Peloponnesus Day #3: This is Sparta!

Only two major stops today, though both very important. We got to wake up a little later than originally planned because breakfast at the hotel was completely backlogged Wednesday morning and the professors wanted to avoid that as much as possible today. So, of course, the hotel gave us a wake-up call an hour earlier than they needed too (because that's how these things work). Most people ended up oversleeping anyway.

First stop was Mystra - an ancient byzantine citadel atop a very tall mountain about 6 miles South of Sparta. The site was gorgeous, though quite a hike for so early in the morning. This will be comprised mainly of pictures, as our Guide didn't have much to say about the site.

Atop the fortress pinnacle, looking down, down, down.

Another angle, doing much the same.

Wide shot, to give an impression of how expansive even this topmost part of the citadel is. The whole site took over 2 and 1/2 hours to skim. We barely scratched he surface of available ruins and reconstructed churches in that time.

Arch and pathway going down from the top.

Reconstructed bell tower.

Surviving fresco from the middle ages (exact date unknown) inside one church ruin.

More fresco in the same church. It's amazing how much remains!

Pathway going back up toward the top.

Reconstructed bell tower.

Same tower from beneath. This is actually part of a fully-functioning convent located within the ancient site. The nuns were quite sweet, as were the cats who live with them.

Near the bottom of the site, looking back toward the top. Did we really hike that? I don't recall.... We must have at some point, but it didn't feel like we went that far up.

Around 2:00 we finally left Mystra and headed for lunch in Sparta where we would be spending the rest of the afternoon. Everyone was starving by this point and really excited to take a walking tour of Ancient and Modern Sparta. We've all seen 300 of course, and after spending so long in Athens, we wanted to get a taste of the top rival to our home city-state, and find the biggest cliff face we could so we could take turns standing at the top and yelling "This is Sparta!"

Sparta, in fact, is...

...not what we were expecting.

It's a lovely little city, but there isn't much to it. It's built partly on top of the ancient city, like most modern towns around here, but the ancient city was unoccupied for over 1000 years before the modern city was founded, so the two really have nothing in common. Also, Mystra stole most of the Ancient Spartan ruins for it's expansive construction, so there isn't much of Ancient Sparta left to uncover or explore. Still, it was fun.

A statue of Leonidas in front of the modern stadium. They have some sense of city pride, anyway. The funniest thing about modern Sparta to me is that there is no tourist market whatsoever. I feel that if they just opened a few tourist shops and got the KTEL train to come here from Athens, Sparta could be a thriving tourist center, but they don't even try. It's probably smart not to invite that sort of activity into such a small, close knit town, but I would think that Greece as a whole would take about any source of outside income they could get these days...

"This is Sparta?" Well, an ancient Spartan theater, anyway, probably dating from the Roman era.

JK and I did a lot of exploring on our own in the Ancient Sparta site and did come across these wall paintings, pretty well preserved, in a corner. The British excavation team hasn't finished the site for decades, due mainly to lack of funding, so the site is pretty barren, but that also means that pottery shards are still just laying on the ground (no, we didn't pick any up - that's illegal, even if we were very tempted) and there are no guards, so we could sing and dance on the ancient, grass-covered stage as much as we wanted. And we stayed there and did just that until after sunset. :-)

One last comprehensive look at the ancient site. This theater is pretty much all they've uncovered, although they are pretty sure that they at least know where the agora is and will get around to it one day.

So, all in all, a good picture day, but not much in the way of new information or varied sites. We are spending this one night in Sparta, just to soak it in (and recover some much-needed sleep!) Tomorrow, bright and early, we head for Olympia to spend the day there!

Καληνύχτα!

Peloponnesus Day #2: Maximum Rockness!

Still having trouble with the pictures, but it's ok.

Day 2 of "CYA Explores the Peloponnese" included a very early morning, trips to Epidaurus and Franchthi Cave, and a picnic lunch by the sea. Let's start at the beginning, shall we?

Epidaurus was - if I'm going to be honest - a little disappointing. The site has a lot of potential (they're still working on reconstruction) and the history of the cult there is really cool, but Lecturer/Tour Guide was having difficulty holding my attention (and from the sound of his lecture, his own as well!) with side comments about the gods worshiped here and the construction of the area. The problems with this site are 1) Nobody quite knows what these things are, since none of the stories really tell us anything that doesn't involve supernatural occurrences. 2) The site looks like a pile of rocks, even more so than most other sites I've visited. It's not just that it looks that way in pictures, it looks that way in person, too and that makes things difficult to picture. Anything that looked remotely interesting to explore was roped off for reconstruction and continuing excavation. So, lots of potential, but it's just not there yet. Which is weird, because the site has been open to the public for decades.... ah well. Pictures!

One of the reconstructed areas, which represents an old entrance-way to somewhere (either a gym or a dining hall, they think). You can see the rock piles surrounding it.

One area I found on my own in an area they thought equivalent to some old-style locker rooms (perhaps, if Building #1 was in fact a gym. Otherwise no idea. It looked like the ruins of a bank more than anything else to me. :-P)

More rocks and a mysterious (purpose unknown) semicircle of large benches with a table of sorts in front. A waiting area with checkers, perhaps? Who knows. Also, some reconstruction of a tholos (read: round building) in the background. The existence of that building puzzle archeologists as well.

Part of the remains of the Sanctuary of Aesclepius, the Healing God (we know what something is!)

Some of the detail of the reconstruction(?) of that sanctuary above. This is a wall of sorts between the larger columns.

The East side of the sanctuary reconstruction, with scale CYA class.

Here is the real treat at Epidaurus - the theater. This was mostly not reconstructed and mostly found above ground as is. Performances are still held here (unfortunately only in the summer and not by tourists) and the acoustics are phenomenal. From where this picture was taken, you can hear a coin dropped in the middle of the stage perfectly, even with people around you talking. It's absolutely incredible. JK and I tried to dance on the stage (it's a theater, and a functioning one, so why not?) but they blew the whistle at us. I guess they didn't want people getting excited. Pooh. (JF says she got pics, though.)

The other best part of Epidaurus. On the way in there were puppies, and on the way out there were kittens! Here, in order from left to right, ES, AS and JF giving the cats some love.

After Epidaurus we stopped at a small bakery (far to small for the 40-or-so of us, anyway) and grabbed sandwiches for a picnic lunch by the sea side. The profs weren't paying much attention, so rather than eating on the grassy knoll, we decided to all eat on the rocks.

JF on a rock by the sea.

JK and AS on rocks across the way.

The little church we ate by. We didn't get to to go in (I'm not sure it's open to the public) and no one seemed to be there or care that we were using their front yard as a picnic area.

The Line following a Professor to our next stop, Franchthi Cave. We are quite good at lines, on the whole.

The "path" we took to get there, looking behind us. Good thing the Professor knew where he was going!

Franchthi Cave. This collapsed cave is one of the earliest inhabited areas we have evidence for in all of the Aegean. It's open to the public as in there are no guards and the area is marked off by signposts as an archeological site, but it's difficult enough and dangerous enough to get to that it doesn't get a lot of foot traffic. Apparently the danger level is high enough that CYA doesn't really approve of groups going there, but the professor who took us excavated the area in the seventies and he takes a group every year anyway.

Looking down one of the excavated trenches in the cave, with scale class.

Looking down into the collapsed area of the cave from above. We climbed up some 30 ft on that brightly lit rock two pictures above. It was very fun. :-D

The view back towards the front of the cave from atop the rock.

ES getting back down, which wasn't particularly easy.

We left the cave slowly and walked back along the beach for about an hour before getting back on the bus. We're in Nafplio again, but everyone's too tired to do much tonight. We'll get dinner, gelato and probably call it a night after that. Tomorrow, Mystra and Sparta!

Καλησπέρα!

Peloponnesus Day #1

I had a lot of trouble uploading the pictures on this hotel wi-fi, so they're a little lower resolution than usual. Still, free wi-fi, so no complaints!

Welcome to the first day of the CYA Peloponnese Vacation! Today, after an exciting take-off at 8am from the CYA Academic Center, and an exhilarating bathroom break in Corinth at about 9:30, we landed in Mycenae at about 11am. Mycenae is (as the name might suggest) the first and largest Archeological site from the Mycenaean Age. The site is big and the scenery around it is relatively impressive, but the lecturer/tour guide we have is completely inaudible in the outdoors, and anything I have heard form him has been either uninformative or uninteresting, which is a bit of bummer after Crete. But the site is still cool, and the weather held up, so again - no complaints!

The Lion Gate, with Scale Tourist. We would have a hard time carving, moving and lifting that huge block with modern technology!

The Site of Mycenae from above. This is one of those few sites (thanks in part to the grass) that looks slightly more organized than your average pile of rocks, even on film.

Some of that fabulous scenery. The Peloponnese is known for its amazing mountainous landscape and sudden cliffs over the water. It's really stunning. Those mountains are SO TALL!

An underground cistern in Mycenae that is open to tourists (oh yeah, we went inside!) Here is a prime example of the difference between American safety regulations and Hellenic safety regulations. There are none here.

The supposed grave of Clytaemnestra: the spouse-icidal wife of Agamemnon, who lead the Greeks in the Trojan War. That's one heck of a tomb for a condemned murderess. Scale Lecturer for reference included.

Clytaemnestra's grave from inside.

More amazing landscape (there will be a lot of these this week, I feel...)

A full view of the Mycenaean Citadel.

This style of architecture is known as "Cyclopean". It was so named by the Ancient Greeks, because it seemed to them that no one smaller than a cyclops could move the blocks. This seems as good an explanation for how the Mycenaeans moved those blocks as anything else. Look at the size of that thing!

Entrance to the supposed tomb of Agamemnon - buried not so far from his killer. Family graves were common, but this might be taking it a bit far for me. Although, if you notice, this grave entrance is even larger than the last. And you didn't think that was possible. :-P

After we headed out from Mycenae, we drove the 45 minutes south into the modern town of Nafplio. It's a thriving, artsy city with some of the best gelato in the world. It's also almost completely deserted this time of year, which makes it a little spooky, but cute. We had a little time to spare between checking into the hotel and our walking tour, so I went up to their Venetian Fortress Acropolis. Of course.

View of the Fortress from below.

View of the town from above.

An attempt at a Panoramic shot of a highly decorated Venetian Fortress wall and doorway. The whole place was like this. There are over 850 steps going up to it, and it took me over 45 minutes to explore maybe a third of the area on top of the mountain. It's like Fort Morgan or Fort Gaines (in Daphne/Dauphin Island, Alabama) for giants. And there remain no safety regulations so you can suddenly find yourself on a cliff face or in a dungeon without warning. Best 45 minutes so far!

Then the walking tour began, and there were many cute streets like this one.

And this one.

And looking out over the streets.

Flower pots on the side of a street. This whole town is adorable!

Looking out over Nafplio at sunset.

Epic Sunset. Thank you, Zeus and Helios.

After the walking tour, JK, JF, JS, AS and I (lots of new initials!) went and got more Gelato than we could eat, and went shopping until we collapsed. New dress, new hair-toys, and a touristy replica ancient terra cotta plate. I am very happy with this trip so far. Tomorrow: Epidaurus, Frankthi Cave, and another night in Nafplio. 

Καληνύχτα!