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Europe Part 2: Mainland Greece

GREECE
Delphi
We got back to Athens on Monday night and got up early the next morning to go to Delphi. Delphi was considered the center of the world back in the day of Zeus, and the oracles prophesied there in the sanctuary of Apollo. There sadly is not a lot left, but it's amazing the dedication that the ancient people put into the site. They still had parts of the roads, treasuries, ampitheater, and stadium, as well as the temples, the main one of which was Apollo's. The museum did have a number of well preserved statues which helped to see the magnitude of their wealth and how talented they were. The site of Delphi was also gorgeous, on the side of a mountain, with olive groves as far as the eye could see down the valley, at the end of which was the Sea of Corinth.



Athens
As far as food, Greece has some great vegetarian dishes, but they only have a few of them. We ate a lot of stuffed tomatoes and peppers, baked eggplant, Greek salad (which doesn't have lettuce, interestingly enough), tatziki, etc. Every meal we had bread and olive oil, and the oil was quite tasty, as expected! The hostel in Athens was decent for the price, but they lied about the fact that the rooms had air conditioning! When we complained, they hemmed and hawed and said they couldn't do anything, and they wouldn't give us our money back or move us. With only one more night (and since the nights were MUCH better than the 100 degree days), we didn't worry about it much more.

The next day, we went to the Acropolis, Ancient Agora, and Temple of Zeus. The Acropolis is being renovated and partially reconstructed, so it was hard to see everything. What we could see, though, was magnificent. The citizens 2000+ years ago were much more advanced than I sometimes remember. My favorite building was the temple Erechtheum , mostly because I think the Porch of Maidens is beautiful and simple.

Erechtheum:


I'm not sure how I feel about reconstruction, though. On one hand, it is necessary to reconstruct the ruins if we want them to last for future generations, but it's also very interesting to see the status of the buildings and how well they have lasted.

Parthenon:



After touring the Acropolis and looking down over the city of Athens, we went to the Agora (Market), and the best part were the views up to the Acropolis. The Agora was also were people really lived and interacted back in the day, and it was also the birth of democracy. Thanks Athenians! The Temple of Zeus (which is not on the Acropolis) only has about 8 columns out of 100 left, but it gives you the sheer magnitude of these impressive structures.

That night, we met up with Vasileios' brother (Dimitrios) for dinner. He filled us in about a lot of areas of Greek culture. Some (very biased) highlights include:
- Greeks get the best jobs when they have someone on the "inside" to get them the job
- College have 2 ~10-week semesters and therefore don't teach that much
- Greek families are very close knit
- The students at D's college go on strike for silly political reasons, which messes up class and their schedules
- Greek men don't hit on women in bars that they don't know
- Everyone needs to know English to get a decent job, so that's why everyone knows it

There is probably more, but that's what I have for now. These shouldn't piss anyone off - it's just what we learned from one person! We also went to a great cafe on the beach, where we could sit on cushions on the beach at tables that had teepees with lamps instead of a covering. It was very romantic for our odd little threesome.

The next day, we went to the Archaeological Museum. We didn't realize how HUGE the museum was, and after an hour, we had only done 3 rooms out of 10 (and we only had another hour). They cover from 5000 BC to about 500 AD, so there is obviously a lot of material. My favorite object were tweezers from about 2500 BC, haha. They also had some great marble status from 100 BC with Aphrodite, Poseidon, Paris, and more. Check out my pictures on ofoto.com to see all my favorites.

That afternoon, it was off to the airport, heading to Milan.

posted by Biff @ 10:40 PM