A Greek shadow puppetry convention in Athens.

We had to go. 

I knew hubby wanted to be there among his Greek Shadow Puppetry friends attending the first ever Convention on "The Greek Shadow Puppetry as intangible heritage",organized by the Greek and Byzantine Sector of the Granada University of Spain.

So we flew to Athens the previous weekend with those low cost airlines that have very reasonably priced tickets.

Friday afternoon after school directly to the airport, a very short flight to Athens airport and from there by underground to the city centre at the building of the Old Parliament that also houses the National Historic Museum.

The talks were very interesting and we learnt so many things.

We also visited the Greek Shadow Puppetry exhibition which you should not miss, those of you living in Athens.

We were lucky to be personally guided at the exhibition by Mihalis Hatzakis, a very famous Greek Shadow puppeteer.

I also took the chance to visit the museum.It had some incredibly beautiful artifacts.

Even cross stitched pieces.

We didn't have much free time to walk around unfortunately.

But we managed to meet some of our shadow puppeteer friends

and attend a performance by the Ilias Karellas theatre playing "The only journey of his life" by George Viziinos. It was a magical performance of shadows, light, music,songs and acting. We really enjoyed it.

With Kostas Arzoglou.

With Zacharoula Klimatsaki.

Just before going to the airport we also visited some of our relatives to celebrate two birthday boys!

It was  a very short trip during which we didn't manage to see as many people and places as we wanted. We really have to go back to Athens for a longer period. Still it was great being there!

A weekend in Athens.

It was one more unexpected thing.
Due to the fact that our play won third place in the Orestiada Amateur Theatre Festival we were invited to present our play in Athens.
It was a great chance for us to show what we can do! But things were hectic. Still we had great fun!
We started early on Saturday morning under a bit of rain.

But we were happy we were going to Athens.

We arrived at the theatre and at once put up our stage materials and tried the lights.It was the Argo Theatre, owned by Emilia Ypsilande.

Then we went to our hotel Mistral at Castella!What a good hotel and what great views it had!

We had a quick lunch at Cheers Beer bar opposite the hotel. It was very good!

Then we went back to the theatre and presented our performance.
The Sub Minister of Education was there and gave us our awards from the Festival. But no one took photos of that!
All of my cousins and one of hubby's too, came to see the performance and then we went out to a great dinner at Rooster's Egg (To avgo toy kokora).
I think that was the highlight of our short stay in Athens.

The next morning after breakfast we spent time at the roof garden of the hotel.

I loved that house opposite the hotel with the amazing garden on their roof too!

 View from our room.

 Then our bus took us to the city centre. We walked at Dionysiou Aeropagitou and all the way to Monastiraki passing through lots of archaeology sites as well as handicraft and antique sellers.

 I loved the Karaghiozis puppets.

 And the views of the train passing next to Stoa Attalou.

 Beautiful buildings. This one has my kitchen colour combination!

 And views of the Acropolis of course.

 Monastiraki.

 Look at that glass ceiling in the antique store.

 I could have bought all of these!Great colours.

 We visited a ceramic art exhibition inside that building which is now the Museum of Traditional Greek ceramics but used to be a Turkish mosque. You can find very interesting information about Monastiraki here.

 We had lunch at Bairaktaris.

 We saw great art in an art gallery.

 And had coffee at Metropol.

 The sun was fast setting and we had one more performance to do.
The Parliament looked so beautiful in the setting sun!

Immediately after the performance we left.

I took with me great memories, lots of pictures, our awards,

and a beautiful vase which I bought for only four euros and it is glowing under UV light!

Many thanks to the Teachers' Assocation for covering our expenses!