Today we got to visit one of the most beautiful places that I have ever seen. It was called Kakopetria and it was located in the Troodos Mountains. I had known about the Troodos mountains from our pre-departure classes, but I never could have envisioned how beautiful they were and just how many people live there. There are big rolling hills and vibrant green trees, with quaint houses that have orange roofs spread throughout the landscape. We got to walk around the village to get to our lunch and we passed countless porches that were decorated with pink, purple, and red flowers. We walked along a stone road which our guide told us was made out of a mix of river and mountain stones. The houses and trees provided a lot of shade which was lovely, but we could still get to see the blue sky and sun peaking thorough. She also showed us a small house which has an old machine used to make olive oil. I enjoyed seeing this because I remembered describing how they would use donkeys to churn the olives in my pre-departure presentation.

We also got to walk into the Church of St. Nicholas and see all the beautiful paintings that have been preserved since the 11th century. The technique used to make sure that the paintings stayed in tact was called “Fresco”. They would paint onto wet plaster so that the paint was absorbed. This was difficult because if an artist needed to repaint anything, they would have to use a new layer of plaster. Our guide also described how the paintings in the Church were organized. On the roof of the dome was Jesus, since they believed he was the ruler of the world. There would be angles around him and then the four triangles surrounding the dome would be the evangelists. On the walls, there would be paintings describing the life of Jesus and then below that would be the saints. This way it started from Heaven at the dome and down to Earth with the saints. An interesting part of the Church architecture was the four holes on the ceiling. Inside the holes were clay jars that would absorb any sound in order to prevent echos. I found it incredibly impressive that they were able to come up with this, especially since most modern Churches tend to have a lot of echoing. I felt very lucky to get to be inside this Church since our guide said the paintings were the best example of byzantine art. It is also one of the few churches that has two roofs to protect the dome inside.