Katie Mucha - Blog Post #2




Katie Mucha

Professor Seaman
Greece Trip – May 2018
Blog Posts


BLOG #2

For the second half of this trip, one of the most interesting places that we visited was Rhodes. It was fascinating to walk through the (still inhabited) streets of the palace and to see where people lived when the castle was still in use. It was extremely picturesque to walk through the cobblestone streets and see the castle that (apparently) was the site chosen for several movies because it was so majestic and beautiful to look at. I was surprised to learn that it is cheaper to live within the walls of the old city than it is to live outside it (for the most part), and often students live there. Typically, places like that would be very expensive, so that was interesting to learn. I added a photo of the cobblestone roads that caught my eye. It is crazy to me that people used to walk on roads that were full of cobblestones all the time, they don’t seem like they would be easy to walk on when it’s raining, let alone when its dry.
I also found that, when I was swimming, the water felt like silk and was not sticky like most sea water in other parts of the world make swimmers feel, and I wonder why that is. Swimming in Rhodes was a life-changing experience since it was so unexpected, and it makes swimming in other places less enjoyable.
I found that Mykonos was the most beautiful island that we visited during the cruise, and i loved walking through the streets of Mykonos due to its beautiful architecture and whitewashed walls. Another island that we visited, Santorini, also had striking feature of its own. When we toured Santorini, it was surprising to hear that the houses are painted white and blue for reasons other than simply just tourist attraction. Our tour guide mentioned that the color white was chosen because that was the color that limestone gave off when it was scrubbed on the walls, which was done originally to disinfect the houses when there was disease and such, and blue was chosen as a homage to the sky and to the ocean. These colors were also chosen because they match the colors of the Greek flag. I also found it interesting when the tour guide mentioned that, due to advancements in technology, if there was to be a massive earthquake on the island (usually there is one about every 20,000 years that reshapes that entire island), that they would know days beforehand and would have been given plenty of time to evacuate the island in time. That makes the idea of living on Santorini much less daunting, since before I heard that information, I was confused as to why the islanders continued to live there even though they know that they live on an active and extremely hazardous volcano.

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