Ryan, Debi, and Toren Cragun's Blog

Toren, who did sleep on the flight from Amsterdam to Atlanta, was still on Greek time, so he woke up at 2:30 ready to play.  Since I had gotten 3 hours or so of sleep on the flight, I got up with him and let Debi sleep.  We walked around the hotel until about 4:30, when we had to get up to get ready to go back to the airport.  We made it back to the airport fine and our flight to Tampa was uneventful.  We did use our meal vouchers (courtesy of Delta) to buy a bunch of donuts, though, and gave them out to various people.  Everything seemed fine when we arrived in Tampa, until one of our bags (my bag) didn’t show up.  When I asked about it, the baggage claim guy said it was still in Amsterdam according to their records, even though I carried it through customs in Atlanta.  That didn’t seem like a good sign.  Anyway, they said they’d send it to our house when they found it.  They did finally find it, the next day, and got it to us that afternoon.  So, trip complete.

Some thoughts on cruising with a young child:

• Cruises don’t really cater to really young kids (<3).  Yes, they have highchairs and cribs, and yes the staff are friendly, but kids in diapers or pullups are not allowed in any swimming pools on the ship.  Also, there is no childcare for really young kids.  There are no babysitters you can pay to watch your kid during the day.  The one daily activity they have for kids under 3 is about 45 minutes long and requires that a parent be there.  In short, cruise ships primarily cater to the old, fat, white people who predominate, then to other adults, then to their teen+ kids, then to kids between about 4 and 12 who get some special treatment.  If you are thinking about cruising with a kid under 3, don’t expect it to be all that easy.
• During one of the excursions, someone from our ship struck up a conversation with Brent and Suzy and asked them, “Are you the ones with the baby?”  Brent and Suzy said no, but that the baby was part of their group.  This person then said, “I would never travel to Europe with a baby.  How exhausting!”  Well, there is some truth to that.  Don’t expect to do all the things you could do on a cruise when you were single. On our previous cruises, we typically would go to the nightly shows and then go out dancing. With Toren, we were lucky we got up in the morning in time for our excursions (he slept in our bed and loves to kick me and toss and turn all night). Toren was reasonably well-behaved on the excursions (less so on the last two), but whenever we had an early morning excursion, we couldn’t help but crash in the afternoon before dinner.  We showered before dinner, and then after a nearly 2 hour dinner (with three courses), it was too late (8:30) to go do anything with the kids and too early to see any shows.  So, we ended up typically just going back to our room and waiting Toren out until he fell asleep.  So, yes, it’s exhausting.  But traveling is typically exhausting anyway, and so is parenting.  So, I don’t think it would have made much of a difference if we were home or on the trip – either way, Toren is a lot of work (and a lot of fun!).
• Finally, I also feel a bit guilty. Most of the staff on the ship are people from developing countries who are working on the cruise ship because this offers them a substantial improvement in life. But, they do this at great personal sacrifice. Our primary waiter, Brenda, had a child the same as age Toren, a girl. Brenda is on the ship for 7 months at a time, then home for 2. Her husband and parents take care of her daughter while she’s away. I can’t even imagine seeing Toren just 2 months out of every 9. Likewise, our room attendant, Angelina, from Mauritius, has three kids – 8, 12, and 15. She’s on the ship 6 months, then home 2. She’s been doing this for 6 years, which means she has been gone for ¾ of her children’s lives over the last 6 years. I only feel slightly better about this when I think that this means her children will have a better financial starting point than she did, but it still breaks my heart to think about how much of her children’s lives she is missing. Brenda said she cried everyday when she first came aboard the ship because she was missing her child so much. Having Toren on the ship reminds them of the kids they have left at home. So, it made me feel guilty.

Anyway, the trip was a lot of fun.  We got to see a lot of amazing things and spend time with family, which is really the point.  Some fun trip statistics for you:

• Countries visited: 5 (France, Italy, Croatia, Greece, Holland – kind of)
• Miles traveled: 13,100 (excluding walking around locally)
• Photos taken: about 2,000, but I’ve deleted some since

I hope you enjoyed the trip report!

Between Katakalon and Venice the time changed, giving us an extra hour.  Unfortunately, I forgot to set my watch back.  So, I woke up at 5:00 thinking it was 6:00, then woke Debi up at 6:30 instead of 7:30.  Oops!  It worked out okay as we got to go the nice restaurant for breakfast one last time.  We then said goodbye to the rest of the family who had different travel arrangements home and disembarked.  Everyone else was staying onboard until 3:30 as their flights were late in the evening.  We made it to the Venice airport by 9:30 but couldn’t check in for our 2:30 flight until 2 hours before, which is some bizarre rule at that airport (maybe in Europe, generally?), so we played outside near the baggage claim for a few hours.  Since we still had all of our luggage, we pulled out some of Toren’s toys and let him play with them.  This attracted the attention of some other children waiting around, so Toren ended up making a couple of friends, an Italian girl and a British girl.

We finally headed up to check in around 12:00, but the line was already very backed up for our flight.  We got really worried that we would miss our flight, especially since traveling internationally with a lap child seems to require very complicated paperwork (it took us almost 20 minutes to check us in).  We finally made it past security with minutes to spare and made it to our plane just in time to board (at the very end of the line).  Additionally, for some reason our seats weren’t together, so Debi had to handle Toren by herself.  Meanwhile, I chatted with a nice couple from England (mostly the husband), who regaled me with a number of stories, mostly about Saint Anthony (he was a devout Catholic with a deep interest in Saint Anthony).  Toren did okay on the flight, luckily, so Debi wasn’t too upset about us sitting apart.  And the couple she sat next to were helpful and understanding.

Our connection was in Amsterdam.  We had to hurry through that airport as well as we didn’t have much time between flights.  Unfortunately, however, our flight out of Amsterdam was delayed by about an hour and a half, first because of a straggler, then because of a mechanical problem. The flight was relatively uneventful, but we didn’t get much sleep.

When we arrived in Atlanta, we were delayed pulling up to a gate as well, by about 20 minutes.  Once we disembarked, we literally ran through the airport to try to catch our connection to Tampa, but we arrived at the gate just as they sealed the door to the plane.  We were not alone.  There were about 8 of us on the flight from Amsterdam who were all trying to make the Tampa flight.  Unfortunately, there wasn’t anyone around to help us reschedule, so we ended up traipsing through the airport for about an hour trying to figure out who could help us (there was an Italian family that didn’t speak much English that we were trying to help as well).  We eventually found a ticket agent, who set us up with rooms at a nearby hotel for the night and booked us on an early flight the next morning.  We checked into the hotel around midnight and had to be back at the airport at 5:30.

Our last day on the cruise was at sea as we were traveling from Katakalon (Katakolo) back to Venice.  I woke up around 6:00 am and couldn’t go back to sleep, so I headed up to the library to do some work. The ship seemed empty at that time – a few people were in the hot tub, probably still up from the previous night, but I mostly saw ship staff cleaning. I grabbed some coffee and watched the sunrise in the library while working on my trip notes and looking at photos from the trip.

We really didn’t do much all day.  Toren and Debi slept in, then we went to breakfast.  At one point we went up to the 11th floor nightclub with Gary and Rosemary and blew bubbles for Toren to chase around, but that was about the extent of our activities.  We spent a good part of the day just getting everything packed up and ready to go home the next day.  It was actually quite nice to have the last day be just a day at sea so we could relax and get ready to go home.

After our last dinner in the nice restaurant we went to another show hoping Toren would do well like he did the previous night.  The show was a magician, Mark Taylor. He was pretty good with sleight of hand tricks, but his total show lasted 20 minutes before he had used up all of his material.  Some of his tricks weren’t even all that impressive if you know how some of them are done (Debi used to date a magician and so knows a lot of the tricks).  We went to bed shortly after the show ended.

We didn’t have to get up as early this morning as our excursion met at 8:15, so we got up at 7:15, which was right about the time I felt like I had slept enough (Toren too). After a quick breakfast, we got our tour bus stickers got on our bus. We drove straight to Olympia and the Olympia Archaeological Site, which is about 30 minutes from Katakolo by bus. There is a modern day city of Olympia, but it is quite small and, like most of Greece, heavily dependent upon tourism with just a few hotels, restaurants, and gift shops. The major attraction, of course, is the ruin of the original Olympic stadium and all of its accompanying buildings – temples, training rooms, Roman bathhouses, etc.

The official start date of the Greek Olympic Games is 776 BCE, but our guide  our guide said that they started before that, possibly as early as 1,000 BCE.  noted early on that the olympic games pre-date the official start date by the Greeks of 776 by about 230 years – so they may have started as early as 1000 BCE. They were held religiously (and I do mean religiously; they were dedicated to Zeus) every four years (with some additional games at other locations around Greece in the off years) until about 393 CE, when Christianity took over the Roman empire and all things Pagan were not only abandoned but outlawed.  Anyway, before anthropologists excavated the ruins, they were completely covered with sand, dirt, and vegetation and, of course, much of the site had been looted. Thus, the adoption of Christianity by the Roman Empire is responsible for the nearly 1,500 year hiatus in the Olympic Games.  A French historian, Pierre de Coubertin, was the founder of the International Olympic Committee and the person who lobbied to bring back the Olympic Games.   His heart is buried in a silver box in the ruins of Olympia.

We spent about 3 hours at the ruins, walking around with our tour guide. Our guide wasn’t great this time. He would stop every 50 meters or so (I’m starting to think in meters after spending 2 weeks in Europe) and drone on and on, repeating himself 4 to 8 times during the course of the tour. Toren couldn’t take the standing around and got antsy, so he and I traipsed all over the ruins well before the rest of our tour group did. We saw the temple of Zeus, which, before the statue of Zeus was taken to Constantinople (probably by the Romans) and then burned (possibly by Christians) was one of the 7 wonders of the Ancient World.  Here’s what it may have looked like before it was destroyed:

The Statue of Zeus at Olympia

Today, all that is left is a ruined temple:

Debi in front of Zeus's Temple

The one pillar you see standing was reconstructed for the Olympic Games in Greece in 2004.  Here’s a panorama of the entire Temple of Zeus:

panorama of Zeus's Temple (click to enlarge)

The Temple of Hera is where the Olympic flame is lit every time there is an Olympic event. That is, of course, a modern tradition started by Germany in 1936 under Hitler and Goebbels for propaganda purposes. There is no constant flame there and, in fact, the alter in front of the temple of Hera is quite modest:

Debi in front of Hera's altar, where the Olympic flame is lit

You can see the Temple of Hera, which was likely the second largest temple after Zeus’s, just behind Debi in the above photo.  Here we are in front of it:

the three of us in front of Hera's Temple

The sculptor of the statue of Zeus, Phidias, had a workshop in Olympia (which was later turned into a Christian church). He is recognized as one of the greatest sculptors of his time.

The most impressive site is probably the stadium, which is quite massive and could have accomodated about 40,000 people. As our guide in Athens noted, the original stadium did not include seats or benches; people sat on the ground. The copy in Athens has benches, but those were added by the Romans. The stadium in Olympia was used for all sorts of races and includes two finish lines, one for men and one for women. I tried to get Toren to run the length of the stadium, but he only made it half way. I walked the rest of it – it’s actually quite far – 180+ meters.  Here are Suzy and Debi at the entrance to the stadium:

Suzy and Debi at the entrance to the Olympic stadium

Here are Toren and I on one edge of the stadium:

Toren and I at the original Olympic stadium (photo by Brent)

And a panorama of the stadium:

panorama of the original Olympic stadium (click to enlarge)

From the ruins, we walked up to the archaeological museum, which contains the statues and other remaining objects from the ruins. The museum has many statues, but many are missing. The decorations of the temple of Zeus are set up roughly as they would have been seen on the outside of the temple, which is pretty cool.  Once again, I had to leave the tour group as Toren was getting antsy, so I did a quick walk through then let Toren run around in the court yard outside. I also picked up some baklava, which was good, but not amazingly different from what I’ve had in the U.S.  Toren and Ethan played for a while in the courtyard, then we headed back to the buses and drove into Olympia for about 15 minutes of shopping. We then drove back to the ship. We could have walked around Katakalon more, but we didn’t want to buy anything else and there aren’t any other particularly famous things to see in Katakalon, so we boarded the ship and ate lunch.

After lunch we took Toren to the pool. He loved it, but we were booted out after about 30 minutes by a pool attendant when they realized Toren wears a diaper. No kids with diapers allowed! And there is no other pool for them. This is kind of annoying considering ½ of the main pool onboard is a wading pool that is about 2 inches deep, and then about 1 ½ feet deep and it is fenced off from the rest of the pool, so it is clearly designed for little kids. But they wouldn’t allow it. So, we left. We then took a nap and went to dinner.

We did make it to the onboard show this night. Debi saw that it was a ballroom dance extravaganza, so she really wanted to try to make it, and given that Toren had been falling asleep around 10:00 pm, that meant he might make it through the show that started at 9:15. So, we went with Gary, Rosemary, Brent, Suzy, and Ethan. Toren made it through about half the show before falling asleep. It turns out the show was pretty good. There were two dancers who seemed like they were probably professional ballroom dancers. The other six (three couples) were decent dancers, but not nearly as polished as the main couple. The singers were also good, but not amazing. Basically they performed a variety of dance numbers set to popular music with ballroom rhythms – chacha, swing, country swing, tango, etc. With Toren out, we went to bed after the show.

Our third stop in Greece was in Mykonos, a Greek island famous for its white buildings with blue roofs and doors, beaches, and night life.  Here’s a shot of the buildings:

the iconic architecture of Mykonos (photo courtesy of Brent)

We arrived early (7:00 am) and had to meet for our excursion at 7:15.  We struggled to get up as Toren woke up repeatedly through the night and only made it in time because Rosemary knocked on our door.  We had different excursions this day as well.  Brent, Suzy, and Ethan opted for the beaches of Mykonos while the rest of us headed to the island of Delos, one of the most important mythological and archaeological sites in Greece.  Delos is about 20-30 minutes away from Mykonos by boat.  Delos was a holy site long before Greek mythology turned it into the birthplace of both Apollo and Artemis.  At its apex, almost the entire island was covered with one massive, booming city.  According to our guide, there were over 60,000 inhabitants (today there are 14). It was covered with temples and monuments, most of which have been raided.  Since 1872, the French School of Athens has been excavating the island.  The island is fascinating because it has very few natural resources – no timber or arable land as it is too dry.  What little water the island has is stored in cisterns and the dirty water is managed through a complex sewer system (that actually runs under the cities streets; you can see it through the cracks in the rocks).  All the resources used by the inhabitants were shipped in, which was obviously a considerable amount considering the size of the population.  Delos was also quite multicultural as the Romans eliminated taxes on the island.  Everyone from the Naxos/Cycladic Culture (who were quite powerful before the Greek Athenians came to power; our guide was from Naxos and talked about it a lot) to the Egyptians set up shops and temples here.

Unfortunately, the place has basically been ransacked and most of the amazing artwork and sculpture has been taken by looters, but it’s still pretty amazing.  One of the first things our guide showed us was a portico donated by King Philip V of Macedonia, which still has the Greek writing on it indicating that he gave it as a gift to the island, the visitors of the island, and the gods.  Here’s the portico today:

portico donated by King Philip V of Macedonia, now lying on the ground but originally was quite a tall structure

Another remarkable site are the famed lions donated by the Naxos, which haven’t weathered well, but are still quite impressive considering they are close to 4,000 years old:

the three of us by the Naxos lions

Our guide also pointed out a still-standing herm (or herma), which is a squared statue with a head (typically of Hermes, the messenger god and protector of merchants and travelers).  More interestingly, the genitalia were also typically part of the sculpture and occasionally the erect penis held a sign with information or directions (the one below, unfortunately, is sans phallus):

a herm, sans penis and dangling sign

I think life would be more interesting if all of our road and information signs were herms today.  Don’t you?

As I mentioned, Delos is known for being the birthplace of Apollo.  According to Greek mythology, Leto, Apollo’s mother, was banned from giving birth on “terra firma” by Hera (Zeus’s wife; Zeus was the father, that scoundrel).  Delos was a newly created floating island at the time.  Leto found Delos and gave birth in the middle of the sacred lake, holding a palm tree, first to Artemis, and then to Apollo.  The sacred lake has been drained to prevent the spread of disease, but the lake bed is still there and there is a palm tree in the center:

the sacred lake, birthplace of Apollo and Artemis

Here we are at the birthplace of Apollo and Artemis:

the three of us at the birthplace of Apollo and Artemis

I’ve never visited the birthplace of a god before!  How cool is that?!?

Another temple had two very large phalluses standing guard at the entrance.  The phallus was often revered by the Greeks, who saw it as a symbol of fertility.  Unfortunately, they were both broken:

Debi by a broken phallus; poor phallus

From here we wandered into the ruins, visiting houses dedicated to various gods and other figures.  We visited homes dedicated to Trident, Poseidon, and a Cleopatra, but not “that” Cleopatra.  We eventually worked our way up to the very large amphitheater. However, on the way Toren started getting antsy, so he and I took off and left the rest of the group, climbing around the ruins.  We actually climbed to the top of the amphitheater before our group arrived and took this shot of the group as they entered:

view of the amphitheater from the top

Steve, in turn, took a shot of Toren and I at the top of the amphitheater:

Toren and I at the top of the amphitheater

The tour ended at the amphitheater.  Our guide, who was really good by the way, had noted that the mountain at the center of the island was called Mount Cynthus, which is the root for Cynthia, which is a different version of the name Artemis. We could see the mountain in the distance and noted that there was a path to climb it:

Mount Cynthos; the horizontal dark line is a stairway; the temple ruins you see at the bottom right are of an Egyptian temple

I asked the guide if we could climb it.  He said yes and that it was an easy climb.  Gary, Rosemary, and Debi weren’t interested, so I left Toren with them at the amphitheater and Steve and I set out to climb Mount Cynthos.  Twenty minutes later we were at the top:

Ryan at the top of Mount Cynthos

While up here I took a number of pictures to build a panorama of the great view, which I pieced into two photos:

panorama 1 of Delos (click to enlarge)

panorama 2 of Delos (click to enlarge)

If you look closely in the panoramas you’ll see rock walls running the length of the island.  As I noted above, the entire island was at one point inhabited, but only a small portion has been excavated.  The wall illustrates that the ruins do cover the entire island.  The island was, like most things pagan, abandoned with the spread of Christianity (the exception being temples that were converted to churches).

On our way to Mount Cynthos I saw a temple about half way up the mountain that no one was visiting.  On our way back down we found the path to it and worked our way over to it.  Turns out it isn’t a temple but the ancient entry to Mount Cynthos:

Ryan in front of the ancient entrance to Mount Cynthos; the sign to the right indicated what this was

We hiked back down the mountain and met back up with everyone at the amphitheater.  Toren was having a ball running around the amphitheater but was excited to see me:

Toren at the amphitheater

By this point we had about 30 minutes until we had to be back on the boat.  Debi, Steve, Toren, and I ran over to the museum, which houses the more sensitive sculptures and decorations that have been preserved from the ruins.  We didn’t have much time, but worked through the museum quickly.  A lot of the ancient artifacts have been plundered over the years, so not much remains.  We then got back on our boat and headed back to Mykonos.

We walked around Mykonos for a little bit, following the boardwalk to the nearby beach.  We also walked through some of the of the narrow back streets (stopping to buy some more wipes for Toren; we were running low).  We also found a free wifi hotspot, so Steve and I stopped to check our email for a few minutes.  We then headed back to the ship and grabbed a bite to eat at the buffet.

Mykonos does look very cool with the nearly uniform white buildings with blue accents.  The uniformity makes it very quaint.  Brent and Suzy said the beach was nice – not great sand, but the water was very clear.  Oh, and they went to a “family” beach; there are “adult” beaches too.

As was quickly becoming the pattern, we took a nap in the afternoon, waking up in time to get ready for dinner.  It was the second and last formal night, so Toren got fancied up in his tuxedo again.  We didn’t get as many pictures this time as he was still tired, but we snapped a few:

Toren eating pizza in his tux

Ethan, Toren, and Rosemary at dinner

We tried to go dancing again this night, but Toren wasn’t game.  Rosemary was with us and every time we’d start dancing, Toren would run out on to the dance floor and grab Debi.  So we called it a night and just went back to the room to put Toren down then fell asleep ourselves.