Thursday, July 1--Still Athens

We spent the morning getting my passport replaced. Took a taxi to the embassy--it was like a fortress to get in. Fortunately we went early and so there wasn't a crowd. The passport pictures we had paid for the night before turned out to be too small, so we paid for a second set right there. Hal said I looked like a terrorist in the pics taken the night before anyway. It took most of the morning and then we worked our way through a couple of museums, had lunch, and eventually came back to the hotel to get ready for dinner and the folk dance theatre.
Fortunately, the raincheck tickets we had for the Dora Strattou theatre were not in my stolen purse and so we walked up the Philopappou hill and watched the dances. Hal managed to capture some short videos on his camera, one of which is included here.  The woman you can see standing to the left in one of the videos was one of two singers who performed that night. She was apparently quite elderly and blind as she was led out onto the stage by one of the musicians and stayed seated in a chair except when she stood to sing.

The costumes were beautiful.

Weds, June 30--Athens, again

This was an eventful. day. We got up bright and early to see our colleagues off to the airport at 7:30. Ron and Sharon--our California couple--had left in the wee hours of the morning. Hal and I went to get tickets for a concert that night and planned to join Wendy at Herodes theatre at the foot of the Acropolis for the performance. Then we came back to pack up our things and move to a less expensive hotel, the Parthenon, which was just off the Plaka. The pictures make it look quite a bit more luxurious than it was, but the room was pleasant (another airshaft view) and the desk staff were really helpful. We would definitely recommend a stay there. We basically puttered around and did some shopping, had lunch at a nice outdoor cafe, where a little of young cats kept us entertained.

When we headed out for the evening we stopped at a sandwich shop on our way to the symphony concern and that was when my purse was stolen. The rest of the evening was taken up with calling credit card companies, going online to try and stop activity on my debit card, and filing a police report. It took forever to find this hole in the wall of a police station--no signs, nothing to indicate that it was tucked away in a dingy office on the 4th floor of a dark office building. And there we filled out a piece of paper with our names and they stamped it and made a copy for their files. And that, I'm sure was the last bit of activity the police ever took on our behalf. The hotel staff, on the other hand, couldn't have been kinder. They found phone numbers, let us use the reception desk phone, the computer (with no charge) and then bought us a drink in the bar. They even checked the embassy schedule so we knew when we could go the next morning to try and get a passport replacement. Needless to say, I was just distraught. We had gone to the cash machine that morning so they got a lot of money and apparently tried to use my credit card for a cash withdrawal within the hour. In addition to my money, credit cards, driver's license, and passport, I lost my new travel purse, our symphony tickets, my makeup kit and my prescription sunglasses. Ugh. Normally, all our valuables would be carried in a money belt, but since we were going out, I had on a dress and transferred everything to my purse. The man--I know exactly who it was and when it happened--just slid my purse off the back of my chair when he leaned over my shoulder to put out a cigarette in the ashtray on our table. I hope he rots in a hot place.

Tuesday, June 29--Meteora Monasteries and return to Athens

The sandstone pillars on which stand the monasteries are located on the northwestern edge of the plain of Thessaly and are a UNESCO World Heritage site. There is a list of the monasteries functioning today and more pictures of them here. Built in the 1500's for the most part, only one of them is inhabited by nuns, St. Stephen.  This is the approach to St. Stephen, our first stop.

And this is a little garden tucked below the causeway entrance to the monastery.


There was also a small vineyard maintained here.

As with all the monasteries we visited, there was such a sense of peacefulness to these places--in spite of the tourists tramping all over.

Next we went to the monstery of St. Varlaam, the first one built and the 2nd largest.

Today, all of the monasteries are now accessible by steps cut into the rocks...

But originally, many of them were only accessible via ladders or rope baskets. Here, our tour leader Joy shows off one such rope basket.

And this is the cliff up which the basket, with people or cargo inside, was hauled.

After Meteora, we headed back to Athens for a final meal together as a group before everyone, except us and one other group member (Wendy), would leave the following morning.

Monday, June 28--Delphi & Kalambaka

Delphi was also a marvelous archaeological site. There was actually a smaller site, down the mountain from the main one, that included a gymnasium for training and several temples. This picture was taken there.

This is our intrepid tour leader, Ihla, standing next to the "naval" stone on the main archaeological site, which I got to rub before being whistled at by a site monitor. That act is supposed to guarantee me long and healthy life, I think.

This is looking down on the temple of Apollo, which is where the oracle sniffed her herbs and gases and muttered mysterious words, that were then translated for the common folk by temple officials.

There was also a fairly sizable theatre on site.

This is Hal with Anne (from our group) and Marilyn (a woman we met on the bus from Seattle) when we had finally made it to the stadium at the top of the hill--whew! This stadium, unlike Olympia, actually had rows of seating along the sides.

It was hard going up the hill and hard coming down because the stones were so worn and slippery. Guess that's what happen over thousands of years with untold generations treading the steps. 
There was an amazing aquedict that apparently carries water from the surrounding mountains all the way back to Athens. The valley below Delphi, with a small fire going on the hill, and the sea of Corinth is in the background.

There are more pictures of the town, the museum and the archaeological site of Delphi here.

Next we headed to Meteora and on the way stopped briefly at the site of the Battle of Thermopylae (480 BC). Here, an alliance of Greek city states (Spartans, Thebans and Thespains) held off an infinitely larger invading army for several days (approximately a few hundred Greeks and over a million Persians) until they were betrayed by a local resident who showed the Perians another path through the mountains. The heroic efforts of the Greeks are honored at this site.

The setting of the town of Kalambaka and the remaining seven monasteries at Meteora is just stunning, with pinnacles of rock rising up from fertile farmland. The bus made a short stop in town Monday evening and then went on to our hotel--which was pink--to settle in and wait for dinner.

As was the case on most of the bus tour, we were pretty much the only guests in the hotel.

Sunday, June 27--Olympia and beyond

Early Sunday morning we made a brief tour into the town of Olympia before heading to the archaeological site.


The site of the games was impressive, with ruins from gymnasia and other training facilities, temples and places for people to stay, in addition to the stadium.

Athletes could not practice in the stadium itself since that was sacred, so the gymnasium was laid out with a practice track of equivalent length.
Here's a picture of our tour guide, Joy, showing members of our group a photo recreation of the site. Trained as an archaeologist and then an additonal 3 years to become a licensed tour guide, she was full of information about history and mythology as well as architecture. Anytime you see bricks (like the background here) that is an indication of Roman era work.

Originally, Greek columns were made of one large piece of stone or marble, but in later years they were built in sections and fitted together with dowel-like pieces in the center. You can see the fallen columns in sections very clearly here.
The arch marks the entrance to the stadium. Joy told us that athletes who cheated were forever shamed by having statues place along the walkway...not sure if that's true.

The start and finish line for the races, were lines of stone. You can see there were no seats, just hillsides where people sat to watch the games.to get a wonderful fictionalized but historically grounded story of how the games were carried out, read Mary Renault's The Last of the Wine.

We then went to the museum where they have preserved substantial portions of the friezes from the buildings on the site.

The statuary conveys not only their reverence for the human form, but also the high level of artisanship.

After having lunch, we headed north, back across the canal to the mainland. Next stop, the museum at Delphi (pronounced DEL-fee) since it wouldn't be open Monday morning. The drive up to the mountain town of Delphi was gorgeous; the valley below supposedly is home to over 1 million olive trees.

Delphi was considered the "naval of the earth" (aka Omphalos) supposedly because Zeus sent his two eagles to fly from opposite ends of the earth and this is where they met.
Delphi was also the seat of the most revered oracle in ancient Greece and home to Panhellenic games called the Pythian games. Apollo supposedly defeated the god Python, who originally guarded the site, because Python had tormented Apollo's mother while she was giving birth to him and his sister (on Delos). It's very complicated, no? These statues of the "Twins of Argos" in the museum fascinated me because they reveal very strong Egyptian influence on the art of the time. Greece was such a cross-roads for trade and culture and was constantly fought over and conquered by multiple groups from around the Mediterranean and Europe.

Another Egyptian derived creature fueled the myth of  the Sphinx who posed questions to travellers and ate them if they didn't get the right answer. The Sphinx of Naxos is also housed in the museum
The last memorable sculpture at the museum is The Charioteer, a life-sized bronze statue whose eyes seem to follow you.
This was our favorite hotel on the trip because it had a stunning view from the lobby and was close enough to town to allow an evening ramble and some shopping.( Yes, that's me reading on the balcony--what a surprise!)

We tasted homemade olives, bought ceramics, and a birthday present to myself, a small gold "meander" pendant. We saw a herd of goats being shepherded only by a hard-working dog.

Saturday, June 26--The Peloponnese

The Peloponnese is the name given to the lower portion of the country; it's still called an isthmus, but is separated entirely by a canal which was completed in 1893, although efforts to that end date back to 700 BC. Nero had plans drawn up and construction started in 67 AD and some say those were the plans that were actually used. Other accounts suggest that the plans for the Panama-Suez canal provided the model. It is less than 4 miles long, and before the canal was built, ships were sometimes pulled over land on a rock road built for that purpose, or cargo was off-loaded from one side and put on wheeled carts to be carried to ships on the other side. Today it is spanned by two major bridges, both of which we crossed.



We drove along the east coast of Corinth and  then into Argos perfecture where our first stop was Epidaurus.Scenery is gorgeous with views of the sea and groves of olives, though usually not the orderly kind of orchards we're used to seeing, rather just scattered about the hillsides. The most famous and best preserved all the ancient theatres in Greece is here. Built in 3rd C. BC, it can seat 12, 000 and is still used for performances, having nearly perfect acoustics.

Some ruins of the temple built to honor Asklepios, the god of healing, are also here in Epidaurus, and we visited a small museum at the site.

Then we headed west across the middle of the Peloponnese and stopped at Nafplio--obviously not a Greek name--which is capital of the prefecture and home to three old fortresses: the Venetian fortress of Palamidi (late 17th C.)crowning a hill in the middle of town, and reached by a flight of nearly 1,000 steps, which we did not climb--
the Acronofplia (14th C--
and the Bourtzi (15th C) which is an island in the bay-- There are some great pictures of the town here; we didn't actually get to tour Naplio since we just had a 10 minute rest stop.
On to Mycenae for lunch and to visit the ruins at the acropolis, which is entered through the Lion Gate--there used to be carved stone lion heads facing toward anyone who approached. This is the ancient home of a tribe that ruled much of Greece for several hundred years, up 1100 BC. Like all good fortifications, the acropolis offered a commanding view to the surrounding area, even to the sea in the east.
We then drove to the Treasury of Atreus, a beehive shaped tomb, aka as tholos tombs, which was the most common form of burial architecture from about 1600-1100 BC.

As you can see, we covered a lot of ground in one day. We finally arrived on the west side of the Peloponnese in Olympia.We weren't really near the town at our hotel, so most of us just had dinner and rested up, while a few of the group headed to the bar to watch the World Cup matches. The chain of  hotels where we stayed (Amalia, pronounced Ahm-ah-LEE-ah after the former queen), were on a grand scale, a couple decades past their glory days, and almost empty except for our group of 18.