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...