Another beautiful day!

Thursday, January 21, 2016

Hello!

I need to first cover last night’s dinner, before heading back into the ruins of ancient Greece for today.

We went out about 7 pm heading for a place in Loutraki called Di Georgio’s – and, while Emmy (our GPS) apparently got us to the right location, we could not spot the huge neon sign that was supposed to be there…so, we figured the restaurant was closed, which isn’t surprising, considering the time of year. 

LOTS of salad!

Now the spaghetti ...

View from our balcony this morning

Decided then to head back toward the Diolkos and see what places along the sea were open.  Chose the one closest to our place, and in we went.

Well…There was only one other person in the entire room, but of course, he was smoking. 

More from our balcony

On the road again ...

Lots of snow!

That left us with either taking the corner farthest away, or sitting on the patio outside, which, to be honest, never entered our calculations.  So, we ended up in the far corner.  Honestly, neither of us was really that hungry, and we should have stayed in and eaten our wonderful Greek cheese with crackers and tangerines, and have done with it, but we didn’t.  So…I ordered a salad of rocket lettuce (aka arugula) with parmesan and tomatoes with a balsamic dressing, and R ordered their eggplant salad.  My salad was truly enormous!  You could have fed a family of six on the rocket lettuce alone!  It was very good, but I could hardly make a dent in it.  R’s eggplant salad was much smaller, and came with some wonderful crostini.  The cooking at this place was really very good!  For mains, we both had ordered spaghetti Bolognese, and it was delicious – although again, the portion sizes were huge!  Finally finished and scampered back to our hotel for the night.  There were stars out and boy, was it chilly as well, but it seems that the front has moved through, which is great news.

Acrocorinth

Acrocorinth and its walls

Up this morning about 6, and reassembled and down for breakfast by 7:30 am.  Checked out about 8 and headed to Acrocorinth, our stop from yesterday to see if we could actually see things, or if it was still lost somewhere in the clouds.  Talk about a view!  In fact, all of the ruins we visited today seemed to focus around tops of hills with stunning countryside all around.

Arcocorinth has been inhabited since ancient times, and became a Byzantine fortress in the middle ages.  It seems that anybody who is anybody has passed through there – Venetians, Franks, Turks, etc.  And each successive generation attempted to further fortify the series of three walls that were built around the compound.  Unfortunately, not too much of the truly ancient was still remaining, having been built over repeatedly, so we moved on to Nemea, our second stop on today’s list.

Nemea was about 10 km from Corinth, and we came upon the ancient stadium and locker room (yes, really – a locker room for the athletes!) before we got to the site itself. 

"Locker room" at Nemea

Tunnel through which the participants entered

Starting line in stadium

As it turns out, in Ancient Greece, there were four Panhellenic games held at different times at Delphi, Nemea, Olympia and Isthmia.  One of them took place each year, with the Olympics being held every four years, and the Pythian games at Delphi also every four, but two years off the Olympics.  The Nemean and Isthmian games made up the other two years.  Each games awarded the winners with different types of wreath crowns – olive for the Olympians, Laurel for Pythian, Wild Celery for Nemea and Pine for the Isthemian games.  But of course the winners received far more than that, from their home towns in which they gained automatic “hero” status. 

Nemea was first and foremost a sanctuary to Zeus and Heracles.  The competitors who came from all over Greece would stay at the sanctuary to prepare themselves for the competitions.  The stadium that we walked around still contains the ancient starting line for the running races!  And believe it or not, in the museum we were able to see pieces of the starting line that had indentations cut out of the stone where the competitors were to put their feet to ensure a fair race.  The Nemea museum also had a very good video explaining the construction of the Greek “fair start” device – it was a very complex construction that, when the starter yelled “GO” (or whatever one says in Greek) he dropped the line, and the rope in front of the contestants would automatically drop at the same time for everyone.  Very ingenious device, we thought.  [Note: Runners who committed a false start were flogged!]

Additionally, from the locker room to the stadium, the contestants entered through a 36 meter-long tunnel that has been fully restored.  Quite something, actually, to come out of the dark tunnel into the bright sunshine of the stadium.  

Sinks in Nemea bath

Ancient plumbing in Nemea bath!

Temple of Zeus at Nemea

From the stadium, locker room and tunnel, we drove around the corner to the Sanctuary of Zeus and their small museum.  The University of California, Berkeley has done a lot of restoration work on the temple, and helped put back several of the main columns.  There is also a large bath complex that has been restored and is now under a great roof for protection. 

Temple of Zeus

Downed columns were everywhere!

Nemea Museum starting block with place for toes!

From Nemea, we headed to Mycenae, the Palace of the Mycenaeans in Greece that was found and first excavated by von Schliemann (who, of course, also found the ruins of Troy).  The Mycenaean culture was prominent from about 1600 BC to 1100 BC.  Again, the scenery was absolutely stunning, especially with the heavily snow-covered mountains in the distance.  We decided to go through the site itself first, and then the museum.  There was actually a big tour bus pulled up outside of the entrance – and after having Nemea all to ourselves, it felt a little odd to actually see people at a site!  There weren’t too many of them, fortunately, and they seemed to be heading out as we were heading in.  Most of the time, we had the place entirely to ourselves, which was wonderful.  We are definitely getting spoiled!  

It was quite a hike through the Lion’s Gate and then up to the top of the site.  It is still under excavation, and some of the signage was missing, but we were able to make out a fair amount of text.  We found the palace outlines and royal grave circle, as well as the ancient cistern that still has water in it!  The museum contained the grave goods of a variety of tholos and pit graves that had been discovered over the years.  The collection of grave goods – from beautifully painted vases to votive statues to table ware and jewelry was impressive.  

Lion Gate at Mycenae

Grave circle inside walls

View from Mycenae

It was lunchtime by the time we got back to the car, so we decided to picnic on the Greek cheese we had purchased several days earlier, along with some very good crackers and tangerines.  All in all, a very satisfying lunch!

Our next stop was at the Treasury of Atreus, just down the hill from Mycenae.  This was an absolutely HUGE beehive shaped tomb from around 1250 BC.  The acoustics were incredible, as was the general construction – circular corbelled courses of stone.  As far as we can tell, this structure is the original, not a reconstruction.  The lintel stone above the doorway weighs 120 tons, and in its monumental shape and grandeur it is one of the most impressive monuments surviving from Mycenaean Greece.  And again, we had it all to ourselves!

From there, we decided to head to Nafplio, where we will be staying at the Letonuevo Hotel for the next couple of nights.  It really wasn’t hard to find – but again, it sits on a dead-end street which makes parking rather interesting.  Not sure how I’m going to get out tomorrow morning, but we’ll cross that bridge when we come to it … or possibly not, depending on the bridge!

We are in room 152, which is very tiny, but on the top floor of the hotel, with a very nice balcony overlooking the Nafplio harbor.  We’re going to have an interesting time trying to keep all our possessions together and still move around the room.  As R says, it’s a “one person moves at a time” place.  However, the view is wonderful, and we don’t plan on staying in the room all that much anyway.

Down the "back" slope at Mycenae

Robert!

Steps into the cistern

We dropped the luggage, R made sure we had internet access, and we headed downhill to try and make the Archeological Museum before it closed at 3 pm.  Actually, it took us less than 10 minutes to find the museum, which is just off the central square in town.  The town itself is really quite lovely, with all sorts of nice shops to look into…R’s favorite occupation! 

Me near back gate at Mycenae

Grave good from Mycenae

Love the vase!

The museum was very good, and contained finds not only from Nafplio but all of the surrounding region, including Argos and Tiryns, where we are headed tomorrow.  Finished the museum and headed out into the main square.  We found a very nice place (with no smokers in sight) to have some wine and sit in the sun.  

Tholos tomb outside Mycenae Museum

HUGE tholos tomb

Looking up from inside

Nafplio harbor

R on our balcony!

Mirror!

Nafplio fortifications

Enjoying the sunshine

Just to add scale!

Very, very relaxing.  R was hoping we could just stay there for the next several hours, thereby not having to walk back up those steps again and then back down for dinner, but I needed to start the blog, so up we went.  Whew!

We’ve identified a possible place for dinner tonight, but it didn’t look like it would be too difficult to find a place.  We just need to go early so hopefully we can avoid the smoke!

More later!

m

xxx