Thanksgiving Break!

I hope everyone had a fabulous Thanksgiving break with lots of turkey and pie! We had a lovely Thanksgiving Break traveling around the Peloponnese. We started our journey on Thanksgiving day and went to the Corinth Canal, where you could bungy jump off of, unfortunately it was closed when we were there. We then stopped at the Epidavros theater and saw the temple of the god of medicine, Asclepius, along with the stadium. The theater was pretty cool with acoustics that can be heard all the way to the top of the theater. We did test this by dropping a coin. We ended our day with Nafpoli, it was a really quaint little town. I didn't go swimming b/c it was a bit cold, but I did climb the fortress/castle on the top of the acropolis. It had an amazing view, especially during sunset(pic). We had our Thanksgiving meal that night at the hotel. They made three turkeys for us, but the meat was a bit dry and the stuffing inside was rice and ground beef which looked kinda gross. We had Greek salad, potatoes, and then flan for dessert. Some of us weren't that satisfied so we went to a Gelateri for gelato which was amazing and made up for the dessert at least.

Friday we were back on the bus heading to Mycenae for the morning. It is an ancient city of ruins of the Mycenaean people. It had a graves inside its walls, along with a palace in the center. It was very neat to see and learn. We did go into the museum they had and saw some of the replica items that were buried with the dead and some other pots and inscriptions. We were back on the bus after an hour or so and headed to Sparta. (This is Sparta!!) There really isn't much in Sparta, not even paraphernalia of the movie 300. But Robert, history prof., took us to where he is excavating, the theater(pic.) which was really cool to see and the view was spectacular. However, the Spartans were obsessed with training males and sending them to war that they had little time to reproduce so they ceased to exist b/c they forgot to keep reproducing, which I thought was kind of funny. From Sparta we headed up to Olympia for dinner and the night. Dinner did make up for Thanksgiving, it was really good. We stayed in and watched movies because we don't have tvs in Athens.

Saturday was an exploring of Olympia. First we went to an Olympic museum that described the first Olympics that existed. It was very interesting. We then went to the ruins, where we saw the Temple of Hera, some treasuries, the stadium, the Temple of Zeus, and the gymnasium. The temple of Zeus (pic) was huge, or at least what was left of it. We did go to the museum which had some statues and artifacts found at the site. We were free for the day after the museum and a few of us went to a jewelry place that had 50% off items (score). Most of us just chilled and did homework until dinner. After dinner in our room we had a Harry Potter party with 13 people on 3 beds. It was almost half of our group. It was a blast, we watched Harry Potter IV until our tv cut out towards the end of the movie.

Sunday was a long day on a bus, driving back to Athens. It took 5 hours, which wasn't that long compared to the 7 hours I'm used to in order to get to Minnesota or the 8 hours to Aurora, IL. Now I am just getting some odds and ends done before I go for my trip to London on Wednesday! I can't believe December is two days away, but I can't wait to see you all soon! Miss you and love you all! Keep well!