Greece Study Tour: Sabrina on day one
The final members of our group arrived in Athens Monday morning around nine thirty. Once we got to the hotel we dropped our bags and headed up to the rooftop restaurant, hearing that it had an incredible view of the city (fig. 1).
Figure One – View of city from roof of Astor Hotel
We were given about an hour to grab some lunch or take a quick nap if we needed to before we started our day. A handful of us walked around finding a little cafe where we enjoyed pizza and paninis. We had a hard time at first trying to place our orders since the lady we were speaking to did not speak any English and had to get one of the other workers to translate our orders for us.
Regrouping around noon we then walked over to the Kerameikos, along the way I was overwhelmed trying to take in everything we were seeing as we walked through the streets. Along the way we did see the Church of Panagia Kapnikarea (fig. 2), which was built in the eleventh century. I was very interested to get a look at the mosaic with a depiction of the Madonna and a child on the south side of the church.
Figure Two – Church of Panagia Kapnikarea
Personally seeing the Kerameikos (fig. 3) was an unreal experience for me, based off the fact that it was the first time I have ever physically seen a site like that before. A fascinating thing was seeing the difference in ground level of the site compared to street level, showing us how far they had to dig down, knowing they had to destroy what was above it to get to those ruins. Another couple of things we saw that caught my interest were seeing the oldest of the walls amongst the ruins and hearing Professor Glazebrook’s explanation on how they had to rush in the building process in order to fend off the Persians. The site of the Kerameikos is thought to be where Pericles delivered his funeral speech to honour those who had lost their lives in the war.
Figure Three – The Kerameikos
We got a chance to go inside the Kerameikos Museum and get a look at some of the objects found on the site. I appreciated the layout of the museum, specifically the center piece of the marble bull in the middle of the museum under the skylight.
Next we walked up to the Pnyx, an ancient meeting place, where we had a great view of the city and the Acropolis, it was a great opportunity to take lots of pictures. After walking a bit more around the city we ended up at the restaurant where we would be having our welcome dinner (fig. 4).
Figure Four – Enjoying the welcome dinner
The staff at the restaurant were super friendly, the service was fantastic, and so was the food! They kept bringing out different appetizers, such as greek salad, calamari, tomato balls, so many that most of us were almost completely full by the time the main course came out. They made us a wonderful lamb dish with french fries and tzatziki sauce. It was a perfect opportunity for all us to get to know each other better as well as enjoy some delicious Greek food.
