Thessaloniki

A week ago, a group of students (including myself) and two awesome professors went up north to the city of Thessaloniki, which is about seven hours away by sweaty bus ride. We left early Friday morning and made it to our first site of the day of Dion. This was an epic fail. We got there at about 2:30 and the people running the site and decided to shut down at 3. They didn't let us in. So we continued on to the city. Running late. Even though we didn't visit this site. We took a walking tour of the city, and by this time it was already late. So after the tour, we just ate dinner, and went to bed. A truly eventful day.

Saturday we woke up early again. We spent the morning at the ancient city of Pella, which was the ancient capital of Macedonia, where Phillip II and his son Alexander the Great were from. The site was huge and beautiful. The current Archaeologist was there, and my professor happened to know him, so he told us all about the site. Which was really cool. After that we went to the museum. Which was very nice. After the museum we went to a couple ancient tombs. These too were very cool. It was beautiful there. With the leaves changing colors, apple orchards, and mountains in the distance. The tombs were beautiful too. Plaster was still on them, with columns. Unfortunately, we couldn't take photos, so I can't even describe it. The next place we went is disputably the site of Aristotle's school when he taught Alexander the Great. It was ridiculously beautiful there. We ran around exploring the caves that Alexander the Great at age 11 would have visited and had lessons in. How he could pay attention in such a beautiful place was beyond me, but oh well. We went out to eat "lunch" at about 3:30-4, and then we went to the hotel. Others went out to eat, but we had just eaten, so we decided to wait until like 8:30. By that time we were about to fall asleep. So we did.

Sunday we woke up early again. We had a handful of sites to see, as well as a seven hour bus ride to look forward to. Because we got in so late the night before we didn't have time to visit the Roman ruins that the city was built on then, so this morning we got to walk around the city and see the ruins of the Roman palace. Also we went to this museum that was in what was called the White Tower, it was one of the coolest museums I have ever seen. Too bad it was completely in Greek. I still had fun exploring. Next we went to the Archaeological Museum of Thessaloniki. It was a very well done museum, but since we had so much to do still we only got like a half hour, which was not enough time. It was still very worthwhile. We drove next to the Archaeological site of Vergina, which had several ancient tombs including the one most likely dedicated to Phillip the Second and Alexander the Great's son. Achilles's shield was there, which was very very cool, and the set up the the tombs and the museum were very cool. Basically, a huge mound of dirt, was built around the tombs, and the museum was built inside, so that it was basically a hollow hill filled with museum and tomb-y goodness. After Vergina, we ate lunch in the town around the site, and had some more gyros. Gyros were another theme of this trip. That was at least my third one of the weekend. After lunch, we still had 7 hours to drive and Thermopylae to see the memorial of the 300 Spartans and maybe make it back by 8. (Obviously we didn't make it back by 8). We got to Thermopylae at about 7, and by then it was dark, but the moon was huge and bright, so it gave the site a really cool feel about it. One of the professors talked about the site for a while, and then we got back on the bus, and made it back to Athens at about 10:30. It was a good trip.