Greeces most well known building. Its a wholly temple, and its being restored. The Parthenon is one of the proves of the rich history Greece has. Greece has a big financial crisis now, but the Parthenon proves Greece wasnt always bankrupt. It was one of the richest cultures in the history of mankind. So of course, the second day (after resting one day from the trip) we started visiting the architecture of Greece. So we went to see the Parthenon. Its very impressive, there are illusions in the building, to increase the perfection of the building to the human eye. And with the restoration almost complete, itll have the honor it deserves to have. The third day, we stayed in the same area, to visit more architecture. More temples, of course, because there are lots of them in Greece. Of course, the trip wasnt all about the architecture, so we tried to combine lots of things on the same day. We also went to see the ancient theater of Epidaurus. Its amazing how these theatres of hundreds of years old, still manage to provide such a good range for hearing, without any technology. Just because of the special form and design of this architectural masterpiece, its possible to hear perfectly what the person far away is saying during the Greek play (which was played during our visit there, tickets were bought the first day already). During the play, we could also enjoy the wonderful nature scenes around the theatre. The special thing about the architecture of Greece is that scientific research proved that all these temples were painted in very flashy colors (blue, green, red, ). So even though the architecture is still very beautiful, I guess it was even more beautiful in the time Greece was the dominator of the world.
We were about halfway in our trip and we were very curious to visit Greece. The country looked very beautiful on the internet but we wanted to see it with our own eyes. Although the temperature was around 20 degrees, there were already a lot of tourists in Greece. During that week we went from city to city or island by bus or by boat. During our long bus rides we could enjoy the mountains, nature and the abundance of water. The first thing we visited was the lake of Corinth. It is a narrow lake with six bridges. Five bridges are for cars and one bridge for the railway. The bridges are located approximately 70 meters above the water surface. So we had already suspected that Greece is not totally flat. The next day we visited the theater of Epidaurus. This theater is huge and to our surprise we could hear everything that a group of English speaking tourists was telling below in the theater. Because the bus could not drive to the excavations of Mycenae, we did a part of the trip on foot. Unfortunately there was on the outside not much to see. Normally there are several bodies in each grave. The bodies were buried with many artfully crafted objects: gold cups, goblets, masks and ornaments, beautifully decorated swords and daggers. But unfortunately we could not see that. Later that we week we visited another Greek island Olympia where we visited the Old Olympic stadium. It was not a round track as we had thought, but a long rectangle. A line showed us the start and finish. Athletes were not walking in circles, but returned at the end of the runway. In the past, there was seating for 45,000 spectators and a tunnel in which athletes would make their appearance from. Now there is nothing left from the tunnel and the stadium. We also visited Delphi and the temple of Apollo. During or trip back to Athens, we stopped at the Byzantine monastery. Thomas laughed with us because we were obliged to drag a long green skirt over our dresses. We bought a bracelet after the visit. The bracelet had drawings of several holy persons; the person who stays longest on your bracelet becomes your guardian angel. To finish the week in beauty we went to the Acropolis. There it was very windy but the view over Athens was very beautiful.
