Dion

Greetings!

Let me start by saying that if you are like me and enjoy going to museums and archaeological sites, do yourself a favour and pick an archaeologist as a companion. :-p

I know it’s stereotyping, but it’s their thing, you know? They are more likely to pay attention, they won’t get tired and grouchy (you may even have trouble keeping up with them at times…just sayin’), and they’ll be great at explaining things.

So yeah, Eirini, now you know the true reasons I wanted to go on this trip to Dion with you! :-p

Seriously now, Dion is one of the most gorgeous archaeological sites in Greece, albeit a bit underappreciated. It is located at the foot of Mount Olympus and its’ name comes from the sanctuary dedicated to Zeus (Δίας in Greek -or Dias in its’ latinised form). 

The ruins of Zeus's temple

Besides the temple dedicated to Zeus, there is a temple dedicated to Demeter and one dedicated to Isis, the Egyptian goddess (the cult of Isis was introduced to traditional centres of worship in Greece after the conquest of Egypt by Alexander the Great). And there's also a theatre, the ruins of the walls and the city adjacent to the sacred site.

The ruins of Demeter's temple.

The ruins of Isis's temple

The entire site has this fantastic energy about it, that makes it very easy to realise why it was considered a sacred place. Rich vegetation, fantastic trees, springs, a river, Mount Olympus, the ruins of an ancient city; the photographer in me was very excited about it all; and the nerd too! :-D

If anyone's interested in drawing a jungle, we can provide the pictures. :-p

Since it was mid-July already, any sane person would go out bright and early to avoid heat;  that’s not our style though. :-p

We arrived sometime close to noun, when the sun was already high in the sky, and we walked around for almost three hours, which resulted in sunburn and a minor heatstroke too; and because clearly, who cares about that, that was the day we ate the stew we mentioned in the previous entry. (...yep, completely mental!)

Theatre ruins

City ruins

Still, the heat didn’t stop us from taking our time to explore the site (“we are walking through an actual ancient city, how cool is that?”), taking a million pictures and talking -once again- about all topics imaginable; thankfully no one could understand what we were saying (because there weren’t any other Greeks around), otherwise that would have been a tiiiny bit embarrassing at some points. :-p   

And here's the traditional selfie too; not bad at all! :-)

Now, although I’ve been to Dion before, I’ve always wanted to go back; and really, I don’t think I’d enjoy it this much the second time around, had I gone with anyone else but Eirini; not because she’s an archaeologist and she had worked on an excavation there (that was just an added bonus, because it felt like I had my own private guide :-p), but because we are interested in the same things, and that made touring the site a lot more exciting.  

And of course, Eirini had first thought about drawing the myth of Eros and Psyche there; how could I not want to Dion with her? In a way, it all started there! :-)

Until next time!