Day 3

Today was the group’s third official day here in Athens…

The day commenced at 10:30 a.m when we departed the hotel for the Acropolis museum. We took the metro from Syntagma, which is in the vicinity of our hotel, to Acropoli, in which we started our adventures. The views of the Parthenon were incredible as we approached the museum and explored the ancient remains of the sacred architecture. The museum utilizes three floors to display the different sections of the once whole structure. The ground floor exhibits the statues that were found on the grounds of the Acropolis. The second floor was dedicated to the cafeteria where we ate a delicious lunch while enjoying the outside air and view and a short video that better explained the structure and its incredible history in depth. The third floor was the designated Parthenon Gallery. Here, the sculptures and carvings that fabricated the perimeter of the exterior roof were exhibited in a continuous sequence to show the authentic layout. 

Before lunch, the group was able to watch the video explanation of the great structure. Following the first destruction, the Parthenon was transformed into a Church for the Greek people then a Church dedicated to Latin faith, and finally into a Mosque. In 1867 the building was blown up by Venetian bombardment. This was a travesty for the Greek people, and rebuilding would, in turn, be nearly impossible. Unfortunately, as well, many statues were stolen subsequently. 

After lunch we had planned to make our way up to the remains of the site, however, a snag in our plan occurred. The machine for tickets was broken, so we decided to detour through many shopping areas before our next destination... 

The visit to the University of Athens was a very short but memorable stop within our day. We had the chance to walk through the hall of administration offices and take a group picture before we had to exit the building and continue on our way to sit and recuperate for a little bit.

The history of the University is worth researching. The school was first founded officially in 1837 and was interestingly not only the first University in Greece but in the Balkan Peninsula and the Eastern Mediterranean region as well. The population of students is about 103, 972 in 2013. This student size makes good sense since Athens is the most populous city in Greece. 

At the restaurant, called Nancy’s Sweethome, the group enjoyed a wide variety of desserts that were very sweet and largely proportioned. Continuing on with low appetites we started to make our way back to the hotel. The metro stop was called Monastiraki that we left from. We returned to the hotel at 5:30 p.m and had a few short hours to work on our class assignments before dinner time. We ended the evening with a nice dinner by the sea in a quaint little restaurant named Enteykthpio.