Photo Dump! or, Athens Days 1-4

Edit- I'm going to go through and add some commentary on the photos/tell you a bit more about what I did the first four days! Added stuff will be in red.

hello lovelies,
for the time being I have internet and as far as i can tell a reliable way of uploading photos, aside from the fact that the upload process somehow took all the photos off my camera and put them on this random hotel computer. In fear of not being able to upload them here later, I'm uploading them now!

I think I will try to do this once a week, or every few days. I wont say anything too permanent because I'm not sure when I will have internet once we leave athens next sunday. For now, though, here are a zillion photos from the first few days of this amazing trip. I haven't edited them at all yet and I'm not going to include any writing right now because I've got 30 mins to do this and get breakfast, and I really want to get a cappuccino from down the street :)

The first beach we went to. very nice, although our grumpy bus driver didn't let us stay more than an hour or 2 and was very anal about us showering off completely before we reboarded the bus. Apparently the Unions in this country are ridiculous, so people can basically just say fuck it and not work whenever they want. Strikes happen allll the time, as do protests (there are 2000 people on syntagma square right now apparently). We have to pretty much appease the bus driver the best we can so he doesn't ditch us in the countryside! Totally different from America where people are assholes to employees and the workers just have to take it cause of the whole "customer is always right" policy. not here! anyways, tangent. The boys were surprisingly good at skipping rocks on the ocean.

My room! I have 2 roommates for the time being, and they're both wonderful.

The teeny little bath/shower.

view from my balcony

the above two are from the parthenon! The first full day in athens we woke up bright and early and trekked up the parthenon. It was craaazy busy, but we all have extra special archeology student passes from the American school which let us get into every site without paying or waiting in line. It's pretty awesome.

Views from the acropolis.

such a majestic piece of architecture!

love those whitewashed buildings :)

The Erectheon

Have you heard the myth about how Athens got it's name? Apparently both Athena and Poseidon were in the running. Poseidon slammed his trident into a rock, leaving a few marks, and gave the athenians the power of the sea. Athena planted an olive branch, giving the olives/olive oil that is so detrimental to greek life. Apparently the athenians chose Athena based on her gift. This is supposedly the very same tree which sprung from the olive branch Athena planted all those hundreds of years ago.

The theater of Dionysus I think.

Lunching at a taverna! You can't tell because of the perspective of this photo, but Sam, the boy in the red, opted for the fixed price meal with included drink and they gave his a tiny (like 8 oz) beer. Nick, the other boy, ordered a normal half liter I'm pretty sure. The tiny beer looked pretty pathetic next to the normal one.

The next day we went to the Agora, which was like the marketplace of Ancient Athens where Socrates spent a lot of his time. A friend of our professor is an archaeologist here and she showed us one of the sites they're about to start digging at.

The Hephaisteion! So gorgeous... maybe one of my fave temples thus far.

View of the Agora and acropolis. gorgeous.

The Agora was full of stoas, which are like our modern day shopping malls only open air. Only one was restored for use as a museum- the one on the right which is the stoa of attalos.

Various things from the museum at the Agora.

The above are all from the Kerameikos, which is the site of a cemetary. lots of funerary steles here :)

The Pnyx

View from the Areopagus, a very slippery rock hill where murder trials were held. In the Oresteia, this is where Orestes went after he killed his mother and was pestered by the furies. Athena pretty much laid down the law, and the jury was split- Orestes was acquitted and Athena stated that from that point forward if there was ever a hung jury the defendant would be acquitted- something we still go by today.

The Athenian tomb in Marathon from the battle of marathon. Under the glass panes you can see actual skeletons, but I couldn't really manage a good picture.

The temple to Poseidon in Sounion

A bunch of the kiddos posing in front of the temple to Poseidon.

Greek coast=most beautiful thing ever.

It was an absolutely amazing first four days. I was soooo tired when we first touched down in Athen's because I had been travelling for nearly 20 hours, couldn't sleep on the plane, and it was 10 am- We were supposed to stay up until about midnight. I showered and got myself a little lost in Athens, and then at about 6 we took a short walking tour. We went to the hill of the muses and saw our first view of the athenian skyline which was stunning to say the least. we then went to a taverna for dinner where we tried all the greek classics- greek salad, moussaka, pasticcio (sp?), calamari, wine, ouzo, and lots of other stuff I can't remember.


The next few days were jam packed with activity, and we were all soooo exhausted by the end of each day. we get up early every morning, and eat breakfast in the hotel or go down the street to a little cafe where the guy recognizes us and makes the best sweet cappuccino ever. There's also an awesome bakery where you can get a big piece of spanikopita or a bunch of greek pastries for a bit over a euro. We eat at tavernas for lunch and dinner and get gelato way more often that we really should :)


I'm getting super tan and I know by the end of this trip it will be ridiculous! I'm excited though :) anyways, on to edit the next post! love you all


Ya-Sas!


<3
Em