Blogs from Cape Sounion, Attica, Greece, Europe

The Temple of Poseidon was constructed between 444 and 440 BC, with 38 columns that rose 20 feet into the air. It once housed a 20 feet tall bronze statue of Poseidon in the hall of worship. It is located at Cape Sounion at the southern tip of mainland Greece. The first version of the temple was constructed in the archaic period. However, it was destroyed in 480 BC by the Persians during the Greco-Persian Wars. Pericles rebuilt the temple around 440 BC, although only 16 of the original 38 columns remain standing today. According to Greek mythology, Poseidon’s power is second to only Zeus. As the god of the sea, the mariners and fishermen of ancient Greece prayed to Poseidon to keep them safe from storms and shipwrecks and often left animal sacrifices and other ... read more

No snooze-alarm fest today! We were up at 9:20, well okay 2 snoozes. We got ready for the beach and went down for breakfast at the hotel. It was actually pretty delicious; they had cold cuts and hard boiled eggs but also eggs sunny side up and cooked ham and mini hot dogs (which seem to be the Greek version of sausages). They also had fruit, yogurt and cereal. So bellies full we grabbed our beach stuff and headed south.We decided to go to Cape Sounion first to see the Temple of Poseidon and then to the beach after. The road the hotel is on is called Poseidonos and it’s the coastal road. It probably took us about an hour to drive down to Sounion as the road hugged the coast with lots of switchbacks, but ... read more

I have been remiss in adding to my blog. I'm 2 countries later and I need to catch up. It may end up being more pictures than typing since it takes an insanely long amount of time to upload pictures with mediocre connections. Or maybe I'm just too tired at the end of a long day and ready to sleep!! On that note, I'll wrap up Greece... Temple of Poseidon - Sounio (Cape Sounion) Driving from Delphi to Sounion was pretty and relatively uneventful for the first half. The second half however was back to the stress of driving in Greece. Bits I didn’t add to the blog about driving: the roads are not well labeled AT ALL. If you have a map that is actually labeled to show you the road number, it probably doesn’t ... read more

Today was good. Rested and such. So my overall goal for today was to get to Cape Sounion, specifically to the Temple of Poseidon there. Getting to the bus station for that was a bit of a chore, but instead of whining about it (or, more accurately, in addition to whining about it), I decided to make it into an adventure. The National Archaeology Museum was on the way to Areos Park (where the bus station is), so I decided to see that. turns out that today is "World Museum Day", so while that makes stuff like this free (yay!), it also means today was crowdTASTIC. It's okay though, it was a lot of fun. Finding the museum sent me through a park that had to have once been nice, but was now entirely taken over ... read more

I took a day trip to Sounio where the temple of Poseidon stood. There was a metro strike, so I had to walk all the way to Mavromateon Terminal to catch the bus to Sounio. I have to say, I've traveled extensively and I am not that bad with directions, but I had a hard time finding the bus stop for the Sounio bus. Asking for direction can be quite daunting, as most people don't know what they are talking about. I was turning around the bus terminal, looking around and asking people where the bus stop is. There is not ticket booth that sells the ticket, you pay once you are on board. Kind of reminds me of Thailand. It took about two and a half hours to get there. I hardly felt the time ... read more