dimanche 13 mai 2007

Delos

Although it was pretty windy, we decided to take the boat to the island of Delos for the morning on Friday to see the ruins. After Athens we were feeling pretty blasé about seeing more ruins, but Delos turned out to be quite interesting. First of all, the scope of it was so grand: at one point, it had been a city of 30,000 people and was among the most important and wealthy cities in the mediterranean. In fact, Cleopatra had lived there. Secondly, things were well preserved because it had just been up and abandoned and no civilization has lived there for a long time. So, there was a lot to see.

These statues of phalluses were dedicated to Dionysus. Here were some lions which had been dedicated by the Naxians in the 7th century BC. These statues were in Cleopatra's house.It was also nice to see mosaics, since the painting and coloring on most ruins elsewhere has pretty much faded. Afterwards we took the boat back to Mykonos and spent the afternoon at Platy Yialos beach. ahhh...