Trekking Across Greece
My mom and I have begun our journey across Greece with our tour group on Tuesday. The first couple of days we were in Athens. We got to see the original Olympic stadium (of the modern Olympics), the Acropolis and Parthenon, then we walked around a lot. I loved the Acropolis and Parthenon! It was so big and beautiful I just wonder what it would have been like to see it in person before it was destroyed. I love hearing about the Greek mythology of each city. Apparently Athena and Poseidon gave gifts in order to win the city, Athena gave the olive tree and Poseidon gave water. Athena won so the city was named Athens.
On Wednesday we started our journey outside of Athens by stopping by the Corinth Canal. There was a place right next to it to sign up to bungee jump into the canal! Anyone who has seen Chasing Liberty, I definitely thought of that part of the movie. Then we went to Ancient Corinth, which was Apollo's city. We then drove to Mycenae and climbed to the top of the ruins for a beautiful view! We were looking out over mountains, don't worry I took a lot of pictures. Then it was on to lunch, we are pretty much exhausted at this point but the day isn't over. We went to the stadium of Epidaurus, which they still use! It blows my mind how there are these ancient stadiums that we have seen here and in Athens and there are still events like concerts and plays held in them! This stadium is known for its good acoustics, you could hear easily without amplification. I climbed the crazy amount of stairs to the top for a gorgeous view!
We climb back into the bus and everyone is pretty much done, we have been on the go all day but there is one more stop to make. We stop in Nafplio to get a view from the pier. I was more into sneaking of a picture of our bus driver than the view of the water. He looks like Robert De Niro! I totally got a picture of him, I pretended I was taking a panoramic picture or a video and paused just long enough to get a picture of him at the end. He may have known what I was doing but oh well. He is super nice and helps everyone out of the bus! Finally time to check out, we get to our hotel to rest before supper. At supper we sit at a fun table and I laugh more than I have laughed in awhile. The people on this tour are great! I'm really enjoying having them around!
Here we are on Thursday, we left Nafplio to head to a Greek pottery place where they make replicas of ancient museum pottery, they make jewelry, and lot of other things. Everything there was handmade in Greece and since we were the first tour bus of the day they gave us discounts so everyone went crazy! I bought this cool cup called the Pythagorean cup, when you fill it up too high the entire contents of the cup spill out of the bottom! Pythagorean made it to make sure all of his students who he drank with had the same amount, it is also called the Cup of Justice. I also got a little pottery jug of Apollo because he is my favorite!
Another awesome place we visited today was Olympia aka the place of the ORIGINAL and I'm talking B.C. Age of the Olympics. How awesome is that?! I love the Olympics so being here was super duper awesome! It is crazy thinking about the people that were standing there getting ready for the Olympic Games thousands of years ago. Then it was back to the hotel to be stuffed by another thousand course dinner with more awesome people from our tour!
We will continue trekking...