{"id":164,"date":"2012-07-30T07:19:49","date_gmt":"2012-07-30T07:19:49","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/fnerk.com\/?p=164"},"modified":"2012-08-12T14:36:31","modified_gmt":"2012-08-12T14:36:31","slug":"greece-day-11-vergina","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/fnerk.com\/?p=164","title":{"rendered":"Greece – Day 11: Vergina"},"content":{"rendered":"

Our last day in Greece was to be relatively uneventful.\u00a0 We had a few possible stops planned, but decided in the morning to just go to one to save stress.\u00a0 This is good, because I was in pain <\/em>by this point.\u00a0 Just stepping off a curb was making me wince, let alone walking down from our third floor hotel room.<\/p>\n

We set out in the rental car and after about 2 hours drive came to Vergina.\u00a0 (That’s pronounced “ver-GEE-na,” by the way.)\u00a0 The archaeological site there was only discovered in 1977 to be the burial site of no less than Philip II of Macedon.\u00a0 For those of you a bit fuzzy on your ancient history, that would be the father of Alexander the Great.\u00a0 The tombs were under a large hill called “The Great Tumulus.”<\/p>\n

The museum there now was constructed in a fairly ingenious way – the hill was left intact over the tombs, and the museum simply constructed in the empty space inside after the excavations.\u00a0 So you’re wandering around looking at exhibits just feet from the actual mausoleums.\u00a0 And the exhibits include, among other things, the actual box containing Philip II’s bones.\u00a0 It’s quite the experience.\u00a0 Sadly, no photography allowed.<\/p>\n

Afterwards, we stopped of for lunch at a little taverna in the middle of nowhere.\u00a0 It dawned on Leigh and I that in eleven days, neither of us had actually ordered a “Greek Salad” per se, so we did just that.\u00a0 This was not the sort of place that normally gets foreign tourists, but the owners were just as friendly to us as everyone else had been, and yet another plate of free fruit appeared after the meal.<\/p>\n

On returning to Thessaloniki, it was time for another bit of sheer terror, as we had to negotiate a non-trivial number of crowded, insane major streets, followed by a number of tiny, packed, one-way streets to get to our hotel.\u00a0 But we made it, checked in, returned the rental car, and spent the rest of the day just bonking around the town.\u00a0 We had dinner in a restaurant with carved figures over the windows.<\/p>\n

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The food was very good, but part of me suspects we may have eaten in the Greek equivalent of a T.G.I. Friday’s.\u00a0 At least we didn’t eat in the ACTUAL T.G.I. Friday’s on Aristotle square.\u00a0 We did walk back down to the waterfront and did some people-watching.\u00a0 We also saw our final sunset in Greece.<\/p>\n

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Since nothing happened on day 12 but travel (over 24 solid hours of it), I’ll include our only picture from that day here, without comment.<\/p>\n

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Statistics:<\/p>\n