Greece: Wednesday, January 20th

January 20th 2010
It’s coming down to the last few days of the trip and everyone is just about ready to go home. It’s been a good amount of time to be away from home, but people are starting to get a little antsy and no one has any patience to deal with the issues anymore. It’s all very exciting when you stay out of it and observe from afar. But the personal issues will be over soon thankfully. However there are still a few days left and everyone has to put up with each other for a bit longer. But who wants to hear about those issues when there are so many exciting things to see! Our last big excursion of the trip to Mycenae and Epidavros (Epidaurus) went smoothly and we had an incredible day for sightseeing. The weather was fantastic even though the forecast for the week had predicted rain so we were very lucky to have sunshine to see the spectacular theater at Epidavros and the ruins at Mycenae.
The theater in Epidavros is a must see for anyone traveling to Greece as long as you have an extra day or two to travel out of Athens to see the sites. The bus trip took us about 3 hours, but on the way to the two sites you have to pass over the Corinth Canal which is an amazing work of engineering. The canal was built through the rock and is very narrow, just wide enough to let smaller ships through. We stopped to take a quick look and then it was back on the bus. We finally got to Epidavros and headed straight up the hill to the theater, which is by far the star attraction at this site. The theater is nestled in the hillside with impressive views across the valley. Once we stood in the center of the stage and serenaded the audience with a song we scrambled up the steps to the top to fully appreciate the acoustics of the theater. The theater seats up to 15,000 people and no matter where you sit you can clearly hear the person standing at the bottom. No microphones allowed! Microphones actually mess up the sound of the theater. The rest of the sites are insignificant compared to the theater, but Epidavros is actually undergoing a significant restoration project to rebuild all of the temples and buildings at the site. It’s all very expensive to do this of course, so progress is slow. We took a quick tour of the site but then we were back on the bus to head on to Mycenae.
Mycenae was the hub of an extremely successful civilization that was around nearly a thousand years before the Golden Age in Athens and it is built on the hillside with views across the entire valley. There are three main areas at Mycenae. The archaeological ruins, consisting of the walled city of Mycenae at the top of the hill called the acropolis (high city), the museum and the treasury of Atreus. We started at the bottom of the hill and passed through the famous Lion Gate entrance on our way up to the top of the hill. It’s a short hike to the top, but the view across the valley is breath taking. The museum is brand new and was also worth walking through. We also took a quick detour to the treasury of Atreus which is a domed room built into the hillside. but we didn’t have a lot of time to linger as we had to be at the restaurant for lunch.
We had lunch in restaurant that looked like an 80s restaurant built for extravagant weddings, but the food was excellent. The restaurant is in the middle of nowhere but apparently does great business because of the view of Mycenae. After lunch we hopped back on the bus and made our way back to Athens.
Tomorrow we have an exam for class and then on Friday we have a free day to wander Athens and see anything we may have missed. I’ll post some reflections tomorrow when I have a chance, we’re about to head out to dinner so check back for a final posting! Kalispera everyone!

Greece: Wednesday January 20th Slideshow