The Wykehamist
Later that day, we drove to Mistras, another Venetian site built half a century after the Fourth Crusade of 1204 near the site of ancient Sparta. Soon subsumed within the Byzantine empire, the city is characterised by its ornate eastern Orthodox churches and the stunning backdrop of the Taygetos mountain range. After this, we made our way to Gythion and reached the third hotel.
From there, we travelled south to the Byzantine town of Monemvasia, built on a rocky tidal island like France’ s Mont-Saint-Michel. Here, after spectating a celebratory ceremony for Greece’ s Independence Day, we had another strenuous climb, rewarded by stunning panoramic views and another ice-cream opportunity in town.
This was followed by an excursion from Gythio to our third ancient site, Messene. This was built in 369 BCE by Thebes, the dominant polis at the time. Thebes built several ideal Greek cities near Sparta in the aftermath of its war with the city to prevent it from rising again to greatness. Due to these unnatural founding circumstances, the city contained all the major public
buildings the Ancient Greeks desired, many of which remain standing today, including the Stadium, where Alex Hettiarachchi( I, 25-) won our rather short‘ Wykehamical Games’, and the Odion, in which we were graced with TEG’ s performance of‘ Ithaka’.
The remainder of the trip consisted of visits to Methoni, a Venetian sea-castle where we enjoyed an hour at the beach; Nestor’ s Palace at Pylos; a world-class olive oil farm; Olympia, once home to Pheidias’ 12-metre-tall statue of Zeus, praised as one of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World; Delphi, where SJ, acting pythoness, gave us his best prophetic verse; and a honey farm, where BKP narrowly avoided being stung by a bee in a rather sticky situation.
All in all, the trip was a great success, and all the participating boys are very grateful for the time and effort contributed by the dons, Alex, and the legendary, dedicated coach-driver, Uncle Pavlos, who stood by the group even when the bus broke down.
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