The End is Nigh

I just lost the first version of this post. Bah. Anyway, long story short, this will probably be the last set of pictures until I'm back in the States. So here's a bunch from the second half of the trip to tide you guys over until I'm back. With less commentary, because I'm annoyed at the internet. You'll get more when I do proper posts from home.

Peloponnese trip:
The temple of Apollo at Bassae was guarded by ferocious kittens.

A nice odeon (basically a theater that had a roof) in Messene. The city was founded by the Theban general Epamenondas for the Messenian slaves he had freed from the Spartans.

A shot from the medieval fortress of Mystra. Those white buildings are the modern town of Sparti. Even the view from a higher part of the castle looking at a lower part was impressive.

A monument in Sparti listing every Spartan Olympic victor from Akanthos in 720 BC to Thomakos in AD 2004.

Looking to the right from about 2/3rds of the way up into the theater at Epidauros. Most of this is original, actually, and they reconstructed the rest so that they could have plays in the summer.

The bay in Nafplio, as seen from our second medieval castle. That island is the fortress that I posted pictures of after our first trip to Nafplio, when we did Mycenae and Tiryns.

The isthmus of Corinth as seen from the acropolis of ancient Corinth. That's the Gulf of Corinth (between the Peloponnese and the mainland) on the left and the Saronic Gulf (south of Attica) on the right.

The Temple of Olympian Zeus in Athens, with the Acropolis in the background. It's famous mostly for being really big, and is only about ten minutes from CYA.

Northern Greece:
One of the handful of surviving chryselephantine statues. This one's Apollon in the museum at Delphi. These were the nicest of the cult statues (both the Wonder of the World statue of Zeus in Olympia and the one of Athena in the Parthenon were in this style). The god's skin is carved ivory, which has turned black in this one for some reason, and the hair and clothing were all pure gold.

A modern mosaic of St. Demetrius, the patron saint of Thessaloniki, in the Aghios Demetrios.

A 2200 year old or so yahtzee set from a Macedonian tomb. The Macedonians didn't have 20-sided dice, and thus were unable to play Dungeons and Dragons until the Roman period.

Currently the last picture on my camera. It's a mosaic from a Roman bathhouse in Dion, near Mt. Olympos.

Ok, now it's lunchtime before the internet eats my post again. I'll see you all next week.

I figured I'd do a quick update for those loyal readers out there. No pictures tonight, though, since I'm paying for the time and wanted to take care of some other things while I had computer access. And, while I'm thinking of it, no pictures of today, either. The Verginia museum is probably the coolest one in Greece, but they don't allow pictures. For those who didn't obsessively read the wikipedia links from my first post way back when, Vergina is the site of some royal Macedonian tombs, which they've actually built the museum around. There's lots of gold and ivory; very cool stuff. Alexander the Great's tomb was in Egpyt until it was lost in the middle ages, and despite claims that his dad's buried at Vergina, it's most likely just his brother, Philip III, and his son, Alexander IV, who were both killed off by the generals dividing up the Macedonian empire after Alexander died.

Tonight and the next two nights we're in Thessaloniki (named after one of Alexander's half-sisters, if I remember right), Greece's 2nd largest city. It's got a much different feel from Athens and is much more multicultural. Back before the Nazi occupation it was also one of the biggest centers of Jewry in Europe. Anyway, when we get back there's a day off, the final, and then I have another day off before leaving Athens on the 10th. It's not much longer now.