Weeks 4 and 5: Athens and Aegina

The weeks in Athens have been flying by, and it's hard to believe that midterms are now approaching. Things have been incredibly busy between balancing homework, traveling and writing a thesis, so I'm going to try to condense the past two weeks into one blog post. I have spent the past two weekends exploring Athens and the island of Aegina. During the first weekend, I spent some time wandering around the Kerameikos to help with a site excavation report I had to write for my topography of Athens class. The Kerameikos is best known as an ancient cemetery, containing the graves of many important Athenian citizens. Running through the Kerameikos are two important roads: the Sacred Way, leading to Eleusis, and the Panathenaic Way, leading to the Acropolis. The most striking monuments visible in the Kerameikos today are the reconstructions of the grandiose grave stelae lining the Street of Tombs. My site report focused on the recent excavation of a marble omphalos found in a shrine to Hekate/Artemis near the Street of Tombs. The omphalos covered a well and contained an inscription to Apollo. This was an important find, as it is the only known oracle of Apollo that has been found within the city of Athens.

The Street of Tombs

Reconstructed burial monument of Dionysos

The Sacred Way

During the week, I got the chance to go inside the Parthenon with my topography class, which was amazing. The Parthenon is now on its third reconstruction, and when a student asked if we knew when it would be finished, my professor responded: "No. I've learned never to ask that question".

Also during the week, my Near East history got to visit a reconstructed ancient Greek trireme. The trireme is one a kind and is part of the Hellenic Navy.

This past weekend, my friend Ana and I decided to travel to the island of Aegina, one of the closest islands to Athens. We took a forty minute ferry ride to the island from Piraeus early Saturday morning.

Leaving Athens:

Approaching Aegina:

Once we arrived at Aegina, we walked around the port and visited Panagitsa Church.

Then, we walked for about 10 minutes from the port of Aegina to the Archaeological Museum of Aegina and the ruins of a temple to Apollo.

 Oedipus and the sphinx

Ruins from afar:

Mosaic from a synagogue:

Then, we rented a car to drive from the port to our Airbnb in Agia, located on the other side of the island. The apartment we stayed was beautiful, and was situated right next to the beach.

After dropping our bags off, we got in the car and drove to Agios Nektarios Monastery. 

Next, we visited the old village of Paleochora, just adjacent to the monastery. This village was once the island's capital, but suffered from invasions by pirates, and the Ottomans and Venetians. Now, all that remains of the village are about 70 churches, most of which are abandoned. It was very eerie walking through the village, but the view from the top of the hill was spectacular.

Finally, we visited the Temple of Aphaia, a Doric temple built in the 5th century. 

The next day, we took a ferry back to Athens in the afternoon. It was a beautiful day out with many boats in the water, so I took a lot of pictures from the ferry:

I just got back yesterday from a trip to Metsovo, Ioannina, and Meteora in northern Greece. Hopefully, I will be able to write a post about that trip sometime this week!