Covered LOTS of ground today!

Exhausted. Details later.  A few highlights.

  

Mycenae / Nafplio

Saturday, May 30, 2015

We started our day in Nafplio with a guided tour of the old town.  Nafplio was at various points settled by the Mycenaeans, the Ancient Greeks, the Venetians (who used and fortified the port as a Naval Base and shipping center), the Ottoman Turks and the Greeks again.  The town's architecture has elements of all of these periods but the old town feels a lot like Venice with it's winding narrow streets and occasional relief of the winged lion of St. Mark on the fortifications.  

Hotel View

Old Town Nafplio

Davis outside the church where the first president of modern Greece, Ioannis Kapodistrias, was assassinated.  The bullets passed through and hit the church and the impressions have been preserved.   Apparently Kapodistrias ticked off one too many special interest groups...

After our tour we visited the local farmers' market/ flea market--set up every Saturday morning.   

These live snails were crawling out of their bowl--yum!

Olives of all varieties

MYCENAE

After a break for lunch we meet our guide again at Mycenae, which is about 30 minutes inland from Napoli and was a fortified city on a hill that was active 1600-1200 BC (before the classical Greeks).  The citizens of Mycenae fought the Trojan War and legend has it that Homer's Agamemnon was their king.   Some archaeologists also believe that the Trojan War led essentially to the bankruptcy of the kingdom with resultant social disorder and decline of the civilization.

Approaching the city ruins on a foothill of the adjacent mountain.  The pink oleander is in bloom everywhere and is quite lovely.

Outside the legendary Lion's Gate--the entrance to the city.  The Lions have stood guard over this spot for 3500 years. 

Outside one of the "beehive" tombs.  These were built out of massive limestone blocks moved into place with primitive methods.   The amount of man-hours required is staggering.

Inside the dome of the tomb

This tomb wall, outside the treasury of Atreus, is the oldest intact standing structure in Greece.  The tomb has been looted thousands of years ago but the structure has not been rebuilt or modified in 3600 years and is in perfect shape.  Now that's some engineering!

All kinds of things found in local excavations are in the associated museum.  Who knew a Grecian Urn could have so many shapes.

 After Mycenae we drove back to Nafplio and explored the largest, and highest of the three Venetian Fortresses--the Palamidi.

Everlie showing acrophobia who's boss!

The boys are starting to show some signs of "museum fatigue" but are holding up well.  We are putting them to bed early tonight.  They need more than the 7 hours we've been allowing some nights!

View from the computer.  Tough duty.  Did we mention the absolutely beautiful weather?

Tomorrow:  Epidavros (the largest and best preserved ancient Greek Theatre), Corinth and on to Athens.

Trekking Across the Peloponnese

Friday, May 29, 2015

Today we woke up in our cozy little hotel in Olympia to start out adventures.

 Our first stop was the Museum of the History of the Olympic Games in Antiquity.  At this point we have seen A LOT of museums and have been to a lot of archeological sites.  So I am sure we missed something very important in this museum but it seemed that most of the really great stuff is housed in the Archeological Museum.  Under the very watchful eye of the docents we quickly made our way through here.

 We then stopped by the free Archimedes Museum.  It has a fancier name but basically it was a small museum that highlighted Archimedes inventions.  The boys could give a much better explanation of every single exhibit we saw.  However, the takeaway for me was that he was a really smart guy way ahead of his time.  Our super duper helpful docent, Mario, thoroughly and enthusiastically explained every single exhibit.  We spent a lot of time here and were the only visitors.  If you ever go to Olympia, stop by here and ask for Mario!

 We will see the real thing in Athens but this is a reproduction of the first laptop.  See the little bitten apple on the side?  ;)  It does something fancy like predict eclipses and other things but the main point is that you give input, it does calculations and then produces output.  It was found on the bottom of the ocean in perfect condition.

 Another Archimedes invention with a fancy name that I don't remember.  It was used for moving really heavy blocks of stone with just one finger.

 This was Archimedes' solution for figuring out if objects were made of pure gold.  A solid gold ingot is on the right.  An object is balanced on the left.  When submerged in water, you can tell if the object is pure gold or if the seller/artisan is trying to pull one over on you.

That concluded our time in Olympia and we headed toward Nafplio (it has about a million different spellings).  Unfortunately (for me, Everlie) we took the route through the mountains.  You can see a few of the roads on the previous post.  Mostly they were glorified goat trails through the mountains.  There are not a lot of photos of this adventure as I spent most of the time with my head in a motion sickness bag that I brought with us from the airplane (I learned that from previous experience).  Dramamine became my best friend!

 I did manage this photo while we were down in the valley.

 The boys were finally kind enough to stop for me to walk around the square of a little village.  Luckily, there was a nearby path that lead us to the river.  We took a break for the boys to skip stones.  They are expert rock-skippers!

 After that little break at the river, they went in to get us some lunch at the Super Market.  They came out with a variety of snacks and reported there was not a single fresh item in the market.  We enjoyed testing a number of Greek snack foods.

 Davis chose a chocolate egg for his lunch!  There was a plastic egg inside with a little toy car as a prize.

 My drugs kicked in so I slept and missed the rest of the trip.  Below you will see the old city of Nafplio.  All of the old Greek cities are really hard to navigate.  Thankfully this hotelier suggested parking above and walking down to our hotel.

 We were surprised at our modern and luxurious accommodations in this ancient city.  The area we are in is built into the side of a hill and the rocks make up a part of the rooms.

 On our way to dinner, we saw numerous orange trees full of fruit.  There are many orange groves in the area and we have enjoyed delicious fresh squeezed orange juice.

 I don't know exactly what this salad contained but our hotelier suggested that we order the specials at the recommended restaurant and that is what we did.  It was delicious!

 We ended the day with a sunset walk along the Argolic Gulf with the Bourtzi Fortress in the back ground.

 One bonus picture from today.  We are glad that many signs have English translations.  Unfortunately, they don't always get the translation exactly right!

Traveling

Survived lots of this (high up in the mountains!!!)

And this

And this yesterday

So that we could enjoy this today

Ancient Olympia

Thursday, May 28, 2015

We woke up this morning to this view in Itea...

 After a delicious breakfast at the hotel (breakfast is included in most hotels), we hit the road.  Interesting side note:  we have been basically the only guests at most of our hotels!  This is a great time to visit Greece!

This was a long but easy drive on the north side of the Gulf of Corinth.

 We reached the bridge that crosses the Gulf and paid the 13.20 Euro toll!

 And then continued our drive on the western side of the Peloponnese (the island part of the south part of Greece).

 There were numerous strawberry farms along the way.

 Scott has been an excellent driver in all sorts of difficult driving situations.  Most roads are two lanes but have a shoulder that is used as an additional lane.  Nice drivers stay partly in the regular lane and partly in the shoulder lane so that they can be easily passed.  Slowly but surely we are also learning what all the road signs mean!!

 When we reached Pyrgos, there were many roadside areas heaped in garbage.  It was quite a sight.  We later learned that the local government had not provided adequate landfills and had been chastised/fined/whatever by the European Union.  It has taken a really long time to get things straightened out.  Now the city workers are slowly recovering from many months of no garbage pickup and have started picking up from hospitals and homes of the elderly.  After the garbage is removed from homes of most other residents, they will finish by removing the trash from the more easily accessible highways.  It is quite a mess and seems to be very embarrassing to the locals as tourism is a major part of their economy.

 We made it to Olympia in time to get checked in and run to a local take out eatery where the food is prepared fresh every day and then closes when it all gone.  We bought everything the proprietor had left and then he closed for the day.  We ate outside in the church yard.

 We have learned that the best way to really learn about a site is to have a local guide.  Once again that proved true as we had a terrific tour of Ancient Olympia by Niki Vlachou.  This is her home and she made the history come alive as she described everything we saw.  Kronos Hill towers over the entrance to the site. According to the ancient Greeks, this is the birthplace of Zeus and where he tricked his father Kronos who had tried to eat him!

 Niki gave us an overview of the site and a history of the area before we got started.  The ancient Olympic games occurred here every 4 years for 1,169 years and finally concluded in 393AD!

 According to romantic tradition, this is the olive tree originally planted by Hercules from which the winners' (only the first place finisher was considered a winner) wreaths were made.

 The center of ancient Olympia was the massive Temple of Zeus.  The photos really don't do it justice.  Logan is holding a sketch of what the sacred area would have looked like.

 Boys ages 8-12 competed in the games as well.  Davis was our winner of the 8 year old category.

 Logan is the winner of the 11 year old division.  He is standing in front of the base of the statues of the winning horses from the chariot events.

 Ethan is standing in front of the top of one of the columns that you can see in the background.  They were massive!

 We have been to a lot of "ruined ruins" but this was a in incredible site and we could not believe how much of it was still here.

 These are the Bases of Zanes (cheater statues).  It seems there is nothing new under the sun.  Even ancient Olympians were known to fall victim to choosing to use performance enhancing drugs.  In this case that was animal blood.  It was detected by professional urine tasters!

Just like in football stadiums of today, athletes ran through a tunnel as they entered the stadium.  They stored their clothing and other items in lockers built into the wall of the tunnel.

 Our Olympians are lined on the originals starting blocks.  Logan has his toes in just the right spot.

 They competed in the two stadia race (192 meters x 2).  Unfortunately I could not photograph and video at the same time!

 Ethan was the victor and was crowned with an olive wreath which he wore with pride!

 Now he is standing in front of Alter of Hera.  This is where the Olympic torch is lit and then relayed to the modern Olympic games.

 Next we toured the museum.  It was filled with all sorts of remarkable finds.  We won't bore you with all of them.  But this was a very interesting exhibit.  On the right is the helmet of Miltiades.  He was the Athenian general who convinced the Athenians to attack the Persians resulting in the victory at Marathon.  Phedipidaes ran the 26 miles to Athens to announce the victory and then died on the spot.  Interestingly, the marathon was not an Olympic event until 1896.  How do we know that was Miltiades helmet you may ask?  Well, his name is written on it, of course!

 Famous Hermes of Praxiteles.

 We ended the day with a yummy meal of gyros, Greek salad and other assorted goodies on the street at sunset.

 On the way back to the hotel we had dessert of ice cream and a Lacta Sandwich... delicious!

 We are in a small family owned hotel.  The owner showed us his display of Olympic torches carried by his family.  He carried the two on the left!  There are pictures of him with the torches displayed nearby.

Now we are settled in for a good night's sleep with the balcony doors open to a gentle breeze and the sounds of Olympia.  Good night.