Ah, lovely countryside...

Here I am, on another mode of transportation writing my blog! I’m on a ferry this time! Visiting with Mom and a friend Jess this week! I am so excited! (We are officially on Fall Break with school and we have classes again next Monday.) You’ll hear all about it next week. But, this past week has been FULL of good times. We were gone all week on a school trip to the Peloponnese. For those of you not up on your Greek geography, the Peloponnese is the part of Greece that looks like a hand! Anyway, we spent the week there with school from Tuesday early morning until Saturday evening. It was amazing and now I miss Virginia even more! Seeing all of those trees and the beautiful mountains! I love it!!! It was a great week, full of travelling, so I’ll fill you in on the details!

Let me preface this by saying that I did not even know about, or knew little about a few of the sites we visited this week! So if I mention a place that sounds unfamiliar, maybe Google it and check it out. Everywhere we went was awesome! Tuesday morning, I got on a bus with 40 or so students and we all began our five day long tour of the Peloponnese! Our first little stop was at the Corinth Canal! We all had potty breaks and opportunities to accumulate snacks for our journey ahead!

We got to Mycenae after some driving, which was met by much excitement by dorky archaeological students excited to see the Lions Gate there. It is an incredible site, but since I had been there last summer, it was a bit less cool! Anyway, it was great to be guided around and learn more facts and theories about the site more relevant to my Archaeology course. In addition to the crazy big Mycenaean Palace remains, there are tholos tombs that are great. A tholos tomb is a tomb that was usually used for royal families that looks like a big bee hive/cone structure. The largest tomb, the Treasury of Atreus, is absolutely huge and impressive! After a visit to the little museum there, wandering, and lunch, we hopped back on the road to drive to Olympia. The drive was a few hours, so when we got to Olympia, we checked into our hotel and had free time for the evening. Some friends and I visited the Museum of the History of the Olympic Games (I think is the name) and the Archaeological Excavations at Olympia Museum. I had also been to both of these museums last summer, but it was great to see them again and know a little more background knowledge to the pieces I was seeing, etc. Afterwards, the evening consisted of some jogging around the modern town of Olympia (woohoo) and a light dinner.

Wednesday, we jumped right into the site of Olympia! I had also been there last summer, but still enjoyed my visit and again enjoyed having a guide leading us around highlighting relevant facts. The site is huge and pretty incredible. After organized wandering, as well as a jog in the old stadium, some friends and I wandered the site more and checked out the big Olympia Museum before lunch. After lunch, our class met up to go to the museum. This place is so cool, even if you think archaeology is lame! The craziest big sculptures were found from the Temple of Zeus in Olympia and they truly are beautiful works of art. Also in the museum was the Nike of Paionius and the Hermes and Dionysus statue. I joined up with the other class from our bus’ tour after mine, and after a bit we all got back on the road again! We drove to Pylos, which was kind of cool and kind of lame. The town is unimpressive today, but in my Ancient Greek language course right now, I am reading from an author Thucydides. We are translating his account of the Peloponnesian War and specifically, the battle at Pylos. So, it was great to be there and see the place we were reading about, but there was not much to do in the little town but eat, so a group of us went out to dinner!

Thursday, we went to Methone, a crazy awesome Venetian palace. It was so fun and they just set us free for an hour. I felt like a kid running around a backyard fortress! It is very well preserved and really beautiful! We also visited the Palace of Nestor, which is an incredibly preserved palace structure right outside of Pylos. It has a very well preserved megaron, a sort of sanctuary area. You can even see the flame paintings on the edges! After exploring these areas, we went to Sparta for the evening and checked into our hotel. We had a walk around ancient Sparta and a lecture by one of our professors, which was interesting. The remains of Sparta are few, since the Spartans were not big fans of showy architecture and such like Athens. Also, the modern town was built over the ancient town. Anyway, a friend and I also jogged in Sparta before going out to dinner with a bunch of other students in a nearby town our professor recommended. The food and wine were both great and we had so much fun. Plus, we got free baklavas and chocolate turtles. That was a fun night for sure.

Friday, our group went to Mistras! This was probably my favorite site by far!!! It is a very well preserved Byzantine town with tons of old churches and a monastery and fortifications. It was a very important site in the Byzantine Empire and especially since I have heard about in class, it was great to see it! It was such a beautiful place. We had lunch in Sparta and got back on the road to go to Nauplion! This may have been my favorite town! It was so cute. One of our professors took us on a walk around the town and the old town, which was beautiful and fun! Also, Nauplion is said to have the best gelato in Greece, so we got tons! We got some before and after dinner! Our professor recommended a great little place for dinner! It was so good!!! It was so fun to visit with friends more and chat over a lovely dinner. I wish things were a bit more like that at home. I guess meals seem to be so much more rushed and lame at home. I love how Greeks put more emphasis on meals and spending time with each other. Anyway, that was a fun evening wandering around Nauplion.

Saturday, our group went to Epidauros. I forgot what was even there! There is a healing sanctuary of Asclepious there, as well as a really well-preserved Greek theater! It was so interesting to be at such a site. It was in the beautiful countryside, which is in itself therapeutic. It was pretty cool to imagine how so many people came to this healing sanctuary in antiquity. After exploring that crazy site for a while, including this circular structure with a sort of maze beneath, we checked out the theater. This theater was amazing and the best preserved Greek theater! It started raining there and everyone's umbrella came out! After wandering up and down the slippery wet stairs of the theater, we headed back to Nauplion for lunch. More gelato! We then began our journey back to Athens. Part of the way there, we stopped off in Tiryns. The walls of Tiryns, an ancient Mycenaean fortress, are huge and very well preserved. They were crazy to look at and going through the fortress we all wondered why they needed such a wall! After checking that out a while, we finished our drive back to Athens!

By the end of it all, I was/am tired, a bit sick of being on the road, excited, a bit sick of being with American students in hoards, and loving being on break from classes! It really was an amazing week and to be led around looking at ALL of those sites was incredible. Good times for sure. You’ll hear from me soon about this coming week of break. Being off of school is awesome, too bad classes are coming back in merely a week! The semester is already halfway over, can you believe it?!

Love!