Spring Break and Crete Trip!

Hello again!

April was a wonderful month for me full of adventures in Athens and on Greek islands! I spent my two week Spring Break primarily in Athens, and got the chance to spend time in the museums I had not yet and wanted to visit. With my dear friends Emily, Alicen, and Yili visiting me I took trips to the Byzantine Museum (where I spotted this elephant, Tufts at heart!) and look at their wonderful icon collection as well as see some of the remains of the Byzantine church that once resided inside the Parthenon.

I also made it out to the National Museum, where I was happy as could be looking at Mycenaean artifacts such as this Mycenaean dagger decorated on both the handle and blade with lilies. (And of course saw the famous bronze statue of Poseidon/Zeus which is stunning.)

Emily and I also took a day trip with three of my CYA friends to the island of Aegina! Aegina is close to Athens, and while it's claim to fame today is pistachio's better than you could believe, in ancient times it had a very important Temple to Athena, so after we disembarked our boat (not this one but I thought it was a funny coincidence), we headed to the temple and had a wonderful time exploring the site before enjoying some pistachios on the island ourselves.

Spring Break flew by with these adventures, work on a paper on the interesting topic of the Temple of Athena Nike on the Acropolis, and my birthday for which we went up on the Areopagus and enjoyed the night lit-up view of the Acropolis, and the next thing I new I was getting excited for the Crete Trip. As I've mentioned before I love studying the Bronze Age, so Minoan Crete was right up my alley. We visited Knossos first thing in the morning, where we saw Sir Arthur Evans reconstructed palatial structure and explored the ruins. I was so excited about the throne room - decorated with the original stone seat and with frescoes of griffins how cool is that! - that I came back to it twice, and spent quite a while speculating on the mysteries of the Minoan civilization. It was absolutely wonderful. We even saw peacocks nearby!

We then went south to Plaka where we visited the islet of Spinalonga which was once a Venetian fort and later a leper colony. The history of the island is a deeply emotional one, and was moving to see.

For day two we moved back into the Bronze Age with a visit to the Heraklion Museum. I was buzzing with excitement to see the famous artifacts of the bee pendant, the Phaistos disk, beautiful Minoan labors (double-axes), and the real frescoes of Knossos. I had visited this museum once before college, but now with my studies in archaeology lending me knowledge of these beautiful things I can honestly say that for the first time in my life the age and historical presence of these artifacts hit me, I was completely in awe of the craftsmanship, the undeciphered language on the disk, and the survival of the frescoes over the course of so much time. The glass separating me from the objects felt fogged by the more than 4000 year temporal divide between myself and the people whose legacy these objects represent. What I wouldn't give to remove the mist and learn more about this first civilization of Europe.

We had some beach time in Matala after that, and enjoyed the amazingly delicious food of Crete, and before I knew it it was our last day and we were off to a potters village called Margaritas. There we learned about the pottery tradition of Crete, and saw some very fun ceramics such as some Byzantine trick cups and ceramic hot air balloons. 

We made our way to the Arkadi monastery and learned the history of the site, including its incredible battle between the Turks and Greeks in the 1800s. It's role in the history of Greek Independence is one to be remembered.

After that we only had time to see the Venetian port fort at Chania before we were off for Athens, but it was a beautiful evening.

I hope to return to Crete soon, and as my last two month with CYA flies by will explore as much as I can!