Day 5 - The Greek Experience

Today has been amazing! Our first stop with the class was the newly opened Akropolis museum. I think I posted this earlier, but here is a birds eye view of the museum. It was pretty cool. It is kind of unfortunate that most everything was a reproduction, but it isn't really going to be possible for England to give back the Elgean marbles. If they give back those, they'd have to give back everything else they have that was taken back from another country. And if they do it, every other museum will have to do it. And that is just not going to happen. En tout cas, there are parts in front of the museum which are glass covered floors that are put over some ruins. It is pretty awesome. I took some pictures of these ruins, but not through the glass because there are black dots all over the glass and that doesn't make for a very good picture.

View of the Acropolis.

Then we went into the museum, which does not allow pictures. I don't really understand this, but whatever. They had a room which has a rectangular area on it in which they have placed the metope, frieze and pediment sculptures/reliefs. Some of them are real, but, like I said, much of it is reproduction. We also saw some other Greek sculptures. And we saw the caryatids from the caryatid porch from the Erektheous Temple. Pretty awesome! After we finished lecturing and looking around, we headed out and to the metro. I love the metro. I wish we had a metro system in provo. It makes life so much easier. And it is cheaper and less polluting. Brilliant. Being on the metro made me really miss Paris. Ah. Anyway, we headed to the National Archaeological Museum, where we could take pictures.

I wrote an analysis on this work.

Reminds me of Star Wars.

Death mask of Agamemnon!

I wrote on this piece also.

And this one.

Grave stele.

Minoan "Spring fresco" or Dr. Suessville

After that, we headed out to the town to find lunch. I had a pastry bread thing (looked like a pain au chocolat kind of, but more substantial) filled with cheesiness and ham. It was quite tasty. Then we headed back to the hotel. We still had a large amount of the day left, so we had to figure out what to do. We asked the front desk and he suggested several things, all of which we had seen. Then he suggested the beach. We thought that sounded pretty good. After getting ready (donning skirts because none of us have swimsuits), we headed out. It took us about an hour on the tram to get there, but it was worth it. The water is gorgeously blue and only a little bit cold! Seriously, it was perfect. If only we had our swimsuits. It worked out. I waded in as far as I possibly could without getting my skirt wet (I hiked it up). It was wonderful. Then we sat on the beach in the beautiful sun. The beach was actually made of small rocks instead of sand. I like this a lot better because it was much easier to clean off afterwards. Some pictures.

The girls on the beach (Elisabeth, Tabitha, Ali, Claire, Shamra).

:)

I loved it. I am so glad that we went. Then we came back to Athens and found some dinner. We went to a traditional but inexpensive place. I got pork souvlaki. It was delicious. It is basically a pork kabob (not to be confused with kebab, which is a sandwich) on fried pita bread with some veggies and fries. And lemon. I love lemon. Then we got some gelato, which is one of the best desserts ever. I like it more than ice cream. It's just better. I am excited for Italy to get some legit gelato! Then back to the hotel. Some of us just chilled and talked for a while. Then we went to go find this restaurant that had live music. Well, we didn't exactly find it, but we did find this adorable street with restaurants lining the stairs.

We met some very friendly Greek men. Greek people are so nice! We shared some baklava, which was delicious, and then one of the men taught us how to dance! It was so much fun. And we got to say "Opa" and everything. Quite enjoyable. I feel like we had a pretty awesomely Greek experience tonight. And then back to the hotel, again, this time for sleep.