The Trout of Justice

2006-11-06T09:14:00.000-08:00

The internet seems to have eaten my last post that I tried to make. I'll try to have another one up soon.

2006-11-01T01:28:00.000-08:00

Well since it's now November I feel it is as good a time as any to talk about early October and my trip to northern Greece. We started the trip off at Delphi. Delphi the place that is always hyped up as being the site of the ancient Pythian Oracle. Supposedly there was a crack in the ground that released these fumes under the temple of Apollo and when the Oracle inhaled them she would have visions that would be translated by the priest as being the voice of Apollo. Oh a whole the site was actually kind of disappointing. It used to be that you could walk around in the remains of the temple, sit over the site where they think the crack used to be, and get some great pictures of you and your friends being oracles. Now you get to stand behind a rope and try to go up hill enough that you can look down in the hole in the temple that you can sort of almost see the spot where they think the Pythia used to sit. I couldn't walk around inside the Parthanon either but atleast the Parthenon was a beautiful enough structure to make up for it. The temple of Apollo was far less well preserved and over all felt like kind of a let down. However, if you cared to take a hike up the hill side on which the city of Delphi was built they do have an excellently preserved racing arena. We all had a great time standing on the marble starting line and pretending that we were in good enough shape to run the whole length of the arena and back when quite a few of us were still panting from climbing the hillside. This is one time it's probably good that I didn't have pictures because trust me the arena looks a lot smaller when you are not standing in it.
Our next stop was the remains of the ancient city of Pella, birthplace of Alexander the Great. Now it fits pretty much with it's description by Lucian 180 A.D., "now insignificant, with very few inhabitants". Mostly it was just a series of floors and a few scattered pillars. It did show some early city planning and some of the floors had impressive mosaic scenes but for the most part Pella has been completely destroyed by time.
It's class time now but there will be more to come later.

2006-10-30T02:51:00.000-08:00

I'm not dead yet.... just very very busy. I'm going to try to sweep through the three trips I've taken in one post later tonight. There probably won't be any pictures or at least very few ones in that post. I'll have to come back later and sort out my pictures to add.

2006-10-03T05:30:00.000-07:00

Well it seems like I've gotten a little bit behind on updates. I had a trip to northern Greece this last week, but more on that later. Today I'm going to try and finish the story of my cruise trip. After leaving Ephesus we traveled to Patmos. I don't have any pictures from Patmos that are worth showing. There is a cave that is traditionally associated with being the place that John wrote down the book of Revelation, but it has a Greek Orthodox Church built over it so you can't take pictures inside and there is probably no truth to that tradition anyway. We also saw a monastery there but once again we couldn't take pictures inside. Honestly I was feeling really tired that day and even Patmos was just as beautiful as any other Mediterranean island, I felt like I understood why John was exiled there as a punishment. Also there is not naturally occurring water on the island other than rain water. Today they have a huge boat bring it in but that had to be hard to deal with in Biblical times.
Our next day started off with me being tired again, but Crete, our first stop that day, was an interesting enough stop to keep me mostly awake. In Crete we stopped to visit the Palace of Knossos and a Museum with artifacts from the Minoan civilization that had lived there. The minoans are believed to be the civilization that was the origin for the Minotaur and labyrinth myths. The word labyrinth is believed to mean "place of the ax" and based on the decorations from the palace these people were definitely obsessed with axes and bulls. Plus when it had been complete their massive palace could have easily been mistaken for a maze. The actual palace site itself felt a little unimpressive when you realized how large it used to be, but still it was an interesting stop. There where quite a few frescos that they recovered when they dug the palace up. I was a little dubious of how accurately they were depicted though. The rough sections are what they found and the clear sections are what they fill in based on sections from other works. As you can see they made quite a few guesses on the murals.
Later that day we made our final stop of the cruise on the island of Santorini. Santorini had been a major center of the Cycladic civilization until a volcanic eruption literally destroyed and sunk half the island. Today it is a peaceful sites with only cliffs covered in picturesque white houses surrounding an inner caldera of water. A small island has slowly built up in the middle over the volcano. Some think this could have been the origin of the stories of Atlantis, but there is no real evidence of this beyond the fact that the city on the island was largely sunken and destroyed by a volcano.
Getting onto the island can be quite an ordeal since you have to go up the cliffs. Your options are take a donkey, take a cable car, or walk up the approximately. 500-600 stairs to the top on your feet. Well I hate riding donkeys. (They smell awful. Really there is nothing else that needs to be said about them to defend my hatred of riding them. If you don't believe me smell one sometime.) And any rumors of me taking the nice and easy cable car up should be treated like the filthy lies they are because as this pictures will prove my friend Brian and I were the only ones brave enough to try climbing the stairs.
We set off with all the enthusiasm of youth.
I for one felt that we were off to a great start...
the weak however were quickly culled.
Thus I set off on my journey alone.
I don't really know why anyone thought this would be so hard.
Maybe it was a little early to start celebrating at one hundred stairs.
Wow. Guess I really hadn't thought about how many stairs five hundred is.
Just have to press on to the end is all.
There is an end. Right?
I think I'm almost half way there... or is it a quarter of the way there?
I didn't really need anything in my backpack anyway.
Finally though I arrived in Santorini and demonstrated that indeed those stairs were nothing to worry about for some one of my peak physical condition.
These photos were definitely not taken on the way down.
That's all for the cruise folks.
See you next time.

2006-09-23T04:27:00.000-07:00

All right. Your here. I'm here. Lets talk about Ephesus. In biblical times Ephesus was a coastal city next to a river, but that was almost 2000 years ago. Now thanks to the build up of silt from the river Ephesus is miles from the coast. Actually this was a constant problem throughout the history of the city and it would periodically be abandoned and rebuilt closer to the water. So since nobody had pillaged, burnt, smoothed over and rebuilt on it like most ancient cities, Ephesus was restored remarkably well when archaeologist found it. This isn't to say that there were complete building everywhere. Mostly we just had arches and columns, but they were everywhere. You could really tell that this was once a city. The scale of this place was just unbelievable. The technology was also quite impressive considering the age. There were signs of ancient pipes and plumbing everywhere. And of course.... Ancient Roman public restrooms! According to the tour guide because only wealthy men were allowed to use the public restrooms they apparently ended up being a place where politicians would regularly meet for discussions. And you thought our politicians were full of crap.
As we went on we approached a building that I had been looking forward to seeing since I first heard we were going to Ephesus... The Great Library at Ephesus. This was truly a beautiful building and I only wish I had a picture that gave a better idea of what it was like to have it towering over you. On our way out of the city we passed by the massive theater of Ephesus. We also visited the remains of the Temple of Artemis which was one of the seven wonders of the ancient world. Yeah... not much left of it... it was kind of sad. The full structure was almost four times the size of the Parthenon and now all they have left is one column.
that's all for Ephesus. Sorry it's taken me so long between updates here but I'm running on what feels like a test a day schedule here. We leave for our bus tour of Northern Greece on Wednesday though, so I'll try to finish up the last part of the cruise story before I go.

2006-09-21T10:46:00.000-07:00

Ha Ha! I am marginally competent after all! Well anyway... We came to the island of Mykanos. Mykanos is known as the party island of Greece and as you can see by this shot of me near where we landed on the island it's quite the happenin'' place. Well at least it is at night and when you're not standing outside of a sun-dried octopus shop. Our first real stop on Mykanos was to see the famous windmills it has. Yeah they're really pretty. They don't do anything, but darn if the tourists don't flock to them like flies to honey. After leaving the windmills like most tourists we entered the narrow winding streets of Mykanos. The streets were purposefully made to be narrow in confusing in older times so that pirates who frequently attacked the island would be unable to figure out how to get into the city and get lost. In modern times the Agean islands are attacked by pirates less frequently thanks to the Great Scallywag Decline of the last few centuries. Now the streets merely serve to confuse tourists and keep them from leaving the shops. My friends and I broke of from the main area and explored some of the back alleys. We saw a lot of cool stuff while we did this, but unfortunately it was to dark to get any good pictures. So just imagine some really old stone walls, mysterious plants, and an oddly place amphitheater and you pretty much have the idea. Once we returned to the shopping area we were surprised when the crowd suddenly parted to make way for.... Petros the Island's Mascot. Yes that's right. It's a couple of Pelicans named Petros. Apparently years back some rich guy from Florida decided to retire to Mykanos. He really liked it there but noticed that the island was missing one very important thing... Pelicans. Yeah I don't get it either. But the descendants of his original two Pelicans still live on the Mykanos and have become celebrities there. So finally we returned to the boat where instead of sleeping for the next day I spent the night at the Disco on the boat. I am so John Travolta it's not even funny.
Our next port of call was far too exciting for me to be sleepy though. We went ashore in Turkey to take a tour of Ephesus. This is was the home of the church that the book of Ephesians in the Bible was sent to. Just in case you didn't know. Anyway, Ephesus is definantly one of the more impressive ruins that I've seen so far. So impressive in fact... that I'm going to talk about it in another entry later tonight. So stay tuned.

2006-09-21T10:41:00.000-07:00

If I finally figured out how to get this working, then this should be a picture of a sign I saw outside of Ephesus in Turkey.

2006-09-20T11:47:00.000-07:00

Well sorry for the long break between posts. Over the weekend we took a three day Mediterranean cruise and while on it I didn't have any internet access. I know. It is indeed a hard life that I lead. Well I've been trying to get a post about it up but at this time I think I need to be honest and reveal that I am not the technowizard I never claim to be and do my best to avoid being labeled as. Anyway, I'm having a lot of trouble figuring out how to post images here but I think I will have it down by tomorrow. For now I'll give you the introduction to my cruise. We left on a ship called the Ocean Monarch. I'm kind of confused by the name Ocean Monarch. I imagine somebody already took Ocean Queen and that naming the ship Ocean King didn't make much sense since ships are always referred to as females. So I guess they just decided to take the middle road, call it a monarch, and leave you to figure it out. Anyway on our first day of sailing we came to the island of Mykanos... you know I really need some pictures of this place. Sorry to tease you with this entry folks but that's all for now. Just come back tomorrow. I promise there will be more.

2006-09-14T11:44:00.000-07:00

Today was a lot like eating ice cream. It was great for the first little bit but after two hours I was tired of doing it and still had hours to go. I had always heard that street corners in Athens are almost entirely composed of historical sites and/or museums but not until today did I really have any idea what exactly that meant. You see as part of one of my classes I have to take detailed notes on what the tour guide says at everysite we visit in these little moleskin notebooks. This notebook is something that I will probably love having years from now but for now it means the already tiring tour schedule we have to keep is even more hectic. Thankfully we started the day at the Parthenon while we were still fresh. I've seen pictures of the Parthenon and read about how large it is my whole life but until you actually stand next to it you have no idea how impressive it really is. Unfortunantly I could not go inside of it because of the restoration project it is undergoing right now, but it was still by far the most impressive structure I saw during the day. It is pointless for me to try and describe it, so I am just going to advise that at somepoint in their life everybody try and get to see it. Of course people say the same thing about hundreds of such buildings and I don't think I'm going to get to see the Taj Mahal anytime soon. You have my word on the Parthenon being worth it though. Just wait until they've finished the restoration if you can or if they ever do. After that we saw Mars Hill, the Forum, the Agora, and every temple within a stones throw. Of course considering Greece in a stones throw there will have been about 8,000 temples. I was a little overwhelmed by the end of the day and tired of walking since Greece is very mountainous and hilly. I think when I have some free time I am going to try and return to some of the sites on less crowded days and get a view of them then. Today was really was a good day and I know I'm too tired to give it proper justice in this one post. We leave for our cruise tomarrow so it might be a few days before my next post, but I'm not giving up yet. Farwell until next time.

2006-09-13T11:11:00.000-07:00

Well here I am making my first blog post. Or at least I hope I am. Still kind of new at this so I have no idea where this text I'm typing is going to go. I have to admit I have always disliked the idea of blogging and done my best to avoid it. But since I'm in Greece now this is the easiest way for me to keep in touch with everybody. Anyway, welcome and stick around. I promise future posts will be better as I figure out how to use this.
I wish I had started this up earlier because I can't really cover everything I've done this first week in one post. So in short I got on a plane, flew to Greece, arrived at HUG, found out that the rooms at HUG are awsome, ate some Greek food, drank coffee by the sea at a little European style coffee shop, swam at the beach, went to the Temple of Poseidon and Sunion, went to Athens, ate Gyros (or whatever the proper spelling for them is), saw a mime, bought at Greek helmet in the Athens market, got my group lost in Athen (mostly on purpose), found the Temple of Zeus and Hadrians arch while lost, got my group reoriented in Athens, met up with Dino, talked about my grandfather with him, got back to HUG, took a bunch of quizzes and tests, did a bunch of studying, decided that I was going to grill my own food for free food night, talked a friend in to joining me, realized we had no real experience with grilling between the two of us, decided to not let that stop us, went to the grocery store for ingredients, made our own marinade. asked the HUG maintenance man for help getting the grill equipment, was given charcoal and lighter fluid that I suspect was actually just paint thinner, messed up cooking our first two skewers, ate a few bites of almost raw pork, decided to give it another try, cooked the meat correctly, discovered that we put way too much lemon in our marinade, threw out our meat, went to get gyros, and finally started a new blog.
So there you have it. My week in brief. We leave for a cruis on Friday and I don't know if I'll have internet access while I'm on it. But I'll try to get in another post tomarrow night.
Farewell until next time.