Thermopyles

We stopped at Thermopyles (pronounced Ther-mop-ill-ees) in Greece on the way to France. At Thermopyles we saw the monument or statue of Leonidas, King of Sparta. He led the battle against the Persians in 480 BC. A long time ago, really. A very long time ago.

Leonidas, King of Sparta.

After looking at the statues and the monuments, dad and I went up onto the hill with an inscription of stone on it saying:
Ὦ ξεῖν', ἀγγέλλειν Λακεδαιμονίοις ὅτι τῇδε

κείμεθα, τοῖς κείνων ῥήμασι πειθόμενοι.

It was written by a Spartan warrior. Here is a link to the wikipedia page with all the English translations of it on it:                                  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Thermopylae 

Mum and my brothers joined dad and I after a while and mum and I sat under a tree. It was a really nice day that day. Very sunny with an occasional cloud. But enough about the wheather, I need to say what we did next.
Well, we went down the road a bit to find the hot springs. They are made of water that comes up from under the ground being warmed as it comes, making the water like a bath when you touch it. It smells a bit because of the sulphur it collects on its' way up through the ground. We went and dipped our hands and feet in, then got back into the car to head off to the airport to go off to France.

Would you have liked to get into those hot springs? It was quite warm, I'm telling you, so I wouldn't be surprised if you did!

Sunrise at Delfi

Waking up today at 6:00am was hard, but we had no choice. We just had to see the sunrise at Delfi. We dragged ourselves out of bed, put on some warm clothes and wandered over in the direction of the temple of Apollo. We didn't go into the archaelogical site because it was too early and that isn't the place you are supposed to see it from. There is a lookout place with benches to sit and wait for the sun to come, but dad wanted to go and see it come up from a different angle, where it would hit the temple, too. Mum and I thought it wouldn't happen that way, so we wanted to go back to the actual lookout spot. Dad didn't want to leave his spot, so he stayed there for about half an hour until he realised that Mum and I were right. So we wandered over to the lookout spot and immediately we noticed that the sun was beginning to come up.

Here comes the sun.

We waited a bit longer and began to see rays of sunshine beginning to come through a gap in the hills.



Rays of sunshine sneaking out.

And then...


It's coming...

Coming...


Here it is!

 Finally! The sun has risen before our eyes in a beautiful way in Delfi. The prettiest sunrise I have ever seen!

Apollos' Temple

 Last night we were in that lodge in Delfi that I put a post about. Tonight I am in hotel more into the city.
The place we went to today was Apollos' Temple. It was built on a lovely mountain with a beautiful view. It was built in 800 BC, so it is about 2,800 years old. The Romans took over a bit later on and stole about 300 statues from the place that were mostly gold. Then the Romans built different buildings over the place and made it like they wanted.
There were a few priestesses that drank a certain sort of water and were put on a tripod in a certain place in the palace. They then went into a sort of trance that made them see into the future and they would go on a rant about what they see. Five priests would stand there and record what the priestess said and they would then work out what it meant.

A hole in the wall.

An interesting rock that had no information.

Some remainds of old rooms.

An interesting part to a pillar.

The temple where the priestess used to go into a trance.

A big theatre stand.

The theatre stand from the top.

The beautiful view.

Some pillars and a wall.

 After looking around the archaelogical site, we decided to go and see the museum. Inside there were many statues and carvings in marble.

An enormous sphinx statue.

A statue of a woman.

This is how tall the actual statue of the sphinx was.

A drawing of the sphinx before being destroyed.

A front on view of the sphinx.

A horse carving into the marble.

The woman statue again.

A drawing of the temple and other buildings around it.

Looking at the museum was fun, but we had to go back to our hotel eventually. So we went back and on the way had an ice cream as a special treat. When we got back to the hotel, I had a nice drink of orange juice to cool me down. It was fun today at the temple, and I enjoyed it very much.

Off to Delfi

We left Athens and its' busy city behind us today as we set off to Delfi. Delfi is still in Greece, so we went in the car. The trip was about three hours. I am getting used to car trips theses days, so it didn't seem that long at all. Compared to the flight here, it's nothing. Anyway, we are staying in Delfi for two nights, one at the wooden lodge sort of thing we are in now, and the other night at some other place. When we got to the lodge, the first thing we saw was a cat. My camera was in my suitcase so there will be no photos on this post. I had some mini-milks in my shoulder bag so I gave one to the cat. Immediately after that, we saw about five more cats emerge from underneath the lodge. One of the cats was very friendly, but she was definately pregnant. The cats finished off the mini-milks I had, so I went inside to see what we had for the night. I was quite surprised to see that it was quite nice for a little lodge. It had a toilet, two bunk beds and a double bed. There was surprisingly a cooker and nice shower. There was even a little TV (when I say little, I mean about 20 inches wide). I walked into my room and saw that the bunks were very skinny. I would say about a shoulder width apart, so there wasn't much room. To top it off, there was no rail on the top bunk, making it a bit dangerous for the person sleeping there since it is a wooden floor (I was sleeping up there by the way).
Sleeping in the lodge is sure to be quite fun for me. An adventure in itself, sleeping in a tiny bunk bed!

Archaelogical Museum of Athens

The archaelogical museum of Athens is just around the corner from our hotel. That made it convenient for us because we went there today. A five minute walk and we were there. Dad bought tickets to get in and we wandered in together. There were many different things there, but there were many statues of naked men and vases.  These things were from lots of different places and were so old and crumbly that some arms and legs were falling off.

Some carvings in marble.

An ancient vase.

A statue of a man.

Another vase.

A sphinx statue.

Another statue of a man.

A statue of a Kore made by the sculpter Ariston. Made 550-540 BC.

My camera ran out of charge so I didn't take pictures of anything else in the museum. There were many objects and statues of most things. There was even a beautiful bronze horse statue that was nearly lifesize. The horse had a young boy on its' back and the expression on the face was in high detail. That was my favorite thing in that museum.
After looking around at the museum for a bit longer, we went and looked for the museums' cafe. I had a mini chocolate cake that had chocolate mousse in the middle. Mmmmm, yummy! I also had an iced chocolate. That was possibly the most chocolately lunch I had ever eaten.
Then we went off to the shop to have a look at some things. I got a magnetic bookmark that had decorations of flowers on it.
After that we were all very sleepy so we dragged ourselves back to the hotel and had a rest. After that, we went and ate some supper at the restaurant. I had pork and everyone else had some sort of pasta. Everyone crashed into bed that night after the busy day walking around in the museum. I wish my camera hadn't run out of charge so I could've taken pictures of the horse and boy. I love museums in foreign countries. I hope we go to more in our trip!

Parthenon at the Acropolis

I woke up today feeling lovely and refreshed. It was a good day to feel refreshed, too, for we were going to do alot of walking that day. After getting dressed and ready, I went downstairs with mum and dad to have a beautiful breakfast. It was a buffet and I had some scrambled egg, boiled egg, a croissant, some bacon and two pancakes. I loved it and that built up my energy for the days' walking, so I was all set. It was really quite a long walk there. Mum and dad think it was about 3 kilometres from the hotel to the Parthenon. It certainly felt quite long. I seem to do a lot of walking around to most places these days because sometimes it isn't far and sometimes we don't even have a car. So we walked to the Parenthenon and saw a few sights on the way, like a few pigeons...

A pretty pigeon.

...and a few more pigeons!

A lot of pretty pigeons.

When we climbed the short staircase up to the front entrance, I saw a dog.

The dog.

I wasn't sure what sort of dog he was. He looked like he might have some German Shepherd, but that isn't too important (I thought he was cute by the way).  Dad bought some tickets for us all and we walked into the Parthenon. It wasn't too exciting at first, because it was just a pathway up to the actual building. Down next to the path there was the Odeum of Herodes. It was built in 161 AD and was used for plays and theatures. They still use it for a concert venue in Athens.

The Odeum of Herodes.

I walked along the path a bit more and saw some masive collums.

Some big collums. 

Then I went up the path a bit more and saw the Panthenon itself. It was actually replacing the temple of Athena. Historians call the temple the Pre-Panthenon or the Older Panthenon and it was destroyed in the Persian Invasion in 480 BC. The Parthenon - like most Greek temples - was used as a treasury.

The Parthenon.

Then we wandered over to the temple of Athena Nike. Since Nike means 'victory' in Greek, she was worshipped in this manner. The Goddess was worshipped when they were vicotorious in war. It is being cleaned at the moment because it was destroyed by earthquakes like many old building around. There were some nice statues of women on the front. As I looked around at the side, I saw a dog just lying there relaxing or sleeping.

The dog sleeping.

Women statues.

Then I walked and saw a big doorway at the back.

A very big doorway.

After looking around at the temple of Athena Nike for a bit, we wandered up to a look out area. The view from there was awesome.

What a view!

After that we went to see the Theatre of Dionysus. It was built in about 500 BC and was the first to be built of stone.

The Theatre of Dionysus.

After looking at the theatre, we went started wandering back. On the way, we saw a cat having a lie down with a wooden plank as a pillow.

What a cute cat!

After looking at the cat we went back to our hotel by the underground tube. We could only go halfway, however, because the line wasn't finished. So we walked back the other half of the way and had supper at the restaurant. It was fun today at the Parthenon and I enjoyed seeing that exciting part of Athens.

Goodbye Plakias, Hello Athens!

The airport greeted us today as we set off to the mainland of Greece. We were off to the 'big smoke' (or the city), Athens. It is the capital of Greece and extremely huge. Athens is one of the biggest places I have ever been in my life. If you walk about ten minutes and look back, it is hard to recognise anything because there is so much traffic and people everywhere. I might be exaggerating a bit, but that is sure what it looked like to me. When we arrived at the Park Hotel, I looked around and saw that it was definately a park theme. No coincidence that it was right opposite the park, too. There were fake trees around the main entrance with leaves on the roof. There were many scenes of what people do in parks, and some bikes surrounded by cut out butterflies. It is just lovely in there. The elevator is decorated with a black background and lights, making it a bit like the night sky. The carpet has a grass pattern on it, just like some grass in the park (no coincidence there). The view from the window in my room is quite nice, for it is overlooking the park.

The view from my window.

After all that, I suddenly felt very exhausted and snuggled into bed and fell asleep.