Advertisement
Published: February 9th 2009
Edit Blog Post
The last week has been a lot of fun and very busy, just like nearly all of my time so far in Athens!
Last Monday, my first class of the day, Archaeology of Athens, met at the Acropolis which was absolutely amazing. It was so surreal and interesting to be able to have our own private tour around the Acropolis! Then in that class on Wednesday we went to the Ancient Agora for class! We again got our own private tour from our professor followed by some time to explore the Agora Museum and the Agora itself. One of the neatest things about being in Greece is being able to see and feel the long history all around me! At the Agora, we were able to step foot on part of the Panathenaic way, the original road leading to the Acropolis! In fact, you could even see grove marks in the rock that were made by repetitive usage of carts!
On Wednesday my Ancient Materials and Technologies in the Greek World class got to go to two different sites! First we visited the Kerameikos, an ancient cemetery, and the museum there. Then we went to a small Ceramics Museum.
In both places we were looking at ceramic artifacts in order to better understand what it takes to make pottery: from the people involved to the tools and techniques used to create different objects. The class is very interesting because it really gets me to look at different aspects of things when I look at them in the museum. For example, when looking at one ceramic piece I noticed that it had to have been first thrown on a wheel and then cut out into the shape I saw because the inside of the leg of the piece had the lines created when a vessel is thrown on a wheel!
On a very different note, my apartment-mates and I have been taking turns cooking dinners. I really enjoy cooking and have had some fun and unexpectedly successful attempts! Last week I make pizza one night and really amazing Mac and Cheese (with excellent cheeses!) On that note, if anyone has any relatively easy recipes, I would love if you had the chance to send them my way!!!
I signed up to take Greek dancing lessons. The lessons are about an hour long and we only have a few
of them, but it is a lot of fun, albeit incredibly exhausting and challenging.
On Friday, I went with four of my friends to check out the Poet Sandal Maker in Monastiraki, one of the nearby neighborhoods in Athens. The Poet Sandal Maker actually retired a few years ago, but his son, who calls himself the Artist Sandal Maker, took over the business. From the front the shop looks a bit like a hole in the wall kind of place, but it is absolutely amazing! A number of celebrities have actually bought sandals there including Barbara Streisand, the Beatles, Jackie Onassis, and others. The store offers a number of different all leather sandals, many of which look very Greek. Once you find the style you want, the Artist Sandal Maker fits the sandal to your foot. Entirely. If a strap is too loose, they tighten in, if you need more holes for the buckle, they make them, etc. The sandals are also incredibly comfortable and best yet- reasonably priced!!! It was definitely a good first purchase.
This weekend we had a few problems trying to get our plans to work out, which was a bummer, but at least
we are much wiser as to prices and times for travel in the future! My friend Sarah and I originally wanted to go to Meteora for the weekend. Unfortunately, the tickets were sold out when we got there to purchase them. So then, as we sat planning our Meteora and Galaxidi trip for in three weeks, we decided we would go to Thebes for the day this weekend. We were much too tired to get up early enough on Saturday, so we though we would go on Sunday. Unfortunately, we arose to find it pouring, and as our plans involved being outside most of the day, we felt it might be wise to wait until a later date to go to Thebes. Oh well, at least we have figured out how to get there and how much it costs! We will for sure make it to Thebes soon, though!
Since we did not travel out of Athens on Saturday, I took the opportunity to go with a group of friends on a walk up the Lykavittos Hill. The weather wasn't great, so the view wasn't as spectacular as it is when it is clear, but we will go back
on a nicer day! The Lykavittos is the tallest hill in Athens and provides (even on a cloudy, gray day) a spectacular view of the city. On top of the hill is a small church. We were not entirely sure of how to get onto the path to the hill and ended up taking a small foot trail through a hole in a fence in order to make our way to the official path. But we got there in the end and had a nice walk!
Since our travel plans fell through on Sunday as well, Sarah and I decided to still take advantage of the day, so we went to the Ilias Lalaounis Jewelry Museum. It was a lot of fun to spend a few hours looking at some incredible pieces of jewelry, most of which were more pieces or art than of jewelry. The interesting thing was that a lot of the pieces were inspired by very interesting things such as neolithic figurines, American Indian artwork, dance choreography, jewelry portrayed in detailed portraits of royalty, and biological phenomena such as chromosomes, DNA, and bone cells, to name a few. Following the museum, we took advantage of the
beautiful day it turned out to be (despite the deceptive rain earlier) and went for a bit of a walk through Athens. We both got ice creams and Sarah made a spectacular purchase of The Little Prince in modern Greek from a street vendor selling books.
Advertisement
Tot: 0.045s; Tpl: 0.017s; cc: 8; qc: 23; dbt: 0.021s; 1; m:domysql w:travelblog (10.17.0.13); sld: 1;
; mem: 1mb
Britt
non-member comment
I want a pair of Hermes sandals! I'm glad you are having such a great time. I will e-mail you a curry recipe when I get a chance. It is what I lived on over the summer.