On our last full day in Greece, we headed out on yet another bus trip, this time around the southeastern part of Attica. We started off early after breakfast and headed to Marathon, a town that is most famous for being the place of origin of the marathon race. According to the legend, Pheidippides, a Greek herald of arms who fought in the Battle of Marathon in 490 BC during the Persian Wars, famously ran all the way from Marathon to Athens to report the Athenian victory over the Persians, running 42,195 kilometers. After he had delivered the message, he promptly collapsed from exhaustion and died.
We saw the Archaeological Museum of Marathon which houses artefacts mainly from the Battle of Marathon and the nearby Isis Sanctuary. Afterwards, we walked down to the sanctuary, which is beautifully situated by the Aegean Sea. The sanctuary is the remains of a Egyptian temple, dedicated to Isis, one of the older Egyptian deities whose cult was very popular in the entire Mediterranean area.
Our next stop for the day was supposed to be Lavrion, famous for its prehistoric silver mines, but because of logistical problems, the teacher’s decided that we should drive to the nearby ancient city of Thorikos instead.
The site of Thorikos has been inhabited since the 4th millennium BC during the Neolithic period and up to the 6th century AD, where it was finally abandoned. There is evidence of extraction of silver from 1500 BC, where Thorikos was the mining center of the area. In the nearby area, several Mycenaean tholos tombs from the 15th century BC have been found, which can possibly be connected with the mines in the area. The center of the ancient city is located on the Velatouri hill, where the theatre from circa 525-480 BC is the best preserved structure.
A few of us decided to climb the hill, which was quite a steep climb, but it didn’t take us long before we reached the summit. We only had 1,5 hour to explore the area, so we had to hurry to see the Tholos tombs as well as the remains of the ancient city. Most decided to go down the same way that they came up and then walk around the hill to the tombs, but Anette, Katharina and I instead wanted to go on a small adventure and climbed down the other rockier side of the hill. It was a challenge, but of course we managed!
We hurried down to the Tholos tombs, where one of them was very well preserved, but the others were in ruins. We then hurried back to the bus that was waiting to take us to the next and last stop for the day.
It was actually not on the original plan, but our teachers decided to pay a visit to the Temple of Poseidon from circa 444–440 BC, located beautifully atop a hill overlooking the Aegean Sea on Cape Sounion, the southernmost point of mainland Greece. We only had half an hour there and I wanted to explore the temple and also drink a cold slush ice, so I ran all the way up a steep path to the temple, looked around for a few minutes, ran around the temple and down another path to an island viewpoint and then headed back down to grab the slush ice with 15 minutes to go! Haha, I was so out of breath – but it was so worth it (both for the views and the slush ice!).
After the visiting the temple, we headed back to Athens, where we all spent the last evening eating great local food and drinking local beers, retsina and ouzo! It was a beautiful evening and a perfect end to the nine-day journey we’d been on together.
The drive around the southeastern part of Attica was the last adventure on an intense, but wonderful field trip to Greece. I absolutely loved everything about this trip and I felt very sad to see it end. Greece is truly a wonderful country, but best of all was all the people that I got to experience it with. My teachers and fellow students are all amazing, every one of them.
Read about all our other adventurous days here.
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