The PARTHENON (and the Temple of Zeus...)

(Yes! It is the Parthenon! And it needs no introduction. BUT. Here we come! We are making a pilgrimage to see Barnard's favorite goddess.)

A good view:

(Look who's arrived! Christine!! Hooray!)


The temple of Zeus is cool too:

Also has good views of the Acropolis:

P.S. Today I became a hipster - it was an accident (I was cold, and Christine leant me her flannel.) BUT we went with it, so here I am:

National Archaeological Museum

One thing they do not let you do in Greece: pose in museums with statues. One other thing they do not let you do in Greece: pose next to archaeological monuments. No pointing. No silly faces. Just stand next to it, please, and stop there. Why is this?? No one knows...

You are SO famous, Mr. Grave Amphora! Why couldn't Hillary point at you?



This room didn't have a guard in it, so Christine and Hillary got to look at the kore in a slightly pose-ish manner. (How lucky!)



Some other tourists tried to imitate this guy's [famous!] pose in front of him; they got a talking to. So my picture is just this Zeus all by himself, in all his majestic but lonely glory.

Nafplio (Happy April Fool's Day!)

Greece played several April Fool's Day jokes on us today. We wanted to go to ancient Mycenae, on the Pelopponese, so we got up early to get on a 9:30 bus. But we were a little late, and the bus was already full, so we had to wait for the 10:30. So we got to Nafplio, which is the town near ancient Mycenae, at around 1:00pm. And the next bus for Mycenae left at 2. We bought tickets before we asked how long the bus took, and when the last bus from Mycenae to Nafplio was. The answers? One hour, and 3pm. So we didn't go to ancient Mycenae. Sad.

Instead, we found this castle on a hilltop! Cool! We decided to climb up to it. But it was already 2 by then, and we noticed a sign at the bottom of the stairs that said the castle was closing at 2:30pm. So we practically RAN up about 1000 stairs in 20 minutes. But we made it! Pretty view, isn't it?