And now for something different

All the museum stuff can dry and overwhelming, so here's a little more color:

View from Hotel Napflion at sunrise this morning (10:15pm Oly time)

Elementary school across the street from hotel roof

Elementary school roof

View from the top of the Palamidi Fortress

Ocean view from Palamidi Fortress

Yet another stairway leading to nowhere

Chains to keep us out of one of the bastions under renovation

Just to get an idea of how far we were form the ground.  That's Ian down there (I think)

Intrusive lamps for your nighttime viewing pleasure

I don't know what kind of plants these things were, but they were awesome!
A grain of some kind?

More flowers

A family of dogs lives up at the Mycenean site we visited and they just had puppies!

As soon as it's feasible, I'm getting a dog when I get back home.


Overall today was good.  Visited a few sites.  Been taking some down time at the hotel until going to a wine tasting in half an hour.  And tomorrow, I visit Olympia! (Greece, not WA)

Greece in video

shot on one of the buses in Crete coming back from the Palace of Knossos:


crete from Kristina Williams on Vimeo.

The quality is a bit shoddy, I apologize. It's Vimeo's fault, not mine.

Magic Numbers: 14-41-11

I've been in Greece now for 15 days. 15 days feels like a lifetime.  And there's no time to stop, so we haven't.  We haven't had any free days since class started and I'm exhausted.  We were supposed to have one in Chania, but that got cut because of the strikes.  The free day was then tacked on to Athens, but we had seminar that day and the day after that was also supposed to be free, but we had Latin that day instead (again, because we had to rearrange the schedule).

On my fifth hotel stay, seventh if you count the overnight ferry rides.  I know my teachers are just trying to expose us to as many the different things as possible, but it's a bit overwhelming.

For class, we will be:

Traveling to 14 different cities
Athens x4
Heraklion
Chania
Nauplion
Epidaurus

Olympia

Delphi

Florence

Duomo

Volterra

Siena

Fiesole

Pizza

Lucca

Visting 41 different sites/museums
Monastiraki (Athens)
Acropolis
Mt. Lycabettus
Acropolis Museum
Tomb of Kazantzakis (Crete)
Archaelogical Museum of Heraklion
Gortyn
Palace of Knossos
Palace of Phaestos
Agia Triada
Matala
Malia
Tilissos
Chania Museum
Hania Museum 
Corinth Museum
Acrocorinth
Mycenea Museum
Palamidi Fortress
Epidaurus Museum
Epidaurus Theater
Epudaurus Site
Olympic Games Museum
Ancient Olympia site
Archeological Museum of Olympia
Delphi upper site
Delphi lower site
Osios Loukas Monastery (Pellepenese)
National Museum of Greece (Athens)
Renaissance Florence (Florence)
New Market
Piazza della Signoria
Altra' Arno
Church of Santa Maria Novella
Church of San Lorenzo
Duomo interior (Duomo)
Baptistery
Duomo Museum
Monastery of San Marco
Accademia Museum
Fiesole Etruscan ruins
Uffizi Art Galleries

Staying in 11 different hotels/accommodations
Art Gallery Hotel x3
Minoan Lines Ferry x2
Hotel Olympic
Hotel Kydon
Nauplion
Ilis Hotel
Hotel Acropole
Florence Apartments

Okay! Time to start utilizing Google Calendar!
Just got into Nauplion. I'm exhausted. Good night.

Crete Day 3

Okay, finished Latin, finishing up my posts before the long long days ahead of me in Corinth and Delphi.

Crete, Day 3, Sunday, April 18
Minoan Palace of Phaestos, Agia Triada and Matala

Giant groves of giant olive trees outside of Phaestos.  I've decided that wherever I live I want to have olive trees.  They are just so damn regal.

More storage jars at the Palace of Phaestos

Agia Triaga, used to be an agora, an outdoor public place with shops and such.  Those giant square stone-looking things used to be round wooden columns.

Okay, so this probably doesn't look terribly impressive, but this was the one of many underground plumbing systems used in the different palaces we visited.  There were actual streams of both fresh water being brought into the palaces and waste water being taken out of the palaces under the floors.  Controlled the flow with a series of levers and pulleys.  This one is pretty rudimentary, but just keep in mind this is over 2,000 years old, and it still works!  They also had actual terracotta pipes too.

View from lunch in Matala.  The little ants swimming down there are classmates, and I think Andrew too (one of the professors)

Crete days 1 & 2

So I'm exhausted.  Enjoying my second free day back in Athens, the last for a while and I didn't realize how exhausted I was (am).  The ride on the ferry back was rockier than on the way over and I had land-sickness for the better part of yesterday.  Slept from 10am - 5pm, and then slept some more from 10pm-8am.  I've lost all sense of what day it is, so this post and the few to follow are in effect, a partial effort to reorient myself back to, you know, reality.

SO
Friday, April 16th
A pretty boring day altogether.  Got off the ferry.  Got familiar with Heraklion and visited a few Minoan villa sites from .  Not a terribly great place.  Capital of the island of Crete after dictatorship was removed from power back in the 70's I think and the capital was moved from Chania (Hania).  Lots of students staying at the hotel we were at--lots of noisy students, mostly from high schools in Italy and America.  Very touristy in a very kitch sort of way.

This is some of the pottery from the Minoan villa.  Storage jar of some kind, ~4ft. wide, 4.5 ft. tall.  Possibly used to stare grain or wine. Designs on the jars made with rudimentary tools, date approximately 3600 years ago.

Not allowed to take any the of the rocks or pottery pieces from the site, but there was a beautiful poppy field next door we were allowed to pick flowers from.

Heraklion is right on the sea on the north side of the island, and it had not one, but two city walls (inner and outer) to protect itself, and apparently one hell of a navy army back in the day.  Heraklion has grown now so that the walls only separate the inner city from the outer city.  There's only four entrances into the inner city and the actual harbor, one pictured here, built some time in the 1700s I think.

One of my roomies Dani at a fast food joint back in Heraklion.  Fast food is notoriously glam here.  She's either mean muggin' some girl who gave her a dirty look or is looking longingly for her cheeseburger, one of the two.










Saturday, April 17

Minoan Palace of Knossos (Gnossos) and Archeological Museum of Heraklion

Knossos was fantastic.  It's where the myth of the Minotaur and the Labyrinth comes from (see other post). 

Much of ruins uncovered to Knossos have been restored, a contemptuous order of debate among those in the archeological field, but, in my opinion, it was a nice change in pace from photographing rocks.  Here was what would have been considered the throne room of Knossos.  The griffins pictured were a common motif in Knossos, with the head of an eagle (meant to represent Zeus and the Heavens), body of a lion (meant to represent the earth) and the tail is actually supposed to be a snake (meant to represent the Underworld). The date of this restored wall painting is between 4,000 and 3,600 years old.

More restored artwork from the Knossos palace.  Lots and lots of art discovered from this site shows sea life, so dolphins, starfish, fish, squid, octopus, you name it.

Look.  It's a pot.

Although this is a poor portrayal, The Palace of Knossos was freakin' HUGE. The building itself was ~20,000 square meters, about five acres with about 1,500 rooms divided among four or five stories. Keep in my mind how long ago this was, about 4,000 years ago.  And from what's been deciphered from the pictographs (no decipherable text history), the palace itself has been around at least 1,000 years before then.  THAT'S 5,000 YEARS AGO OMG

Another restored portion of the palace, one of the gates with a picture of a bull, the classic Minoan-Knossos icon.

So that was the palace.  The real treasures however, were at the Archeological Museum of Heraklion, which stored all the treasures they found at the site.  I was really annoyed the tour guide wouldn't just let us walk around and discover for ourselves.  I guess someone forgot to mention to him we've been studying these things for the better part of six months now.  But after he was done, I got to snap some fantastic pictures of what they had to offer:

These may not seem terribly impressive, but they are dated in the Neolithic time period, between 8,000 and 5,200 years ago. Most of the figurines from this time period are of the earth goddess, Mother Earth. The one in the middle is my favorite :) 

Old Palatial Period, between 4,000 and 3,300 years ago.  More utilitarian artifacts begin to immerge, like the pottery here.  Figs (left) and flowers (right) depicted.

There's nothing particularly fascinating about this piece of pottery, except that it's freakin' GORGEOUS.  Looks almost like something from the far-East, considering the design and patterning (water reeds, repeated).

Bees!  New Palatial period, between 3700 and 3450 years ago.  Ornate jewelry begins to immerge.  This was a broach or pendant of some kind.  Bees were also a big deal back then, used to make honey for trade and a mark of status in a household, etc. (click pic for enlarged detail)

Check out them tatas!  These figurines are presumably priestesses and snake handlers.  Women were sacred figures, able to give predictions into the future, mother and daughter priestesses shown here.

Okay, I know I know, this is a lot of museum stuff.  Bare with me, one last piece from the museum:

THIS is the bread and butter of the Museum in Heraklion, a discus found in the deepest regions of the Knossos palace.  The pictures are called Linear A, a form of pictography that hasn't been deciphered yet.  It's  considered to be a divining tool, although it's meaning is still unknown.  The details and quality is amazing.  You should click on the picture and check it out.

Well, I've got 20 minutes until Latin so I better get on it.  Will update more later tonight.

Ferry Strikes on Crete

Change of plans. Ferry workers strike in Chania, my current city.  Have to leave a day and a half early, in a little under two hours.  Take a bus (between 2 and 4 hours) to take a ferry from another part of the island where the strikes haven't taken effect yet. Pictured above is one of the ferries.  They are huge and it's a really big deal when they go on strike because the majority of all the imports for Crete come on these ferries, which are part industrial and part commercial.  

This is what the lobby of the ferry we took to Crete looks like. Doesn't seem like the industry could hurt to pay it's workers a little bit more.  Lots of classmates are pissed we have to leave early and at such short notice, but I'm kind of charged by it.  Going down to the port for a bite to eat, see if anything is going on, maybe snap some pictures. 

Crete shorthand

So I can't go into too much detail now. Tomorrow our journals, sketches and Latin are due, and I have a lot of finalizing I want to cover before deadline, but after that we have pretty much the next two days free so I will give a long and extensive post of Crete and the things I've been learning about.  In the meantime, here are a few tidbits to preview what's to come:

Ruins of a Minoan villa we got to walk in and around and touch, including pottery left behind.

Poppies in the field next to the Minoan villa

Snapped from the highest point of Heraklion, the first city we stayed at in Crete

Staircase from Gnossos Palace (it was four or five stories high before the earthquakes)

View from Gnossos Palace

Fig trees :)

The first Mediterranean beach we visited, which paled in comparison to the beach we visited today (more on that in my next post)










Also, I've fallen in love:

His name is Hercules.  :)

This is a work of fiction

At first, they said no flights would leave Europe for 24 hours.  I first heard about the volcanic eruption on Iceland by accident, early Friday afternoon.  Tired and begging for some entertainment, I found the only English-speaking channel available on Crete, BBC News.  I was surprised that the first I heard of this major international event was rolling across the ticker at the bottom on the screen  while watching a special on surfing in Scotland.  The official British stance, despite over 17,000 flights cancelled that day, was "We'll be looking into it first thing Monday." The brush-off colored my mood for the next few days.  I was distracted myself with Cretian artifacts and museums and archeological sites, but alone, at night before sleeping, or drying off after a shower, my thoughts of the uncertain lingered.

A day became two weeks.  Meteorologists reassured the press that the volcanic ash would shift east and south, eventually rising into the jet stream and dispersing into the ozone, making the skies safe again for air travel.  What they hadn't counted on however, was the length of the eruption.  Most people didn't realize it at the time, but a volcanic eruption isn't just a sudden burst of lava, but a slow dance between earth and air.  

I watched from my second home in Athens, the outdoor coffee shop Cafe Acropolis, as the sky behind the Parthenon faded, day after day, from the cuerelean blue Greece was famous for to this white-gray haze, hiding the moon, the stars, and eventually even the sun the Greeks had worshipped for millenia.  The satellite pictures I downloaded showed the stream of ash spiralling down from the Atlantic across the Northern Hemisphere, only to be reach the equator over Southeast Asia and be swept back up again.  Like a marble, I thought, a sad, beautiful marble.

I began to watch my spending more carefully, lest I had to extend my stay.

Weeks became months.  Patience was wearing thin among those displaced.  In the beginning, airline companies purchashed cruise lines to bring wary travellers home, but piracy reimmerged with force as ship after ship was raided.  American tourists and their fat wallets had not gone unnoticed.  Meanwhile, naval navigation immerged as the new most powerful geopolitical tool as satellites, unable to be maintained, faltered.  All commercial ship travel eventually ended completely.  The offical stance of the American government shifted from rescue to integration.  Many people were angry.  Several American embassies were bombed, including the one in Athens.  A group called the American Relocation Group claimed responsibility, apparently travelling American students like myself, angry the government had not done more to intervene, took matters into their own hands, damning us all.  The Department of International Defense, issued a statement that all displaced American students should be considered dangerous and potentially threats to both local and international political powers.  Some feigned membership and turned themselves in, desparate to go back to America, reasoning that coming home as a domestic terrorist is better than never going home at all.

Most of my fellow classmates had left Greece by now out of fear, scattering across Europe, seeking out friends of friends or settling in slums populated by other like-minded and displaced travellers.  Those that stayed in Greece did not acknowledge me, as they had already begun their new lives here and it was too painful to see a face of a place they would not return.

Makes you fall, do silly things

So I did genuinely mean for my previous post to be my last one for a while, but I had such a serendipitous experience, I really just had to share the story of how I found this gorgeous book:

After I finished blogging I decided to take the Metro down to the Cycladic Museum to see that erotic art and Eros exhibit (like I said).  I got there, bought my ticket and started furiously jotting notes from the introduction wall about Eros and it's many definitions, etc.  As I'm writing, Bob and Andrew, my faculty, came up behind me, muttering to themselves, very confused.  After asking a few curators, it seems the exhibit ended about a week ago, and one statue and this wall was all that was left :( I started browsing around the main store and they had one book on display, the one pictured above, except it was in Greek.  I asked the lady if they had one in English and she said to go downstairs to the bookstore.

I walk down and there and to my right I see exactly what I want, and as I'm pulling it off the shelf, I fumble and about eight of these two-pound books come tumbling down onto my head.  My eyes squeeze shut, my water bottle drops on the polished wood floor with a big echoing clank and I let out a big, embarrassed "Oh!" The young cashier, looking so put together in her black three-piece suit rushes over, asking if I'm okay, gathering up the books, apologizing and wondering aloud how this could have possibly happened.  In the meantime another curator rushes downstairs to investigate and also begins apologizing and asking if I'm okay.  We laugh and exchange apologies, and the curator Greeks with the cashier while she's ringing me up.  "In Greece, we have saying," she says to me, "when seeing love, for first time," tapping herself on the forehead, "hits you on head, with force, makes you fall, do silly things."

They were so nice.  I will have to go back and thank them again, hopefully get that phrase from her, use it in my presentation.

Last Day in Athens for a while

Well haven't updated in a bit.  Mostly because I have been so unbelievably busy.  In these few days, I visitied the Acropolis and visited the Parthenon.  I visited the Acropolis Museum, and hiked Mt. Lyccabetus.  Here are a few tidbits:

Breakfast in the morning.  Best breakfast I've ever had - ever.  Nothing cooked, everything fresh.  Greek yogurt and honey.  Sandwiches made of rolls, salami, cheese, tomatoes, cucumbers.  Olives and feta (which I'm kind of over by now).  Guava juice.  Tea and a cigarette.  The best way to starts a day. Ever.

Snapped this right inside the Metro (subwat system here).  It's a picture of what they discovered when they began construction.  The quality of the pic isn't great, but the corridors were literally covered with pottery and artifacts everywhere.  I didn't snap any pictures of it, but they also have at each underground station artifacts on display where they were discovered.  There's graves, sculptures, pottery, everything you can think of.

Typically, there are stray dogs everywhere.  They're super tame and friendly and most of them have collars and are regularly fed, either by tourists or locals, but at most historic sights they aren't allowed. This one managed to sneak in, and is alive, I promise, just napping.

Snapped at the Acropolis.  So that mound in the background, yeah, I hiked that, Mt. Lycabettus. As in, walked down the Acropolis, across the city, and up that freakin' mountain.  More on that later...

This is the opposite view of the Acropolis from the top of Mt. Lycabettus, elevation a little over 900 feet above sea level.  Ran out of water halfway through the hike because my stupid water bottle leaked all over the inside of my bag.  I have officially decided to stop smoking. Not right now.  But soon.

Kayla pretending to beg at the top of Mt. Lycabettus.  

Flowers + view from Mt. Lycabettus

Exhausted.  Sunburned.  Dehydrated.  Pulling it off pretty well.

Snapped earlier today just outside of the Acropolis Museum.  Under the Museum are active excavations going on, and the Museum is designed so that you can see them, in all the different stages of maintenance and uncovering.  Some of the sites are from over 2,000 years ago.

Lastly, here are some of my sketches.  I'm still rusty, but in many museums you can't bring your camera in.  And actually, I prefer to sketch them because you create relationships with the things you're viewing in a way that just snapping a picture really doesn't duplicate.  The one on the right is Afroditi from the West Pediment in the Acropolis Museum, and the other is a column from the Parthenon.

Well that's about it.  I'm done with my coffee and I've got about three hours to go to the Cycladic Museum.  There's an exhibit on erotic art and eros I really want to check out for my project before we catch our ferry to Crete tonight.