January 28

So, getting up at 5am is not fun. I did manage to find a cup of coffee, but only one cup. We got on the bus around 5:45 and set off for Marathon. Today was interesting. We saw some really great sites, but the timing was particularly unfortunate. Just when I had fallen back asleep on the bus (I held out for about 45 minutes), Krentz came over on the loudspeaker and told us we were stopping at a burial site. At this point, we were in Marathon and had stopped at a burial mound which more than likely holds the cremated bodies of 192 Athenian soldiers who died in the Battle of Marathon in 490 BCE. Krentz spent all last year on sabbatical doing research for a book on this battle, so he is chock full of information and passion, but 7am in the frigid air makes for a not so pleasant time no matter how interesting the material. Next we stopped at the Tropean column (reconstructed for the 2004 Olympics). Tropean means “turning point” in Greek and was supposed to mark where the Persian enemy turned and fled.
Things picked up when we stopped to trek up one of the smaller hills and got to look out over the plain where the battle took place. That actually was really cool and beautiful. I think this hill was smaller than the one we hiked up our first day in Greece, but the morning sun warmed our bodies and our spirits. We visited the Marathon museum, which held some of less interesting finds from the burial mounds (the really cool stuff is in the Athens museum, which we will visit later) and some Greek statues of Egyptian gods which were worshipped in the once wildly popular cult of Isis. It’s interesting to see the Greek artistic styles applied to Egyptian gods – the female gods here have the draped robes, the medium used was marble instead of limestone, and the faces were different, but I can’t really put my finger on exactly how.
From the museum we went to two side by side temples at Rhamnous and discussed why these temples were built so close, why the later temple wasn’t finished, and determined how many columns were intended to compose the colonnade (only five had been erected and they were uncut). No one knows the answer to any of these questions, but we tossed around some ideas (ran out of money, some ominous sign, and others I can’t remember).
All this happened before 11:30. It was a busy morning, but that means we got the rest of the afternoon off. Tonight and tomorrow night we are staying in Thebes. We went out for a quick lunch after we checked into our rooms, and I have got a bunch of catch-up reading to do, so I won’t be able to do any exploring of the city until tomorrow.
Allie and I are having an “Office” party tonight after we finish with our readings. The plan is to start with season 1 and go from there. She has only ever seen one episode (“The Dundies” from Season 2), so she needs a full background before she can watch any other seasons.
Tomorrow is a full day. I plan to drink plenty of coffee at the hotel breakfast, or supplement with some Nescafe at any one of the hundreds of cafes that line the streets.