The latter part of our week was spent in Athens/Αθήνα, Greece/Ελλάδα. I'm going to try to include as many Greek characters as I can, since most of the signs we were reading were in Greek (which made it somewhat difficult to navigate and know what we were looking at, since Greek is not at ALL similar to any other language we know). Hopefully the Greek characters show up on your computer system!
We first went in search of authentic Greek food. We ended up at a nice place near our hotel that had an AMAZING menu! I ordered roumeliotiko (pork and tomatoes on pita bread) and chicken "burgers" with creamed feta cheese on top.
Our meals also came with shots of ouzo, which is strong with an aftertaste of licorice.
On our way back to the hotel we found one of those small, tourist trains called the Athens Happy Train. Since we were looking for something to acquaint us with the area, we decided to take its tour...at 10pm! We did have to drag Kara on it, but I think it was well worth our while. We got to see all the temples lit up at night, and it helped us figure out where everything was, since we could barely read all the Greek on our maps!
The next day was GORGEOUS, so we set out for the Acropolis/ακρόπολη. However, our attempt was thwarted by a strike organized by the workers of the Acropolis and affiliated sites. For that day we had to settle with climbing up a rock near the Acropolis and getting a spectacular view of Athens.
We then walked down the hill to the Agora. It was very similar to the Forum in Rome (there actually is another Roman Forum in Athens). We passed by the Stoa of Attalos, passed a lot of statues with their heads missing, and ended up at the Temple of Hephaestus.
We left the Agora and ended up walking through the Plaka, a tourist shopping district by the Acropolis. On the other side of the Plaka we ended up at the Temple of the Olympian Zeus (not to be confused with the Ancient Wonder of the World Temple of Zeus formerly located in Olympia, Greece).
A couple hundred metres walk from the Temple brought us to the Panathinaiko, the home of the first modern Olympics in 1896 and the location of the archery competitions for the 2004 Olympics.
That night we went back to the Plaka and ended up at a restaurant where we got gyros! I LOVE chicken gyros; there's an awesome place in Ithaca where I sometimes get them. The others got pork gyros, which ended up making Kara sick :-(. Amazingly enough, we ended up running into four other Ithaca College London Centre students at the restaurant.
The next day we were successful in getting up to the Acropolis. The Acropolis is most known for the Parthenon but there's actually quite a bit on top of that rock. There's the Propylaea, which is the monumental gateway to the Acropolis.
There's the Temple of Athena Nike (Nike means victory in Greek) and the remains of a previous temple to Athena. There's also the Erechtheion/Έρέχθειον, whose columns are actually statues of women.
But of course, the Parthenon is the big draw!
On the slopes of the Acropolis are a couple of ancient amphitheaters. They've maintained the newer of the two, the Odeon of Herodes Atticus, for current performances that I used to watch videos of in high school history/English classes. I use the term "newer" quite loosely since it was built in 161 AD.
The older of the two is the Theatre of Dionysus, built in the 5th century BC. It was the first stone theatre built and could seat 17000 people. It was also the birthplace of the Greek tragedy.
The next day was spent getting as much Greek food in us as we could before jumping on a plane back to London!
That concludes my Greco-Roman spring break. There are some videos from Greece which I will post in due course. All in all, it was an amazing experience that I'll NEVER forget. But then again, I've found that to be the case with everything that has been happening this semester! :-)
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