July 18th - Day 38

Pella

This morning we headed off to Pella, the capital of the ancient kingdom of Macedonia. It was the birthplace of Philip II and Alexander the Great. We spent the entire morning touring the site and museum there. The site is still be excavated and they are working on turning it into a park for tourists, which means they are undertaking some serious restoration and conservation projects in the area. The new visitor center on the site is scheduled to open in 2014 and should be quite a draw for tourists as there is quite a lot to see on site. The museum contains the finds from the site and is laid out well. It contains a lot of interesting artifacts, including mosaics, terracotta figurines and pottery, as well as some really cool coins. 


After we finished up at Pella, we drove another 2 hours to Vergina, which is my favorite site of this trip North and definitely a top 5 for the whole trip. Vergina is the reported burial site for Philip II and Alexander the Great (and a few other members of the royal family). There is quite a lot of debate among scholars as to whether or not this is really the burial site. The problem is that the site is largely unpublished and politics plays a big part in this site. Many believe that much of the site has not been published so that there cannot be any doubt cast on who is buried in the site. The site itself is really cool. The tombs are underground and the museum has been set up around the tombs. So you go down to see the excavated tomb and then you can walk around the different cases and see the artifacts that were found in the different tombs. No pictures were allowed. My favorite was a suit of armor and shield that supposedly belonged to Philip II. Some scholars argue that it actually belonged to Alexander. The amount of wealth that was buried in these tombs was staggering. Tons of gold, benches with ivory decorations, weapons, silver, etc. It was amazing! There were even grave stele found with their original paintings still visible - this is largely unheard of anywhere else. It was a truly remarkable site.


We got back to Thessaloniki just before dinner time. We headed out to the same restaurant again, being too tired to look for anything else. I ordered my Greek salad and mushrooms again and had another Mythos to wash it down. After that I trudged back to my horrid hotel room (late night!!) took a shower and sat down to write this blog post. I am going to hit the sack very shortly as we have an early wake up call tomorrow - 7:30 am...BOO!! Good night, y'all!