Andy got here on May 12th, and since then we’ve had a good balance of sight-seeing, work-doing, and lazy-being. We revisited all the big sights of Athens – the Acropolis and Acropolis Museum, the National Archaeological Museum, the Kerameikos, the Agora – and saw a few new things – the Museum of the City of Athens, for instance, which had a scale model of the city of Greece from 1840 which Andy really liked. We did some souvenir shopping so I can remember that year I spent here. We played some Rock Band at Public and have been out for gyros a few times (this is Andy’s fault; I think he will miss gyros most of all). We’ve also done a surprising amount of work, and have spent long quality hours at the library or in the salon, so I’ve started the research for my second chapter. And we’ve gone to ouzo hour more since Andy arrived than I ever did all year.

But now we’e looking forward to getting home. Our flight is on Monday; we should be in Newark around 4:00 PM. I started packing, and right now it looks like I’ll get everything home, but I’m also leaving some things here/throwing some things out. This afternoon Andy’s finishing up an abstract and I’m writing my end-of-the-year report for the ASCSA, and then we should have finished all the chores we needed to get done before returning.

I’m looking forward to seeing everyone! I have a (very) few pictures from our past few days – Andy and I are bad about taking pictures. They are here. Now I am off to lunch, which is tyropitas; I may miss those most of all.

But now to tell you what I’ve been up to. The Baxters arrived this past Saturday; for those of you playing along at home, it was Labor Day, so many people were striking and protesting (this is normal for Labor Day), but the Metro and the buses were supposed to be operating after 7:00 AM. Around noon I went down to get the Metro out to the airport, but found that the airport line was not running. Then I went to the bus station; the X95 pulled up, drove past the stop, put on its four-ways and took down its sign. I asked the bus driver if he would be going to the airport, and he said, “Next driver,” then got out of the bus and walked away. I waited around about twenty more minutes, then guessed that no other bus or driver was coming (the X95 runs every fifteen), and walked home (through a crowd of a few thousand protesters, who were walking down the street in the opposite direction that I was going, so that I had to shove my way through). A little later I walked down to the Hotel Amalia where the Baxters were going to stay, and on my walk I breathed in tear gas, and it was kind of awful. First it hit my nose and made it burn, and then seconds later my eyes began to burn, and the feeling sort of crept back into my throat, which continued to burn for a few hours. I got to the hotel lobby and sat down, and then had my first bit of luck that day, as two minutes later the Baxters walked in. After settling in we went and saw the changing of the guard at Parliament, then walked through Plaka and saw bits of the Agora, Roman Agora, and Library of Hadrian, and finally grabbed some dinner at Ithaka (which was good, except my gyro platter came with some kind of mustard instead of tzatziki – sacrilege! alternately, crazy Northern Greeks!)

The next day we went to the Acropolis and the Acropolis Museum, and we had drinks outside at the cafe in the museum, which was very nice. We then took the Metro down to the National Archaeological Museum and looked around there. Their new exhibit on Eretria is open, which is very exciting (if you’re a big nerd, I suppose, but I fit the bill). They have the Lefkandi Centaur, except when we were in Eretria with Sylvain Fachard he told us they couldn’t take the Lefkandi Centaur, so maybe it’s a fake. Either way, it’s a 3000-ish year old representation of a centaur, and it’s totally awesome. We grabbed a late lunch at the Museum Garden restaurant, and then took the Metro back to the hotel. Mom walked with me back to the American School and I gave her a little tour, and then she went back to the hotel for the afternoon. In the evening I went back down and we walked around the National Gardens, then got some dinner.

Monday we took a cruise of three islands of the Saronic Gulf. I got to the Amalia around 7:15, as the bus was to pick us up at 7:30 (it got there around 7:50, but that’s pretty good for Greece). We went to the Piraeus and got on the boat; it had three decks, each with a bar where waiters came around and served you, and shops – so, very fancy. We first went to Hydra, which is actually the furthest island. Hydra is very picturesque; the city is right on the harbor and climbs up a mountain, and they have some of their fortifications from the period of the War of Independence, and there are no cars allowed in the city, only donkeys. We walked along the waterfront and then on the road that led out of town for a bit, and finally turned around and got drinks at one of the cafes on the waterfront. On returning to the boat we were served lunch (beefteki, and the lemoniest dessert ever) as we went to Poros. Poros is very small and there’s not much going on there. I saw a sign for an archaeological museum, but as it was Monday it would have been closed anyway. Mom and I walked up to the clock tower on top of the hill that the town is on, and then we walked around the waterfront a bit before returning to the boat. We then went to Aegina, and we walked around the town a bit and then stopped somewhere for ouzo and mezedhes (they had kolokuthokephtedes (fried zucchini balls), so it was very exciting for me). The boat then brought us back to Athens, and Mom and I grabbed some gelato before I headed back.

Tuesday morning we went to Lykavittos and took the funicular to the top, and got a chance to see the whole city. We stopped at the ASCSA again for a few minutes to give Dad a little tour, and then they went to their hotel for the afternoon. They walked around and enjoyed the city, and I went to the library and did work. We met up again for dinner, first going to the Zonar cafe right by the Acropolis to have some drinks while the sun set, and then to a taverna for dinner. Wednesday I didn’t see them at all, and just stayed at the school and went to the library to work, and that was probably for the best. And then this morning I met them at the Amalia and we all had breakfast together (the breakfast was amazing: there were fried and scrambled eggs, bacon and sausage, broiled tomatoes with cheese, fried mushrooms, fried potatoes, vegetables, fruit, granola, yogurt, multiple kinds of cheese, multiple kinds of meat, bougatsa, chocolate filled croissants…). Then Mom and I took a last walk around Plaka, and I directed them onto the airport bus, so they are off to Paris, where hopefully everything will be calm during their stay.

I should be going over to the library now. I have a few pictures of Hydra (my battery died after about fifteen minutes), and a few pictures of Athens from this morning. They are here. Click here to listen to Buffalo Springfield’s For What It’s Worth as you look at them; it adds atmosphere.

Anyway, I have an album up of pictures I took during my morning in the library today. Today is Sunday, so there’s no one around (I only saw one other person all morning). This morning I got the second of the two sections completed, so it was fairly productive, even though the pictures will show that I had a lot of trouble tracking down books. Pictures are here.

They arrived in Athens on Thursday around 1:00, and I met them at their airport; from there we went to Loring Hall, since Rob was staying with me. We then decided to walk to my parent’s hotel in Syntagma with all their luggage – that was a mistake. I mean, I wasn’t carrying any luggage, but it looked unpleasant. After that they were hungry, having only eaten airport food for the past day, so we went down to Ithaka and everyone got some souvlaki. They managed to stay awake long enough to see the Little Metropolitan (a 12th c. Byzantine church), Plaka, and get their first far-off glimpse of the Acropolis, but then we decided to call it a night.

By Friday morning everyone was rested, so we headed off to the Acropolis. We went up the south slope so they could see the Theater of Dionysos (and the few remaining blocks of the Asklepeion and Stoa of Eumenes!), then headed up to the top where they got to see the Propylaion, Parthenon, and Erechtheion. After that we headed back down and went to the Acropolis Museum, where they got to see the Parthenon marbles (among many other cool things). We also ate lunch at the Museum (it’s been recommended to me), and it was delicious. After that we headed over to the Agora, and got a chance to see the Stoa of Attalos and the museum inside it, and then the Hephaisteion, before the guards chased us out because it, like almost all archaeological sites, closes at 3:00 in the afternoon (this makes scheduling fairly tricky). We took a break and got some drinks, and then headed over to the National Gardens where we got to see not just some lovely spring flora, but also the menagerie which I love so dearly. The baby goat was out walking around for the first time, which was exciting (for me). On our way to dinner we passed the Parliament building and the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier; they weren’t changing the guards right then, but the ceremonial guards did perform a little marching routine around the tomb. Dinner was at TGIFriday’s – you may only make fun of me after you have eaten Greek food every day for seven and a half straight months. I had a cheeseburger, and no regrets. I’m also totally making Andy go there with me when he gets here.

On Saturday we started with a trip to the National Archaeological Museum, where we got to see a lot of awesome Greek art. We headed back to Syntagma after that and grabbed some lunch, and then we investigated SE Athens. We started with the Temple of Olympeion Zeus, then saw Hadrian’s Arch and the Lysikrates Monument. Not having walked nearly enough that day I suggested we go to Kolonaki and head up Lykavittos. We learned that, from the intersection of Ploutarchou and Souidias streets, there are about 192 stairs just to get to the funicular station. We then took the funicular to the top of Lykavittos; it was a little strange, as the ride is entirely inside and yet the car has big windows on the sides and ceiling, and as the station is covered with Metaxa advertising. Anyway, we made it up there and got some great views of the city. After that we headed to Phagopoteion for dinner.

Sunday was a day of adventure. We started at 7:30 with a taxi ride to the Piraeus (the metro to the Piraeus is under construction right now, so at one point you have to get off and take a bus to the next working stop). Once there I had to find a Hellenic Seaways kiosk to pick up our tickets, and was helped out by a random old man who then demanded money from us for his assistance. Anyway, I got the tickets, and we took the 8:00 boat over to the island. Once there we started by going to Kolonna, which is just next to the town of Aegina; there we visited the museum and the archaeological site, which has phases stretching back to 2500BC and forward to the Byzantine period. We then walked around the town a bit, and then decided to catch a bus over to Aphaia on the other side of the island. I got to the ticket counter and asked if the man there knew English; he did not. I then used my terrible Greek to ask him how to get to Aphaia and purchase tickets, as well as which of the several buses hanging around was ours. Ours was the ble (that’s Greek for blue – really!) one, which was just a tour bus that the town apparently bought and made a public bus. We drove across the island and got to see some of the countryside, which was nice, and got dropped off right at Aphaia. There we got to see the Temple of Aphaia, which is a really nice temple as far as temples go (plus everyone was fascinated to learn about U-shaped lifting bosses), and the little two-room museum that’s there. We went back to the bus stop and waited there about an hour (there’s no schedules – actually, there’s one in the little shop across the street, but I don’t think the bus drivers are aware of it) for the bus. This one was a public bus, and was pretty old and dirty, had some disturbing chunks missing from the wall, and stalled out after going about five feet. Adventure! We made it back to Aegina town, got some lunch, and then caught the next ferry back to Athens. From there we decided to take the metro back to Syntagma, so we got to experience that too (The metro to Piraeus is under construction now, so after finding the Piraeus station we got on the metro for one stop, left the station, got on a bus, took that for a while, got dropped off at another station, got back on the metro, took it until Omonia, switched lines, and went one stop to Syntagma. Simple!) After that we had just enough energy for dinner.

Monday we were ready to strike out again; it’s a tough day, though, since everything is pretty well closed on a Monday. We began by walking up the Mouseion Hill to see the Philopappos monument. After that we checked out the Benaki Museum, which I had not visited before but which proved to be really cool. It has an ancient collection, but there’s also Byzantine artifacts and artifacts from the period of Turkish occupation, so you get a nice sense of Greek culture over a long period. We headed to Phagopoteion for lunch and got some gyros (yay!), then walked down to the Panathenaic Stadium. After a little rest in Loring we headed down to the National Gardens for a nice early evening stroll. The menagerie was crazy that day – we saw a goose attack another goose and rip feathers from its back, two male goats butting horns, and chickens fighting. Crazy.

Tuesday we had to finish up the archaeological ticket (you literally purchase a ticket that has a number of smaller tickets that let you into all the archaeological sites in Athens), so we walked down to the Kerameikos. It’s not as impressive a site by itself, as there’s no monumental architecture, but there’s things like graves and roads and walls and gates you don’t see elsewhere. That day I challenged my family to find three turtles to earn their junior archaeologist badges; I think they found six altogether, so they made a fool out of me there. We checked out the Oberlander Museum, which is in the Kerameikos and has lots of neat finds from the graves, including a monumental marble bull used as a grave marker. After that we checked out the Roman Agora and then Hadrian’s Library, at which point my family had used all their tickets and seen every archaeological site in Athens. Success! But we were hardly done. After a little shopping in Plaka we got a quick lunch and then headed over to the Byzantine Museum. I had never been there before either, but it proved very nice; it’s a good collection, and it’s inside a villa once owned by the Duchess de Plaisance. And that was the end of our sight-seeing, alas. From there we got my family ready for the trip home (this included buying tickets for the bus to the airport; they were going to use it anyway, but it became very necessary when we learned that day that there would be a taxi strike over the next two days). We got dinner at Ithaka, where we dined the first night, and I got pastitsio that was cooked into a crock and delicious, but also hot, so I burned my tongue and can still feel it today. We also managed to fit a little gelato in there before it was time to say good-bye, and I headed back to Loring.

So now they are off, back to America. I only have 48 days until I go back too, which is exciting, especially since I have two more sets of visitors coming, and will hopefully be doing lots of work in between. I didn’t take any pictures, I’m afraid, but Rob took quite a few, and since he knows how to use a camera they’re of a higher quality than my usual fare. You can check them out here.

Anyway, this post was just to let you know that I’m still alive and well. My parents and brother are arriving here on Thursday, so then I’ll probably have some things to talk about. Until then, I went on a walk to the National Gardens (as has become my daily habit) and took some pictures on the way. It’s Easter Monday, so a lot of places were closed and there weren’t a lot of people out (in case you didn’t know, Easter is the biggest holiday of the year in Greece).

I hope everyone is enjoying the start of spring. My pictures are here.

We begin last Friday, when I left Athens. It takes under two hours to get to Rome, so I had a fairly pleasant flight. I even got a dinner, which struck me as pretty wild given the short flight time, and it was actually pretty good – a kabob of chicken, peppers, and tomatoes, and a little choriatiki (Greek salad) and some cheesecake. Anyway, I arrived in Rome and went right to baggage claim (traveling within the Schengen Zone is awesome, as there is no paperwork), and who should I find but Andy himself? He actually found me, but it was nice that we didn’t have to search at all. We headed over to the train which goes into Rome, and then we found our hotel without much trouble. The hotel was pretty standard European – smallish (but not the smallest I’ve ever been in) with an actually fairly spacious bathroom (it had a bidet for some reason, and there was an actual bathtub, but the water came out through a detachable shower-head in the middle of the long side of the tub, and there was no curtain, but I long ago gave up on expecting sense from European plumbing), and thin walls, but clean and with a generally comfortable bed.

The next day we decided to try just to get our bearings in Rome. (Andy slept really well through the night, and didn’t have any trouble with jetlag at all). So we proceeded from our room, and got to see Rome for the first time in the daylight. Walking down the street we found the Colosseum and the Imperial forums and Trajan’s column, and then we wandered over by the Capitoline. We got lunch (pizza! salad with balsamic vinegar!) and later gelato (gelato!). On returning to our hotel room I tried out the TV (I kept checking BBC to see if Greece had collapsed yet), and found that it was showing Poirot, and that after Poirot was Monk, and later that night was Midsomer Murders, and the next day was Columbo. Somehow all my favorite shows in the world were on Italian TV, though admittedly in Italian. Insane! We went out for dinner then, and just got some paninis. On returning to our rooms, we did what might be even nerdier than my watching Monk in Italian, which was to read ahead for sightseeing. Nor do I just mean we planned our route and checked when things were open, I mean Andy had Eleanor’s Oxford Archaeological Guide and Roman Source Book, and we read up on all the sites we wanted to see the next day, because we are that dorky.

On Sunday we actually went sight-seeing. We started with breakfast, which we had missed the day before, and which was pretty standard European breakfast. Why deli ham and cheese, Europe? Anyway, we headed down to the Colosseum and got in line for tickets, and decided to get the audio tour as well, though that was the last time we got an audio tour as it’s a little annoying to use and I knew pretty much everything they said anyway, and it wasn’t even a super-famous voice like when they got Omar Sharif to do the treasures of King Tut. The Colosseum is awesome, and probably was Andy’s favorite site. I did find the large amounts of going-on outside of it disconcerting, and since that sentence made no sense, let me elaborate. In Athens, when you go to a major archaeological site, it is just there. You go up to the ticket booth and get a ticket and go inside. There are no food stands, souvenir stands, people trying to sell flowers, people trying to be your tour guide, people dressed like ancient Greeks charging you for pictures, etc. This may be related to Greece’s law against posing, dancing or singing in front of the monuments, or Rome just knows how to capitalize on tourists a lot better, but I really didn’t expect it. Anyway, after the Colosseum we got some lunch (one advantage of traveling with Andy is that we would order different things in restaurants and then split them). Then we headed over to the Roman forum, which was pretty cool, and had remains of things like temples and the Curia (Senate-house). From there we walked up to the Palatine Hill, where they’ve also found traces of early Iron-Age settlement (the Romans thought Romulus had his house there), and where the emperors later built palaces. After that we exited and went over to the Circus Maximus, which is not particularly thrilling nowadays.

On Monday we decided to go to the Vatican (a lot of other museums and sites are closed on Monday), and we took the Metro to get there, which allowed me to award a point to Athens for better Metro. The Roman Metro is kind of totally gross, and for some reason they have TVs in the cars which occasionally show YouTube videos (we saw a cat falling down the stairs, and someone who couldn’t park their car). On emerging from that hive of scum and villainy we walked to Vatican City and started with St. Peter’s (first we visited the visitor’s center, and since they were out of English pamphlets we had to get one in modern Greek, which is my next-best language). While we went inside St. Peter’s, we did not visit the cupola or the tombs of the popes (sorry Rob). We grabbed some lunch then and made our way to the Vatican Museum, where we spent the next few hours. There’s a lot to see there, but the highlights (for me) included the Apoxyomenos (he is awesome and possibly my favorite), Laocoon, and the Exekias vase with Ajax and Achilles rolling dice (admittedly, I liked all these things before going). Nor did we skip the Sistine Chapel, getting to which involves crossing half the country in seemingly endless halls of maps, tapestries, and frescoes. When you reach it, you go inside a jam-packed room where people exist in an endless cycle of talking, being shushed, quieting down for a few seconds, and then talking again. The chapel is beautiful despite that, of course. We then began the journey back, which involved going down long corridors filled almost entirely with cabinets, endless cabinets. I didn’t really understand what they’re for, but I’m pretty sure one of them probably has a false back that leads into a secret corridor which leads to secret rooms where the Vatican keeps the good stuff, like the spear of Longinus and probably the Holy Grail.

On Tuesday we hit pretty much every major landmark in the city. We saw the four fountains on the Street of Four Fountains, the Spanish steps, the Trevi Fountain (we made wishes) and the Pantheon, the Piazza Navona (which has three fountains), Bernini’s elephant, Marcus Aurelius’ column, some churches, and the Palazzo Alltemps, which is a museum inside a 16th c (or somewhere around there) palace, and which contains the Ludovisi throne and the Galatian’s Suicide, which are two really famous pieces of ancient art. All of these were very cool, and it was nice just to walk around the city. The disappointment of the day was that we were unable to find the Museum of Pasta, which Andy and I both really wanted to go to because we were both so sure it would be the best museum ever; perhaps it is better if it lives only in our imagination. We also had possibly my favorite meal that day, which was lunch somewhere around the Piazza Navona; I had lasagna and Andy had gnocchi, and they were both amazing.

On Wednesday we hit the Borghese gardens (yes, we are aware it’s not even spring yet, or at least wasn’t at the time). These are north of the city center, and are pretty extensive. We began by just walking around; there’s statues all around, often of famous artists and writers and other such people, and other things to see. There’s a good sized lake with a little temple of Asklepios (not authentic) by it, and lots of ducks and geese and turtles. We sat there a while, then continued on in search of the zoo, because wherever there is a zoo Andy and I must find it. I have to admit, I didn’t expect much at all; the guidebook called it small, and I figured it wouldn’t be much more than a menagerie, but I was quite wrong. We got a map when we bought our tickets, though, and when we sat down to look at it we realized that it’s actually pretty big and has a lot of animals. There were elephants, a pygmy hippopotamus (and a regular hippo, who was very active, swimming around and splashing), Japanese macaques running around like crazy, orangutans (Andy’s favorite), and chimpanzees, which aren’t particularly common in zoos because they’re so aggressive. The male chimp was in fact very aggressive while we were there, and was engaging in a dominance display which included pounding on the glass, kicking it, body-slamming into it, throwing dirt and sticks at it, and some other inappropriate behavior.

On Thursday we went over to the Capitoline, where the Capitoline Museums are. There are two major staircases leading up the hill, the Aracoeli and another one whose name I can’t remember. These lead up to a piazza designed by Michelangelo as part of a general beautification of the city, and the two museum buildings are on either end (they are connected by an underground tunnel). There’s plenty of famous works in the museum as well, though a lot of things had been moved around to make room for an exhibition. Still, I got to see the equestrian Marcus Aurelius and the She-Wolf, as well as some other pretty cool stuff. One of the neatest things to see was the exhibit on Iron Age and archaic Rome (I am a sucker for the archaic period), which had reconstructions of how the Capitoline Hill looked in different eras, and pieces of pottery and votives from the period, as well as parts of the architectural facade of the temples, which were an interesting comparison with Greek counterparts. We then crossed over to the second museum, passing through the hall of epigraphy (I want one in my home some day). The other side had some Egyptian pieces, but mostly sculpture and busts. One room is called the Hall of Philosophers, and contains busts of famous thinkers, writers, and other intellectuals. Now, there were supposed to be three busts of Pindar, and I looked at the signs and had Andy take my picture with what I thought was Pindar, but when I looked closer I realized that the bust on the upper shelf was labeled ‘Pindar’, which I think means the museum signs are wrong. Be wary! We looked around for a mathematician, but the only person who qualified was Pythagoras, and he wasn’t there at the time.

On Friday we checked out the Castel San Angelo. Originally it was the Mausoleum of Hadrian, but later it was made into a fortress for the pope to retreat to in times of crisis. I was unclear on whether it was meant to protect the Vatican, or just keep the pope alive. At any rate, there’s a tunnel connecting the two, probably through one of those cabinets in the museum. The castle itself is pretty cool, as it’s a castle which has some extremely nice rooms (popes get only the best). I think my favorite room was the treasure room, which contained a comically large treasure chest (probably eight or so feet tall). There is also a terrace from which you can see a lot of Rome. We walked back to the hotel from there, which gave us a chance to see some more of the city, and also stop for gelato (do not think this was the only other time that week we stopped for gelato).

On Saturday we were a bit lazy. We did walk around a bit and tried to do a little bit of shopping, and we visited Santa Maria Maggiore and walked over to the Imperial Fora to get a better look at them and to see Trajan’s Markets, but it was a fairly lazy day. As we were leaving early on Sunday we had to pack up and get organized and take care of a few things (like finding out when Rome changed its clocks for daylight saving; not until Sunday the 28th, which is also true of Greece). Sunday morning we woke up pretty early to catch the 5:52 train to the airport, and then Andy and I had to part to go to our own terminals. My trip back was fairly pleasant. Admittedly, my flight took off a bit later than Andy’s, so I had a bit of a wait in the airport, but the flight itself was short and I got lunch (a roll with some feta and olive tapenade, and a spinach wrap with some chicken – seriously, they put no effort into this food and it’s delicious). I was back in Athens by 1:00, and back at Loring by 2:30 (I would have been earlier, but the airport train only runs every half-hour). Since then I’ve done my laundry and read my e-mails and taken care of a few other things. I think blog posts are going to slow down now, since I’m going to be spending all my time in the library working on research, but I’ll try to put something up every so often so you know I am alive and well.

Pictures are still here. You might notice in the comments that a Romanist has verified the truth of all my captions, which means Marcus Aurelius really is a total poser, and pelicans really are hilariously funny-looking.

On Tuesday I had my last Athens class of Athens and Attica. We explored the Olympieion, one of the largest temples in Greece; actually, I think it’s the largest, but it never gets credit for it because it was begun by the Peisistratids in the 6th c. BC, but wasn’t completed until Hadrian got around to it in the 2nd c. AD, so it’s not really classical. Apparently it was just a gigantic area that the Greeks got around to occasionally, but really what’s the hurry? We then took a look at Hadrian’s arch (the emperor Hadrian loved Athens a lot), which separated old Athens from the new section of the city Hadrian added, which was called Novae Athenae or ‘Hadrianopolis’. We then looked down at the Ilissos river area but did not go into it, because it’s apparently annoying to get in and out of, though that’s really never stopped us before (seriously, we were just climbing fences five days ago). From there we walked over to the Panathenaic Stadium, and the whole time we were accompanied by an Olympieion dog who walked in the middle of a busy road and occasionally ran at approaching cars; against all odds he survived. The Panathenaic Stadium was built by Herodes Atticus, another huge benefactor of Athens, and was the site of the Panathenaic games. You’ll see a picture of it, but while the modern structure is modeled on the ancient one it’s entirely rebuilt.

We were supposed to go to Aegina on Thursday, but then the Greeks decided to hold a general strike on Thursday (during general strikes most forms of transportation shut down, including ferries), so we moved it to Wednesday, and thus I found myself on a ferry the next morning making last-minutes notes on my presentation for Greek Sacred Law. It takes about an hour to get over to Aegina by ferry (only 30 minutes by hydrofoil, I hear), so we reached Aegina town around 8:30. The day was overcast and chilly, and it drizzled a bit, but it wasn’t terrible. We started at the site of Kolonna, which is huge and confusing because excavations have uncovered pieces of settlement going back about 5000 years, so there’s bits of buildings everywhere. In exciting news, though, Pindar was there (maybe – at the very least, some Pindaric odes were totally performed there). We heard some presentations and then we had an early lunch break, which was very exciting. I did not, however, purchase any pistachios (Aegina is famous for its pistachios). After lunch we drove across the island to Aphaia, where there is a beautiful temple, and a little museum/apotheke with some of the artifacts from the site. From there we drove south to Mount Oros, which we did not have to climb. I will let that sink in for a moment. Instead we saw the remains of the sanctuary of Zeus Hellanios, which are not many and which are largely overgrown. And then we were done! All that was left was to drive back to the harbor, get on the ferry, get back to Athens, and drive around for over an hour to get from the Piraeus to Loring (the trip took fifteen minutes at 6:45 am).

This morning I had Greek Sacred Law. We are all presenting the inscriptions we worked on, and I gave my presentation, so now all that’s left for me to do is go tomorrow and listen to the remaining presentations and then I will be done and on my way to Rome.

No more posts until I get back, when I should have lots of things to say and pictures to show. My pictures from this week are here.

Last Friday and this past Wednesday I went to the Epigraphical Museum to work on my final project for Greek Sacred Law, which is essentialy a report on an inscription, including a transcription, translation, epigraphical commentary, textual commentary, and discussion.  While numerous people were assigned huge, hundred-line inscriptions whose letters were so worn away they were barely visible, mine was seven of the clearest lines you’ve ever seen in your life.  It’s broken off on the right side, but it’s also an oracle, which means it’s in hexameter, which means I have a good idea of what’s missing from each line.  On the Friday session I got it transcribed, I took exemplars of all the letter forms, I measured it, I photographed it, I translated it, I scanned it (metrically)…essentially, I did everything one possibly could, and I still left early.  On Wednesday I worked on a draft of my report, and Robert Pitt helped me identify some of the letters that were partially cut where the stone broke.  Today my goal is to finish the report, which is really the last thing I have to do for any of my classes.

On Thursday our Athens and Attica class resumed after a mini-break, and we visited some Roman sites, namely the Roman agora, the Tower of the Winds, and Hadrian’s Library.  The Roman agora is a huge marketplace set up by Julius Caesar and Augustus; the Tower of the Winds is a tower which possibly contained sundials, a water-clock, or a planetarium (by which I mean a model of the planets); and Hadrian’s Library is pretty self-explanatory.

On Friday we had a day-trip to Euboea, which is an island just off the northern coast of Attica.  We started at the site of Aulis, which is on the Attic mainland opposite the island.  According to legend, Aulis is where the Greeks mustered before sailing to Troy during the Trojan War; when the weather wasn’t favorable for sailing, they sacrificed Iphigeneia, the daughter of Agamemnon, the leader of the Greeks, to Artemis.  In some versions of the myth she seems to die, while in others Artemis replaces her at the last minute with a deer and sends her to Scythia – the whole tradition is pretty complex.  I presented there on the temple of Artemis and the legends of Iphigeneia, and I possibly confused everyone (I also tried to make a Stesichorus joke; apparently those don’t work with archaeologists, because they have no idea who Stesichorus is).  We then drove a little further north to a point where Euboea is so close to the mainland you can just drive over a bridge to get there, and thus we entered the town of Chalcis.  There was an ancient settlement there, but it hasn’t really been excavated, so we just went to the museum, which was fairly small and not particularly interesting.  Then we drove on to Eretria, which also has an ancient settlement, but this one is fairly well-excavated.  We started at the museum, which has some awesome stuff (you can check out my pictures, which are regrettably a bit blurry as everything was in cases) – and for those of you coming to visit me, a number of pieces are going to the National Museum in Athens next week for a special exhibition.  We were then joined by Sylvian Fachard, a member of the Swiss School, which excavates at Eretria, and he showed us around the site.  They have uncovered multiple houses, a theater and temple of Dionysos, a villa with mosaics, a temple to Isis, a huge temple to Apollo, parts of the agora, the city walls, and more – and all this despite the fact that the people of Eretria hate them.  The tour was interesting, except it took until 3:00, and we hadn’t had lunch yet, so by the end I was pretty ready for it to be over.  We had lunch on the beach (it was a beautiful day, but really windy on the beach), and then headed on to our last site, Lefkandi, where we actually had to climb over a fence to get inside, because for the first time in six months of touring Greece there was no hole.  Lefkandi has a large apsidal building which dates back to the Iron Age and contained a burial of two people and two horses; the people were a man (who was cremated) and a woman (who was not), who were adorned with objects from as far away as Syria and Babylon, and were as much as a thousand years old when they were buried (archaeologists don’t quite agree as to what function the building served or on most of the details either).  At that point it was about 5:30, and after hopping the fence to get back out we got back on the bus, and did not get back to Loring until 8:00.  The people of Greece need to stop rioting.

Anyway, the winter term is drawing to an end.  This coming week I have class on Tuesday, when we’ll check out the arch of Hadrian, the Olympeion, and the Panathenaic Stadium, then Greek Sacred Law on Wednesday when we’ll present on our inscriptions, and then a day-trip on Thursday to Aegina.  I leave for Rome on Friday; everyone pray that there are no strikes so I can actually get out of the country.

Pictures are here.

The past few days have gotten us back into a normal routine, although the schedule from here on out is pretty un-normal. I spent Sunday recovering from the trip; the only productive thing I did was unpack, but I was trying to get over my cold (not a lot of success; I’m still waking up every morning coughing and congested). Monday was better. I picked up Andy’s care package, which involved me going all the way to Omonia because for some reason the package was not at the Kolonaki post office; I got it without any trouble, and then went back on the Metro carrying the bulk heavy box (it had candy inside, so really I do appreciate it). Sadly there was some serious disruption: things got crumpled and crushed, and apparently the Wilbur buds you will see in the picture of the box were in a tin when Andy sent it; said tin has now disappeared, and the Wilbur buds were conveniently poured into the bottom of the box for me. I also got laundry done that day and prepared for my presentation, and a few other odds and ends got done as well.

On Tuesday I walked to the Pnyx, on top of which is the Philopappos Monument. There are no signs for it, so you essentially walk towards it (it is very easy to see as you walk around the city), then get to the Pnyx, which is pretty dense woods, and can no longer see it, and so must follow paths leading up to it (there are no signs; you just assume you should always be going up since it is at the top). I made it, though, and gave my presentation: it’s a funerary monument for Philopappos, whose grandfather was the last king of Commagene, a kingdom of Anatolia; Philopappos himself lived variously in Athens and Rome and hobnobbed with emperors and writers and all sorts of important people, and apparently Athens loved him because it’s really a very conspicuous monument. After that we talked for a while about the Pnyx, which is where the assembly of citizens met to vote on legislation. Then we visited the Areopagus, which also gives you a great view of the city, but which is made of bedrock so worn you can barely climb it in places. The Areopagus was where a council (of the same name) met to decide on murder cases. At that point it was already about 1:00, so I got some lunch in the city as I had to be at the agora at 2:00 for my next class.

The next class was Bones of the Agora with Maria Liston, who is a physical anthropologist who specializes in osteology. [This part is not for the squeamish] She talked to us about the dead baby well, which is a well that was excavated in the agora that contained the bones of about 450 dead babies (she had the bag with all of their right femurs; it is a large bag). Some people have argued it was used by a cult practicing baby sacrifice, but Maria thinks that is ridiculous, and some have said it was used by a brothel when prostitutes got pregnant, but context pottery shows the babies were deposited in a 15 year span, so you’d have to have a lot of very careless prostitutes (her words). Instead Maria thinks it was used by a few midwives for babies that died soon after birth or were born with defects; she’s identified obvious problems in about 40% of the babies. She also showed us the Rich Athenian Lady, a skeleton which was found in the agora with rich grave goods; she was cremated, so all that’s left is bone fragments of varying sizes. Maria studied these as well and was able to determine that she was in her mid-30s and that she was pregnant. Finally she showed us the skulls of what she suspects are two murder victims: one is a man who shows fractures consistent with being hit on the side of the head, and the other is a woman who has no less than four axe-marks on her skull.

So, tomorrow I have class down at the Piraeus, but there’s no class Friday and Tuesday! This was to be used by us for mini-vacations, but since I’m going to Rome soon I’m just staying in Athens. On Friday I’m going to the Epigraphical Museum to make up the class I’m missing today, and then this weekend I’m going to try to check out the Byzantine Museum, Museum of Islamic Art, Benaki Museum, and Museum of Cycladic Art (assuming they are open). After that there’s only a few more classes left, and then to Rome!

I have a couple pictures from Tuesday’s class which are here.

On Day Five we started at the site of Nirou Khani, which is a Minoan ‘villa’ (bigger than a house, smaller than a palace, but no one quite knows what it was used for). On the way to it we saw signs for the CretAquarium, but despite Joe’s pleading Bob would not take us. After that we had a pretty long drive (over two hours) to Siteia, where we hit the museum to see the Palaiokastro Kouros, which is a Minoan ivory statuette of a man. It’s pretty cool, and we heard a presentation about it, but Bob then informed us that we were short on time, so we had half an hour to see the rest of the museum, get lunch, and get back on the bus. I walked briskly through the rest of the museum (it was just one big room) but only took pictures of a cool 1st c. grave monument (it had a poem on it!). I then went across the street (as did many people) to the gyro shop, and got a gigantic gyro. This was not anyone’s brightest idea, because (as I forgot to mention) the trip to Siteia involved an extremely windy mountain road that left most of us carsick, and we were going back on that same road to reach the next place. I braced myself a bit better and kept my eyes closed the second time, so I didn’t feel as bad when we got off, but the fun was not over. We got to the village of Azoria, but we were going further up into the mountains to look at an Iron Age settlement; the roads were really bad, though, so the bus couldn’t go, and instead we got into the back of pick-up trucks (eight to a truck bed) and went up the mountain. We were given a tour of the site, which was nice except for being very very hot (it reached the 80s on Crete this week, and I packed for 50 degree weather). We then got back on the trucks and went back down, and then drove over to INSTAP, the Institute for Aegean Prehistory. It is not run by the American School, but it is good friends with it, and so we were given a tour there as well. It is where the finds of various projects dealing with Aegean Prehistory are studied, conserved, and stored, so we got to see some some recent finds and the labs where they work on artifacts (there were x-rays and lasers). After that they put out some food and homemade raki for us (raki is pretty strong Cretan liquor; this stuff was in a plastic jug marked ‘raki’), and we stayed until about 8:00, at which point we had to walk down an extremely dark road to get back to the bus, the side of which road had a fairly notable drop-off (and most people were drunk). Somehow we all made it, and we drove on to Agios Nikolaos and to our hotel, where Bob (drunkenly) gave us all our instructions for getting off the bus and to the hotel in Greek. By the time we settled in it was 9:00, so I ate some snacks and went to bed.

Day Six began at Gournia, which was a (surprise!) Minoan settlement. There sure are a lot of those. We then went to the Panagia Kera church, a 13th century Orthodox church with some very nice frescoes depicting scenes from the apocryphal Gospel of St. James. After that we were driving back towards Iraklion, and Bob had us stop at an oceanside cafe so that we could hear the last presentation, which was on Linear A and B. We then got to Iraklion proper around 3:00, and were told to be at the boat by 7:00. I grabbed lunch with some people and wandered a bit, looking at some of the sites and walking the Venetian…I forget the name of the long bit of fortress that goes out into the sea so sentries can watch for boats, but I totally walked down that. At 7:00 we got on the boat, which was much bigger and nicer than the last one. I wrote some postcards and got some dinner, and by 9:30 I was ready to try to sleep, and I am happy to report that I got much more sleep this time than last. We got up at 6:00 this morning and were on the bus by 6:30, and back at Loring by 7:00. I thought I would be sleeping right now (most people are) but I’m not too tired, so I’ve unpacked and signed up for laundry tomorrow. I’m feeling a little congested still, but I’m definitely on the mend.

Pictures from the last days are here.