Greece

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Created 14-Aug-14

Modified 20-Aug-14

On October 20, 2013, we landed in Greece for a two-week visit. With four nights in Athens, we visited the usual sites with old, run-down buildings. No visit is complete without a day (two would be better) at the Acropolis, the site of the main temple for the goddess Athena. On day 2 it was off on a day trip to Delphi, the Temple of Apollo and the home of the Oracle. Our hotel was across the street from the National Archaeology Museum, so we spent most of the Day 3 morning to early afternoon there. Then we were off for a late afternoon trip to Souinon and the Temple of Poseidon. Day 4 we flew to Crete for a week. This island was the home of the ancient Minoan culture that predated and helped to seed the subsequent Greek culture. Later, Crete came under a major Italian influence, and many forts from those time remain as well as abundant irrigation windmills. As you can see in the folders below, we visited many sites and took many photos. Next, we flew to Thessaloniki, the capitol of the Roman Empire in northern Greece, and later a major center of the Byzantine Empire. There was too much to see in a day there, but that is all we had. We more or less stumbled on the ancient Roman Agora, the former capitol complex for the Roman empire. The rest of the day we walked around as much of the City as we could, then took a bus tour to see what we we were going to miss. On our final day in Greece we hired a guide to take us to Meteor, where monks started to take refuge in the caves of its cliffs in the tenth century and later built 24 monasteries, with 18 remaining and 6 still operating.