Yeia sas y’all! I am so excited to finally be spending time in the
beautiful and historic city of Athens. My journey to Athens was a bit
overwhelming and scary, but it taught me how to remain calm in sticky
situations and how to be assertive and direct when working with airline
representatives!
My flight schedule was supposed to begin in Little Rock
and then take me to the Dallas-Fort Worth airport, and then to
Philadelphia and finally Athens. However, my flight from Little Rock to
DFW was delayed for 45 minutes, and the next thing I know, I’m flying
from Dallas to ROME. However, my direct flight from Rome to Athens was
overbooked, and so I was bumped from that flight. After spending 7 hours
in the Rome airport with two of my fellow U of A scholars, I finally
flew to Paris and then to Athens from there.
Needless to say, I was exhausted once I finally arrived in Athens, so
I chose to catch up on sleep on the first day of activities. These last
couple of days, however, have been full of activity! Yesterday I
visited the Jewish Museum and learned about the unique culture of Greek
Jews. My favorite part of the day was visiting the ancient Agora, and
giving one of my site reports on the Trial of Socrates and the Ancient
Athenian Judicial System. It was so exciting to walk the same paths that
the likes of Socrates, Plato, and St. Paul have walked once before. I
learned so many valuable facts about life in ancient Athens by seeing
the ruins of one of the busiest parts of the city. It was definitely an
interesting and busy day.
Today, it was another day full of museums and walking. Dr. Levine
often has us walk to our destinations so he can point out various
features along the way. For example, this morning on our walk to the
Numismatic Museum (also known as the national coin museum), we walked
past the Parliament Building and watched the Greek Tomb of the Unknown
Soldier’s changing of the guards. Additionally, we walked through the
absolutely beautiful National Gardens. At the Numismatic Museum, we had
the chance to view coins from all eras of Greek coinage. Even more
interesting is the fact that the Numismatic Museum is actually the
extravagant former home of Heinrich Schliemann, a German business
magnate who also happened to be a archaeology and Homer enthusiast. His
home was incredibly elaborate, and it was fun to explore the
architecture and design of the museum as well as the artifacts inside.
After a quick lunch, we rode a bus to the National Archaeological
Museum. This is by far the best museum that we have toured so far.
Thousands of sculptures, pots, and various artifacts are housed in this
museum. It was amazing to see in person sculptures and black and red
figure pots that I have studied in art history! Today was a long day of
learning, and I ended the day with a nice waffle cone of rich milk
chocolate gelato.
Tomorrow, we will spend most of the day on the bus to Piraeus, the
port city where we will board a ferry boat to Crete. We will make a few
stops on the way to explore a few smaller cities outside of Athens. I
have loved my time spent in Athens, and I am excited to come back to
Athens later on in the month. Thanks for reading!
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Follow along with Anna at thisisallgreektomeblog.wordpress.com
Do you want to immerse yourself
in Greece’s history, art, culture, cuisine, topography, language and
literature? If so, check out studyabroad.uark.edu/classicsingreece
