Day 4: Island of Kea
by Rae Weibel
Today was a busy, busy day with lots of traveling! We woke up early (too early, if you ask me) for breakfast, and boarded a bus to the port of Lavrio. Then we all took a ferry ride to the island of Kea. Most everyone stayed indoors on the boat ride, but a few of us went out to look at the water. The seaspray hitting my face was such a wonderful feeling!
Once we arrived on Kea, we were able to bus over to our hotel and check in. It was such a beautiful property with quaint, cottage-style buildings that reminded me a lot of Tuscan architecture. Here’s a photo of the property!
After checking into our hotel, we took a bus to Kea’s capital city, Ioulis, and did a walking tour. This is where I truly fell in love with the island. Ioulis is an adorable (albeit hilly) city.
We visited the Kea Archeological museum, and it was so amazing to see the sheer amount of artifacts that were found just on Kea, which for reference is about 15 square miles larger than Denison’s campus. There were terracotta statues of what we inferred are dancing women, each between three and five feet tall. There were only a few statues i the museum, but archeologists originally found 40-50 of them! Unfortunately, I was so caught up in the history that I wasn’t able to take any photos. Afterward, we hiked up to see a statue of a lion carved into the side of a mountain. Nobody knows why he’s there, but this big cat has one heck of a view!
Afterward, we walked down into the village and stopped at a small restaurant for some souvlaki– who doesn’t love meat on a stick?
After lunch, we took a quick bus ride to Vourkari and all raced to find the Bronze Age temple ruins. Of course, Dr. Kennedy was the first to find them! It was fascinating to me that the temple was still even somewhat standing, because the walls were just flat rocks sat on top of each other.
After walking through the archeological site, we went to the beach! It was COLD. Everyone else jumped right into, but I’m a wimp when it comes to cold water, so I had to force myself to dunk under and stay there, which was… less than pleasant. I got used to it eventually, and I was absolutely psyched to be swimming in the Aegean Sea!!!
While everyone else was tanning on the beach, a small group of us went hunting for marble chunks in the shallow water, and used that marble to make a mini Parthenon in the sand! Here’s Michael with his masterpiece:
Finally, we all cleaned up from our beach day and went to dinner! I ordered shrimp pasta, and that is the first time I have ever had to crack the head off of a prawn. Surprisingly, a lot of us ended up going to the same restaurant, just in different groups. In my little group, our day ended with ice cream and drinking wine together on the porch. It was an amazing day, and I didn’t want to leave Kea!
