National Archaeological Museum:
The National Archeological Museum was different from other museums, it had every part of the history of Greece, not only the history of when it was a great Mycenaean civilization, with buildings like the Parthenon, but it also had artifacts from the early history of Greece, also some artifacts from Egypt, and even a real skeleton, which was a first for any of the museums I went to. the place is enormous, I could only see the first floor and after we were leaving I realized almost no one from the group finished seeing everything from the place, some of the girls in the group left because they thought it was too much to see. It was amazing seeing that place, and it had anything you would want to see in a museum, from clothes to jewelry, armor, marble statues, bronze statues, ancient fishing lures, a chariot, paintings, vases, swords, and even a sarcophagus as well as a boat from Egypt. This was one of the best museums I’ve been to because of the amount you can see, but it was also overwhelming because it was a lot to see and too little time.
Museum of Greek Culture:
The Museum of Greek Culture was really fancy, it isn’t that big but it has three floors, and each one of the floors shows artifacts from the Bronze Age (floor 1) up to WWII (floor 3). As you went up in floors, the age of the history went up as well, so on the first floor you could see head and body sculptures, vases, and jewelry, with some Bibles and old Christian monuments. Still, the second floor had fully decorated rooms from Macedonian mansions, Greek costumes, and dresses. the first part of the third floor had a place dedicated to a movie called “Poor Things”, which showcases the designs of the costumes used in Victorian times, but this movie was not set in Greece. The second part of the third floor showed more costumes from before and after the Greek Revolution. It was a nice museum but not the best I’ve been to on the trip.
Panathenaic Stadium:
This was the best museum on the trip. At first, I thought it wasn’t a museum, but after getting there they gave us a radio walkie-talkie that explained each part of the Olympic stadium. It starts with number one and ends with twelve, so each number you touch on the walkie-talkie talks about a different part of the stadium, and the best number in my opinion was 9 because it talked to you as if you were a competitor from that ancient time, an immersive experience, giving details about how they would feel going inside the tunnel and going outside as if you were from that time in history. It was really nice. I loved this because it was really interesting for me and I’ve always liked Olympic sports. Most of my life I’ve done them since I was a kid in Argentina, that’s why this was my favorite place.
Our Farewell Dinner:
The farewell dinner was sad, Katherina, the tour guide for the whole trip was the sweetest person that I met, she was always full of energy, willing to talk, and always looked proud to be talking about her country, Greece, to people like myself, which we basically know very little about, because of her I could visit and learn about many places and I could see things that I would have probably never done myself. When dinner ended we all gave her a tip of 100 dollars total and she started crying, that made me think deeply about this, and now that I think about it, she is super passionate about her job, being able to travel through the country she loves and giving groups of people that are not from Greece knowledge and information of the beauty of the places. Honestly, I’m a little jealous because many of us don’t get to find what we want to do with our lives after a long time, or maybe never, I mean I haven’t even found what I like to do yet. Saying goodbye to the group wasn’t as hard as I thought it would be, we had fun and it ended with fun, but I feel like I’m gonna miss being there because it was an amazing experience with lots of new things, which I know I’ll want to do again (maybe in another country). This trip was everything I hoped for, and it exceeded my expectations.