Traveling with Aspergers: An Aspie in Athens, Greece

 

This is my family in Greece. On the trip that would not end. 

We are in front of the Temple of Zeus.

This is my brother Max petting a mangie dog. He seemed to want to pet every homeless animal we found. And we found a lot.

Travel Tip #24: There are a lot of "monument pets" that hang out at the places where people visit. They are actually pretty tame and are used to the crowds. But they all could use a bath.

Travel Tip #25: An American is more likely to get rabbies from a dog in a foreign country rather than in the United States. So stop petting the stray dogs, Max. 

Travel Tip #26: Your hair sometimes does crazy stuff when you travel. If people tease you about it just say, "I'm on VACATION."

We were all pretty happy when we got off the cruise ship and saw our personal tour guide and our personal driver with our personal van. There were lots of buses crammed with people going to the same places. I was really really glad to not be on the buses. I hate being crammed in anywhere. 

Travel Tip #27: This is worth repeating - If you are a large family or group, it is often cheaper to have a private tour and driver than sign up for the cruise ship's bus of sardines.

Travel tip #28: Keep your eyes open in Greece, there is cool super-old stuff mixed in with regular stuff everywhere. I don't know what this ruin is, but it is kinda cool to see it right at the road. If I owned it, I'd serve Slurpees just through the arch. 

Travel Tip #29: The phrase "It's all Greek to me" doesn't work in Greece. Because a lot of it is Greek. Our tour guide said if he used the phrase, which he didn't, he would say, "It is all Dutch to me."

Going up to the Acropolis is where our day started to fall apart. Our guide said there were a lot more people than normal there that day. He said there were extra cruise ships in port (one being ours) and it made it super crowded. Awesome. This is my family moving through the super slow line and taking pictures. 

See me? I'm the one crumpled on the ground. Crowds make me tired and irritable and pretty much want to run the other direction. 

Travel Tip #30: A private tour guide can take you to the tourist spots in a different order than how most people visit them (like going to the Acropolis later in the day when most people go first on their stops). He seems to be able to bypass some of the lines because he knows where he is going and because the people at the gates recognize him from visiting so often. 

Travel Tip #31: Tour Guides are not psychic and can not predict huge crowd swells from extra cruise ships until you find yourself crumpled on the ground and full of despair. 

 

This is us in front of the Parthenon. And, of course, scaffolding because there is scaffolding everywhere when you visit old stuff.

Travel Tip #33: The scaffolding has been around the Parthenon pretty much my whole life time and will probably be there the rest of my life. This is surprising to people because every photo and every movie you see shows the Parthenon without the scaffolding. Lies. They are all lies. As Christie would say, "Look at it. LOOK. AT. IT."

The Parthenon was in pretty decent shape for such an old building in like 1656 when the Venetians attacked. The Ottoman guys put all of their ammunition inside the Parthenon. So just one Venetian mortar shell made it inside and exploded all the ammunition. The building pretty much blew up with one shot, from the inside out.

Basically, the more these ancient buidings were used (and not blown up) the better shape they stayed in.

I think this is the Parthenon reflected in my sunglasses.

Travel Tip #34: If you are traveling with someone with Asperger's, please carry our sunglasses. I pretty much am going to always have them with me and never put them down or totally forget and leave them in the first place I walk into on the trip. No in between. Just assume I will do the second thing.

Travel Tip #35: Do reoccurring photos. Like my mom tried to get pictures of me with the monuments reflected in my sunglasses. She got pictures of my brother, Max, wearing these crazy gold sunglasses in front of stuff. Alex just held up the 2 Flat Stanleys that we took with us. Anyway, if you have reoccurring photos you take of people, they may get into the spirit and start liking having their picture taken. Or they could get obsessed with it like, Max, and insist you take loads of pictures of them and the stupid gold glasses everywhere.

I was leaning against these pieces of marble that fell off the building and they are trying to figure out where they go (worst puzzle ever). Mom took my picture and said how I was touching something so super old. I wasn't sure if that was o.k. and cool or I was in trouble...so I moved away from it.

This is us in front of Athena's Temple. It is next to the Parthenon. On top of the Acropolis.

Travel tip #36: The Parthenon and Athena's Temple are buildings on top of a hill called The Acropolis. If you google any of these 3 places, you see pictures of 3 different things and it is confusing. 

This is the view walking back down. In the swarm of people who all slow down to take a picture. Like we did.

This is the Temple of Hephaestus. It looks pretty good because they still used and repaired it until like 100 years ago.

This rock thing is the Areopagus. They used it for lots of stuff including a site to worship the unknown god. Like if they left one out and he showed up - they could cover and say but this is your rock. This is where Paul gave his famous speech telling the people that the unknown god they refer to is the God. It got their attention. 

This is us at an authentic Greek restaurant.

Travel Tip #37: American Greek food and Greek Greek food taste very different.

There was an octopus hanging up outside of the restaurant and bees were swarming all around it. Then we looked around and it was gone. And we were the only people in the whole restaurant at the time. My dad talked to the owner and asked him to just make us some of their best foods to taste. He took my dad back to the kitchen while he was cooking our food. LOOK AT WHAT IS IN HIS HAND...

Those things that look like fried green beans on the far right:  they are skinny, tiny fish. You eat everything.

 

You can read my other travel tips here:

Travel Tips 1-9  Traveling with Asperger's: An Aspie in Paris

Travel Tips 10-16  Traveling with Asperger's: An Aspie in Florence

Travel Tips 17-22  Traveling with Asperger's: An Aspie in Venice

Travel Tip 23 Traveling with Asperger's: An Aspie Almost in Dubrovnik, Croatia

Comments

[Tracy Wallace]

I sure love all your posts, David (and Christie).
Would love to see a wrap up post on this trip from your parents. What would they do differently? They obviously tried to accommodate all things aspie as much as balancing the whole family's trip but an honest review on what worked and what didn't would be amazing. Just a suggestion.

Thanks and keep posting....both of you...love your blog!

[novamom]

Omg, the octopus. /shudder. My Aspie doesn't travel well. Of course she's 8, that could change. But my husband doesn't travel well either. So pretty much we vacation within a short drive of home. It works.