Greece, Day 8

I promised you guys I'd start posting more photos weeks ago, i know. I just couldn't bring myself to sit down and edit them all... plus I'm still processing and adjusting to this "normal" life thing again... it hasn't been easy and I really haven't been in the mood to have to deal with it all. but here you go- most of the picture posts won't be this long, but i didn't want to split up one day's worth of photos (and this was a busy day!) In this set are pictures of Plataea, where the battle of plataea took place (shocker, right?), Gla- an ancient Mycenaean ruin that was covered by a lake for a very long time, Thermopylae, where the battle shown in the movie 300 took place, and Delphi, where all kinds of cool shit from the Pythian games to the Delphic oracle of Apollo occurred.

 Greece is full of gorgeous flowers. This one was in Plataea. Modern Plataea is just a teeny tiny little town, and Ancient Plataea is even smaller- just a few old very worn down ruins, mostly the bases of houses and such.

 Nick got our Professor to pretend to fight him to recreate the battle of plataea- as if the prof is a persian and nick is a greek.

 This is Gla- it's actually quite huge, though it's hard to really see much in this photo. the whole thing was covered by a lake for a very long time- mostly you can just see the wall that lined the perimeter of this Mycenaean town.

 The boys- and one, in particular- had a habit of flexing their muscles for every picture we took. This is us girls (well three of us anyways) making fun of them :)

 see what i mean with the muscle flexing?

 This is Thermopylae, where the battle that is featured (and hollywood-ized, though not as much as you might think) in the movie 300 took place. Imagine the greeks coming down through those rocky, steep mountains, and the Persians approaching from the sea, which would be opposite these mountains. There's no longer a sea there, it's just farmland, but it's cool to think about.

 looks kind of familiar, doesn't it?

 A tribute to the Spartans, who fought to their death.

 Schmules doing his reading

 Statue of Leonidas, the spartan commander (Gerard Butler's character in the film)

 The spartans would of course not actually fight naked, but the Greeks were obsessed with the male form and perfection, so they always sculpted their warriors to be mostly nude.

 The view from the bus as we drove up the mountains to Delphi

 A tholos at the lower ancient site in delphi. Most tholos' we don't know the purpose of- in later pics you'll see some tholos tombs and at the agora there was a tholos where the important people in athens would meet, but this one and most others give no clues as to what they could be used for. Tholos just basically means round building, by the way.

 This is the greek version of an exit sign! weird, huh?

 If you look really closely at the center of this pic, you'll see a whitish dot. it's a goat! If you zoom in a bunch you can actually make out it's shape.

 Swimming pool at the ancient training area in Delphi. The pythian games- one of the four panhellenic games- took place in Delphi, but at the upper site (next set of photos). The lower site was where a lot of training took place. this swimming pool was aobut 4 or 5 feet deep now, but was surely deeper in antiquity.

 some of the boys pretending to swim in the pool.

 backstroke!

 awesome tree at the lower site

 the lower site at delphi

 there are a million stray dogs and cats in Greece! In delphi in particular, there were a bunch of cats that hung out across from our balconies at the hotel.

Nicholas, one of the two "greeks" on our trip. If you couldn't tell, he basically has a bottomless stomach. That night he pretty much finished everyone's food for them.


more pics in a few days!

<3
Em