A fact-filled tour of ancient Greece and its extraordinary monuments leaves both kids and parents wide-eyed with wonder
Ed Grenby - 18 January 2024
Percy Jackson and the Olympians
Episode 7 available Wednesday on Disney+
We look at the rock. The rock doesn’t transform into a five-man-high monster, horns as sharp as diamonds, slavering jaws wide enough to swallow a human. We look at each other – me scanning my nine-year-old’s face for signs of disappointment. Miraculously, I find none. Despite having read every one of Rick Riordan’s bestselling Percy Jackson books, watched the Pierce Brosnan/ Uma Thurman/Sean Bean movie adaptations, and even seen bits of the brand-new, big-budget Disney+ series (which climaxes next week), my son Otis is gazing at this simple bit of stone with the same wide-eyed wonder as he bestows on the Hollywood FX wizardry of the screen versions and fairy-tale fireworks of the novels.
That, I suppose, is the enchantment of ancient Greece and its still-standing monuments, because the chunk of masonry we’re gazing at is a 2,500-year-old piece of the Parthenon, atop the Acropolis in Athens. And while much of the Percy Jackson action occurs in its 12-year-old hero’s home town of modern-day New York, the magic comes straight from Greek myth (“Percy” is short for Perseus, and the youngster soon discovers he is the son of Poseidon).
I’ve promised Otis an insight into that world, and signed us up to a Percy-slanted tour from an expert in the field (greekmythologytours.com), who brilliantly engages kids with not just titbits from the tales, but fascinating “real history” facts snuck in there, too: the stubbornly non-metamorphosising stone block before us is “part of a 25,000-piece 3D jigsaw with no instructions,” explains our guide, Eva. “They completed the reconstruction of one side of the Parthenon in 2010. But they started in 1860!”
It’s no wonder Otis looks impressed, and Eva is even able to find bits of the Acropolis Museum that keep him interested (Look! A Lego recreation of the site, and a hologram of the 40-foot gold-and-ivory statue of Athena that once stood in the Parthenon!). My attention levels are maintained, meanwhile, by a lunch of goddess-light calamari and sensational charcoal- crusty lamb chops, so that in the afternoon we’re both ready for the nearby Temple of Olympian Zeus (just a short stroll from our chic Acropolis-view accommodation, New Hotel; yeshotelsgr/newhotel). Around a dozen of the Temple’s 104 columns remain erect, one lies where a storm toppled it in 1852, and the atmosphere is shiveringly electric: without the crowds and reconstruction work of the Acropolis, it’s like you’re wandering right into a world of gods and heroes.
It took 600 years to complete (Otis’s eyes widen once more); but just as jaw-dropping is the fact that the Temple of Poseidon, an hour’s drive up the gorgeous coast on Cape Sounion, took only four years. It’s another stunner – as large as legend, as mysterious as myth – and even more dramatic at sunset, when its marble seems to turn from honey-hued to silver as the daylight fades.
It’s said that it was here that Aegeus hurled himself into the waves when his son Theseus returned in a black-sailed boat from slaying the Minotaur (Theseus, I recount to my boy pointedly, had forgotten his father’s instructions to hoist white sails as a sign of success), and for the second part of our holiday we head for the Minotaur’s home island of Crete.
While the poor beast – a CGI star of the Disney+ series – is imprisoned in the Labyrinth designed for him by Daedalus (“Remember him, Otis? Another dad whose son, Icarus, wouldn’t listen…”), we’re happily ensconced in Cretan Malia Park (cretanmaliapark.gr), a stylish resort that combines all the pools and beaches and family-friendly restaurants kids could want, with the lovely authentic architecture and peaceful gardens that make it an Elysium for adults, too.
We escape on various day trips – notably to the Cave of Zeus, said to be the old thunderbolt- chucker’s birthplace. It’s a truly supernatural- feeling, underground infinity, where the eerie beauty of the stalactites and stalagmites is matched only by the mind-blowing mathematics of their age: Otis runs out of counting fingers when our guide (from kidslovegreece.com) tells us they grow at 0.01cm a year, meaning that these 20-metre ones are 200,000 years old – more ancient even than Zeus.
Then there’s Knossos itself, where much of King Minos’s palace – underneath which the Labyrinth was said to sprawl – still stands. Here, our guide gives us the stories, then apologetically adds the actual facts: the “Labyrinth” was probably merely the many-roomed palace and its attached warehouse complex, the all-consuming “Minotaur” simply a metaphor for earthquakes.
Even in the Med-warm light of day, though, the magic holds – and our trip ends on another memorable moment with a bit of old rock. Caught briefly in a ray of sunshine, the selenium that veins naturally through the palace’s stone shimmers like moonlight (it is named, after all, for Selene, the Greeks’ lunar goddess). “I thought for a second that a god was appearing,” says Otis – fooled by ancient Greece’s all-natural special effects. ED GRENBY
We look at the rock. The rock doesn’t transform into a five-man-high monster, horns as sharp as diamonds, slavering jaws wide enough to swallow a human. We look at each other – me scanning my nine-year-old’s face for signs of disappointment. Miraculously, I find none. Despite having read every one of Rick Riordan’s bestselling Percy Jackson books, watched the Pierce Brosnan/ Uma Thurman/Sean Bean movie adaptations, and even seen bits of the brand-new, big-budget Disney+ series (which climaxes next week), my son Otis is gazing at this simple bit of stone with the same wide-eyed wonder as he bestows on the Hollywood FX wizardry of the screen versions and fairy-tale fireworks of the novels.
That, I suppose, is the enchantment of ancient Greece and its still-standing monuments, because the chunk of masonry we’re gazing at is a 2,500-year-old piece of the Parthenon, atop the Acropolis in Athens. And while much of the Percy Jackson action occurs in its 12-year-old hero’s home town of modern-day New York, the magic comes straight from Greek myth (“Percy” is short for Perseus, and the youngster soon discovers he is the son of Poseidon).
I’ve promised Otis an insight into that world, and signed us up to a Percy-slanted tour from an expert in the field (greekmythologytours.com), who brilliantly engages kids with not just titbits from the tales, but fascinating “real history” facts snuck in there, too: the stubbornly non-metamorphosising stone block before us is “part of a 25,000-piece 3D jigsaw with no instructions,” explains our guide, Eva. “They completed the reconstruction of one side of the Parthenon in 2010. But they started in 1860!”
It’s no wonder Otis looks impressed, and Eva is even able to find bits of the Acropolis Museum that keep him interested (Look! A Lego recreation of the site, and a hologram of the 40-foot gold-and-ivory statue of Athena that once stood in the Parthenon!). My attention levels are maintained, meanwhile, by a lunch of goddess-light calamari and sensational charcoal- crusty lamb chops, so that in the afternoon we’re both ready for the nearby Temple of Olympian Zeus (just a short stroll from our chic Acropolis-view accommodation, New Hotel; yeshotelsgr/newhotel). Around a dozen of the Temple’s 104 columns remain erect, one lies where a storm toppled it in 1852, and the atmosphere is shiveringly electric: without the crowds and reconstruction work of the Acropolis, it’s like you’re wandering right into a world of gods and heroes.
It took 600 years to complete (Otis’s eyes widen once more); but just as jaw-dropping is the fact that the Temple of Poseidon, an hour’s drive up the gorgeous coast on Cape Sounion, took only four years. It’s another stunner – as large as legend, as mysterious as myth – and even more dramatic at sunset, when its marble seems to turn from honey-hued to silver as the daylight fades.
It’s said that it was here that Aegeus hurled himself into the waves when his son Theseus returned in a black-sailed boat from slaying the Minotaur (Theseus, I recount to my boy pointedly, had forgotten his father’s instructions to hoist white sails as a sign of success), and for the second part of our holiday we head for the Minotaur’s home island of Crete.
While the poor beast – a CGI star of the Disney+ series – is imprisoned in the Labyrinth designed for him by Daedalus (“Remember him, Otis? Another dad whose son, Icarus, wouldn’t listen…”), we’re happily ensconced in Cretan Malia Park (cretanmaliapark.gr), a stylish resort that combines all the pools and beaches and family-friendly restaurants kids could want, with the lovely authentic architecture and peaceful gardens that make it an Elysium for adults, too.
We escape on various day trips – notably to the Cave of Zeus, said to be the old thunderbolt- chucker’s birthplace. It’s a truly supernatural- feeling, underground infinity, where the eerie beauty of the stalactites and stalagmites is matched only by the mind-blowing mathematics of their age: Otis runs out of counting fingers when our guide (from kidslovegreece.com) tells us they grow at 0.01cm a year, meaning that these 20-metre ones are 200,000 years old – more ancient even than Zeus.
Then there’s Knossos itself, where much of King Minos’s palace – underneath which the Labyrinth was said to sprawl – still stands. Here, our guide gives us the stories, then apologetically adds the actual facts: the “Labyrinth” was probably merely the many-roomed palace and its attached warehouse complex, the all-consuming “Minotaur” simply a metaphor for earthquakes.
Even in the Med-warm light of day, though, the magic holds – and our trip ends on another memorable moment with a bit of old rock. Caught briefly in a ray of sunshine, the selenium that veins naturally through the palace’s stone shimmers like moonlight (it is named, after all, for Selene, the Greeks’ lunar goddess). “I thought for a second that a god was appearing,” says Otis – fooled by ancient Greece’s all-natural special effects. ED GRENBY