Our ten day excursion to Greece took us first to Olympia. This stop was a little (literally) foggy for me as I had scratched my cornea. It was pretty beastly, but oh well. my favourite thing about Olympia was the presentation of traditional Greek dancing which we saw after dinner the first night there. After the presenters danced, they brought us all in and taught us how to do some simple steps. Everyone was very into it, and it was exceptionally fun. (Oh, we also ran races on the original Olympic track which was incredible.)
After Olympia, we headed to Delphi. I really loved Delphi. It was a small town set in the mountains and surrounded by incredible archaeological sites, like the Oracle at Delphi.
Notes:
1) The food in Delphi was delicious.
2) A bunch of us went to the discoteca both nights. SUPER fun.
3) I hiked a mountain! Oh joy!
Next, Athens! My first impression of Athens was interesting as I was lost at the time. Alright here's the story. Only a half hour after we all had to check into our hotel, we were scheduled to head out to the Pnyx and Areopagus for lectures. I, my roommates Shannon and Teresa, arrived in the lobby three minutes past the time we were supposed to have left. No one was there but a few other bemused students (Joe, Thomas, Chris, Ladd, and Alban). Well, we figured that since everyone else had left, we should try to find the place ourselves. Really, these are big sites. Everyone in Athens should know how to get there, right? So we thought. We stepped out into the frenetic Athenian streets and immediately felt rather helpless. We had no map which showed the Pnyx (our first destination) and when we asked a local, he replied that he had no idea where we were talking about, but gave us vague directions to what he believed the "general area" would be. We headed out pretty confidently at first until we realised that we had no idea where we were at all. I looked around for someone to help with directions again. The first three people didn't speak any English, and as I obviously don't speak Greek, that was to no avail. Finally I spied some policemen. They are generally competent souls. Ha. They pointed us in the "right" direction, and confident and pleased we headed on. After another half hour of walking back and forth through different sites I asked another person, who pointed in the opposite direction that the policemen advised us to go. At this point rather frustrated, we just decided to find it ourselves. We climbed to the highest point right under the Acropolis and came across the Areopagus. This was one of our destinations for the day! Filled with hope that the class might be there, we dashed up the marble steps that hundreds of years ago Socrates and St. Paul climbed. The Areopagus was painfully devoid of people. We waited there for a little; we had now been walking for over an hour. Suddenly, Chris caught a glimpse in the distance of a massive group of sitting students. That was our class; it had to be. With them in sight, we couldn't just sit on the Areopagus, we had to go. We ran down the hill and headed in what we believed was their general direction. Somehow on the way through one of the wooded hills, Chris and I were separated from the rest of the group. We ascended the hill where we believed the rest of the class to be, and found it empty. Assuming that they had left and were on their way to the Areopagus, we walked ALL the way back to find it still empty and the students still sitting on that same hill. We had walked up the wrong one. Finally, we found the class. We had been walking for two straight hours. As soon as Chris and I stumbled onto the Pnyx, we heard "All right! You can take a few photos, and then we have to go!" That day, I walked on the Areopagus three separate times. Brilliant.
Other than this crazy, but nonetheless fun experience, Athens wasn't too bad. It was big and ugly and smelly, but the gyros were delicious and there was excellent shopping (though I couldn't handle much of it--it's too insane!) The sites we saw were so wonderful also. The Parthenon was incredibly large and very beautiful. I wish I could describe everything we did and saw, but it could fill a book, and this is but a lowly blog entry.
Our last stop was Nafplion, a lovely little seaside town. I learned never to walk inside dark, smelly caves. Sometimes hobos follow you out of them. Also, poorly prepared kalimari is something no one should eat.
