Day 17: What happened? I blinked!

Today was our last full day on the trip! It started with a trip to the site of the 2004 Olympic Games in Athens. We learned a lot of great history while sitting inside of their 72,000 seat Olympic Stadium that was built in 1982. We learned that Athens was actually prepared to host the 1996 Olympic Games before they were eventually awarded to Atlanta. Athens actually had 70% of their infrastructure built already by 1996, but wouldn’t end up needing it for another 8 years. The city improved their surrounding infrastructure such as roads, airports, and metro for the games. After the games, the city maintained all of these stadiums and infrastructure until the global recession in 2009, where many of these venues became abandoned and run down. Currently, some of the venues are trying to stay afloat by renting out their facilities, but that strategy hasn’t worked very well. The Athens games are a great example of how important the sustainability factor is for the cities hosting the games. It is clear that the London Olympics in 2012 took many measures to fix what Athens did wrong, and it was easy for us to see since we had visited the London Olympic Park earlier in the trip.

Next up was visiting Marathon, Greece. This is where the Battle of Marathon took place around 480 BC. This is the site where the Athenians defeated the Persians, although heavily outnumbered. Their strategy was to trick the Persians into thinking they had won by letting them penetrate their front line. Their front line essentially funneled them into a narrow passage, where the Athenians ambushed them. This strategy proved to be successful seeing as there were only 190 or so Athenian casualties to the 6400 Persian casualties. After the battle was won, a soldier ran back all the way to Athens to share the news. This run is where a marathon gets its name! It was awesome to be walking around where this defining moment in history took place.

After that, our next stop for the day was the beach! We were at a beautiful resort on the Mediterranean Sea. We all grabbed lunch in the restaurant first. I ordered the shrimp pasta, and boy was I surprised to see whole jumbo shrimp on my plate, eyes and all! After lunch, we digested for a minute before heading to the beach volleyball court. Not to rub it in, but the final score strongly resembled the results of the Battle of Marathon, with my team being the Athenians. The other team returned the favor in the beach soccer, however. To cool down after our intense games, we all jumped in the water, which turned out to be quite warm! Overall, we had a great time at the beach, and made it out with only a couple sunburns!

To wrap up the day, we headed back into Athens for our last group dinner. We ate up our last traditional Greek meals, topped off with some delicious baklava for dessert. During the dinner, we tallied up the results of our scavenger that took place throughout our trip. Although Louis and I gave it our best, the gold medal ended up going to Aodhan and Kaya, who put up an impressive 25 points. Professor Kim surprised the whole group with some awesome Olympic patches and magnets, while the best scavenger hunt teams got a few extra prizes as their reward. The day as a whole was an amazing end to an amazing trip.

To wrap up this incredible journey, I decided to ask each member of the group their favorite part. Here are their answers:

Anna - The Pairs river cruise at night and seeing the Eiffel Tower all lit up, and then having a group photo shoot in the middle of the street

Fiona - PSG game in Paris. It was an amazing atmosphere, and the post-game championship celebration was awesome

Jacob – Going out to O’Neils as a group in London

Lintaro – Our tour of Wembley Stadium in London

Toni – Hiking in Switzerland and seeing the amazing views

Andrew – Abbey Road in London, and INSEP in Paris (France national Olympic training facility)

Ethan – Eating fish and chips in London, Eiffel Tower, and rooming with Lin <3

Kaya – Going to O’Neils with everybody in London, and hiking in Switzerland

Louis – Hiking in Switzerland

Matt – Beach volleyball in Greece and meeting with representatives from the IOC and checking out the Olympic Museum in Lausanne

Aodhan – Hanging out at O’Neils in London and the IOC day in Lausanne

Christian – Beach day today and seeing the Parthenon in Greece

Maggy – Paris river cruise at night and seeing the Eiffel Tower all lit up

Myself – Our group picnic on the coast of Lake Geneva in Lausanne

Professor Kim – Our archery day at the World Archery Excellence Center in Lausanne and INSEP in Paris. Both were new additions to the trip, and it was important to add a Paralympics portion to the trip we got at INSEP.

As you can see, there are a ton of different answers, which speaks to how great of a trip this was. There’s no doubt we’re all sad as we wrap up and say goodbye, but in the words of Dr. Seuss,

“Don’t cry because it’s over, smile because it happened”