by The ancient Odeon of Herodes Atticus is protected by Athena, Dionysus, Zeus and Elton John. The first three – in their respective roles as patron gods of Athens, drama and the entire Hellenic world – have been taking care of the still magnificent theater at the base of the Acropolis since it was built in AD 161; Elton (in his role as the god of funny specs?) has been doing his thing, along with Placido Domingo, Sting and others, by playing concerts there since 2000. apparently maintenance, so the money collected comes in handy; For all his “patronage”, Zeus has misplaced his checkbook for the past few thousand years.
If that combination of ancient, divine and Rocket Man modernity bothers you, so you’re probably avoiding the TV show of the moment: Percy Jackson and the Olympics – the Croesus-budgeted Disney+ adaptation of Rick Riordan’s squillion-selling children’s books – which ends its first season tonight. Well, 12-year-old New Yorker Percy (short for Perseus) finds out he’s the son of Poseidon, fights a meteor, gets the golden fleece back and… actually, if I’m being honest, I stopped listen to my nine years. Sean fixed explanations of the plots somewhere after the first few months of his obsession. But I would, I agreed, take him and his almost 11-year-old brother to Crete (birthplace of Zeus, home of the original Minotaur) and Athens (birthplace of Dionysus, home of several seafood restaurants of excellent; who says it has to be about the kids?).
Worried that their enthusiasm for Greek mythology might melt as the wings of Icarus tackled a load of ancient stones and several museums, I embark on a child-friendly Percy Jackson-themed tour from a company that specializes in them (greekmythologytours. com). Despite her degree in ancient Greek and archaeology, our guide Eva is a dusty purist: she draws my boys in with her TV presenter energy levels and genuine enthusiasm for the books (her version of the gods and goddesses, she tells me out of earshot, “the original stories have changed little – they just say ‘dating’ instead of ‘rape'”).
She also gives each child an iPad, loaded with augmented reality software that overlays interactive features onto whatever they point their camera at. But no such modern magic is necessary: as our group reaches the Acropolis plateau through its giant, god-sized Propylaea gates, every eye widens and every hair stands on end at least a little.
The incidental music rises in our heads unnervingly, then there’s a cinematic moment any director would be proud of, the October half-term sun slipping in between the columns of the roofless Parthenon.
Even the kids gasp a little at this first scene – I don’t know if it’s the age, the stories woven around it or the pure aesthetics, some timeless algebra of perfect proportion – and then (another classic trick from the cinematographer’s manual) we get to tell them that’s just the Back door they are looking at, and we pan around to the large front portico.
Eva blows her mind a little further with a description of the 40ft gold-and-ivory statue of Athena that was once here, evoking our grimacey British half-smiles as she tries to apologize. those missing marbles, and he tells us the most pleasant pieces tween-in the Acropolis Museum (ancient public eight-man toilet, and the comic book punch of the Centauromachy friezes – bulging marble muscles and arms all crunching graphically into flesh).
The next day, we push in a few thousand years more: the magisterial Temple of Olympian Zeus (which took 600 years to build), the Temple of Hephaestus (its interior and altar still imagination-firingly intact), and Panathenaic Stadium, where the original Olympians are. competition, exposure, in athletics. (“What do you think the prize was for the winner?”, I asked my boys, after discovering that it was an amphora of olive oil. “Clothes?” said the 11-year-old age.)
Similarly, it is unplucked at Sounion, a few miles outside of Athens, and the site of Aegeus’ suicide when his son Theseus returned from killing the minotaur but forgot to raise the white sails that would show victory. We both take a lesson from the story, but while my son is “Sons should listen to what their fathers say”, I’m afraid it’s “Theseus should do WhatsApp”.
As soon as the sun starts to set, however, it is impossible not to feel the many charms of the place. The honeyed Pentelic marble of the Temple of Poseidon seems to soak up the rosy glow of the sky, bursting with sunset through amber and peach before settling into a translucent moonlight-white. At the foot of those deadly cliffs is the Aegean itself, a brilliant blue infinity, the first islands approaching from afar – and we listened to their siren song (and that’s the ice cream parlor all day) going on Crete. next day, and Malia Cretan Park resort.
This was supposed to be a kiddie-pleasant, sun-sea-and-pizza-at-the-hotel-buffet part of the vacation. (In Athens we stayed at the sophisticated New Hotel in the lively Plaka area.) But in reality the Cretan Malia pulls back on the whole family thing while still feeling like a small Greek island village. Rooms, pools and restaurants are scattered throughout beautiful Homerically gardens that stretch down to the demerara-sugar beach, and the air is scented with olive tree, tamarisk and pomegranate. We paddleboard in temple-calm waters; I get a massage with fig massage oil and olive oil that leaves me smelling so good but I can barely resist licking my hands; and we feast like Dionysus himself at every meal – honey and thyme-infused yoghurt for breakfast, herbed garlic lamb slow-roasted over an open fire for dinner.
I love the laid back bar and the authentic restaurants; my boys were swinging for movie nights and milkshakes at the outdoor movie theater with a hammock. But not all children are so lucky. With the help of another great operator (kidslovegreece.com), we make the 40 minute drive to the Cave of Zeus one day: the supposed birthplace and nursery of the father of the gods, a non-existent soft play area. Down the long and steep stairs of the Orphans is Hades full of thunderingly grandiose power rock pillars where stalactites meet stalagmites to form a natural version of temple columns, strong enough to hold up the roof of the Earth itself.
Stalactites grow at just 1 centimeter per hundred, explains our guide, and with some here well 20 meters high, they easily before people. The jawline of the nine-year-old is visibly reduced.
A minor local myth holds that Crete’s ubiquitous soundtrack of falling goat stones was created to hide the location of Baby Zeus from his father, who wanted to kill him (we’ve all been there, right, fathers?). Something rarely seen until our guide leads us down the Gorge na Naomh the next day, where the high walls of a dry valley increase the ring until it is deafening. We walk, rock climb, abseil, poke our noses into a tiny 14th century church where the air is heavy with fatigue and the presence of those sad-eyed Greek Orthodox icons – then suddenly it opens the Gorge out on a wide screen, a perfect stony beach and the sparkling Libyan Sea like a fringe of golden dandruff trembling from the shoulder of the sun god Apollo.
Elysian is a positive, a location scout’s dream… which is more than can be said about Knossos, back in northern Crete, which we visit on our last day. You’d need a lot of CGI to recreate the Minotaur’s labyrinth from the ancient stone here – although, according to our guide, you might not mind. The “maze” of the legend simply refers to the large number of rooms in the palace/storehouse/temple complex, she says, referring to symbols carved repeatedly into the rock to mark their various functional areas, such as the different aisles in a supermarket. It’s not quite so magical when you think about it that way, but my boys love hunting for the “secret” signs: a double-headed Minoan ax subtly carved next to a door here, a trident etched at the bottom of a passage there.
So it turns out – Hollywood’s final schmaltzy alert – that it’s imagination rather than intellectual FX that brings Percy Jackson stories and Greek myths to life for my kids. Too cute? Don’t worry, they’re not above using what they’ve learned for nefarious purposes. In the late afternoon, the 11-year-old asks for something “truly ancient Greek” to eat, and I’m delighted – until he quotes our guide from earlier in the day about a fifth-century Athenian custom. BC honey mixed with snow from the mountains. He’s after ice cream, so he goes to the resort’s gelato section again. Do not underestimate the inspirational and educational power of television and television.
Fundamentals
Ed Grenby was a guest at New Hotel in Athens (yeshotelsgr/newhotel) which offers doubles from £148, one room; Cretan Malia Park (cretanmaliapark.gr) offers triples from £136, including breakfast; Greek Mythology Tours (greekmythologytours.com); and Kids Love Greece (kidslovegreece.com). Multiple airlines fly to Crete and Athens, and there are plenty of flights and ferries between the two (try aegeanair.com or minoan.gr), so it’s possible to put together an “open-jaw” trip to simple.
