BYE BYE LONDON
"Oooh dear, what a pity"....the end of the Olympic Games 2012 and the end of our visit to London. There were still so many things we wanted to do, before we left the United Kingdom. No time to go to Wales and no time to visit a beautiful castle (in which Jane Eyre must have lived!).
But we did see so much of the Olympic Games and cheered till the end for the Dutch hockey ladies and the Dutch Hockey men who both played in the finals. They got a gold medal and a silver medal. On Sunday we saw the closing ceremony of the Games and that was the end of Steven's sports 'wish' (European Soccer Cup - Olympic Games). We walked so much that Stevens new shoes (fake Vans from China) had big holes in them, so we had to find new shoes. He also grew 2 sizes since China so we had to find size 8 (42) for him now (say what?????????). We went to the Westfield - a big shopping centre - and 'swapped' the shoes...see below! |
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| BEFORE |
For our farewell we went to a real British musical "Wicked" with Mieke, Lex and the 4 of us. It was really scary, but also beautiful with all the different costumes and songs.
Of course I also wanted to have the last pictures taken from Notting Hill and from the famous travel-book shop there and from the typical English telephone booth. I still had postcards to post and looked for a mailbox, but strange enough the box was filled with rubbish and not with mail. The outside of the mailbox had broken off, so I took the postcards with me to Greece.
Jazu to Greece.
Now it is my mother's turn and she wanted to show us Ancient Europe. There suppose to be a lot of old history around the Mediterranean Sea and so we went first to Greece. This is the birthplace of the Olympic Games and this was a nice connection with our London visit.
When we came out of the airplane in Athens, the first thing I felt was the warm weather and the hot sun.
I got a very nice hat from Jan Krekel (a friend of my parents) which I put on straight away. On our way 'home' to our apartment there were no other cars on the road and we did not see any people. We thought it was because of the economic crisis, but the driver told us it was the 15th August - a national holiday. All the Atheneans were on the beach. After we unpacked we went for a walk, but still no people around and all the shops and supermarkets were closed.
The next day we had school and in the afternoon we started our visit to ancient Athens. We went to the Parliament and saw the change of the guards at the Tomb of the Unknown soldier. The way they moved was quite interesting with their special shoes up and down and their legs high up before making a move. We had lunch in the National Garden, saw the Zappeion, went under the Hadrian's Arch (the old city gate) and I saw my first ancient temple The Olympieion (Temple of Zeus). I always saw the old pillars in movies or pictures, but this was even more beautiful to see From there you could see the Acropolis, but it was too hot to clime up the hill so we went into the New Acropolis museum to see and read about the history of the Acropolis.
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| Playing Memory of Athens with the Acropolis in the background. |
The museum was very interesting, because they had kids quiz's which was a lot of fun. We had to find sculptures, look at dates and played memory of the Goddess Athens. She is the daughter of Zeus and Zeus was the God of all Greek Gods. The goddess Athens was chosen to be the Goddess of the city (Polis in Greec). Therefore the city was named Athens.
After the busy and hot day we went to sleep straight away!
After seeing the city,It was time to see the Greek beaches where all the Athenians hang out. There were blue seas, white beach, many palm trees. Steven and I swam in the warm blue sea. Mom read her book. Steven played Volleyball and dad worked. Sorry papa you mist out! After tanning we went to have a Greek dinner. Greek salad, Sword fish, smelts.We put our dishes in the middle and shared, just like the Greeks do it!Loes
(next week : ACROPOLIS IN CRISIS)
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