Hello all! So, seeing as today was the last official day of my Greece adventure, I figured it was about time to catch you all up on the last handful of days before I prance off to Germany. So I left you with Olynthos, I do believe...

The day after that we went to Pella and Vergina, which were pretty cool. Pella has a pretty new museum, and they are working hard on the site to make it visitor friendly, and I can only imagine in a year or two that it will be totally awesome. Vergina has, hands down, one of the coolest museums I have ever been into, but they don't allow you to take any pictures in it, sadly. Vergina is the site of Macedonian tombs, and (probably, maybe, some people say) of Philip II, the father of Alexander the Great. The tombs were built into the ground and then covered over with a giant burial mound. Today, the museum is under a mound, and the tombs have been left where they were found - so you go into this giant mound, walk around and see the finds, and can walk a bit further down to the tomb faces. It's totally awesome!

The day after that we went to Dion and then Dimini. Dion was a really pretty site, where they had a collection of temples and sanctuaries outside the city itself, right near(ish) the foot of mount Olympus. Besides that, it was very wet and green and park-like, quite unlike most of the sites we've seen.

Dimini was also pretty cool, it is a neolithic site, and so one of the oldest on Greece. It is kinda small, just a little hilltop settlement in that time, but way nifty to look at. There is also a Mycenaean something or other there, but they are still excavating that and we couldn't see any of it, so hopefully there will be more about that coming about later!

The day after that we just went to the Volos museum, which was very nice, mostly because it has these amazing painted funeral stele. It isn't often that the paint survives so well, and they have more than a dozen  fabulous examples. After that we stopped by Mitrou, which is a little island site, but currently is all backfilled to protect it while they are having a study season. And then we drove back to Athens.

The next day we visited the Kerameikos in the morning, and then had a free afternoon. The Kerameikos is a rather fun site, it is the location of two gates of the city, one of which is the Dipylon gate, where the procession for the Panathenaic festival begins, winding up the sacred way and all the way up to the Parthenon. This is also where the dining, that followed the sacrifices at the festival would take place. Outside the gates are the potter's quarters, and the Street of Tombs, since it was against the law to bury anyone within city limits.

The next day we took a day trip to Aigina to see the two big temple complexes there - one to Apollo, and one to Aphaia. They were both pretty cool, the one to Apollo because there are a bunch of bronze age remains under it, and the one to Aphaia because the current temple standing there is pretty well preserved/restored. The day was a long one, though, because of the way the boats and buses worked out, which meant a lot of sitting around. It was still pleasant, though, the islands are mostly breezy so that was nice!

Today we went to the Agora and saw a little of that, and peeked in on all the excavations going on now, and then talked a little about Monastiraki and Plaka, neighborhoods in the shadow of the Acropolis and on top of the ancient city, and the Lysikrates monument. And ... that was the last of it! We had this afternoon free and tomorrow we have all day free, too, until we have our farewell party in the evening. And then off to Germany!

For some reason I cannot get pictures to upload today, so I will try and come back and add them in tomorrow and hope it works then. Love you all, hope everything is going well! <3

Hi guys! A general combo of lack of internet and laziness has kept me from being productive in updating you all, but I promise you something soon! ^^ <3

Hello all! So, first, catch-up time! So yesterday we went to Meteora, and then stopped by Aiani. Unfortunately the site at Aiani was closed when we go there, but we did get to poke around their museum, which was pretty cool. A lot of things were unpublished there, so I can't share pictures of the nifty vases they have there on the internets. But! I do have lots of pictures of Meteora. Meteora, in short, is a huge outcrop of these big limestone and composite stones, which are way cool and way tall, and have some 24 monasteries perched on and around them. Rocks:

 One of the monasteries:

 And the modern city below them:

 It was a rather cool site, to say the least ^^ And then today we went to see Olynthos, which is -the- city for domestic architecture in the ancient world. There are more than 100 houses excavated there, which is by far the most from one site and gives us a lot of information about how the regular people were living. Then we came back to Thessaloniki, and went to see the Mausoleum, Arch, and Palace of Galerius, who was one of the later rulers in the ancient world, after the Roman Empire had begun to fracture. This is his tomb (which he never got around to using because he died in Serbia):

 And his arch (or at least a fraction of it. It was a biiig arch thingy):

And that's about it for today. More tomorrow! Love you all! <3

Hi Guys! Still alive, but I didn't have the time to get any pictures uploaded today, which means that you get a double dose tomorrow, be excited! ^^ Today we went up to the monasteries in Meteora, and then stopped by Aiani before driving up to Thessaloniki where we are spending the night. The sites up north have been awesome so far, but they are a lot more spread out than those in the south, so we have spent a lot more time driving here and there than before. Which is... interesting. Today it was like 104, I think they said, so bus time was a bit warm. Hopefully it will be cooler tomorrow, though! Love you all! <3

Hello all! So my evening last night was spent places besides the computer, but yesterday was a good day! We went to see Delphi, which is one of my favorite sites ever. Actually, it is my favorite site ever. The site is beautiful, the town more so, and the valley and mountains most of all. If you only ever go one place in Greece, this would be the spot to visit.

The main attraction, of course, of the archaeological site is the temple of Apollo, where the pythia would answer questions 9 months out of the year about anything and everything, supposedly being inspired by Apollo to do so. Some of the most famous events in history have been impacted, or at least commented on, by the oracle at Delphi, and two of the most famous phrases of the ancient world ('Know thyself' and 'Nothing in excess') were carved on this temple. Ta-da: You can perhaps catch of a glimpse of how amazing the scenery is behind the temple foundations here:

The other cool thing is that there is a little tunnel beneath the temple which you can crawl through. This is me, absolutely blocking it. It is a wee bit tight, to say the least, but totally doable!

Alright, so that was Delphi day. We spent the night there and then made three stops today on our way to Kalabaka, where we are spending the night tonight. Our first stop was in Orchomenos in Boeotia. (In Boeotia, because there is, oddly enough, one in Arcadia, too.) This is a pretty cool site, though we couldn't see too much of it. It has a hypothesised Mycenaean palace, unfortunately a church still stands today on the site where it might or might not be. And also a massive tholos tomb, which is almost an exact copy of the tholos tomb of Agamemnon, which is the most famous one. So, it's big:

But the fantastic thing that makes it so unique is that the round tomb also had a side chamber, and the ceiling is intricately carved in relief allll over. This is just a piece of it:

From there we moved on to Chaironeia, which is where the famed battle took place between the Macedonians (supposedly this was Alexander the Great's first battle) and the Sacred Band of Thebes, which was a group of about 300 elite fighting men. Unfortunately, the Sacred Band was defeated for the first time ever here, and died to a man. Two funeral mounds were erected, and atop the one for the Sacred Band, this monumental lion was set up:

Our last stop of the day was at Thermopylai. >> Hopefully you have all at least heard of the 300 and know why that was cool, if not, go watch it right now! In short, the site, in ancient times, was a narrow path between the mountains and the water (which is now much further away because the shore line has silted up). This has caused a number of battles to be held here, but the most famous is when the Spartans and allies faced the Persians in 480 BCE. They did lose, but they fought valiantly and have been remembered for it ever since. This is the monument set up to that battle there today:

With a nice fancy, heroically nude spartan in the middle:

And that was it for the day! We have made it to Kalambaka, which is right near the site we are going to see first tomorrow: Meteora. We can actually see Meteora from our balcony:

That's the view from our balcony, and our next top is right atop those awesome rocks. More about it tomorrow! Love you all, hope all is well!

Hello all! So we've departed to the north, and so far we're got good internet, at least for the two nights we are going to be in this hotel, so yay! So let's see... today we started out stopping in Thebes, which was fun. We got a tour of the sites which are scattered throughout the modern city, since it is built right atop the ancient one. Unfortunately, as that is the case, there isn't too much to show in the way of pictures of things, so I shall spare you my square piles of rocks ^^ We did get to go into the museum there, which was fabulous, because the museum is actually closed for renovation and revamping, so it's entirely in pieces and scattered about, but we did see a few cool things. They had this nifty grave marker:

It's pretty cool because it is a dark stone with incised decoration that can only be seen from a certain angle. It's most likely that it would have been then painted in antiquity to bring out the image that had been incised on it. Also this snake: I don't know much about him, I just thought he was awesome ^^

So after that we went on to see the Trophonius oracle at Herkyna springs. We didn't actually make it to the oracle, but we have lunch by the springs, and they were way pretty (and nice and cool!)

And then our last stop of the day was at the monastery of Hosios Loukas, where we wandered about a bit. I bought delicious delicious honey (or so I assume, I haven't tasted it quite yet!) and got to wear this oh-so-fashionable outfit, since we had to have our knees and shoulders covered ^^

And then we headed off to Delphi, where we are now, with a fabulous mountain view and two nights to spend here. Hope all is well, love you!

Whoo! So, today was a good day! Mostly partly because I got my kindle back! And also my paper submission to the CAMWS Southern Section was accepted! Yay! Alright, but aside from that we did do a half day trip down to Piraias. First we stopped in the museum there, which has some amazing bronzes. This one's Artemis:

It's an awesome statue, not only because it is well preserved, but also because the inlaid eyes are still extant. There are two other awesome bronzes, but I won't flood you with too many pictures! Then we peeked at the arsenal, where they stored the movable ship parts when they weren't in use (oars, ropes, sails, and such) and the ship sheds, where triremes were pulled up out of the water to preserve them when they weren't in use. Unfortunately, not too much of those structures actually remain intact these days. Our last stop of the day was to look at a reconstructed trireme, which is a miracle of scanty clues and experimental archaeology. It turned out pretty cool, and though it is dry docked now, it was taken out and a bunch of silly college students and archaeologists proved it worked!

Triremes were sturdy, amazing ships. It took about 200 people to row each one, and they were mostly used as rams in order to sink enemy ships during naval encounters. And our last stop of the day was right next to that, a American become Greek ship from WWII that played a part in the anti-dictatorship protests during the years of the Junta in Greece when it fled to Italy.

It's name is Velos, which means arrow. ^^ And... that's it for today really! Now we're all scurrying about preparing to leave tomorrow. Tomorrow is our last big trip up North for a week. Hope all is well, love you all! <3