Athens (Sorta) Weekend

So this weekend, I was lame/exhausted, so I stayed in Athens. Yea yea i know, I fail at providing amazing new pictures, but the weather was sooooo bad here it wouldn't have made much difference. It was very windy (the balcony doors almost blew open a few times), cloudy, and somewhat rainy. So I stayed in Athens and watched some DVDs and slept.

I did manage to get some things done on Friday. I went to the local farmers market which is quite a sight. The entire street gets closed down weekly and local vendors come in to sell their produce. Some of it they buy and then resell, but some of it is grown locally. Chefs from the area buy all their weekly produce here. As you walk down the street, vendors shout out the goods they are selling and try and get you to buy from them. I was very impressed. The food I got was in pretty good shape, and pretty cheap. Now i really can't wait until spring when the strawberries come into season, because they look amazing.

I also managed this weekend to go to two museums (yes, me in a museum...it's a amazing thing). These weren't your typical museums however. The first was the Numismatics Museum. Numismatics is a big fancy word for the study of coins. The collection apparently houses over 600,000 coins from all ages, all the way from the ancient Greeks and Persia all the way to the modern day with the Euro and Dollar. Some were quite impressive in their detailing, even the ancient coins. The display was not the most easy to follow, as i apparently went backwards at times. If i didn't know what i was looking at, i wouldn't have known what was going on in the ancient coins. The very first gallery is made up of collections from individuals, so there is no order to them. Once you get to the second floor, there is a lot more of organization. The most fantastic part of this museum is that it was the house of Heinrich Schliemann. For those of you who are not ancient historians (I only know this because i'm a history dork), he was the man who in the 19th century discovered Troy and Mycenae. He discovered these by using Homer, so is a bit of a crackpot, but overall he contributed greatly to our understanding of ancient Greek history. His house is in Athens, built in the Neoclassical style, and is rather impressive. Unfortunately i got there about an hour before it closed, so i had to rush through, but i plan on going back.

The other museum i visited was also a former house, but this time for a wealthy family named the Benaki's. This is truly an impressive museum. It contains art starting from the early Minoan and Cycladic civilizations all the way to the late Byzantine and Ottoman. Best of all, it was free for students, so the price was most certainly right. I enjoyed the first two floors, but was getting tired, so i rushed through by the end. There were 2 more floors, but they did not interest me very much (they were from the more recent era). Who knows, maybe I'll go back and visit. The museum does contain several impressive pieces of art, and is most certainly worth a visit.

Next weekend, I'm traveling on a school field trip to the Argolid, which is the northeastern part of the Peloponnese. Not quite sure what the itinerary is, but Nafplion, Corinth, Tiryns, Mycenae, and Epidarus are in the area, so I'm sure i'll be going to some of them! Plus, spring break is going to be in Austria and Germany, so you KNOW there will be good pictures!