WSJ: A Percy Jackson inspired family trip to Greece
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WSJ: A Percy Jackson inspired family trip to Greece

A Percy Jackson inspired family trip to Greece, is that even possible? According to Wall Street Journal and Liam Callanan yes it is! The young-adult book series sent a father and daughter searching for the ancient gods and  for a divine adventure. As Mr Callanan explains in his article entitled «A Percy Jackson inspired family trip to Greece», his trip to Greece with his daughter was worth it!

Read below the article:

MY LUNGS were burning, my legs wobbling. My first outing as an Olympic athlete was not going well. Then again, I was burdened with a backpack and jet lag.

My 11-year-old daughter had decided that the best way to experience ancient Olympia—a sprawling riverside complex in Greece where the Olympic Games were held starting in the eighth century B.C.—was to run the roughly 200-yard track that Zeus’s son Hercules supposedly laid out. Under the scorching midday sun, was it a smart thing to do? No. Did it make antiquity come alive in a rush that I can feel again typing these words? Ye gods, yes.

My daughter, Honor, is not only an athlete but a bookworm—particularly when it comes to Rick Riordan’s best-selling Percy Jackson series for kids. Mr. Riordan’s books, which follow the fictional children of the Greek gods as they roam the modern-day world, have inspired a wave of adolescent fascination in ancient myths and the characters who populate them. They spurred Honor to explore the subject more deeply—she was surprised to learn that the author didn’t create all the mythology in the books, while I was taken aback that he’d placed Mount Olympus atop the Empire State Building. And they prompted me to plan a week-long trip to Greece as an educational adventure.

I hoped to show Honor how Mr. Riordan tapped into some of western civilization’s founding stories; what I didn’t expect was that she would end up teaching me, too.

Greece is an extraordinary place to visit, perhaps never more so than now. Upgraded museums have transformed how people experience some of the world’s most famous sites; fast, modern highways have put much of the country within easier reach; and prices are low. Our goal was to road-trip to as many spots related to the divinities as we could—including Athens, Delphi and Olympia—before greeting the gods en masse at Mount Olympus, Greece’s highest mountain and their fabled home. We would then fly to the island of Crete to see where Zeus is said to have lived as an infant.

Source: Wall Street Journal

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