July 22nd - Day 42

The Temple of Apollo @ Aigina

Today was the last day that I will have to rise and be ready to go by 7:30 am (!), as we made our way to the island of Aigina. We were picked up for the last time by our faithful bus driver, Spyros, who has been with us for 6 long weeks, and dropped off at the port. We had to say our goodbyes to Spyros there as he would not be accompanying us to the island or picking us up, because it would have gone over the 12 hour limit. There is a law in Greece that prevents drivers from working more than 12 hours a day.

The ferry took about an hour and a half and we landed in a quaint little port town. We made our way over to our first stop of the day, which was to see the ruins of the Temple of Apollo. The temple is also known as "Kolona," meaning column because only one column remains standing today. The temple dates from the 6th century BC and is constructed in the Doric architectural style. It was believed to have had 11 columns on the sides and 6 columns on each end. After we walked around the site and took in the amazing views of the surrounding water, we stopped in the on-site museum to look at the finds.

Sanctuary of Aphaia

Next we hopped on a local bus and made our way across the island to see the Sanctuary of Aphaia, which is a really cool site. The goddess Aphaia was almost exclusively worshiped on the island of Aigina and was a local deity associated with fertility and the agricultural cycle. According to myth, Aphaia, who is identified with Britomartis, daughter of Zeus and Karme, was loved by Minos. To escape his attention, she jumped into the sea and emerged in Aigina, where she became "invisible" in a grove. Later the goddess becomes associated with the Athenian hegemony and comes to be associated with Athena and Artemis.

The temple had a really cool inner structure and I wish that we had had an expert with us so that we could have gone inside the temple and learned more about the goddess and the architecture of the temple. After we finished at the temple we headed back to the port via the public bus and got back on the ferry. After we arrived on the mainland, we had to take the metro back to Loring Hall.

It turned out to be a long, hot day of travel and we didn't get back to Loring Hall until around 7 pm. By then most of us only had enough energy to find some dinner, shower, and head to bed. Tomorrow is our last day of scheduled site visits. We are heading to the Agora of the last time and then to the Lysikrates Monument.