Anzac Day in Athens

In previous years, the Australian Embassy in Greece had acknowledged Anzac Day and the connection between Greece and the Anzacs in previous wars with a memorial service in Athens. We had hoped they would do similar this year, however my enquiries with the embassy were unsuccessful. Eventually they announced they would hold a ceremony on May 2 on the island on Lemnos, a key site from WWI near the entrance to the Dardanelles of Turkey.

No matter, we decided it would be an appropriate day to get to the tomb of the unknown soldier, which sits outside the Greek Parliament. Two Greek soldiers guard the space. My understanding is that they are graduates of John Cleese’s Academy of Silly Walks. The boys were really excited to see it. (Refer photo of excited looking boys).

We all know Sarah loves to chat to strangers, and she found one in the young soldier who was walking around in regular military uniform not the ‘original’ uniform. She quizzed him on what era the unknown soldier was from and also chatted to him about Australia ‘the other Greek country’. This connection than allowed her to get a photo of him next to Tom.

We had previously missed our stop on the bus and overshot the parliament building. It was a fortunate misadventure as we ended up exiting the bus right in front of the Athens Academy. A beautiful neoclassical building with two large columns topped with Athena and Apollo.

Guarding the entrance staircase is none other than Socrates and Plato. In fact, while the current building dates to the 1800’s, it is often referred to as Plato’s Academy and believed to be the oldest educational facility in the world, dating back to around 400BC. The text books need a bit of updating since then though…

It was a small day in sightseeing compared to others. We were all getting a little tourist weary, and could see the end of our journey getting closer. However, Rowan had wanted to enter a small church whilst in Greece to compare it to the large one we had visited in Crete, we found one as we slowly made our way back to our apartment - it was beautiful inside and whilst it was a Greek Orthodox Church now, it had been an Islamic place of worship during the Ottoman period.

After ‘dragging the kids into a church’ we promised them a drink and chips to give them energy to make it home. It must be pointed out that Jack has turned into a major ‘tea drinker’, he drank it before we left Australia but really fell in love with it whilst travelling, to the point that he would order that over anything else. Sarah liked to call him ‘the 80 year old in an 8 year old's body.

Tomorrow would be our last day in Europe. Tom’s efforts at having pizza in every location continued at dinner, at a restaurant called Grandpas. I’m sure they were all cooked in a Thermomix with the recipes followed to the letter.Read more