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!
What a great trip!