Peloponnese

Dear readers,

I apologize profusely for not posting for like a month. The reason for this is because, literally, nothing happened. Well, not literally, figuratively, and then I went to the Peloponnese and Rome (which will be in the next blog). Seriously all I did was study for midterms and write papers for a good two weeks though. Except, the night we left for the Peloponnese I went to someones birthday party at Applebee's.

After those two awful weeks were over, we went on a school field trip to the Peloponnese. We left the morning of Tuesday October 19th. The first thing we did was make a stop at the Isthmus at Corinth and took pictures of the canal that they have been trying to make since the Hellenistic period and just finished in like the 80's. That was pretty cool. But also kinda lame. The next place we went was to Ancient Corinth and the museum there. Out of all the ruins that we saw, it was pretty typical, but had a great view of the sea and Acrocorinth, which was our next stop! Acrocorinth was the ancient acropolis on a mountain behind Corinth. We had a picnic lunch with a sweeping view of Corinth, fields, the sea, and the mountains. It was absolutely stunning from up there. I could have spent at least another hour there, but we had to get to our hotel in Nauplion. Lastly, before we got to our hotel, we went to Epidaurus which was a temple to a man who was a doctor in life and after he died Apollo claimed him as his son, so he was deified. This site was fantastic and had an amazing theater, where one could drop a penny on the stage and it could be heard from the last row. We tried it. We had a walking tour of the old city, and they showed us a "world famous gelato place," which was decent (after Rome all gelato places are just decent).

On Wednesday we left early for Mycenae. This was the center for the Mycenaean period a couple thousand years ago. It was a huge city between two large hills/mountains. There are a couple very famous parts of Mycenae, including "Grave Circle B," and the lion gate. Also, there were huge Tholos tombs, which you can see how huge they are from this picture. After Mycenae we went to a smaller Mycenaean city of Tiryns. This is another site that was just typical. After Tiryns we went to the fortress of Palamidi above the city of Nauplion. This was the site of huge battles and Nauplion was almost the capital of Greece because of its importance. We got done early and spent the rest of the day exploring the city some more.

Thursday was a day that I had already lived through earlier this summer. We returned to Mystra and Sparta. I already knew a lot more about Mystra before I came this time, and so it was much more impressive, knowing that the last emperor of the Byzantine empire was crowned at that very place, and that it was the third largest city in Byzantium after Constantinople and Thessaloniki, which is incredible. After that we had a couple hours before they brought us to ancient Sparta, where everyone was extremely disappointed. I had dinner and went to bed.

We did a lot of driving on Friday and drove several hours to have a picnic lunch outside of the city Messene. This was a huge Roman era city with a wonderful stadium I really liked this site. It was a beautiful day, and a beautiful location, so maybe that influenced my liking of this city. Then we drove for a couple more hours and made it to the castle of Methone, which was right on the sea and we were there just as the sun was setting and it was just lovely. It was a very good day, but not much happened because we were driving a lot.

Saturday morning we work up early, and because we got into the city of Pylos that we stayed at so late they gave us a small talk about the city, which usually comes in the evening, so they can show us the site, but we were all tired after the previous day. This city and the bay that it lies on was the site of a couple decisive battles in different time periods, Sphacteria in the Roman period, and Navarino in one of the World Wars. After the short talk we got on the bus and drove to an early Mycenaean palace called the Palace of Nestor. The one thing I really remember about the site was not the actual site (it was forgettable) but the smell and the air. I don't know if it was because they were harvesting olives, or what, but the air up there was so fresh and clean it made me feel really good. The second stop we made was at Olympia, a site where I had been earlier this summer, but having a guide like my professor who knows so much about all the sites really made it interesting, and I feel like I know so much more about the site now than when I did this summer. After this we drove until like 9 in the evening to get to Delphi, where we met up with a couple other buses from our program and had dinner with some friends. Then I fell asleep. I was exhausted, can you really blame me?

Sunday we got to sleep in a while because our professors felt bad that we had the longest bus ride ever the day before, and then we went to Delphi. I also went here this summer but again this time it was much more interesting with a professor who knows what they are talking about. And no family, we did not have any people in our group ask if the earthquakes happened in like 300 BCE or AD. Also of note is that the stadium that we walked up to this summer was blocked off because of a rock fall. If you have been there, you know that something like that is probably inevitable. We went to the museum, and then left for lunch in the next city over called Arachova. We ate at a restaurant that had a picture of the Beatles with the owner. That was cool. The food was good too. We then headed back to Athens. In the morning I went to Rome. Which is a whole other blog post.

Love,
Becca

Mount Olympus

This last weekend the Jens and I had previously signed up to climb up Mount Olympus. We left early Saturday morning and got back at like midnight Sunday night. It was an amazing trip. We didn't have anything to do on Friday though.

A quick note on Friday. We got sandals by this really famous sandal maker. He has sold sandals to people like John Lennon, Kate Moss, Jackie O., and Lily Tomlin. So we had to go there and get sandals from him. Lots of people from our program had already gone, and they were not expensive, and handmade. So, on Friday afternoon we walked over to Monstraki and found his little shop. It was covered in many different sandals and funky art. We got to try on different styles named after famous people who had bought the same pair. I tried on the John Lennon, but didn't end up getting them. I did get a pair though that wasn't named after anyone famous, but I am quite happy with my purchase. Once you bought them they fit them to your feet too, so they fit extremely well. That was my Friday.

We left for Mount Olympus, like I said early Saturday morning and we were prepared for what we were told a "5 hour bus ride." Yeah. It was closer to 7 hours. I ran out of reading material pretty quickly. Anyways, we got to where the bus dropped us off and began our "3 hour hike" (closer to 4 hours, but maybe that had to do with the fact that every 5 minutes or so we all stopped to take pictures, because it was sooooo beautiful). It rained on us for like 10 minutes when we happened to be stopped for a break, but otherwise the weather was fine. It was a little chilly, but it warmed up once we were walking, and we didn't see the sun until we were out from under the cloud cover. We got to the "Refuge" where we would be spending the night like a half hour before it got dark, and there we had a delicious warm dinner and some hot chocolate. The room where we stayed was basically 2 walls cover in a very, very wide bunk bed. We fit 5 people on our bunk, meant for 4 people. It was freezing cold at the refuge because it was such a high elevation and the Jens and I covered our selves with 7 blankets and fell asleep by 10.

Sunday morning we woke up at about 7:50 and we had to be out of our little rooms by 8, so we hurried up and got ready and then ate a nice long breakfast as we weren't going to leave for the summit until 9. We left at about 9:20. One thing about Greeks is that they have a different sense of time than we Americans do. When we say we will leave at 9, we mean like 9-9:05, the Greeks mean at least 1.6 times that amount (we calculated that based on the fact that Nadia told us it would take us 10 minutes to get to school from our apartment, but in reality it makes us 16 minutes if we catch every crosswalk, and we walk really fast). Anyways, we left and walked up the very steep, very rocky, treeless path for about an hour and a half and stopped at the "summit" at a very beautiful place, which wasn't exactly the top of any mountain, but I think our guides could tell that we were struggling with the lack of oxygen, and lack of food, and lack of sleep, as well as poor Jen G. having a terrible cold. So we stopped and us really dorky people gave offerings to the gods in the forms of half a granola bar, and some bread. They obviously accepted our offerings because the sun came out and the wind stopped almost as soon as we had dropped our food on the mountain. We hung out up there for a while taking pictures and such, until we started getting super cold. So our guides took pity on us again and we walked back to the refuge to get lunch. We were going to have a half hour break for lunch (1 hour) and then we headed back down the mountain to our bus. We got down to the bottom of the mountain at about 4, and our guides showed us a mountain runoff stream and little lake. Some crazy kinds (myself included) decided that a mountain runoff stream would be a great place to go swimming. It kinda felt like jumping in the lake on Easter. Very cold. But at least we didn't have to wade out that far to go under, unlike dear old WBL, as the little lake got deep pretty fast. We then got on the bus and headed home. After a couple short breaks we got home at about midnight, and I fell asleep almost immediately.