Rich in History: July 4th

Our weekend was once again filled with lots of visits to different historically important sites around Greece. Since we celebrated July 4th a day early, we spent Independence Day traveling all day. We set out on a road trip for Corinth, Mycenae, Nafplio, Monemvasia, Mystra and a picture stop at Sparta. The history surrounding each of these sites is absolutely astounding. Honestly, I never realized how much history the country of Greece possesses. At each site, we discussed a certain period of Greek history, from Ancient Greece and Byzantine Greece to Turkish Greece, Independent Greece, modern-day Greece and everything in between. It's a little mind-blowing trying to fit all the pieces together and understand the history as a whole. I'll be honest, I really didn't know much at all about Greek history until this trip. And I've absorbed and learned more than I ever could in a classroom. Actually experiencing the history and visiting these sites make the history feel alive.

The Temple of...no one knows!

The detail on this stone absolutely amazes me!

The holes in the middle of this stone were created by men who would play a game similar to Mancala. They played so often that eventually it wore holes into the stone, providing little cups to hold the playing beads. The men would sit here and watch who came into the city (and also checked out the ladies! Guess some things don't change!)

Our first stop was at Corinth, where we learned that what is commonly known as the Temple of Apollo is actually not  100% correct. Scholars and archaeologists are no longer positive that it is a temple built to Apollo. Either way, the temple was beautiful to see.

Artifacts housed at the Corinth museum.

When we visited the museum at Corinth, the guide told us the story of when 274 artifacts were stolen from the museum in 1990 (and a guard almost died during the break-in). Apparently some of the artifacts were found at an auction in the United States and eventually they were all returned to their rightful place in the museum. Who knew ancient artifacts had such exciting adventures?

Our stop at Mycenae might be my favorite stop of the whole weekend because I saw something we specifically studied in my Art in Athens class. For those of you who know about my class scheduling catastrophe, I finally picked a class! After my dance class was cancelled, I went to The City of Athens as Myth (too much reading), PR for Non-Profit (already studied that) before finally settling on the perfect class- Art in Athens. The class is taught by a British professor who lives in Greece and the class is actually very interesting! I've never been an "artsy" person but being in the culture of the art we are learning about is intriguing. In our art class, we analyze and learn about the different techniques, patterns, and stories behind Greek art. When Erika, Micah, Erin and I got to actually visit Mycenae, we were able to see in real life things we had only seen in pictures in class. We were easily the most excited out of the group for this visit!

The students who are taking the Art in Athens class, standing in front of a piece of art we discussed in class: The Lion Gate of Mycenae, the entrance to the city. 

The Lion Gate

Some of the girls on our hike to the underground cave.