Museums and Stuff

So I went to a museum this weekend and an old Pagan Temple that was converted first into a Christian Church and then an Islamic Mosque. This building is known as the Rotunda for its' shape... round. The Rotunda is currently under construction and has been since 1978 when an earthquake shook the foundation. Since then they have been reconstructing the mosaics and securing the foundation. It doesn't appear as though too much progress has been made. Clearly things get done really fast here... The museum we toured was the Byzantine Museum. There was a lot of beautiful pottery and jewelry and some very intricate relief prints of various things. There were also some remnants of tombs and a lot of Corinthian style capitals from pillars. I would say it was a relatively educational day. However, the weather sucked :( It was cold and rainy. So I got coffee with Sarah and Britney after our educational excursion and we sipped on that for about 2 hours. Then we hightailed it home to warm up and take a nap. Sunday was also a dreary day so I did absolutely nothing... I caught up on my sleep before my crazy travel schedule starts. I will be preoccupied with traveling on the weekends for, oh about.... the rest of the semester. Thanks for reading :D
P.S. - Scroll down to the bottom of the page, I have larger pictures of different things.

School Field Trip to Volos

Went to the port city of Volos this weekend. It sits at the base of Mt. Pilio. It's a city of about 200,000 people and has a considerably young population because of the university. However, we only spent a couple of hours in the city. We went to the Archaeological Museum and had lunch. Then we took about a half hour bus ride up Mt. Pilio to stay the night at "The Balcony of Mt. Pilio" which was a small village called Makrinitsa. It was a beautiful village with small cobble stone roads. Our bus couldn't even go all the way into the village, we had to walk to our hotel accommodations. Speaking of the hotel, cutest place ever. It appeared as though it used to be a home and now converted to a hotel. We had a wonderful honeymoon suite that had a gorgeous view of Volos and the harbor. We walked around when we got there and had some coffee and looked around at the small shops. We had dinner later that night at a small taverna [surprise, surprise ;)] and then had made plans to go out not realizing that there was ABSOLUTELY no bar in the village. So instead we got dessert. A delicious chocolate souffle. Stephany and I slept together in our suite, haha. The next morning we had breakfast and went to a mansion in the village. There was a collection of things inside the house. Some clothes, books, pottery, kitchen stuff, beds, a weaving loom, and much more. After the house tour we had some time to relax and do as we pleased in Makrinitsa. Our last stop was another small village about 5 minutes from Makrinitsa and we ate lunch there. We left after about an hour there and headed back for Thessaloniki. I slept the whole way home. Unproductive weekend as far as school work goes though. Thanks for reading :D

Edessa

Traveled to Edessa this weekend. Beautiful place. However, the train was a little ghetto. Quite run down and it looked like someone had thrown up on it. Yet it was still a fun train ride. We woke up at 5 in the morning to catch the train at 7. Perfect timing on our part. I was planning on sleeping on the way there, but the scenery was amazing and I couldn't sleep a wink. It took about 1.5 to 2 hours to get there. Once there we got off the train and were starving, however, we all wanted to find the waterfall first. Well, Vasilios did not want to listen to me about how to get there yet my internal GPS signals were right. Got us there fast as lightening. Walked around the waterfalls for awhile and found the hemp factory. I ripped my pants while taking about 1,000 photos of my surroundings. It was absolutely beautiful. After awhile of exploring we decided to head for the hot springs. There were 5 of us and we did not want to take 2 cabs so unfortunately they had no vans and we had to squish all of us in a cab, a Mercedes none the less. So plenty of leg room though. The hot springs were beautiful and there were a lot of people there for it being February. The water was not as hot as I expected it but it was amazing still. We stayed there for about an hour and then made our way back to Edessa. We ate linner (yup, lunch and dinner) and then meandered back to the train station. This train was a bit more crowded than our morning train but we all managed to find seats. We were all so tired so some of us slept while others recapped the day. We arrived in tact back in Thessaloniki and napped when we got home. Woke up a couple hours later just in time to go out for a drink or two. Very successful day! Thanks for reading :D