Almost to Italy

March 28, 2007

Igoumenitsa, Greece

Right now I am sitting in the lobby of the ferry port, waiting until late tonight when our ferry will pull out of the harbor here and make its journey across the Mediterranean sea to Brindisi, Italy. From there we board a train until we finally make it to Reggio. I loved Greece but I cannot wait to make it to Italy, where there is more to sea and do and more different food to try!

Today has been very restful. Because we knew that the ferry was leaving late in the day and we only had one site to visit without a very long bus ride our wake up call was for 9:30—I couldn’t sleep that late so Ambrice and I ended up having breakfast and then grocery shopping, wandering around the town back toward the old Byzantine fortress. Appparently Ioaninna is famous for its silver jewelry, so we stopped in at a couple of shops to examine the wares, but did not purchase anything. It felt so relaxing I almost couldn’t believe that we were still on the classics trip!

Then it was some emailing and some reading before loading the bus for the last time, and trundling our way came to the site of Dodona. This place held the oldest oracle on Greece, which centered mostly around a sacred oak tree, under which big bronze cauldrons would be placed in order to catch the falling acorns. The sound that the acorns made rattling against their bronze repositories was supposed to represent the voice of Zeus himself.

There is not much left to the sanctuary now, most of it is dominated by the ruins of a theater, added onto in a few stages, most notably by Augustus during which it was converted into an arena for beast shows by removing the few lower seats and replacing them with a retaining wall for the containment of the animals. The theater is quite big, supported by large retaining walls on the diazoma that rather resemble the walls of a fortress, and was believed to have a capacity of about 17,000 spectators, making it one of the biggest in Greece. Indeed, the back of the theater itself abuts the acropolis, and from our position down on the cavea we could clearly make out the tops of the fortification towers. Along one of the retaining walls, the crumbled remains of a third century stadium barely poked itself out of the ground, the seats built into the same hillside as the theater retained their shape and integrity, while the other, a simple earthen embankment, fell into ruin and reintegrated itself into the landscape.

There were a number of small temples and shrines on the site, all reduced in most parts to lichen covered grey stone foundations, bleak testaments to the majesty of what had run before. The sacred oak of Zeus himself stood taller than the cnclosure that once would have held it—although the oak had the advantage of being replanted where the ruins had been left to the mercy of time. At the far end of the site was a Christian basilica, a 3 aisled church with the usual rounded nave at the east end, the remains of columns and walls poking out of the grass.

But the most spectacular thing of the entire site was not in what the ancient Greeks did, for to turn the back on the theater meant to turn toward the vista of those massive jagged snowcapped mountains, surging out of the landscape and clawing toward the sky. The day was clear but the tops of them were shrouded in cloud, and the sun would hop in and out of the pockets to illuminate the green rolling landscape that abutted the mountains like a mussed rug against a chair leg. I have been consistently impressed with the landscape here, and today has been no different. Greece is beautiful in its own rugged way. We stood and stared at the landscape for a while, saying our own private goodbyes to Greece, before hitting the road.

Now we are here in the station for a good amount of hours, and have to content ourselves however we can, by reading or sleeping or walking around, typing etc. When we wake up tomorrow we will be in Italy!