Dimitsana Arkadias

The first night of our field trip in the Deep Peloponnese lands us in Dimitsana. This is a very mountainous area. I felt pretty sick for most of the bus ride today due to up and down and round and round of the mountains. We left at 7am from Athens this morning and had our first pit stop about an hour and a half in at the Isthmus Canal over which a bridge connects Athens with the Peloponnese. This wasn't a scheduled site, so I didn't take my camera, but it was a huge canal. This picture from touristorama does a nice job.

After that we went to our first site which was the Kalavryta Memorial and Holocaust Museum. This is where I gave my report. I will provide more information on this at a later time. Then we when to Lousoi where we saw remains of a house and a Temple of Artemis. Our last stop was at Cave of the Lakes. We were not allowed to take pictures in the cave, which was a shame because it was really neat. It was a 2 kilometer long cave of which we explored the first 500 meters because they have a foot path through it. There were live bats flying around in it, and the temperature was about 15 degrees Celsius or 59 degrees Fahrenheit.
If you're super interested, there are a couple pictures here: http://www.visitgreece.gr/en/nature/caves/cave_of_the_lakes

Finally, we ended up at Hotel Tefthis in Dimitsana. We went out for dinner and ate rooster and sagonaki, but I forgot to take a picture.

View from hotel balcony

the yellow building is the hotel

the town in the hill

view from hotel

view from hotel balcony

the town

the town

view from hotel balcony

Arta - Museum, Polyandrion, and Temple of Apollo

We spent a lot time viewing different things in Arta. I wrote about the bridge yesterday, and here are three other things we went to while there the next day. Our first stop was the museum; the exhibition includes three main sections: the public life, the cemeteries, and the private life. There was a large collection of funerary stelae and burial offerings from cemeteries. I only took a few pictures half of which had to do with turtles.

musical instrument made out of a turtle shell

A recreation of what was found in a grave with the skeleton and offerings. The skeletons are my sister's favorite, so I am sure to include them. JK fs.

jewelry

this is the museum with the dog and bread

 The Polyandrion was one mass, public grave with many bodies inside. It was founded to honor the dead from a battle. There is an inscription that runs the length of it, and it is too big to stand in one place to read it, so you have to walk around to read it. This is a cultural clue about how they did monument inscriptions.

zoom in on part of the inscription

 This is a cemetery that was outside the ancient city gates, as that is where they bury the dead since they are not clean in order to avoid the unpleasantness that accompany a dead body such smell and animals. There are ongoing excavations here.

The Temple of Apollo is where the turtle "infestation" was if you remember that post. I don't know anything other than it is dated to the early 5th century -- I was a little busy with the turtles.

Notice this temple is literally in someones back yard. The architect who took us here explained that there is some sort of payment to the owner of the property since it pretty much forever becomes an archeological site.

MBIA:
We leave tomorrow morning at 7am for our next trip. This one will be 10 days long. We had our trip meeting today, and we were warned that bathrooms that are not the woods may not always be available nor will food during the day, so pack snacks. This means Bob and I spent some time out food shopping today as well as packing. The trip leader also said to expect lots of rain. We've been lucky so far; hopefully the luck continues. 

Louros Aqueduct and The Bridge of Arta

The Louros Aqueduct is a very large Roman aqueduct built sometime after 31BC on the orders of Emperor Octavian Augustus to supply the city of Nikopolis(see earlier post) with water.

The Bridge at Arta is a stone bridge that crosses the Arachthos River. It is famous due to the song titled "The Bridge of Arta" which tells a story of how builders would spend all day working on the bridge but it would collapse at night. Then one day, the master builder got a message from a bird that told him he needed to sacrifice his wife to the bridge in order to complete construction. So he says he lost his ring down below the arch of the bridge. His wife goes down to get it, and they build her into the foundations of the bridge. She first curses the bridge but then turns the curse into a wish once she realizes her brother may cross the bridge. Thus the sacrifice is fulfilled and the Spirits of the river all the bridge to be built successfully. The Bridge has been in many paintings, embroideries, engravings, and sculptures.

It is now a pedestrian bridge

the top of this arch was the exact border line between the Greece and Ottoman Empires in 1881-1912

MBIA:
We don't get a lot of meat around here, and anyone who knows Bob and I knows we enjoy eating meat. Today, we decided to go get a plate full of meat. We went to a place called MeatMeatMeat The Grill and got the meat sampler for two. We may have splurged a little bit here, but it was worth it. There are six sticks of meet (two chicken, two pork, one beef, one turkey), two pork chops, one sausage, fries, pita bread, tomatoes, lettuce, and two sauces.

Horraon

Horraon was a small city of the Molossians founded in the early 4th century BCE. It is known for the preservation of its stone architecture. What makes this site different than many that we have gone to is that not only are the foundations preserved, but whole sides or frames of the houses are well intact. In addition these are two story houses, so the walls of the houses are much larger than any we've seen yet. Remember to use the people as a scale to compare how tall these house walls are.

windows

doorway between rooms

room

this is Bob's picture of me inside the house

MBIA:
The school's Halloween Party is tomorrow. The theme is "Hubris the Party". People are costume shopping like crazy around here. You may be asking, why host it on Oct 22? The reason is we will be on Trip 3 during the actual Halloween holiday.

Actium Memorial and Stadium

This monument is Augustus' Victory Monument which was built to commemorate the victory over Antony and Cleopatra in the Actium battle of 31 BCE. The first picture shows a drawing of a reconstruction, and then after that you can see what's left. This was a huge monument, but not much remains.

this picture refused to rotate for me, so sorry it's sideways

The Actium Stadium was a place for athletics, mostly running races. It held 10,000 spectators. We didn't spend long here, just enough time for our leader to conduct a race. Bob participated; I did not.

the race

this spiky plant got me in the back of the leg and I had a little itchy patch for a couple days

MBIA:
Bob got back last night from trip 2. We are now both working on our reports for trip 3, which we leave for on Tuesday.
I've recently been noticing a lot of dogs in businesses here. Not the stray dogs we see all the time, but dogs with their owners. I even saw a sign saying a business was dog friendly, which I thought was pretty neat. Tonight while making a visit to a grocery store, I witnessed a lady with her dog stop at the entrance doors and a cashier went over to her, asked her what she wanted, got it, rung it up, and gave it to her while she stood outside with her dog. I thought that was pretty neat too.