Trip 1 Day 5 (September 24): Ioannina, Aiani, Vergina

We started the day at the archaeological museum in Ioannina where Asterix and Obelix greeted us outside.

The museum had a special Asterix exhibit celebrating the 50th anniversary of the cartoon. The rest of the museum housed finds from Epirus (prehistory to Byzantine) including the sanctuary at Dodona we'd visited the day before.

Coin picturing the sanctuary at Dodona

Next, we went to the museum in Aiani--our first Macedonian city. Photography was not allowed inside but I did see a reconstruction of a house I really liked and a set-up of a spear, shield, and helmet that was really cool. The shield was very big and I can imagine quite heavy.

While in Aiani, we got to see some Macedonian tombs where the finds in the museum were excavated. 

One of the tombs had a wooden shed built over it. An owl sleeping on one of the shed roof beams awoke when we came inside and flew right over our heads! 

The tombs in the next museum were much cooler, though. The museum at Vergina also didn't allow pictures so I took this picture from Wikipedia.

Photo by Sarah Murray from Wikipedia

The museum is built over the tombs, so visitors come from the sunny outside into the dark interior of the grassy burial mound. The finds are housed on the ground level and down a set of wooden stairs, one can find two tombs which still have visible paint! I'll admit standing at the top of the stairs and seeing the facade of the tomb gave me chills. It is the most ingenious museum set-up I've ever seen (and after this trip, I've seen A LOT of museums). The tombs stay protected and visitors can get a tomb-appropriate experience. And, if this wasn't cool enough, they have a set of armor likely to have been worn by Alexander the Great. HOW COOL IS THAT? I definitely got chills standing in front of the armor. I bought a guidebook since I couldn't take any pictures. There were a lot of really neat artifacts since two of the four tombs had not been robbed before they were discovered in 1977.

We spent the night in Naousa at the Esperides Spa (http://www.esperideshotel.gr/) where the proprietor, who also happened to be a chef and cooking teacher, made us a special Greek dinner! The rooms at the hotel were not numbered by named for famous Greeks. Ally and I stayed in room "Helen."