Trip 1 Day 2 (September 21): Thermon and Stratos

I'm writing this on Day 4 of the trip, and already, the activities of the different days are bleeding together. Sadly, I left my travel journal which Jean gave me on my desk at the School in my haste to get to the bus. Fortunately, though, I've been writing letters on the bus and so have recorded much of what's been going on.

Day 2:  Up early and to Thermon which meant a drive through very twisty and turn-y, single-lane mountain roads. I tried repeatedly to capture the beautiful view of the bay visible between the mountains on film, but was never successful. At Thermon, Stephanie gave her report on the site and on the temple of Apollo which was Archaic in style but Hellenistic in construction. 

Highlights of the site: along one of the walls of one of the buildings, there were benches and there was a still working channel with running water.

And the view of the mountains:

Next we stopped in a little musuem in a little town called Agrinio. We regrettably (and unintentionally) tracked mud onto the gleaming marble floors inside.  The museum housed finds from local sites like Stratos, Nafpaktos, and Kalydon.  I liked this lady's attitude.

We stopped for lunch between Agrinio and Stratos at "New York New York" where I didn't order anything because I'd already eaten a peanut butter sandwich on the bus, but from the reports of those who did, I wasn't missing anything.

After lunch, we drove about ten minutes, pulled off onto a side road and got out.  We scrambled through some brush and up a hill to get to the unguarded ruins of the temple of Zeus at Stratos.

I made a new, little friend while investigating the temple.

Rain threatened to join us from a distance but we left before it arrived.

On the way to the hotel we got a very special treat. There's an ongoing excavation at the temple of Apollo built by Augustus at Actium. Yesterday was the last day of the season and the head archaeologist stayed late so she could show us the site which happens to be in the middle of a modern sailboat yard.  The coolest part of the temple is that the mosaic pebble floor (probably from an earlier Hellenistic version of the temple) was still there.  I stood on it. I touched it. I also found a potsherd, which I put back in the mud after having a look. No pictures, though, as it's an unpublished site. Too cool

We stayed the night in Preveza at this hotel:  http://masthotels.gr/prevezacity/.  A handful of us went down to the water for dinner where I saw this beautiful rainbow just over the boatyard where we'd just seen the temple site.