Brucatos in France and Greece: Another beautiful day and lots and lots of ruins!

Friday, January 15, 2016

Hello!

Me and my new umbrella!

Theatre above Lavrio

Nice theatre!

Up about 6 this morning, which is becoming (hopefully) a bit more normal. (For us, sleeping in until 7 is WAY too late, but it just seemed odd to wake up and have it still be pitch black outside!) Thanos, our landlord, delivered breakfast at 8:30 am – way too much food! There was cheese and cold cuts, and bread and jam and eggs and homemade pastries. We did what we could, but it wasn’t much.

Then, out about 9 am and heading back east to Lavrio and the amphitheatre ruin of Thorikos. We did stop first, though, in Lavrio, to pick up some water and a few other odds and ends. They have something called “My Market” which is just a wonderful grocery store! All sorts of fresh fruit and a great variety of cheeses and meats. (I also found a child’s Minion umbrella which is following us home … groan … Yes, I know, if it had Minions on it, I would buy it. That is certainly true!)

According to some things we have read, Thorikos is actually the largest theatre in all of Greece, although to us it appeared that the theatre at Delphoi was bigger.

Beautiful church on the top of a hill overlooking the sea

Beautiful bay!

However, be that as it may, it was really interesting to see a theatre in unrestored condition. (And actually, it may be that this theatre is Greek, and the one at Delphoi is Roman, as I believe that possibly Hadrian expanded the original Delphoi theatre after Rome conquered Greece.)

We then followed the coast road heading north, to Vravrona and the Sanctuary and Temple of Artemis at Brauron. (First of all, (and hopefully no one will shocked by my ignorance) I didn’t realize that Artemis was a woman! All this time!) (Also, I’ve come to the conclusion that the difference between a sanctuary and a temple is that the sanctuary is the entire area, encompassing various things such as sacred springs, and the temple is the actual building itself.)

At Brauron, we started with their very nice museum, and do I need to say that we had it all to ourselves? It was very interesting, as many votive offerings had been thrown into the sacred springs and were later retrieved by archeologists.

Artemis was the Greek’s goddess of the hunt. She also was the goddess of women in childbirth, therefore, the offerings had a very feminine slant. There were ancient mirrors and perfume bottles and jewelry cases.

Piece from Artemis museum

Beautiful sculpture from Artemis museum

Reminds me of a Mata Ortiz pot!

Additionally, the sanctuary had been pillaged by the Persians in 480 BC and in the clean-up after that, many broken bits of ceramics and other remains were gathered together and buried in small sacred pits, which have since been excavated and catalogued.

After the museum visit, we walked about 500 m. down a winding path to the sanctuary itself. The ruins of the temple are quite impressive.

The Artemis Temple

Artemis temple

Ancient stone bridge over spring

The interesting thing about the entire sanctuary is that a very small Greek Orthodox church had been built almost on top of the ruins. The local people asked permission to put a wall around the church, and when the digging began, guess what? They had struck the sanctuary! I’m thinking those kind folks probably have never asked for anything again, as the first thing that happened is that their church got relocated…

We walked around the site and saw the sacred spring as well as the bridge that had been built somewhere in the 490-480 BC timeframe. Very interesting, and it has been such a beautiful day!

Looking down from height of Cape Sounio

Love the blue water!

Cape Sounio

On the way back to Sounio, we stopped for a late lunch of sandwiches and picked up more tangerines at a lovely shop in town. Then, back to see the Temple of Poseidon at Sounio.

Beautiful drive along the coast. There were even people in the water occasionally, although they would have to be pretty hardy. It’s not that warm out; maybe 60 degrees?

Walked up to the Temple of Poseidon and had it all to ourselves for probably half an hour or so. Again, it isn’t possible to get right up to it as the area is cordoned off, but it certainly does photograph well, especially with the blue Aegean Sea as a background!

From Sounio we returned to the apartment, as it was almost 4 pm and we still haven’t figured out what we’re doing for dinner tonight! That is Robert’s assignment!

xxx

Just back from dinner at Marida, a nice family owned tavern about 3 km down the road. We got there about 6:30 pm (which apparently is REALLY early for Greek dining!) and there was one other man in the restaurant at the time. For starters, I had their mizithra cheese pie, and R ordered their grilled vegetables. However, before they even got to the table, we were given a bowl of eggplant dip for the bread, which was fabulous! Then, for mains, R actually went into the kitchen and selected “his” fish, which turned out to be Dorade Gris or something unpronounceable in Greek [Σκαθαρι = Skathari = Black Sea Bream]. I had pork souvlaki. Everything was excellent.

Sunset from our apartment!

Then, as it seems to be a Greek tradition to provide free dessert or something at the end of a meal, we got two small dishes with Greek yoghurt, one with marinated grapes on top, and the other with marinated quince. R had both, and preferred the quince. The other dessert was rather cake-like with some chocolate sauce, and that, I can attest, was great. Then, as we certainly couldn’t be finished yet, we were given two glasses of homemade lemoncello – WOW! Honestly didn’t taste to me like any lemoncello that I’ve ever had before – more like homemade lemonade. Could it possibly be lethal? Then, back to the apartment after a long but very fun day!

More tomorrow!