Rome-ing Athens: The Pelopennese

Hey everybody,

This last weekend we had an excursion to southern Greece- an area known as the Pelopennese!
We left early (again, surprise) on Friday morning. This time though, no ferry. We had a bus and a personal driver that brought us down to the birthplace of Greece. Very nice for a change.

It was a lot of ruins. A lot. And the whole excursion was for the art history class, which is the one I'm not taking. So I just got to come along for the fun of it.

We made a stop at Mycenae- one of the oldest important cities in Greece.

Some cool flowers up on the hill on the way to the secret sistern

The secret sistern: a stairway going straight down hundreds of steps in the pitch dark to what used to be a water well.

The grave circle

The treasury

As cool as the ancient ruins were, when we stopped in Napflio for the night and my favorite place was yet to be explored.

Napflio was the capital of Greece until 1834. Now, it's a beautiful town with a sea port marina, with a fantastic Venetian fortress on top of the hill.

The really huge hill.

The 1,000+ step, high-incline hill.

Actually, it was more of a small mountain.

Lets go with that: slightly humble mountain.

Either way, about half our group decided on a whim to make the climb. We still don't know anything about it other than that it was a Venetian fortress (I'm sure, previously taken at some points by the Byzantines, the Turks, the Franks, etc, etc.). The stairs were fun at first:

And the view was unbelievable

But it didn't change much

Every step we climbed

So it took a while

But it was soooooo worth it

The hikers

All the better though, as we made it into our own personal playground. I loved that there wasn't anyone else there. It was only our group climbing around on this old fortress, exploring the dungeons and the different rooms.

What a wonderful end to the day!

Saturday we visited the Theatre of Epidaurus at the ancient sanctuary of Asklepios

And spent some time in the museum, learning about the sanctuary itself.

Way back in the day, (ooh, 400 BC or so), the sanctuary was a sacred place of healing, where people would come to listen to philosophers preach at the theater, run on the track, and stay in the hotel-like building to get well. As well as to pray at the temple.

The rest of the day was a lot of ruins.

Saturday night, we made it to Olympia, where we got settled at our hotel (which was so nice by the way- so nice to stay in a hotel with hot showers, clean sheets, a pool and TV). They also served us dinner for free, which was some kind of roast beef, rice and a nectarine.

There was a cute stray who knew exactly when to come up to our table to beg and when to hide from the waiter. He looked a lot like Benji and he was so smart. Needless to say, he got a few scraps from me.

Sunday we spent the day in Olympia. The site of the original ancient Olympics!

Every 4 years, places in Greece would send their finest athletes to Olympia to compete. The winner received nothing but the honor and a wreath of olive branches. The athletes spent their days training indoors and out at Olympia, and honoring Zeus' temple at the site.