Greece Preparations

1:30:00 AM Out And About Global 0 Comments

We are going to Greece for Easter break.  It will be a one week driving tour through the Peloponnese to see archaeological ruins. With one week, we will only have time enough to do the northern half of the Peloponnese despite the fact there are some great things to see further south.  After landing in Athens our plan is to rent a car and drive directly to Delphi.  Here is our itinerary:

Day 1: Drive to Delphi
Day 2: Tour Delphi, drive to Olympia
Day 3: Tour Olympia, drive to Nafplio
Day 4: Tour Nafplio,
Day 5: Tour Myceanae, drive to Athens
Day 6: Athens
Day 7: Athens
Day 8: Fly home

In preparation, I checked a bunch of kid friendly books out from the library and this has been our "required reading" the last week. A couple favorites are "Ancient Greece" DK Eyewitness Books. These books have lots of great photos with short captions, but then more substantial text on the body of the page.  It is so helpful when I can show my children beforehand some of what they will be seeing especially if there is a significant "find" in a museum.  It creates a little anticipation.   Another fun book is from the "You Wouldn't Want to Be..." series called  "You Wouldn't Want to Be a Slave in Ancient Greece."  This series of books is fun at every level and they actually have 3 or 4 about Greece, but our school library only had this one.  All illustrations are cartoons and like the Eyewitness books they have short tidbits of info scattered amongst the text.

I also ordered Great Tours: Greece and Turkey from The Great Courses.  This wasn't in anticipation of our trip, but boy did they come in handy.  This course is a DVD tour through Greece led by an archaeologist.  They are packed full of information with great visuals and they actually helped me refine our itinerary. They aren't so much kid friendly, but we did watch the Acropolis DVD together.   Having watched this series of DVD's I felt more knowledgable and if you are going to tour Athens on your own, knowing the why, when and how turns a pile of rocks into something meaningful.

I booked all our hotels online via booking.com as they have an easy to use website with one click booking.  Also, they have good photographs of room types.

We are getting excited!  I can't wait to leave the cold of Germany behind for warmer temps and a peek at the sun.