July 11th - Day 31

I can't believe I have less than two weeks left here in Greece! Our days continue to be jammed packed, but today was a nice change as we got to sleep in a little bit. Our morning didn't officially start until 8:30 am when we walked down to the Byzantine and Christian Museum that is about a 10 minute walk from Loring Hall. We spent about 2.5 hours there as we were guided through the museum. It is a very well put together museum and it was air conditioned! Today's high was 101 degrees, so I was happy that it was a museum heavy day. The most interesting exhibits in the museum were the ones that dealt with how the Christian's re-appropriated the pagan ideas and structures of ancient Greece. Most of the time it just involved adding a cross to convert something from pagan to Christian.

We had about 1.5 hours to kill after leaving the first museum before we were scheduled to be at the National Archaeological Museum for our tour of the Roman sculpture galleries so we decided to walk there rather than take the metro. We stopped along the way for coffee and a snack - because the Greeks always have time for a coffee! - and hung out in the little park area in front of the museum. This was our last trip to the National Archaeological Museum and I think it remains my favorite museum we have visited. It is put together perfectly and although it contains a lot of material, I didn't find it overwhelming. It is definitely a museum that takes more than one trip to see however.

The focus of today's visit was sculpture during the Roman period. There were lots of statues and portrait statues of the various Roman emperors, including a really cool bronze statue of Augustus. My favorite piece was of a sleeping Maenad that was found near the Athenian Acropolis. After we finished up at the museum we walked back to Loring Hall and had a few hours to relax.

We ate an early dinner because we got tickets to the Dora Stratou Dance Theatre to see some traditional Greek folk dancing. The concert was held in an outdoor theater next to the Acropolis. The performance was amazing. The company is made up of 75 dancers, musicians and folk singers. The music was lively and the dancers were dressed in traditional costumes. They changed their costumes frequently to correspond to the region the dance came from. The male dancers did all sorts of crazy kicks, slaps, and turns, and it was a fun evening out.

Tomorrow is a half day trip to Peiraias to visit the Peiraias Museum. We leave for our trip north on Friday morning, so that involves more packing tomorrow as well! Time to live out of a suitcase again...but at least the hotels have air conditioning :)