Today was a chilly (high today was 47), gray (it rained a little this evening) day, so Kim and I decided it would be a good museum day. We paid a visit to the Byzantine and Christian Museum. The website doesn't have an English version yet, but it does provide nice pictures. As usual mine won't be quite as good, but they're all you'll see posted today. The museum appears to be in a Tuscan villa, but actually the exhibits are below ground, so the villa isn't disturbed and things are exhibited in a museum-like atmosphere.

I had to include this chain mail picture (15th Cent) for Anthony and Nicole.

A few of the articles were copies of the actual artifact, in some cases pillaged and now in Rome, London or some other world capitol museum. You can actually detect the snarl in the voice as you read the descriptions.

In spite of the weather, we took a short stroll through the National Gardens. It's not yet spring but a few things were still blooming. Kim had a good time taking pictures with her (good) camera of oddly-shaped tree trunks and other anomalies of nature.

Afterward we actually trammed back to the apartment to eat, call my mom (it's Sunday) then head back downtown for an English-language mass. We had read that mass was at 7 p.m. and were rather proud of ourselves for getting to the church at 6:30 when we came to discover that from Oct. to April mass is actually at 6 p.m.: the later time is during "season." So we arrived late to a Standing Room Only church. It was about as diverse a group as you can imagine. There were westerners, Africans and Asians.

On the tram ride back home afterwards, a teenage male discreetly graffitied a tram door. An older man saw him and started hollering at him. The young guy smirked a little but said nothing and took a seat as the older man continued to chew him out. A young woman not with the graffiti guy yelled back at the man in defense of the teenager, telling him to leave him alone. A couple of stops later the young guy got off the tram without incident. Signs are posted about the severe penalties for vandalism but obviously no one who would enforce it was around.

These mosaic floors were quite impressive. All different patterns - all from the 6th to 11th Centuries.

I was also impressed with this book of the Gospels, from the 12th Century.

Today's Greek news is about secondary education. There's debate in parliament about reform. College admission is all based on an entrance exam all high school students take. Most middle-class and above students enroll in private prep schools for a year to prepare for the exam. Many of them don't even care about high school and skip lots of days, don;t do homework, etc. It's all irrelevant - all that matters is the exam. Reformers want to change the system so that a combination of the entrance exam, class rank and high school grades is used. Others simply want high schools to do what the prep schools do an "teach the test." Obviously the students aren't being well-served.