Thera Volcanic Eruption

by: Logan and Bryce

We spent our last week in Greece on the volcanic island Santorini. The volcano Thera erupted 3,600 years ago. After the volcano exploded the Minoan civilization based in Crete was destroyed and the eruption inspired a couple of myths.

The Cretan Bull

Before Minos was king of Knossos the people wanted a sign that he was worthy, so he prayed to Poseidon and offered that he would sacrifice anything he presented to him in the gods name so he could become king. So, Poseidon gave Minos a beautiful bull and he became king, but Minos thought the bull was too beautiful so he sacrificed a different bull. This angered Poseidon and he made King Minos's wife, Pasiphae, fall in love with the bull. Poseidon also made the bull rampage across the Cretan country side destroying farms and killing villagers.

Adventures Through Crete

During my travels through Greece my family spent a week in Crete. We flew from Thessaloniki to Heraklion and rented a car to take a mini road trip around Crete. First we went to Chania where we had our first bad experience with directions, but we made it to our awesome little house. We got to our house and the nice people we were renting from were waiting there, with freshly baked bread, little savory pies, and oranges from their orange trees (which we made fresh orange juice out of) - it was all delicious.

Fresh squeezed OJ in Chania

WWII in Greece

Original artwork from the war.
Displayed at Moni Megalou, Meteora 

Greece was greatly affected by WWII. The Italians wanted to prove that their army was strong and capable, so they decided to attack Greece because they thought that it would be easy. When they tried to invade, Greece successfully fought them off and pushed them back. The Italian failure forced Hitler to attack Greece and he succeeded. After the German invasion they stayed there for the whole war and made life miserable for the Greeks.

The war with the Italians in Greece started after the Italians torpedoed the Greek cruiser called Elli in the 15th of August 1940 in the harbor of the Greek island Tinos which killed tons of people. Then on October 28th 1940 the Italian minister in Athens gave a letter saying that Greece has to let the Italian army occupy its country or they would invade. The Greeks refused so the Italians invaded from Albania thinking it would be an easy victory, but it wasn’t easy or a victory. The Greeks fought back and in six weeks they pushed the Italians back into Albania. This is very humiliating for the Axis so to get the job done Hitler had to stop getting ready for invading Russia to go invade Greece. First the Greeks asked if they could make a truce between Greece and Italy, but on the 6th of April 1941, the German Army invaded Greece. The new Greek Prime minister, Alexander Korysis, committed suicide when the Germans invaded.

Thessaloniki

We just spent the last several days in Thessaloniki which is the second biggest city in Greece. In our guide book there was a walking tour of the city which included a lot of churches, this seemed like a fun way to explore the city so that's what we did all day. When we were done with the walk we went to a delicious bakery with tons of different desserts. Here is a little photo tour.

Our first destination of the "Tour" was part of the Byzantine Walls.
These walls were built in the 4th century B.C. until the Ottomans
destroyed it in the 19th century.