a tribute to the anonymous Thespians who died in the battle.

After Thermopylea we had another 2 hours back to Athens to end of trip.

One unique thing we found while driving around Greece is that there are literal toilets or “WCs” – water closets- along the interstate. similar to our rest stops… but just a toilet with half a door and you can hear the cars going by 15 feet away lol

We got to Athens around 4:30pm and found the venue for the escape room we booked for the evening. Since we had time, we went ahead to the airport and dropped our rental car and put our bags in the airport hotel room and then got an Uber back to the room- then what took us 30 minutes to drive to the airport, took us 1.5 hours to get back due to traffic after work and for a holiday weekend of people leaving Athens.

This escape room is ranked #8 in the world so we were very excited to play a Top 10 room….but a little apprehensive because it was a our first horror room. It was called Don’t Take a Breath by Verone and was based on the horror film “Don’t Breath” from 2013 and basically some young kids decide to rob an old blind guy because one kid’s dad owns a security company and so he can get info. They break in only to find that the blind guy is an old Army vet and has booby traps and torture devices and is holding a girl hostage in his basement… so the movie quickly moves from stealing to just trying to survive and escape.

The room was actually a whole vibe and had live actors. You enter one area and meet up with the guy doing to heist- he outfitted us with gear and who we’d be meeting.

Then we snuck into the security office and grabbed keys, then we had to go outside to a different street and go into the house with the keys… and then search for a safe full of money. The blind guy from the movie was upstairs in bed and we had to sneak around and put chloroform there… and in various parts he came running around with a gun and we had to hide from him while he tried to figure out who was there and where we were. At one point he grabbed Norah and locked her in a cage and we had to rescue her. Totally freaked her out haha but she handled it like a champ. We found secret hatches, crawled through a fake washer into a downstairs basement, rescued a girl who was immediately shot by the guy.. and eventually escaped with no money… but alive. It was a stressful two hours! ha Very immersive, very realistic. Highly recommend. It wasn’t your typical puzzles and riddles and secret doors. It was more like being in a real-life movie… He told us later than he’s been running this game for 8 years just by himself with 1 of 3 female assistants. So he is the owner, the accomplice, the blind main guy, the security guard… all of it. lol The girl from the basement was also the girl on comms with us the whole time telling us what the do and where to go.

After the room, it was back in an Uber and back to the airport. We had the world’s fasted taxi that drove entirely too fast for my liking, but we arrived in one piece.

Can’t recommend the hotel enough that is attached to the airport. Comfy beds, great bathroom layout and showers, separate toilet closet, blackout window shades, great noise control… and good onsite food.

We situated our luggage and showered and grabbed a few hours of sleep. We were up at 5:15am to walk across into the Athens airport and do security and we were off to London.

We had a 4 hour flight to London Heathrow, then a 4 hour layover in London. We grabbed a chance at a “full English” – which isn’t quite a full Irish breakfast- but is a passable version when not in Ireland.

I took an hour to walk around all of the shops in London Heathrow and admire all of the Chanel, Gucci, Loewe, Burberry and Dior handbags I would love to buy but didn’t. Kegan never tells me I can’t do anything (he knows better) but he did think spending more on a purse than our entire Athens trip was likely a poor decision. 🙂

We had a 10.5 hour flight back to Dallas which we were informed 2 hours prior did not have working wifi… so just watched a bunch of shows and movies and shifted around a lot in my cheap economy seat. ha

Then in Dallas we did the normal passport control and customs but due to the budget lapse and partial shutdown, Homeland Security closed off Global Entry and Mobile Passport Control options and only had 2 passport stations processing arrivals. Luckily, the line moved fast and I think we were through in 40 minutes of so. They didn’t even check our passports or verify anything… just walked up, took a photo and we were on our way. Seemed dodgy. All of this emphasis on border control and 2000 people just walked through Dallas airport into the country within an hour with just a quick photo? whatevs. I’m someone who thinks all border control is silly… so it works for me.

Grabbed Norah some Chick-fil-a and hopped on our hour flight to New Orleans. Slept the entire hour because we were exhausted on hour 26 of travel, waited an hour at the New Orleans airport for our checked bags because there was 1 little rinkydink bag crew and 5 flights arrived at the same time… but our Uber was fast and nice and we were home by midnight local time to get some sleep and be back on track with the time zones. The cats were so glad to find we didn’t abandon them forever…and shoutout to my mom for cat sitting a majority of the week while we were gone to keep them from actually dying of separation anxiety.

Overall thoughts – had a great time. Did very little work while traveling this trip, so it made it easy for me to keep up with the blog and keep that on track. We didn’t have as many evening plans as usual either since it was still off-season in Greece and a lot of things closed at 3:30pm or 5pm at the latest- the only evening events after dark were food or escape rooms…so we had a lot of slow hotel evenings which helped us feel a little more rested and relaxed than our typical “go hard” schedules. I actually came home without feeling like I needed a vacation from my vacation! ha Greek food was amazing. Every place we went was exceptional. Greek people were super nice. I don’t think we encountered one rude person the entire trip. Greek infrastructure… I’ll give it a B or C. ha small streets, small highways, a little run down, graffiti everywhere…but nothing bad.. and never did we feel unsafe anywhere we went or walked. Just doesn’t have that posh Euro vibe of a classic inner city tourist district full of granite and limestone and well lit streets.. I would travel there again… but I didn’t start looking up real estate… so I guess that’s a change from my normal Euro trips. ha

We are trying to book something in Europe for the last week of May or first week of June before Norah starts her camps…so see you all then when I figure out where!

We had breakfast at the hotel we were at for just one night. I had booked a family room, but they actually gave us two whole hotel rooms with connecting doors, so Norah got her whole own hotel room. Breakfast was good there, too. Better than American continental… but still just some random items-but plenty.

We gathered our things and walked down the block to the Enterprise rental car spot and spent 40 minutes to get the keys to the car. While we were waiting we got to watch a guy on a motorcycle wreck on the corner…luckily he was OK.

After getting the keys, we were off on our way. I had to drive out of Athens, of course 🙂

The drive north was a couple of hours of towns and mountains and it was a pretty drive with little towns and sites along the way.

Our first destination was the Holy Monastery of Hosios Loukas. A world heritage site from the 11th century on the side of Mt. Helicon.

We went under the church to the burial crypt where there are amazing frescos- the best preserved of the Byzantine era in Greece.

Inside the main church- the first in Greece with the square cross and dome design- there are amazing mosaics – very much like the ones in St. Mark’s in Venice. Wikipedia says these are from the “Macedonian Renaissance” but when I try to wiki that term, it just shows photos of the Hosios Loukas monastery. lol

The monastery site was built where a hermit called St. Lukas lived in the late 900s. His bones are still in the second church on the site on display.

The monastery was very prosperous because it was said that the body of St Lukas leached perfumed oil that could heal and people would travel to the site and sleep under and around the tomb for healing. (Sounds like a scam to me… some monk was running a scam for sure lol)

After the monastery, we were back on the road north to try to reach the ancient site of Delphi before it closed at 3:30pm.

We arrived around 2:30 with last entry to the ruins at 2:50 and last entry to the museum at 3:10… so we had to hustle. No big deal…just hiking up a mountain in twenty minutes. ha

The site of Delphi was considered the center of the ancient world and was where the great Oracle of Delphi, a priestess, offered wisdom and advised on all major decisions for kings and leaders as well as normal everyday people who travelled there.

Next up the pathway we came to the Athenian Treasury. Built to commemorate the victory at the Battle of Marathon in 390BC over the Persian invasion. (This is also where the term Marathon comes from for a race. The legend is that a soldier ran the full distance from Marathon to Athens after the battle – uttered the Greek word for “We won” and promptly collapsed and died. So now we run a marathon in his honor.

From here, Norah and I had to wave Kegan on up the hill to see the rest. We were huffing and puffing and he still had some steam. So he headed on up to the last site to see the Stadium that hosted the famous Pythian games every 4 years. He photographed it for us 🙂

It was back on the road towards our hotel. We decided to stop for snacks a couple hours in at a grocery store in what was likely the last big town before we headed up into the mountains again for the night.

I typed up the blog while Norah enjoyed the jacuzzi, we cracked open a bottle of “house wine” George the taxi driver bought us as a gift from a side of the road stand. It was good for $5 wine! But I promptly fell asleep and slept until 8:30am! ha We knew we would sleep in because breakfast was only served 9am-11am here and we had a fairly slow day planned.

Back on the road for more driving – almost ALL driving- to see more of the mountainous northern Greek areas. Lots of landscape photos today.

Monks were living in the caverns as early as 800AD, but when the invading Turks attacks increased, the monks were looking for more protection. They created homes on top of rocks with ladders that could be removed to give themselves more protection. Eventually stone steps were added after a couple hundred years that today make the monasteries more accessible. There were 24 monasteries here at one time- only 6 remain today, most from the 1300s to 1500s.

Next post will be our final day in Greece and travel home. Hopefully it will be a short, sweet uneventful wrap up. 🙂

Today was our prebooked tour with George the taxi driver that I saw recommended on a Facebook group for Athens travel and he did not disappoint. He arrived to our hotel at 8am on the dot and we packed our suitcases into the car and were on our way for the day. He said his goal was to make all our friends jealous with our beautiful photos. ha I told him I would need friends first. George didn’t really understand my English sarcasm…but we managed ha

After an hour in the car or so, the first stop we made was at the Corinth Canal. An engineering marvel that took 2500 years to actually achieve. This narrow straight of land is all that separates the Ionian Sea from the Aegean Sea and would save ships from having to sail all around the Peloponnese peninsula.

Rulers from 600 BC forward have had plans to dig a canal here…including 4 Roman emperors. Nero actually started the work but then had to stop to fight off an invasion and then was killed… so work stopped. It wasn’t until 1890 that this canal was actually created and ships could pass through it, saving 430 miles of sailing.

The older ruler to think about digging the canal was named Periander and after he consulted the Oracle of Delphi and it was recommended that if Apollo wanted the seas to connect, he would have designed them that way… he tried to resolve the problem by building the famous Diolkos. The Diolkos was a special road paved with slabs of limestone covered in wood from which ships greased with fat were pulled over land by oxen and slaves. Ships were loaded on special vehicles and were carried/pushed over dry land through Diolkos while the goods had been offloaded from the ships and were transported by pack animals. This idea was very successful because the ships of the era were much smaller dimensions than today. George took us by this ancient road to see what remains.

Back in the car for our next stop in wine country.

We chose the Bairaktaris winery on the recommendation of George and were given a tour.

Having the equivalent of 3 full glasses of wine at noon made the cold rain better. ha We then continued on to the ancient site of Mycanae.

The Mycanaens were the pre-Greeks – at this site and flourishing as early as 1600 BC.

The first site we visited was the Citadel which is fortified by the Cyclopean walls and the main entrance being the Lion’s Gate

We took a quick drive over the to the Treasury of Atrius or the Tomb of Agamemnon – a beehive domed tomb from 1300 BC.

After this visit, it was lunch time – George dropped us off at a recommended restaurant in Nafplio called Bounos.

Afterwards, we were supposed to spend an hour walking around the town and seeing the sites, but it was still pouring rain, so we told George we were ready to head on back to Athens. He suggested he knew a spot were we could be out of the rain and get a great family photo – so we drove up to Palamidi fortress – a fortress built by the Venetians during their occupation in the 1600s- above the town to George’s secret photo spot.

George informed us that there was a taxi strike for today, people kept calling him to ask for rides and he had to say no. Thankfully, he did not cancel our trip since we had pre-booked.

We checked into a new hotel on the other side of Athens and said goodbye to George, but Norah wanted dinner… and looking there wasn’t much super close and walkable that looked good… but there was a sushi restaurant with a full 5 stars on Google… so we gave it a shot….and it was good!

Tomorrow morning we’ll rent our car and head out of the city to tour the north of Greece!

To start Day 3, we were supposed to do our Acropolis and Ancient Agora tour…but I got a message that the Agora would be closed for Sunday so I could either move it to a different day, do half of the tour…and cancel and refund. So, we moved it to Monday- but that meant that we would be doing the museum before the site and some smaller sites before the big ones…but we decided that was OK.

So, we had our hotel breakfast and headed out towards Lycabettus Hill in an Uber. Our Uber had to drop us off a half mile from the entrance due to a race we were crossing. Which meant I had to walk up hill AND pay for the Uber 🙂

Mount Lycabettus or Lycabettus Hill is a limestone hill that is 1000 ft above sea level and is the highest point in Athens. The name literally means “the hill walked by wolves” and the legend is that there were wolves who lived here.

It wasnt a great weather day, a little rainy and a LOT windy… but just gotta get on with the tourist stuff when you can. ha You can literally see everything in Athens from this point. Up top there is a restaurant (which I learned later is apparently fine dining and very good- but it was like 10am…so no fine dining for us) and an old church..and an open air theater that a lot of big musicians have played at including Ray Charles, Bob Dylan, Black Sabbath and others

It was time for some lunch, so we walked into the Plaka neighborhood at the base of the acropolis hill.

We ate at a restaurant called Lyra we found nearby and it was amazing.

We had sufficiently wasted enough time to allow for our Acropolis Museum 3pm entrance, so we headed that way. It was just in time, too becuase it started raining on us right as we got to the museum.

Overall, the museum was a bit underwhelming. It is cool that they have taken the original statues and stone carvings and housed them inside for preservation and created replicas at the Acropolis outdoors… and I know these are like ANCIENT and massive and all of that… but like, everything is so worn down its hard to even see what they were, so its just like walking through floors of melted wax figures that I’m sure are important…and worth seeing.. but I don’t know… I didn’t get much out of it. Everyone says you can’t miss this museum…I say you can 🙂

After the Acropolis museum, we were 11k steps in for the day and it was time for our afternoon siesta in the hotel room where I take my two hour nap and Norah gets her screen time in. ha

We booked another escape room for the evening, this time a 2 hour one. (Turns out after talking with the guy, there are no 1 hour escape rooms left in Athens, all 2-4 hours) We booked Death in Space at Escapepolis.

We grabbed a quick takeaway box from the grill at the hotel (much more managable portions this time) and called it a night.

Day 4 started with breakfast at the hotel again- I finally remembered to take a photo of the spread.

We had to get up earlier than we like to get across Athens to our meeting point for a 9am starting tour. We got our headsets and checked in and headed to the Acropolis site.

It rained on us pretty significantly during our Agora tour…so we looked around the museum after and then waited out the rain for 15 minutes or so before heading out to find some lunch.

After planning to go to a Greek restaurant we skipped another night, we Ubered there only to find it was now an Indian restaurant. ha So we searched again and found a charcuterie restaurant in between us and the hotel so we trekked it a few blocks there.

We continued our walk back to the hotel through a more working class normal neighborhood

The rest of Day 4 was very boring- we got back to the hotel around 4pm and we all slept for 4.5 hours after all of that walking today! ha So, here I sit at midnight typing the blog up… packing up suitcases after showering (apparently you have to shower and wash your hair on Monday Feb 16th this year because washing your hair on Tues Feb 17th on Chinese Lunar New Year will wash all of your good fortune for 2026 away! be aware!) If you were born in 1954, 1966, 1978, 1990, 2002, 2014 or 2026 – wear red this year to maximize YOUR year of the horse. 🙂

Tomorrow we check out of this hotel and have a full day tour outside of Athens to Ancient Corinth, a winery, Mycenae and other stops… see ya after!

This year’s Mardi Gras break trip is to Greece! We will be spending 9 days total- 7 days in Greece, 2 traveling.

We started out Thursday evening after Norah got out of school and I was done with work- on a flight out of New Orleans direct to London. This was exciting because every time we fly international, we usually have to make the 5 hour drive to Houston but being able to fly right out of NOLA was *chef’s kiss*.

After the 8 hour flight to London we had a couple hours in Heathrow – Norah got a burger but nothing else to really write about.. then we got on our Athens flight- another 3.5 hours and by this point we were all sleepy-eyed. Most of this flight was just us sleeping.

By the time we got to Athens, it was 6:30pm local time. It took about 40 minutes to get through passport control… but our taxi was there waiting for us. Drove us the 45 minutes from the airport to our hotel on the north side of Athens- the Brown Acropol.

I was a little apprehensive because we were watching a YouTube guide to Athens and the guys was like “don’t book a hotel north of xxx street” and when I checked the map, we were two blocks north of “that” street. ha I had read a hundred reviews or so of the hotel prior to booking and the reviews seemed good and no one talked about it being a bad area. So we decided we’d show up and if we didn’t like it, we’d just get an Uber somewhere else. It was just fine….

After dinner, it was back to the room around 11pm and time for bed. I was out about 5 seconds after my head hit the pillow.

For Day 2, which is really our first day in Greece, we started with hotel breakfast on the roof with a view of the Acropolis. It had a good spread for a hotel buffet breakfast – rasher bacon, eggs, sausages, norwegian specialties like pickled herring, anchovies and smoked salmon, cold cuts and cheese. Greek specialty pastries and breads as well as juices and coffee – and it was included with the room price, so it was fine with us.

Our first stop after breakfast was the National Archeological Museum.

It was a large museum with TONS of ancient pottery and small pieces. Here were some of my favorite items:

After leaving the museum, we walked through the city to some other sites. I love all of the orange trees lining the streets.

Next Norah decided that a gelato shop we passed looked good so we stopped…and this was a great decision. Maybe the best ice cream I have ever had… a chain called Kayak Pure Magic Ice Cream. I recommend you look it up in Athens.

After a late lunch we had a two hour rest in the hotel and then headed out to catch an Uber to our evening activity- a 3 hour escape room at Paradox Project.

With no spoilers- the basic idea is that our uncle had invited us over to the mansion, but when we arrived, we found that he had been kidnapped and we have to find clues to help him and find his hidden jewel. Once we found our way through most rooms, we learn that he actually faked the kidnapping and we are being framed with a fake jewel while he escapes with the real one… and we have to solve more puzzles before the police arrive.

We didn’t want a whole sit down meal at 11pm, but we wanted something…so we stopped by a little turkish food stall right outside the escape room venue.

I forgot to take photos until we were halfway through eating… but we got a couple pizza boat things with egg and bacon, and pepporoni, a sausage filled phyllo dough rope thing ( on the right above) and a pig in a blanket hot dog thing. They were all greasy but good, and total was $15 for everything plus drinks.