Twenty-five Millsaps faculty, alumni, members of the 1997 Leadership Seminar
and friends gathered from Jackson, New Orleans, Washington, D.C. and California
for a 16 day study and discovery tour of Greece. We began in Athens.
Here are 16 of us (I am in the center in a coral print dress) in front
of the Erechtheum. Our hotel was two blocks away from the Theater
of Dionysius and the Acropolis. From the rooftop (and my balcony)
was a view of the Parthenon, great spots for sipping wine in the
evenings and watching sunrises.
We visited many of the other great sites and museums of classical Greece,
including Sounion, Corinth, Mycenae, Epidauros, Olympia, Delphi, Delos,
and Akrotiri. (You see here a view of the Greek Theater at Delphi).
My co-leader, Myrto Cocconi of Educational Tours was an impeccable guide
to these places.
But she also initiated us into Byzantine Greece, and traditional and
modern Greece as well. Here you see two goat shepherdesses in Arcadia
in a field of wildflowers.
Our hotels were all so different. Here is one of our favorites,
the Princess Mykonos, whose pool and view of a deep blue sea, echoed the
traditional colors of the architecture.
Wherever we traveled, we also dined well. We almost always ate outdoors,
as you can see in this picture; Myrto is the standing figure in conversation
at the end of the table.
And after one meal in the island of Paros, local village teenagers
danced for us, and then danced with us.
 The beauty and variety
of the Greek landscape,whether it was the mountains of Arcadia, the Aegean
sea, the plains of Olympia, the volcanic island of Santorini, or even this
sunset in Athens, was as astounding as the archeological sites and the
moving works of art in the museums.
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