Ancient Greece: The Parents' Choice

Lessons Before Leaving

A friend prepares elaborate but kid-friendly history and culture lessons for every family trip. I plan to emulate that. I gather books and announce that I'll be reading aloud Greek myths before bed each night until the trip.

"But we just spent three months studying ancient Greece. I know that stuff already," Maddie complains. So I test her. Turns out Mr. Fourney in Social Studies has beat me to the punch. She recites the major facts of Greek history I've just dug up, corrects my pronunciation of Mycenaean and tells me all about Odysseus and Homer and Pericles. Of course she's no expert. But she does know what I was going to teach her, and I'm not going to study even harder in order to drill a reluctant pupil.

That's my first tip: If you want to play teacher, pick a place your kid hasn't already studied.

Our itinerary, however, designed with the help of a Greek friend raised in Corinth, turned out to be worth copying: overnights in Athens, Nafplion and Galaxidi, with visits to Delphi, Corinth, Epidavros, Mycenae, Delphi and the small mountain town of Arahova, famed for woolens, especially distinctive Greek Flokati rugs, about six miles from Delphi.

We would have needed a few more days on the seven-night trip to avoid pushing it. An extra week or two for some of the 1,400 Greek islands would have topped it off about right. But if it's history, scenery and authenticity you seek, this itinerary should delight.

Kid-Friendly Athens

Any reasonably behaved child should be able to endure even a long plane ride if you've brought books, games, perhaps some new wrapped toys and lots of snacks. It's the long layovers that are the killers, especially on overnight flights. In Europe, Amsterdam has to be the worst -- the airport was filled with cigarette smoke that had Maddie coughing and holding wet towels to her reddened eyes.

Nonstop flights are the first best option. When that's not possible, my husband always recommends we stay one night in the stopover city. I always argue that's a waste of time and money. To his credit, when we find ourselves suffering exhaustion and tedium in the layover airport, he never says "I told you so."

We arrive in Athens ready to collapse, but as usual, the excitement of a new place revives us all. We can see the Acropolis and Parthenon from our hotel window, and head there.

For Maddie's benefit, I repeatedly marvel about standing in the footsteps of people such as Socrates, Aristotle and Plato. She knows about Pericles's fabulous building projects. I add editorial content about how war destroyed in seconds what it took artisans years to create.

I think she most enjoys climbing the slippery rocks in the shadow of the Parthenon. We are all rewarded with a stellar view of the city. Maddie shoots a lot of pictures -- a new interest that has exponentially increased the amount of time we can spend at adult-centered locations. She was, incidentally, at least 9 before she showed the slightest appreciation of even the most dramatic scenery -- that's the lower range, I'd guess, that you can expect beauty to occupy a child's mind.

Athens is filled with renowned museums. But with only two days to spend in the city, the only glass cases we stand before are in the new subway stations. Antiquities discovered during excavations for new subway lines built for the Summer Olympics are exhibited at the stations where they were found. The displays, far short of what you'd see in, say, the Louvre, are just about the right size for a kid.