Greece!

This year, I spent my Easter holidays visiting various Archeological sites in the beautiful Ancient Greece. We left Belgium at six pm Easter sunday by coach, 112 students in total and about 8 teachers. We had three coaches and were heading towards Ancone, Italy, to catch a boat. After a somewhat tedious 18 hour bus trip and several french films later, we arrived in Ancone. There, we took a giant ferry (our coaches came too) for 22 hours and landed in Patras. Here; the journey begins. I put the photo's up in a random order so the captions aren't chronologically correct - tant pis les gars!





This here is a theatre in Epidaure. Its huge, and the people down in the centre were singing to prove that the sound carries really well. It's true, we could here them. The theatre is still being used today.

This is the view from my hotel room in Tolo, the water was really clear but cold, some of the Belgians swam, i paddled.. being used to the southern heat I was a bit more sceptical of the water. I would like to note also that i spent the days in broad daylight without suncream (sorry, mum) , and didn't get burnt! This European sun is extrodinary. It was on average about 20 - 25 degrees.

This was my favourite spot in Greece, Posiedon's Temple. It was a beautiful day when we were there and the view was amazing, we even found a wild turtle (they aren't as cute in real life) but i thought it was really cool. I think I liked it so much because of the link to Greek Mythology, which is what a lot of people my age associate Greece with (that, and toga parties) haha.

Posiedon's Temple again, from a different angle. This is pretty much what Greece looks like, old rocks and Columns. Its cool though, we don't have many old rocks back home so it was nice (:

This is at Mystra ( i think) anyway it's an enormous Canal, heaps of kilometres long and deep. I was scared of losing my sunnies every time i looked down haha. It was impressionnant!

The Acropole: It's pretty famous I think, but we saw it by night first all alight and I thought it was pretty so here's a photo. We spent that night at the "Plaka" which is a place in athenes which had a lot of fake ray bans and chanel bags. It wasn't that safe so we weren't allowed to stay long or go anywhere without boys (this humoured me, belgian boys couldn't save you from anything). Oh and another note, there are stray dogs and cats everywhere, not just mungrels but like huskies and every breed you can imagine. It was weird and unhygenic, but i guess that's Greece.

In Delphes, another Archological site. There were people doing yoga there which i found cool. We strolled around a fair bit, but it was the same as everywhere else we went to, old rocks..

The museum in Delphes, I think that thing is famous but I'm not really sure.

This was in Delphes too, the tombe of something or other, it also has something to do with a sacrifice to Cronos.

Olympia! A column. I'm not sure at all what it's for. This is where the first olympics were held so that was cool. I did a running race on the original track! Far from won, but atleast I did it!

Rocks at Olympia, not sure which olympic sport this was used for, Greek dominos?

The Acropole in Athenes by day, it was cool there, except we were constantly hounded by people who thought we needed to by 100 postcards for 20 euros and so on. The view of Athenes from the acropole was interesting too, its a randomly designed city, and is jam packed.

A little thing near the Acropole, the city of Athenes in the back ground.

Me and Morgane, a lovely Belgian friend, at the Acropole, still no suncream, and no sunburn!

So that's that. After all the sight seeing was done we headed back to Patras (4hour drive) caught the boat (22hours) and then drove for another 18hours to get back to belgium at 6 in the morning. Luckily I could sleep in the car, a blessing of the exchange student -ability to sleep in all situations- the others werent so lucky. The only other thing I can think to mention is the food, it was awful (sorry Greece! but my mothers Greek salad is better than what I got here) The Greek seem to like to drown everything in oil, to the extent that the taste is of oil rather than the actual dish. In Greece's defence, I was on a school trip so was potentially cut short of luxury nutrition but I will say that the ice creams we got were impecable, right up there with the italian gelato, so well done on that front.

Well that's that little adventure. The next will be ANZAC day in flanders field (: until then!