It's all Greek to me!

So we have officially been on the ship for a month, it definitely feels like longer! We have over a month left and three more ports! Quite exciting. Right now we’re watching Labyrinth on a movie channel (I haven’t seen this movie in FOREVER!) and Steven is amazed at the awesomeness of David Bowie’s hair. I miss this movie!

After Croatia, we had two days at sea, which included my Anthropology midterm. We had about an hour and a half to write several definitions, 7 few-sentence essays, 3 one-paragraph essays, and 4 one-page essays. Definitely didn’t have enough time to finish. =( Oh well. In other news, they curved the Global Studies midterm A LOT and I got a 96% (I got 6 wrong out of 35). Woohoo!

Yesterday was our trip to Athens and the Acropolis. Our trip didn’t leave until 1300, so Shaara, Steven, and I went out into Piraeus and got breakfast. A lot of the restaurants in the immediate vicinity of our ship were closed, but we found a place to get really filling omelets and freshly squeezed orange juice. I don’t think I’ve ever had orange juice that just tasted like, well, just the juice from an orange. Definitely better than the stuff from a box! We left for Athens, which is about 6 miles from Piraeus (Athens is technically not on the water, so we are docked in Piraeus). First there was a short bus tour of Athens, which basically included the guide pointing out things that we could see for a split second between buildings. We got to see the stadium that held the first modern Olympic games in the late 1800s. Pretty cool. We also drove by the Temple of Zeus. Next stop was the Acropolis and Parthenon! By that time it was a nice, comfortable 40 degrees Celsius, which is about 104 degrees Fahrenheit, and no shade in sight! The walk up the hill was very slippery as the path was made out of marble, but we finally made it up to the Parthenon. We could see all of Athens from the top of the hill. Unfortunately not much of the original Parthenon is left as it has been looted and it even exploded once. We were given free time until we had to meet the bus to go back to the ship, but Shaara, Steven, and I had signed off early to go to the New Acropolis Museum. The museum opened just last year and it holds the small amount of artifacts left over from the looting of the Acropolis. A lot of the sculptures and stuff were stolen by the British and are in London. Lame!

After the museum, we walked down a random street and grabbed dinner. Shaara and I both got gyros—it was quite tasty. Not the same as the gyro we get at Greek fest though, this was a pile of meat, a pile of tzatziki sauce, and little triangles of pita to make our own gyro “nachos.” Steven got lamb with potatoes. There were a lot of touristy shops around the area, so we went window shopping and grabbed some gelato. We then hailed a cab back to the port, which was an experience in itself. I’m pretty sure he was only in a lane for about 30 seconds of the entire trip. Scary!!

So we have access to the port’s free wi-fi, and I tried connecting so I could upload pictures. Everybody and their uncle is Skyping, so Facebook was being super slow. Oh well.

Today we were up bright and early to go to Delphi, where the Temple of Apollo is. Steven is big into Greek mythology and he was really looking forward to this trip! It was a 3-hour drive to Delphi—sleep time! We drove up windy mountain roads (we seem to hit these in every country) until we reached the Delphi Museum at the base of ancient Delphi. The guide showed us around the museum, which contained sculptures and remains from Delphi. Everything in the museum was original, unlike in the New Acropolis Museum where the large majority of things were cast models. Also unlike the NAM, we were allowed to take pictures in the Delphi Museum. So, moral of the story: you can take pictures of real artifacts but you can’t take pictures of fake casts of artifacts. Good deal, Greece.

After the museum, we started the slippery trek up “The Sacred Way” to the Temple of Apollo, stopping along the way to learn about the other buildings that are still standing or were once there. Whoever decided to make steep paths out of marble is not very smart, we were slipping all over the place! I was laughing at the girls wearing sandals.  The view from the Temple of Apollo, which is now only 5 or 6 pillars standing on a base, was amazing. We got to see dioramas of what Delphi looked like at its prime, it would have been amazing to see it before the buildings were destroyed.

Everyone was starving, and it was time for lunch! I can definitely say I had the best meal of the entire trip. We stopped at a restaurant, seemingly in the middle of nowhere. Our guide told us that it was a 4-course meal of traditional Greek food. Yay! Out comes the bread and tzatziki sauce. I could have made a meal out of that alone! Then came the appetizers. Everyone got one of each food: stuffed cabbage (stuffed with veal), fried zucchini, fried cheese, and spinach pie. Everything was SO GOOD. Then we had Greek salad (lettuce, cabbage, onions, tomatoes, kalamata olives, and FETA CHEESE). The entrée was “fried meat steak” which is basically a glorified meatloaf, but it tasted really good with tzatziki sauce. It also had a little feta surprise inside. =) That came with some rice and fried potatoes (they like frying things).  We were stuffed, but not too full for dessert! Baklava! Steven highly enjoyed his first tasting of baklava, and I, as always, loved it. I wish I could take some home!

We rolled out of the restaurant to our last stop, the monastery of Hosios Loukas (Holy Luke). Our guide told us all about the architecture of the monastery and how it was influential for future churches. There were gold mosaics all over the ceilings, and she was really detailed in telling us what each mosaic was depicting. Very cool! We also saw the body of Holy Luke himself, a little worse for the wear. As we were leaving the monastery, our guide pointed us to a bowl of Turkish delight and said that we could take a piece. Now, I just heard that we had to try Turkish delight, I didn’t know what it was. It’s apparently like a gummy candy covered in powdered sugar. It didn’t taste too great, but maybe if I get some in Turkey it will taste different. Anyway, we hopped back on the bus and slept all the way back to the ship. Hooray for long bus rides!

Long time since last blog post = lots of stupid questions!

1. “How many more games until the world cup finals?” (This was asked AFTER they broadcasted the WC finals on TV for us and everyone was talking about Spain winning)
2. “Do we have to exchange Spanish euros for Greek euros?”
3. “Isn’t a drone just a copy of a human?” (This requires a story--as we were sailing through Greek islands, apparently a drone flew by us. We were told that they think it was Israeli, just checking us out. They apparently flew fairly close, but not many saw it because we were in Global Studies at the time)
4. This wasn’t an official stupid question/comment, but Shaara just told me what a girl said on her trip: “I just had a Greek version of…..what do they call a gyro here?”

Tomorrow we have Greek cooking lessons (fun!) and then I’m going to try to find this shop that makes sandals. Shaara and I read about this shop from a girl who wrote about it in her blog from last summer, they apparently measure your feet and custom-make the sandals for you right there for only 40-ish euros. So hopefully I’ll go get that done, stop at Hard Rock Café for my guitar pin, and back to the ship. We’re going to try to get to a Greek island for Saturday, then spending Sunday in Piraeus. Busy busy!