Home Sweet Rome

There is something amazing about sitting still, and especially knowing that you can remain in one place for a looong time. My trips to Sicily and Greece were both amazing, but I am so overwhelmingly excited to be back in Rome right now. My trip to Athens and Napflio was very relaxed and restful, but part of me is still a little worn out. Looking at the schedule for the week (A three field trip week) and looking ahead to my reports and tests... I'm quickly wearing away at the peace I stored up on vacation.

Here are a bunch of pictures from our trip, with captions to contextualize them.



This is a view of Athens from the Acropolis. The weather was a bit chilly and it was overcast both days we were there. Compared to the views of Nafplio, Athens is pretty unattractive. Overall I enjoyed seeing the ancient sites in Athens as well as visiting the National Archeological Museum, but the city itself was not my favorite place to visit.


This is the Odeon of Herakles. Faith and I had fun discussing it's Roman qualities and being Classics nerds in general.


Temple of Hephaestus. It's a canonical Doric temple... woot!

This is Faith and me in Athens, with the Acropolis in the background.


This is the Parthenon lit up at night. My camera took a pretty blurry picture, but this one's better than the manual setting, which made it look like the Parthenon was on fire.


Ahh, now we have pictures from Nafplio. This is the view from our hotel room. It's a cute town on the Aegean coast. The town is conscious of its tourist appeal and defintely caters to them. We did a lot of shopping but not much buying since it was all overpriced. It was the perfect place to relax for a few days.


More beautiful Nafplio.


The mountains turned purple at night!


This is our room at the Pension Mariana in Nafplio. The view alone was enough to satisfy me, but the cute decor, clean sheets, and tasty breakfast were also greatly appreciated.


In Nafplio there is a fortress from the 18th century on the top of a hill that is allegedly up 999 steps. We had been advised by our professors (the same professors who march us around Rome relentlessly) to take a taxi or bus up to the top, but with all the time in the world we decided to go up, counting the steps. Faith did most of the counting, I just asked, "What are we at now?". The result was 912 with an error margin of 5. This is me still perky before we start the climb. The fortress is in the background.


This is step 587. Slightly less perky.


This is 587 as well I think. We got tired by the end but it really wasn't that bad.


The views definitely made it worth the trek.


Look, it's me... in Greece!


Our hotel is in that picture. If you find the pine tree closest to you, the big one in the middle-ish of the screen, go back to the next big one and then find the yellow building just to the right of
that pine tree and you have the Pension Marianna! (If you actually found the hotel from that horrible description serious kudos for you.)


When we were traipsing around the fortress we found this really fun tunnel. Faith was sad that she was actually smaller than it was.


This is physical evidence that I am taller than Faith.


But it's okay, Faith found a tunnel that she was taller than as well.



These are the two cannonballs that mark the entrance to the stairs up the hill. We sped all the way down the stairs(it was 3:00pm and we were hungry for lunch)but our leg muscles were a little shaky afterwards.


In other news: JONES BEAT SID IN POWDERPUFF!! I'm sorry to my Sid friends (Jenny already chastised me for this) but I have to celebrate. Sid had been undefeated for something ridiculous like 34 games, spanning several seasons. And we finally beat them! This bodes well for playoffs, although I'm sure they'll be out for blood then... Anyway congrats to my powderpuff girls, you kick ass.

I have work to do, things to read, translate, learn etc. My mom, my aunt, and my cousin Katelyn will be here at the end of this week, so that's very exciting. And if we can work out details I think I get to see Sofia O. this Friday? Then more visits, trips, and work. Then Christmas, New Years, and back to Rice. How did I just summarize several months in two sentences....