Sphacteria

Wednesday, July 15, 2009

The island of Sphacteria just a few km from Pylos played a big role in the Peloponnesian War, see here. Spartan troops got trapped on it and were blockaded by the Athenian ships. They circled the island hoping to starve them out. The spartans ended up suing for an end to the war which Athens refused. The spartans on the island ended up surrendering (something they'd NEVER done before).

At the closest point to the island, I decide to walk/swim to it rather than hire a boat. A much more satisfying way to get there! Here's me on the island barefoot. If you look close you can see goats to my right.


During the war slaves were bribed with promises of freedom if they could smuggle food onto the island by swimming. not many survived the water and the Athenians!


We also visited "Nestor's Cave" on the mainland via some very beautiful scenery. That's the Ionian sea behind me where it meets the Mediterranian.


Here's a view from the cave

Sparta!

Sunday, July 12, 2009

Couldn't resist doing the kick from "300"...

At last Sparta! We drove a few hours deeper into the Peloponnese today and made it to one of my top goals of the trip. It's well known there is not a lot left over from classical Greece. but actually that's wrong, there's a lot of ruins, just not a lot of buildings and structures - there's plenty of pieces!

Here is the famous modern statue of Leonidas




















Here's a statue of a hoplite warrior - some think it to be of Leonidas. There is a little 4 room museum in the town.












Just past the statue up top are the ruins. Here is what the ancient ruins look like today. The place was pretty empty and we pretty much had all of ancient Sparta to ourselves for a while this afternoon.





















Something I really wanted to visit was the Eurotas river that I've read about in historical books. It was quite difficult to find, we walked up and down it looking for a path to it. We eventually got an escort from an elderly farmer to the river by his farm.


Here it is. Something pretty amazing about the river is...








... there are actual Spartan ruins sticking out of the river bank and in the river itself! Walking along the river we actually found 2 pieces of marble columns, here's one of them. Maybe I have a future in archeology?


We'll only spending one day here, but it was pretty memorable.




Tomas

Day 7 - Ancient Mycenae and Epidaurus

Saturday, July 11, 2009

Two big archeological sites today! First, we drove to Ancient Mycenae, an ancient citadel that is 3500 years old! It was the stronghold of Agamemnon from the Iliad.










Down the road a little is the "Treasury of Atreus" a.k.a. the tomb of Agamemnon even though it wasn't actually him that was buried there.






Then if was off to Epidaurus, a site with the best remaining ancient theatre described as "acoustically perfect" (my guidebook says is was built according to Fibonacci's sequence).









This is a two-story building where ancient Greeks came to be cured by the Gods (after they took in the latest off-off-Broadway show at the theatre??).






And tomorrow, we're off to Sparta to see King Leonidas!

Claire

Ancient Corinth and Nemea

Friday, July 10, 2009

Corinth! (ally of Sparta) was one of my "must see's" when we first started thinking about what to do and see in in Greece.

It's connected to my favourite time frame of 500-400BC in several big ways.

1. Its where all the city states of Greece met to develop a strategy on resisting the impending Persian invasion of Greece in 480BC. It resulted in the defense at the Thermopylae pass and the battle of Plataea.

2. Its was an early instigator of the Peloponnesian War by attacking an ally of Athens. Corinth got Sparta involved in the whole mess originally, too.

3. Fought the Athenians in Syracuse which is a pretty amazing battle and really did the Athenians in.

A few pics:





The acropolis area

Temple of Apollo, beautiful

Olympic Run in Ancient Nemea

Our Handy Transportation

Thursday, July 9, 2009

What a beauty - Renault something-or-other


This baby is loaded:

• auto locks
  
• 5-speed manual
• fm radio / CASSETTE stereo
• AC
  
• left / right indicators

Driving in Greece is as bad as they say, everyone goes at least 20km faster than the speed limit and people assume you will avoid them if they get in your way.

Day 2 Acroplis - Photos!

Well, we finally got some internet. It wasn't working at this hotel in Tolo for the first 2 nights, but I helped them out with it - and it's working now.




Here's us during our first night in Athens. We are in a touristy area (Plaka) which is pretty hectic and full of people, but it's safe to walk around in and close to the good stuff. Most of the restaurants seem to be carbon copies of each other, and they don't serve the type of Greek food I was hoping for (greek potatoes and stuffed grape leaves). But the Greek Salad is very good. You don't need a fancy sauce, just oil and vinegar does it.

Pan's Cave, anything in there? It goes deeper than it looks!


This is me sitting in the Cave of Zeus, I guess I showed the proper respect as lightning didn't strike.



Here is the one and only Parthenon (going through some repairs right now). All the temples on the acropolis were starting around 450BC. There was lots of room for construction as pretty much the entire city of Athens and its acropolis were destroyed by the Persians in 480BC. It's been partially destroyed several times since then and the big statue of Athena (the Parthenon is her temple) has disappeared. The bloody Venetions bombarded it with canon fire in the 1600's while fighting Turks holed up there.

It wasn't as busy as I'd feared it would be, and since we took the long way around climbing up to the acropolis, we only really met 1 person for the first half hour or so on our way up.


Ancient theatre of Dionysus. Originally built around 450bc, added to for several centuries.

More later...

T