More cities of the Ionian league (and Magnesia)

Athena temple at Priene

Wow, after this post I should finally be caught up. It's really easy to get behind when computers keep hating your camera and even spontaneously die in the middle of a post. That and I've been visiting ruins like it's my last chance ever, which could in fact be the case - who knows when I'll ever be back here?
Today I visited three sites - Priene, Miletus and Magnesia. I'll try to keep this one short. Priene and Miletus were both cities in the Ionian league I mentioned in the last post. Magnesia, despite being very much in the same area, was not accepted into the league. This was basically because it was settled by the "wrong kind of people".

Miletus

The area is an interesting one - a wide, incredibly flat valley through which the tail end of the river Meander flows (ever wonder where we get the word "meander"? Google image search the river). Two thousand years ago, the whole valley was filled with water - it was part of the Aegean sea. But over hundreds of years it slowly silted up, first turning into boggy swamps then flat ground, literally leaving these cities high and dry. However important they may have been in the day, Priene, Miletus and Magnesia pretty much died out after this. And let's not forget that swamps bring with them mosquitoes which bring with them malaria...

Magnesia

In short, Priene was the best location - it was possibly the best preserved with the most to see, and it's located on a very stunning forested mountainside. Miletus was depressing and a little creepy - just a handful of ruins on a windswept, sandy, deserty hill in a wide, featureless flat plain. Magnesia didn't even have much of a hill.

Ephesus

After Pammukale ıt was off to Sleçuk to visit Ephesus and the Artemis temple.

Gate of Augustus, Ephesus

The restored Facade of the Roman Library of Celsus.
Probably the most famous building in Ephesus.

Ephesus was in it's heyday one of the most important cities in the Mediterranean. In fact, in the first century BC it was, with 250,000 inhabitants, the second largest city in the world. Basically you can split Ephesus' history into ancient Greek, Roman, Byzantine and Turkish. During the Ancient Greek era it was part of what was known as the Ionian league, similar to the Lycian league. Again all the cities in the league were in what is now Turkey, but located along the Aegean coast, in an area then known as Anatolia. In the first century BC it came under Roman rule, and continued on more or less how it was, but obviously with a lot of Roman influence. Then with the split of the Roman empire, the Eastern half, the Byzantine empire, took it over. By the time the Turkish empire took over, it was just a little town, having been devastated by a series of natural disasters. Eventually in the 15th century it was completely abandoned.
Just outside the city was also the famous Temple of Artemis - another of the 7 wonders of the ancient world. This really suffered in its time, being subject to earthquakes, fire and wholesale vandalism. As you might guess, the site looks a lot like that of the Mausoleum of Halicarnassus. Worse still, the moment you walk into the site, a horde of peddlars come out of the ground and from the sky and try to sell you guidebooks and useless junk. Still, now I've been to 4 of the 7 sites. That's over half!

Temple of Hadrian

This is what's left of the Temple of Artemis.

Mausoleum photos and Pammukale.

Model of what the Mausoleum would have
looked like originally.

This is what it looks like now

Stone formations at Pammukale

Yesterday morning I spent the day having a look at the sights in Pammukale. These consist mainly of the weird stone formations and rock pools from the hot springs, and the Roman cite of Hieropolis. The site ıs really interesting - mineral rich water cascading down the sıde of the hill have created some very unique and interesting formations and rock pools. It looks almost like snow, and there is no way up to Hieropolis without getting your feet wet - the water pours down the path up the mountain like a little river.

Main street of Hieropolis

Hieropolis itself is at this stage, to me, just another ruin. It's mostly Roman, but I believe there was a Greek cıty there originally. I daresay it would have been an impressive city in the day - fountains were built everywhere due to the natural springs.

Xanthos and the Mausoleum of Halicarnassus

Tower tomb at Xanthos

Man, yesterday was huge. I started off by getting up relatively early so I could see Xanthos, another one of the major Lycian cities in the area. It wasn't exactly on my way, but it wasn't too far out either, so I gave it a squizz. Now, the whole Indiana Jones thing was fun for a while, especially where you feel like you're in the middle of nowhere, but Xanthos is a Unesco heritage site and I just expected a little bit more. The theatre and a few of the main buildings were easily accessible, but the Necropolıs requires you to scramble through thick undergrowth. And it's not even wıld-seeming undergrowth, it's more like a garden that needs serıous weeding. And everywhere there was a serious lack of sıgnage. At very least they could have provided a little xeroxed pamphlet explaining some of the important ruins.

Mosaic floor at Xanthos where anybody can step on
and destroy them.

So then after Xanthos I took a pretty major detour. I added about 300 kılometres to my journey for the day, and all so that I could see what is left of the Mausoleum of Halicarnassus. The name might sound familiar to you, and that's because it was one of the 7 wonders of the ancient world. The Mausoleum, unlike most of the ancient sites I've visited, lies right in the middle of Bodrum, a harbour town on the southwest coast of Turkey. Of course if all the sites were like this one, I wouldn't have had to visit any other city, but annoyingly the people of the ancient world had to build their interesting things all over the place. But more to the point, I had to drive through the centre of thıs annoying, chaotic city. This experience has made me decide to cancel my night in Izmir tomorrow in favour of staying an extra night ın Selçuk.
As I've alluded to, there is little left of the Mausoleum. The Pyramids of Giza are in fact the only wonders still standing. Now, the misleading thing about the Mausoleum is that its name might incline you to think that it was for some dude called Halicarnassus. In fact, that was the name of the city ın the 4th century BC, and ıt was buılt for the kıng Mausolus. So it's actually this tomb that the term Mausoleum comes from.
So I drove an extra 5 hours to spend 45 mınutes looking at a pile of rubble and get annoyed in Turkish traffic. But at least now I've been to the sites of 3 of the 7 wonders of the ancient world. Tomorrow I'm going to make that 4. (No, I'm not makıng a detour to the Hanging Gardens of Babylon. The 2000 kilometres would be too far out of my way even for me)
P.S. Halfway through uploadıng photos, this computer decided it didn't want to play anymore. I'll post the rest of the photos and what I did today tomorrow.

Photos galore!

First things first, I'll get the buisiness out of the way. (By the way, I'm using a Turkish keyboard, so don't be surprised ıf some weird symbols crop up, lıke an ı wıthout a dot, or an uppercase one WİTH a dotç or occasıonally a ç ınstead of a dotç Yes, the turks have got a thing about dots.)
So, pictures of Fethiye and Pinara: Sorry it took so long. I couldn't get at a computer!

The main temple at Fethiye plus some random
person.

Some more temples at Fethiye

I totally climbed up to all of these like a badass archaeologist.

Pinara - some ruins with the second acropolis in the
background, riddled with tombs

Some more rock tombs at Pınara

View of the Pinara site from its theatre. Most of what you can
see here is strewn with ruins.

Fethiye

First, again no photos. I'm using a lethargic XP laptop, and it's just not worth it. I'll post pretty pictures tomorrow.
Well, this is the first time I think something has gone wrong in my favour. After dilligently getting up at 7 this morning to catch my 9 o'clock ferry to Mamaris in Turkey, I arrived at the port at about quarter past 8 to discover the ferry had already left. Apparently due to heavy sea traffic they decided last night to push it forward, calling up all the people who had booked to let them know. I had booked about 3 or 4 months ago before I had any European phone number. So, after having a quick heart attack, I asked when the next ferry was going. Apparently it was leaving at five that afternoon. However, there was another ferry heading to Fethiye at 8:30. I had originally planned to transfer via bus from Mamaris to Fethiye anyway, so this was superb. And to top it off, I could simply transfer my old ticket straight across. So, I got an earlier ferry to even closer to my destination. Win.
In Fethiye one of the first things I did was to check out the Lycian tombs. I have to admit, I have to defer to Wikipedia for almost everything about them, because it seems ancient sites in Turkey are very impoverished in informational signs. Lycia was an area in Turkey (okay, the area obviously still exists, it's just called something else now) in the southwest. It has a complicated history, and I'm still not entirely sure I understand it's full relationship with the other cultures of the time, but it seems by about the third or second century BC its culture had been largely replaced by the Greek culture. It's from this period and the following Roman period that most of the ruins come. This was immediately apparent when I saw the rock-cut tombs in the cliff above Fethiye. Obviously the Lycian culture of the time wasn't an exact carbon copy of the Greek, because I've never seen these type of tombs in Greece. The architecture of them, however, was very Hellenic. And again, like in Rhodes, there were very few tourists. Also, in addition to the lack of signage, there was also a distinct lack of things like handrails and paths. There was only one wide, concrete set of steps leading up to the biggest and main rock tomb, but the others were accessed by beating my way through scrub and clambering up steep rocks. In short, just the way I like it. In fact, I felt like Indiana Jones (helped by the presence of my Indy purse)
Back at the entrace to the site I saw a poster of an imposing theatre at a place called Pinar. I had that morning picked up my hire car for Turkey, and being on speaking terms with Karen again I plugged her in (get your mind out of the gutter) and looked up the site. It was about 50 kilometres from Fethiye, so away I went.
Driving in Turkey, by the way, hasn't been as bad as I expected. So far. It does feel very foreign, and I sense that there are some unspoken road rules I'm unaware of, but overall it's not much more chaotic than Greece.
The last two or three kilometres, while easy on traffic, almost made me wish I had hired a 4x4. Still I got there will all my hubcaps still on, and I was glad I did. Pinar was supposed to be one of the biggest city in the Lycian league (Lycia was a sort of early Federation with 23 cities). The first thing you notice when you approach the ruined city is the imposing mountain dominating the skyline, honeycombed by scores of rock-cut graves. These, however, were simple rectangular holes unlike the Ionian style tombs in Fethiye. The complex more than sated my Indiana Jones appetite - it was huge, and there was only one other German couple there. To give you an idea of its size, it has two Acropoli - one of them right on top of the mountain with the tombs I just mentioned. And all of it thickly vegetated and strewn with rocks to scramble over. It was here that I wouldn't have minded a little bit more of a setup for tourists. Hunting for paths amongst scrub to find ancient ruins is something I like, but I wouldn't mind knowing what I'm looking at when I get there. The well preserved Theatre had a sign (as if it wasn't obvious what it was), so did the Agora and the Baths, but apart from that there would have been about a dozen sites of strewn rubble around the foundations of walls that I would have liked to know what they were.
Even so, I spent three or four hours scrambling amongst the ruins, imagining I was the first to see them in two thousand years and that at any moment I would have to run away from a giant boulder. I even saw a tortoise. Not quite a snake pit or a room full of giant bugs or even a bunch of skeletons on spikes, but it was something. But after all that I didn't even get to the second Agora on top of the mountain. There were a bunch of Ionian style rock tombs I saw on the other side of the site I wanted to visit as well, but by that stage I was tired, hot, thirsty and poked to bits by spiky bushes. As much as I regretted it I had to go back to Fethiye.

Rhodos (Rhodes if you will) and Pub Challenge 113

This morning I was feeling very grumpy.

Artist's impression of the Colossus
of Rhodos.

More or less where the Colossus of Rhodos
would have stood akimbo.

The plane last night was delayed by an hour, and all the time I had to wait in a tiny departure lounge servicing six gates that any respectable airport would use to service two. I then caught a tiny plane that actually had propellors (I thought they stopped making those in the fifties?). I then had to catch a taxi for five minutes to the hotel and pay the exhorbitant price of fifteen Euros for the privelege. The hotel was kinda shitty - the door to the bathroom opened about 70 degrees due to hitting the toilet, the shower curtain had at some point been removed and never replaced, planes were constantly flying overhead, and overall the room was just a little poxy. This morning I had to wait about half an hour for an overcrowded bus to Rhodos.
In Rhodos I discovered, apart from the pretty medival walls and streets, there is very little to do, and again the Buses decided to hate me, because the only archaeological sites in my Lonely Planet guide didn't have any more buses going to them today. And to top it all off, today is Monday and as such even the museum was closed. So I tramped unhappily up Mandraki harbour to the Venetian fortress. Even most of this was closed for repairs. I tried to get a good shot of the harbour with mixed success - it is apparently the original site of the Colossus of Rhodos. This statue, built entirely of Bronze, apparently stood over thirty metres tall and was apparently a depiction of Helios (though I have heard it being attributed to Apollo as well). It was considered one of the seven wonders of the ancient world, until it collapsed in an earthquake. Now there's nothing left. That didn't help my mood.

Walls of Rhodos

Soon, however, my mood made a change for the better. It started with patting a stray kitten that was probably way too friendly for its own good. After thoroughly washing my hands, I got something to eat and drink, then headed for the tourist information centre. There I picked up a map of Rhodos and discovered there was some ancient Greek ruins I could see after all: the old Acropolis, Stadium and Theatre of Rhodos.

Partially restored ruins of the Zeus temple at Rhodos

These were excavated and restored in the early twentieth century by neither Schliemann or Evans, so it actually looked in part how it may have looked over two thousand years ago. The theatre was mostly new white marble, but the stadium, it seemed, had been pieced together almost exclusively from the original pieces. The temples and sanctuaries on the acropolis weren't quite so well preserved, but no worse than most of the sites I have been to. It seems my not knowing about it beforehand is not entirely due to my own stupidity either, because there were very few tourists. And the best part was, it was completely free!
Then the final thing to make me feel good again, I found an English pub and sat down for a pint of Cider.

Top 3, Rhodos

Chania (Quickly)

Very exciting picture of the glass bottomed boat.

I haven't had a chance to update in the last couple of days, so I'll try to keep this one quick so I can keep on top of it.

The small part of Samaria Gorge I saw.

After Heraklion I headed west to the town of Chania. This place used to be the island's capital. I also discovered that I should have researched it a little better before I came. It's another nice town fortified by the Venetians - all round a lot like Heraklion, and I did a nice half hour tour on a glass-bottomed boat - but as it turns out nearby there is a spectacular gorge to visit, called Samaria Gorge. The problem was it takes an hour to get there by bus and at least three hours to walk, and the buses don't drive very regularly. I only had one night in Chania and I had to catch a plane from Heraklion to Rhodes the next day. So basically I did the "poor man's" Samaria gorge, similar to my Poor Man's Gap of Dunloe. I took the bus as quarter past six and returned with the nine thirty bus, giving me about an hour to stumble as far down the gorge as I could and slog like an idiot back up. It was still very nice, but I didn't even see the best part of the gorge - where the rocky sides go straight up for three hundred metres. Vertically. Well, next time I suppose.

PS: I wanted to put this in somewhere, but due to my abridged post I'll add it as a post script. At the bus station in Chania, waiting for the bus to take me to Samaria there was a deranged beggar woman (I've always wondered if they're deranged bcause they're beggars, or beggars because they're deranged), yelling at nothing. I almost expected her to start shouting "buggrit buggrit, I told 'em, millenium hand and shrimp".

Pub Challenge 107-112

Agora, Nafplio. I really wish I could say this wasn't my
first drink for the night.

Xenon, Nafplio

Highlander, Fira

Murphy's, Fira

Town Club, Fira

McDaniel's, Fira

Heraklion

So now I'm at about the most southerly point in my whole Europe trip, the island of Crete - the largest of the Greek islands. I travelled across yesterday with one of those super-fast ferries. The trip only took two hours, which was nice. Once in the island's capital, however, Karen started giving me problems again. I got her out and switched her to pedestrian mode to find my accomodation. I had booked at a place called Manos Studios in a Nimfon street. Karen however only recognized a Nymfon in Heraklion, but it wouldn't have been the first time she recognized a place by a slightly different spelling. And the good thing was it wasn't far from the harbour. The bad thing was it was not the right spot. Not the right spot at all. In fact, it was some seedy back street without any street lights. No sign of a Manos Studios anywhere. So I just went to the nearest hotel and asked. Turns out the place I was after is actually in a town called Amoudara, about six kilometres outside Heraklion. Isn't that nice? So, not wanting to faff about with buses and whatnot at that time of night, I simply called a taxi. The trip cost ten Euro, but at least it got me there.

This is how I wish all of Knossos looked

Today went a bit better. Naturally I wanted to visit the old Minoan capital, Knossos. This time however I did have to faff about with buses, catching one back into Heraklion, and then another out to Knossos. And they were bloody packed! But it was worth it. Knossos is something very special. It was the first major civilization in Europe, starting in the whopping early 27th century BC. However, it didn't really flourish until the 20th century BC, reaching its height in the 18th to 15th. Remember the Mycenaeans I talked about a couple of posts ago? The ones I had to take a whole paragraph to explain how old they were? Well, when the Minoans were building huge palaces, the Mycenaeans were just getting their boots on. Its fair to say that the Minoan culture has always fascinated me, and so visiting this site at Knossos was obviously a must.

Reconstruction of Knossos by Evans. At least he seems
to have gotten the columns right.

One thing that became very quickly apparent at the site was my dislike for Arthur Evans, the archaeologist that excavated the site. Schliemann, if you'll remember, did a lot of the important excavations of the Mycenaean culture. You'll also remember I wasn't too fond of his speculation about Agamemnon that he tried to fob off as fact. Compared to Evans, however, he was as critical and skeptical as Richard Dawkins. And at least he didn't make any major reconstructions based on his wild speculations on the very spot he was excavating. Much of the palace of Knossos is made up of sections of rooms reconstructed out of cement, often painted to look like wood, based on loose speculation of what they might have looked like and what function they may have served. That in itself I wouldn't have a major problem with, but it would have nice if they had been away from the excavation site. Repairing walls with the original stones they were once made of based on sound knowledge of how they would have looked is one thing, but this is something else entirely. The fact is that we know very little about Minoan culture, and what we do know is mostly from sources such as Homer, a poet, in a time when there was no such thing as historians.

Phaistos Disc

Anyway, I could go on about Evans and why I hate him so (even modern archaeologists clearly disagree with him on many points, evidenced by the fact that all the signboards indicating purposes and meanings of rooms and buildings go to extreme effort to point out that it was Evan's opinion, not necessarily anyone else's), but I should really talk about what we do know about this site.
The Minoans have left no deciperable script of their own, the earliest writing that can be read being some so-called Linear B, which is what the Mycenaeans used. Apart from that we only have the so-calles "Phaistos Disc", a clay disc with a bunch of little scribbles on it. Then there's just what Homer and a few other poets wrote, and the fragments of art and frescoes that the Minoans themselves left behind.
Basically from these we can make some reasonable assumptions about their religion - one motif that occurs very often, for example, is the bear-breasted woman holding snakes. And by that I mean her tits were out, not that they were hairy like a bear. That would be weird. This chick is often interpreted as a mother goddess. Evans, of course, came up with this idea and promoted it as if it were fact. Now it's pretty much considered gospel, but I'm not so convinced. Another popular theme is depictions of "bull leaping", where a young man does a somersault over a bull's back. Probably this was either a coming of age rite, or just a general sport, maybe with religious connections.
Okay, I'd better hurry this up, because I still have a bit to cover about my day today. The site at Knossos is also home to another great evidence of how advanced the civilization was for its time, namely plumbing, with two different types being used throughout the palace complex: above ground for clean water, and channeled below ground for sewage.

Venetian harbour of Heraklion

Okay, wrapping things up. After Knossos I returned to Heraklio to have a look at the city itself. It's relatively new for a Greek settlement, being founded in the 9th century AD. Later it was taken over by the Venetians, and it's from them that the most obvious and impressive aspects of the city are from, namely the walls and the harbour. So I had a little bit of a look at them, but there's not that much to write.

Snake Goddess

Bull leaping fresco

Santorini

Now, for our exciting conclusion!

My little quad

No, I didn't have a falling out with Jan. Unfortunately for him he could only get a week holiday. His plane left that afternoon, my ferry that morning, so I left him in Athens to fend for himself. So yesterday I arrived in Santorini, a small volcanic island in the southern Aegean belonging to the group of islands called the Cyclades. It's a very pretty island, and it's often the kind of island people think of when they think about the Greek islands. And as I said it isn't very big, and there's places everywhere where you can hire a scooter or quad, so hire a quad I did. Quite a funky little thing it is too, and it's much smaller and easier on petrol than a car, so perfect for getting around the island in.

Red beach. Apparently this is what passes for a good
beach on Santorini.

My first stop yesterday afternoon was the south of the island, toward a place called Akrotiri and some beaches that I was told were supposed to be excellent. Ancient Akrotiri was of particular interest for me, however, for the Minoan period (17th century BC, so before the Myceneaens) settlement that has been partly uncovered. I had heard it was unfortunately closed due to a roof collapse 5 years ago (that's how long it's taken them to fix the bloody thing), but I thought I might be able to get a bit of a glimpse of it from outside. Unfortunately this was not the case. However, I was this close to having a fantastic opportunity for a personal tour. At the gate, speaking to one of the staff in German, was a lady. When she had finished I talked to her and discovered she was an archaeologist. I mentioned my interest in archaeology, and had there been a local archaeologist on site she thinks we could have both gotten in. Instead she suggested a few other sites on the island to visit, including some nearby Hellenistic graves. These were supposed to be along a little dirt road off the main one to Vlyxada. I said goodbye and completed my disappointment of the area by first off finding the "red beach" which was pretty crummy and subsequently failing completely to find the graves she had been talking about. Not for lack of trying though, but after the seventh little dirt road leading off the road to Vlyxada I gave up. On the way back to my hostel I passed through a quaint little village called Megalochori, which is exactly how you imagine quaint little villages in the Greek isles.

Megalochori

Today's first stop was ancient Thira, on the East coast of the island. This nearly made up for missing out on Akrotiri, but it was only of Archaic origin (so 8th century BC), and nearly all the buildings were Roman. Still, it probably had about the most complete foundations of any ancient town I've visited, and the setting was spectacular. The ancient Greeks sure knew how to pick a location!
After Thira I headed for the Prehistoric museum in Fira. (The island's alternate name is Thira, it's prehistoric capital was called (akro)tiri, it's ancient capital Thira, it's current capital Fira, and there is also a town called Ia. I think the people on Santorini are in need of some imagination...) Here I finally was able to sate my appetite for the Minoan period, as this museum houses most of the relics discovered in Akrotiri. Anybody else, after spending an hour in this museum, would probably be glad never to see another ceramic pot for the rest of their lives. I, however, was very impressed by the amount of information and the state of preservation of the items and frescoes.

Akrotiri

Finally today I headed north toward Ia, making a detour on the way to Koloubos beach. I was very keen to go swimming on Santorini, because it's quite famous for its beaches. The Red Beach yesterday, as I mentioned, was disappointing so I didn't swim there. Koloubos beach was considerably better. It was nice and big without being the Sahara, the sand was black because of its volcanic origin, and it had a dramatic cliff surrounding it. The cove that this cliff created looked like the perfect place for a dip... until I saw the two lovers already swimming there, looking at me. Oh well, no swimming for me.
So finally I went to Ia. This place, even more than Megamantown, is exactly how you would imagine a little town nestled in the mountains of a Greek island.

Koloubos beach

And now I have to go return my little quad. Tomorrow I'm off to Crete!

Last day on the Greek mainland

Well, yesterday was certainly a full day. Excuse me if this post seems a bit rushed, but I've done a million things since then and it's all I can do now to remember what I did yesterday and in what order!
So, yesterday began with getting up relatively early and heading north, in a general meandering direction toward Athens so as to see as many ruins as possible on the way. And see heaps of ruins we did.

Zeus temple at Nemea

First on the list was Nemea. This place would have been absolutely fascinating a month ago, but I've seen so many classical ruins since then that I'm afraid it only registers as very interesting now. This was another complex with a Zeus temple and a stadium for games, as well as an unusual bath house and more lizards than you can poke a moderately sized stick at.

Myceneae.

Next was Myceneae - the bigger brother of Tiryns which you might remember from the last post, and where that period of Greek history derives it's name. In many respects it is indeed like a souped up version of Tyrins - bigger, better preserved, more important, more impressive location. It also has an obviously better pedigree, supposedly being the city that the famous Agamemnon ruled. Agamemnon, if you can remember back to studying the Iliad in high school, led the Myceneaen army to Troy. The site was famously excavated by a man named Schliemann in the 19th century. Ever over-zealous, he declared the nearby Tholos tomb, a death mask found during excavations, a comb, a toothbrush and briefly his own shoelaces as belonging to the famous bronze age king, because apparently in its over thousand year history Myceneae was only ever ruled by the one ruler.

Bottom of the Cistern at Myceneae. I really
wish at this point that I had space for a picture
of the Lion's gate or the entrance to this cistern
or the Tholos tomb,but I don't. If you ask nicely
I might just put them in a post of their own.

Anyway, the site is still hugely impressive, with the two highlights being the lion's gate and the cistern. The latter is basically a tunnel that leads down underground probably about twenty meters to a place where water was stored. The interesting thing about it is that it is not lit at all and there are no safety rails. Down the bottom it is pitch black and the uneven steps are slippery. But it was real and raw, and that's how I like it, even if I could have broken my skull. There's more I'd like to say about Myceneae, but I still have a lot to cover, so moving on...
Next stop was Corinth. This place was incredibly important in ancient Greece, but unfortunately now it's only a sleepy little town with a spectacular acropolis and a few ruins, mostly roman.
Acrocorinth was the first part we visited. It's situated on a nasty rock with great understatement called a hill. Mountain was more like it by the feel of climbing it. Very little of the original ancient Greek buildings remain apart from a few rocks at the very top that represent the temple to Aphrodite. Apart from that the "hill" is criss-crossed by byzantian walls and towers. Buggered if I know why they needed them at all - a soldier slogging up this bastard in full armour would only need a light breeze to blow over.

Acrocorinth

The ruins of Corinth itself are mostly roman now, as the city was taken over by them. While I have nothing against the romans per se, it's still slightly disappointing when you're in Greece and expecting Greek ruins. Still standing, however, was an archaic (so before the classical era) temple to, if I remember correctly, Apollo.

Ancient Corinth

After that we pretty much headed straight to Athens to return the car. This is where Karen decided to have her last little joke at our expense. Giving her the exact GPS location of the place where we were to return the car we were led right past the service road next to the highway where it was. This is where we discovered something interesting about Greece - God help you if you want to go back on the highway. We ended up paying at the toll station a further three times before we were able to get back.
So now I was going to write another post about what I did today, but honestly I can't be bothered now. Long story short: I left Jan in Athens to find his own way back to Germany and I'm staying on an island that's also a volcano and I'm getting around on a quad bike. Want to know the full story? Stay tuned! I'll post it all tomorrow.

The Argolis

I mentioned that I've been travelling around the Greek mainland with my friend Jan, but in fact we have a third member in the party. Her name is Karen. That's the name given to the female Australian voice on my GPS, and she's pracically a member of the family now. The annoying second cousin that you need to have around but keeps getting you in trouble. You know the one - she can't pronounce Greek place names to save her life, but you don't dare correct her because of the conviction with which she says them. Karen has certainly led us down some ... exciting roads... er ... tracks to save a meter or two.

Asclepius complex

Theater of Epidaurus. I spat on the bouncer from up here.

Today Karen, Jan and I visited a number of important archaeological sites in the area surrounding Nafplio, the Argolid. First on the agenda was Epidaurus, a very important site in Classical and Helenistic Greece. Again on the ground it looked largely like a post-war zone, but with the help of the various signs and maps about the place we were able to get a fairly good impression of what it would have looked like. This area notably was the site of a very important temple to Asclepius, the god of medicine. As such many of the buildings were also once upon a time hospitals and other medical related constructions. But part of the complex is also the theater of Epidaurus, the best preserved theatre of the era, also one of the biggest of the time. This, as you may guess due to my thespian education, was of particular interest to me. And I wasn't disappointed. Well, okay I was, but not because of the theater itself. Being a Greek theater it naturally has great acoustics. As you can see from the picture, it isn't tiny, but standing on the very last row you can hear a person speaking not particularly loudly in the centre of the stage. So of course Jan and I thought it would be a great idea to try out the acoustics. Several people before us had stood on the stone disc in the centre and talked, shouted, sung etc., so we thought why not get a couple of tin whistles out of the car and play a little duet? Well, it turns out this place has its own bouncer - a twenty-something buff bloke in a tight white t-shirt, stone-washed jeans, aviator glasses and spiked, gelled hair. After the first couple of notes his shrill coaches whistle put a stop to our musical endeavours (why he's allowed to whistle around and we're not I'm still not sure). He yelled at us "that's not allowed!" and after we asked him why he replied just like a typical bouncer, narrowing his eyes and answering "because it's against the rules".
Oh well, bugger him. I wonder what he would have said to Jan's tipping out a bit of wine in front of Asclepius' temple for the good health of his girlfriend...

View from the "museum" Karen led us to...

Returning to Nafplio we decided to check out the archaeological museum which is supposed to house a lot of Mycenaean items from around the area. This is where Karen decided to be a bit contrary again. Firstly, she offered us two different museums with exactly the same name and both in Nafplio. We randomly chose one and followed her directions. These led us up the nearby hill to a long abandoned fortress. Thinking it might just be up the road past the fortress, we parked the car and walked for a good fifteen minutes in the glaring sun with nary a sign of a museum. We then locked Karen in the glove compartment and returned to our hotel for a sleep.
In Olympia and Delphi we had discovered that the best time to see ruins is in the mid to late afternoon. They're usually open quite late here, but at that time there's much less tourists, it's not as hot and the light is absolutely spectacular. So after we awoke from our slumber Jan and I (with Karen still in her naughty corner) drove to nearby Tiryns, a Mycenaean fortress. Now, the Mycenaean culture is absolutely ancient. Here's a bit of a reference point: when a normal person thinks of "long ago", some pictures of medieval castles usually come to mind. 900 years old would be pretty typical. For these so called people of "long ago" the Romans would have seemed like people of "long ago", also about 900 years before that. The classical Greeks, then, were for the romans ancient history, lying about 700 years before them (around 500 BC). Now, Homer (not from the Simpsons - the classical poet who wrote the Iliad and the Odyssey) is often used to indicate the beginning of ancient Greek culture, around 850 BC, so even for the classical Greeks pretty ancient. Homer's works drew on ancient myths of the Minoans and Mycenaeans, around 900 years before him again.

Tiryns

Yeah, this shit is ancient. And considering how old it is, the complex is reasonably well preserved. And when you look at the size of some of the blocks that this fortress was built of it's hardly surprising - it would take little short of an earthquake to move them. What is surprising is the fact that they were able to put them together at all all that time ago. Tyrins itself was an important centre in the culture of the time, though not as important as Mycenae itself, but I'll be visiting that tomorrow.

Inside the Mycenaean tomb

After Tyrins we visited a couple of other nearby archaeologically interesting locations, just to show Karen that we can lead ourselves down poxy goat tracks without her help. The first was a Mycenaean tomb, which was very interesting if quite small. The second was supposedly a dam, but to be perfectly honest neither Jan nor I could really see anything that looked like it...