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Once again, it’s been a while since I’ve written a post.  In my defense, I couldn’t turn my computer on, and we were traveling.  I got a charger for my computer, so the first problem is fixed, and we aren’t doing any traveling with the program this week, so that’s not an excuse anymore either.

Here’s what’s been going on this past week:

Last Saturday, I wanted to go to the Opera to see La Boheme, but the student tickets were all sold out, so we didn’t go.  In the evening, we went out in Psyrri, one of the main neighborhoods for nightlife in Athens.  We found a bar with dancing and an American DJ.  It was a lot of fun, but the DJ didn’t play any Greek music, so maybe next time we’ll try to go somewhere more Greek.  Also, there weren’t many people our age there.  I’ve heard that people our age (college students) don’t really go out in Athens because they are focused on their studies and don’t have the money to be going out.  This should be the case for us too, but we want to see Athens in its entirety. J  Those that do go out tend to be high school kids and people in their late 20s and early 30s, because they have jobs (well... at least they're not in school anymore).  The place didn’t really get going until about 1 or 2am.  The Greeks stay out so late!  We didn’t get back home until 5am! 

On Sunday, the weather was a bit chilly, and it drizzled a little, so it was too cold for the beach, so we went to the Athens flea market.  There is a section that is a traditional flea market with a lot of antiques, but mostly it is just an area with a few streets of stores selling gift, souvenirs, clothes, etc.  It is very busy on Sunday mornings.  I happened to run into a friend of mine from high school who I haven’t talked to in 3 years!  She is studying in Rome and was in Athens for the weekend.  How crazy is that?!

On Monday, I had to do more laundry (by hand, of course).  I’m getting to be very efficient at it, and it is nowhere as bad as the first time I did it.  Actually, it’s not that bad. 

We went to the Theatre of Dionysos on Tuesday.  It is at the base of the Acropolis and hosted a yearly dramatic festival in honor of Dionysos, the god of drama.  After the morning excursion, I went to find a store that had a charger for my laptop, and in the process of looking for the store, a friend and I found another farmer’s market!!  This one was bigger than the one in our area and had a lot of clothes, shoes, and accessories in addition to fruits and vegetables.  We are definitely going back tomorrow (the farmer’s markets are only one day a week).  

On Wednesday, we departed for our three day trip to Delphi and Olympia.  Our first stop was the Osios Loukas monastery.  This monastery was not as strict as the ones in Meteora, and the women did not have to wear skirts over their pants.  The church had some beautifully preserved gold mosaic portraits of religious figures on the ceilings.  In the afternoon, we visited the Delphi lower site, the Temple to Athena.  

The town of Delphi is very small, with only 2 streets, so a few of us decided to try to find the footpath up Mt. Parnassus.  We never found it, but we did find a modern theatre with really good acoustics near the convention center.  

Thursday was spent visiting the upper site at Delphi, home of the Temple of Apollo and the oracle there.  People would come from all around to get prophecies from the oracle, which would be given by a priestess of the temple who was in a trance.  We drove to Olympia in the evening and had a group dinner there.

   

On Friday, we spent the day at the ancient site of Olympia, the home of the ancient Olympic games.  The site is huge!  The Temple of Zeus there was home to the statue of Zeus that was one of the wonders of the ancient world, but it no longer exists.  We had to give presentations on different buildings there, and then we had a race in the original stadium!  Olympia was my favorite site of this short trip.  The drive home was a whopping 5 hours!

On Saturday, it was Labor Day in Greece, and all the shops and grocery stores were closed.  There was a protest in Syndagma Square, which got pretty violent.  I wanted to go see what was going on, but we had been warned against it, so we went to the beach instead.  We found a nicer and cleaner beach than the one we went to last time, only a few tram stops after Edem.  The weather was beautiful, and the sun was shining.  I bought a paddle ball game that I see everyone playing on the beach- it’s really fun!  I’m definitely bringing it home to play on the beach in Chicago.  It was even warm enough to go for a swim in the sea.  I think May 1^st is the official opening day for the beaches here because there were a lot more people at the beach than last time.  We may have been a bit too early before.  In the evening, we went out in Psyrri again, but didn’t stay out as late as last time.  

Yesterday I did more laundry.  I’m really becoming efficient at it. J

Today, as usual on Monday, we didn’t have class.  I finally got a charger for my computer!  Just in time because we have a ten page paper due on Friday.  Once I get that done, we have a week off for spring break!  I’m going to Paris, Marseilles, and London.  I am SO EXCITED!!!!

Before I start writing about the AMAZING place I’m at this weekend- Meteora, let me start by writing about our foray into Athenian nightlife on Friday night.  We took the Metro to a neighborhood called Gazi, which is full of bars, but there aren’t like American bars; they’re more like cafes with a bar inside.  Right when you exit the Metro station, everything was bustling, even though it was midnight.  There were vendors selling souvlaki, sunglasses, etc (basically everything that is sold on the street during the day).  This is the complete opposite of what you would find in Pangrati, the neighborhood we live in, at that time of night.  There is a row of bars with loud music and modern furniture on the patios, where people sit, drink, and talk.  We looked for a bar called Bar Rouge, because a friend knew someone who was playing in a band there, but we never found it.  We did get a nice idea of the bars in the area by walking around trying to find Bar Rouge.  When we decided to give up searching for the bar, we met up with the rest of our group at another bar, in which we took up the entire second floor.  Drinks are just as expensive here as they are in bars in Chicago.  I paid 7 Euro for a Malibu and pineapple!  After we left that bar, we wanted to find somewhere where there was dancing.  This was difficult because there were only bars around, no clubs.  We found a place on the main strip of bars with some dancing, but even there, people were just dancing around their tables because there was no dance floor.  We danced for a while, then took a taxi home since at that time, the Metro was closed.  It was a fun night, and it was nice to see some Greek people our age.

Now on to Meteora!  Meteora is in northern Greece, so we had a nice 5 hour train ride through Greece to get here.  We arrived at 2pm.  On the train ride, I realized that I had forgotten to print out or write down the address of the hotel.  We tried to find the hotel on the map by the train station, but it wasn’t on there.  We asked a taxi driver, and he pointed us in the right direction.  Along the way, we kept asking people we saw if they knew where Hotel Odysseon was.  This was really effective, and we made it to our hotel without getting lost. 

There are six monasteries on top of the rocks, each one on a different cliff/mountain, that are open to the public.  Since not all eight of us were staying two nights, we wanted to get started seeing the monasteries right away.  Different monasteries have different hours, however, and the walk to get to the monasteries is about 30 min to an hour depending on which one you are going to, so we were only able to make it to one monastery, Rousanou.  We walked along the road to Holy Trinity monastery and up the stairs from which there was an amazing view, but we weren’t able to go inside the monastery.  There was a path down the mountain that led to Kalabaka, which we took back.  After going back to the hotel to rest a little and clean up, we went out to dinner at a taverna.  We treated ourselves to retsina (wine) with dinner and chocolate soufflé for dessert.  We planned on watching a movie together that night, but we were all so tired from traveling and walking that we went to bed.

This morning, we woke up early, had a good breakfast at the hotel, and set out to see the monasteries.  We went to the Great Meteoron monastery first, and we took a beautiful, but strenuous walk up a mountain path to get there.  The monastery has a church, museum, and spectacular views.  There aren’t many pictures from the inside of the monastery, because photography is not allowed in many rooms.  Women aren’t allowed in if they are wearing pants, so there are wrap-around skirts you wear while in the monastery.  We also saw Varlaam, St. Nicholas’, and St. Stephen’s monasteries today.  There are beautiful frescoes inside the churches.  Half of our group had to catch the train to Athens in the evening, and the remaining four of us had dinner at a pizzeria.  Tomorrow, I’m going to the one monastery we haven’t seen yet, Holy Trinity.  I’ll write more about the history of Meteora tomorrow.