Prepare yourselves Mortals, for you are about to enter the realm of the Verbose Geek. Brace yourself for his musings.
LEt's do this.
Allright, so about 12 days over my 7 month checkpoint on this blog, and i needed a new into, my old section headings were getting old i felt. Anyway, without furhter ado, lets press on.
There's not gonna be much, if anything, on music in this post, so those of you who dont read those sections can be happy. onto the main part of this post, and what will probably make it a 2 parter.
Greece:
Unless you've been living under a rock you probably know i did my College's Greece May term not too long ago In fact, i've only been back about 5 days, which is kind of mind-blowing. anyway. i suppose i should recap the trip a bit. If you wanna see photos, theyre on facebook. now where's my copy of the trip itinerary? ah there it is. ok lets do this.
So after a long ass day of travelling (which had been tweaked twice because of a birtish airways issue and dthen that freaking Ash cloud from that icelandic volcano no one can pronounce the name of), I landed in Athens with abotu 2 hours of sleep under my belt. I got my bag and everything and moved to where i was scheduled to meet up with one of the trip faculty leaders. about 45 minutes of slight paranoia later (I'm a nervous traveler), I found the facukty leader and he led me me over to where the other student was. from there, we waited another hour or so for the last 2 students and moved to metro system and evetually got to the hotel which was nice. i had just enough time to change, de-grossify myself slightly and head back to the lobby before we had the welcome dinner. The guy i was supposed to room wiht ended up not being able to make the trip for personal reasons, so i had a single the first 3 nights. This was fine, but i would kinda preferred to have it later in the trip, why? i'm nto sure. Anyway our first full day in athens was marked by a walking tour led by some miltant lady who worked at the company who had organized our trip. She was literally marchign us past all the big sections of town, where she suggested we come back, which we did end up doing in our later stints in athens, but seemed annoyed by the fact we were taking photos ever 20 or so feeet. We're tourists, what do you expect? Anyway, we ened up at the place that was governing out trip, The Athens Centre, a bit late, but that was fine. after a somewhat boring talk by the educational institution's foudner about the history of Greece, we got a good talk from the lady who runs the place about the capabilites of the place and what they had on site. This was a ncie talk, but i dont see how much good it did our group because we didnt end up using much of the Centre's services. supposedly they have a few classrooms in thier main building and then they own the building next door and have classrooms and a internet room there, and they own some apartments near by.
My main problem with the place was that getting there was a pain. the walk wasn't bad, but the last 5 minutes of it was up 3 steep uphills, which sucked. That and i dont feel like there much of an emphasis by them on their services being open to us when we were in Athens. IF there was, our group was fine with the few computers people brought. The trvelling part of the trip was fine, and i loved the may term, but i almost just wanna just go back there and do a semester of classes through the Athens Centre, to get the full sense of their facilities. Again, if anyone from the Athens Centre reads this after i post the link to this on facebook, i think the institution is great, i just feel like the history talk was a bit much for 17 jetlagged college students their first day in athens, and that we didnt get a real sense for all the Centre had to offer.
Anway, i digress. after that, we found out the acropolis museum was closed cause of a gneral strike that week, so we shifted out trip plans for thenext day. We hit up the Athenian Agora in the AM, which was pretty cool. it was ncie to see ruins and remains of what was a bustling city center in ancient times. That afternoon we spent alot of time on the bus, i kid youj not. we drove about 2 hours to some random minign town with some little know mysterious ancient theater remains and we trapsed around there for a while. We then spent another hour or so travelling to the town of Sounion, which aint far from Athens. But we got there at like 4 and were given maybe 2 horus max on the beach. the beach was fine, the water was a bit cold, but it was fun just to relax there. The food at the taverna on the beach was pretty surprisingly inexpesnive and good. the last day of out first stint in Athens we went to the Acropolis and the theater or dionysys. The acropolis was epic and awesome. No amount of words can really do it justice.
The follwoign day, we transferred onto thebus and travelled to ancient eleusis where we learned about the cult of Eleusis and the Eleusian mysteries (google it) and then to ancient corinth where we saw the acneit site, got late lunches and saw and archaelogical site and most of us got rained on. Then, finally we transferred to the wonderful cityh of naplion, found our rooms, finished the essay assingments we had gotten and explored the city for dinner. NAplion is an amazing coastal town that's kind of like subrubia but isnt really it's hard to explain but i got the vibe from it that it was a heavily exanded southern coutnry town on the Greel coast. It was awesome. and had amazing Gelato too. We went there every night. I miss that city and the gelato. The first day in NAplion we visited ancietn Mycenae and Tiryns. Ancient Mycenae was more memorable because of the lions head gate, awesome views, and cistern side-quest we did. Awesome stuff.
The next day we went to ancient Epidaurus and saw the stuff there and learned abotu a minor god named Asklepios (again, google). We then stormed the epidaurus theater, tesetd its acoustics and returned to naplion where we explored the amazing palamidi fortress. Some of the best and most romantic views i've ever seen came from this fortess. From there the next day, we commuted to sparta. Stopping at the ancient site of King Menelaus' palce first, we tested our lungs hiking up the hill to the palace, which was pretty nice for ruins. we did some mass speculation, talked about the oddyseey and then move on to sparta. Nicest hotel in the world for that one night, but literally, there was nothing to do in sparta outside of a few pretty cool restaurants and the unimpressive Sparta acropolis. While exploriung the acropolis a bunch of us got rained on. We then reutrned, dried off and got a nice dinner with most of the group, which was higlighted by many a joke and general hilarity. After that, a few of us explored the town and nothign really eventful happened. We watched some stuff one one person's conputer that night and then peaced out to bed.
the next day we transferred to Pylos by way of ancient Mistras, which was is essentially a byzantine Era landmark. Mistras was pretty cool, but i was a bit undwerwhelmed by what we saw there. Pylos was a small bayside town of awesomeness. we were there for 2 full days, three nights, and it was pretty cool. The hotel was right on the water and had great views. the second day in pylos, we went to see the very well preseved palace of nestor and MEthoni fortress, both of whihc were very cool. Then we had lots of free time on the beach by the fortress before heading back to Pylos. The following day we traveled about 4 hours to the temple of apollo at bassai, which was nice, but is under a long resotration plan that has been somewhat halted cause of the economic downturn over in Greece. From there we drove another 3 horus to olympia.
I'm gonna be honest. Olympia is a tourist trap of a town wiht an awesome Souvlaki restaurant and thats it. every other palce was nice but a bit overpriced and the vast majority of the town was residnetial.. the town pretty much was only there cause of the ancient ruins of tempels and the first olympics ever. Which is fine. The second night we were there i watched a european songf comeptiton that is laods better that AMerican Idol called Eurovision with a couple people and in the middle of it, there was an earthquake. It was very minor where we were, but apparently it was a 4.4 on the richter scale. it was jsut weird cause the room literally shifted form right to left 3 times fairly quickly and then stopped. The people i was wathcing Eurovisoon with all thought it was someone else initially.
After Olympia we took a bus to one of the ports and then took a 2.5 hour ferry ride to the island of keffallonia where we transferred about an hour to a town on the peninsula that starrting to be accepted as Anceint Ithaca from the Oddyseey. For more on this checkout odysseus-unbound.org. Now on Kefallonia, instead of doing a full day walk of the island we got a full day tour of sites relevant to the aformentioned argument and a few other really touristy things. In my opinion the tour sould have ended after Lunch and we shoulda just been given time on the beach we were at as after lunch everyone was crashing energy wise. Plus, the enxt day, which was a day off, was chilly and overcast and windy, so our excursion to the same becah, and awesomely beautiful white pebble beach, got cancelled. Needless to say that night and for a few days afterwards alot of us were very bitter.
From there, we got up super early, caught the ferry back to mainland and drove back to Athens, where we spent a few days seeing byzantine churches and the acropolis museum.
With regard to how we left kefallonia though, we had been told abotu the early wake-up, but then right before breakfast, thins got changed so right as half of us were eating, we were literally yelled at to get our butts on the bus so we could get the ferry. half of the group still hadnt eaten at this point. When we got to the port and onto the ferry, we sat in dock for another 30 mintues, so there was no need for us to evacuate the hotel in KEfallonia like we were gonna get bombed.
After the few days back in Athens, we transferred onto anothe rFerry to the island of Aigina, which was nice. We saw a minor goddesses cult temple and a local potter's place there. but the way we got to thos places made it looked like we wereleaving the main town and not retuning, which we eneded up doing. The hotel in Aigina was ncie but it was about a 10 minute walk downhill and around 2 blind corners into town. On a positive note our only real day there was an off day and the cats and kittens there were awesome. Thats where i also sawy frist episode of the New Dr. Who, the first episode of Season 5. I'm not gonna lie, i really liked it, but i really cant afford another fandom right now. Maybe later once i'm established in the workforce. Dr. Who is really well written Sci-Fi and it British, so i'm happy.
After Aigina, we transferred back to Athens for the last 4 days of the trip. We saw the karameikos site, the national museum and then did student presentations over the course of those 4 days. Then we all flew back home to the states or to wher we were meeting our families over the course of the day on the 11th of june.
So that's greece in a nutshell, pretty awesome trip and the group rocked. I'd do it again right now with the same group. I'm gonna make this a 2 parter to finish covering everything else up there in the title, so see you all in part 2.
--ZB
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