Sights visited: Corinth Canal, Ancient Corinth, Ancient Mycenae, Nafplio, Epidaurus
While Meteora was my favourite in mainland Greece, Argolis is much closer and can be done leisurely from Athens. Every tourism operators in Athens provide tours ranging from 1-5 days depending on the distance travelled. Originally I plan to go as far as Olympia located on the Ionian side of Greece, but scrapped the idea and stuck to the eastern part of Peloponnese.
After a morning touring Athens, we headed out of the city. Fotis bought me a Frappé to go, an icon of Greek coffee culture. It is made by shaking milk, coffee and ice cubes in a shaker. Cinnamon is often sprinkled over the foam and sugar level is adjustable. It's a taste most people find enjoyable and is extremely popular with tourists as well.
The first stop was the Corinth Canal, about 30 minutes from Athens. Built in 1893, it is a deep, very visually striking canal. It sounded like a great idea to make a canal through the Isthmus of Corinth, and attempts had been made since ancient times. However, it seemed to have faced many problems that nowadays it's used mostly for tourism.
Not far from the canal is the site of ancient Corinth and also the city of modern Corinth. When referring to places in Greece, it's important to specify whether you are visiting the ancient ruin or the city, as they often share the same name.
In ancient Greece, Corinth was a large prosperous city-state. The large population attracted Saint Paul to build one of the early Christian churches here. Last year in Turkey we visited a couple of his other stops like Laodicea and Ephesus, so it somewhat felt like we were following his footsteps (but really, he was in a lot of places so it's hard to miss).
The state of the ruins of Corinth was...not very good, and this seemed to be the norm for most ruins in Greece. Unfortunately, they were not comparable at all to the ones I've seen in Turkey or Italy. I do not know whether it's the lack of funding for too many ruins, or they became impossible to rebuild after being destroyed in wars.
A scripture from 2 Corinthians 4:17 was on display at "bema", where St.Paul most likely was charged and judged for spreading Christianity. Bema was an elevated platform, usually located at the forum, for giving public addresses and legal hearings.
In Greece, very often a small-sized museum would be present at archeological sites to house artifacts found. These small museums were maybe 1/100 the size of the museums in Athens, so we were in and out within 15 minutes. For museums of these size, having five or six staffs there seemed a bit overkill.
We saw some cast body parts of arms, legs, noses, ears, genitals and babies. At first I thought they were prosthetics, but later found out they were offerings to the deified physician, Asclepios, in regard to the body part being healed. These were found in his temple (asclepeion, or the ancient equivalent of a hospital) in Corinth.
Our next stop was the famed excavation site of Mycenae. The story of Schliemann excavating this place is included in most Canadian elementary social studies curriculum, and presented in a way of the cheesy "follow you dreams & believe in yourself". I didn't find out until I was older that there were so much sketchy stuff going on with Schliemann. For some others, Mycenae might be famous because of their role in the Trojan War.
I almost cried when I saw the Lion's Gate!!!! ・゜・(ノД`)
Mycenae was a civilization earlier than Classical Greece, about 16th century BC of the Late Bronze Age. I tried to explain the chronology of this civilization to my parents, but it was hard for them to comprehend by looking at "Grave Circle A" and "Grave Circle B".
These grave circles were royal cemeteries, and many of the gold artifacts in the National Archeological Museum in Athens were excavated from these locations.
The excavation site was huge, but the Grave Circles were the best preserved parts. The other parts looked no more than random stones on the ground.
Like Corinth, Mycenae also had a small museum. These psi and phi type figurines (named because of the resemblance to the alphabets) were so deja vu as they also appeared on my exams.
These unexpectedly amusing terra cotta figures were often found in tombs, and were suspected to represent protective goddesses.
The Treasury of Atreus was a short drive from the main site and a must-see for any visitors to Mycenae. Schliemann named it Tomb of Agamemnon, but archeologists believed that the this was a tomb of an unknown ruler earlier than both Atreus and Agamemnon.
It was an impressive example of a tholos, or "beehive tomb", with a very tall dome ceiling. This type of architecture can also be found in Southern Europe and Middle East, such as the beehive mud houses I saw in Harran, southeastern Turkey last year.
It was almost 7 PM when we finished touring Mycenae. I was really tired from not sleeping for 30 hours straight, and was more than glad to have finally reached the town of our overnight, Nafplio.
Nafplio was the first city in Greece to become independent from Turkish rule, hence the old capital of Greece. Now it is a lovely seaport town and a popular weekend getaway for Athenians.
Since it was a weekend night, a lot of hotels in Nafplio were fully booked. Fotis was able to get rooms for us at one of the hotels he worked with, Hotel Victoria, at an excellent rate. We had been very happy with every one of Fotis's hotel choices, as they are usually family run, well-equipped and of good value.
We had our first dinner at Savouras taverna, recommended by Fotis. As with the hotels, we had 100% positive experiences with all his meal recommendations. This taverna was, by a huge margin, the best seafood we had in Greece.
According to Fotis, Nafplio is one of the best place to have seafood in Greece. Unlike on the Greek Isles, the seafood were actually caught nearby and not imported. We were shown the fresh raw seafood by the restaurant staff, and picked from what was available that night. The seafood were weighed and priced, and cooked to order.
Usually I worry about my nutrition when I travel, but Greece offer plenty of vegetable choices. We had Greek salad for every meal and didn't suffer any digestive problems during our trip.
Frying and grilling seemed to be the two main method of cooking seafood in Greece, which is understandable given how fresh the ingredients were. We had no idea what the red little fishes were but they looked good and taste great as well.
The calamari was the calamari from heaven. I still dream about it sometimes! The meal totalled to 50 Euros for three of us, which was more than reasonable.
Nafplio at night is very charming, but we were too tired and went straight back to the hotel.
Next morning, we set off for the return trip to Athens. Breakfast at Hotel Victoria was excellent. For such a small hotel, there was a good variety of fresh food. Non-instant coffee could be ordered from staff.
Before leaving Nafplio we took a good look at its harbor. Standing in the water is Bourtzi castle, built by the Venetians to fend pirates.
Up on a hill in the city was another Venetian fortress, Palamidi. We didn't pay the entrance to go in, but Fotis negotiated with the staff to let us in for a few photos. I felt that the Greeks put a lot of emphasis on courtesy between people and that's a good thing.
The stop after Nafplio was Epidaurus, an ancient Greek city most well known for its asclepeion. It was the birthplace of Asclepius, the god of medicine, so its asclepeion was extra prestigious. The ill came from all over to seek health, and the town became a healing centre. There were mineral springs nearby, so it might had a similar story to Hierapolis in Turkey.
Not much of the town itself was left, so most tourist came here to look at the theatre, the most intact and impressive structure.
The theatre was built from all the offerings the pilgrims brought, searching for cure in Epidaurus. It is smaller than the one at Ephesus, but has an amazing acoustic. The limestone seats actually filter out low-frequency sounds and amplify high-frequency sounds from the stage. I did a test with my parents and one could just propagate their sound on stage with just a normal talking voice!
A statue of Asclepius in the Epidaurus museum. The "Rod of Asclepius" with the intertwining snake is easily recognizable as it is still used as a symbol for medicine in modern times.
The most interested artifacts I found at the museum were the ancient medical instruments. I saw retractors, scalpels, forceps and even needles for sutures. They really haven't changed all that much compared to modern ones.
The road from Epidaurus back to Athens was along a very lovely mountainous, winding road along the Saronic Gulf. This view was seen from a cafe on the way called Stork.
While the drive was very sceneic, I wasn't prepared for the motion sickness that came with the zigzag road, so I recommend taking some medication for this segment.
In late afternoon we reached our pit stop for the day, President Hotel. We said bye for the moment, but would be meet up with him again after ten days hopping around the islands.
President Hotel was the worst hotel of the trip, and I wouldn't have chosen it myself. It was a free night's stay provided by Atlantis Travel Agency, the travel agency that also organized our cruise ship departing the day after. If I could do it again, I would pay more money and book the cruise independently and NOT use this travel agency.
I didn't take many photos of the hotel because things already has gone wrong at check in. Atlantis Agency booked us under a completely different name. I was very careful during my communication with the agency about our name, but they still messed up! The hotel let us check in anyways because they didn't really care, but I was stressed for the entire night thinking our cruise tickets might be messed up too.
This hotel received mediocre ratings on TA and booking.com, but the rooms were ok, if not a bit dated. They did miss the towels in my parent's room though and I immediately felt this large, commercial hotel wouldn't meet my standards.
Wi-fi was only available in the lobby, which is typical for a large hotel like this, but why would I want to stay here if I could have unlimited wifi at a B&B? The location also wasn't that great for tourists, as it's a taxi ride away from central Athens. We were done sightseeing for the day and just needed a place to sleep, but I still got very annoyed with all the malfunctioning. The only positive point about the hotel was the common areas being very nice and modern, but that hardly made up for anything.
It was a good idea to get out of the city and visit these sights in Argolis, so we didn't overstay in Athens. I was stressed about embarking the cruise tomorrow with the mishaps, but couldn't do much at this point and could only hope for the best.
