Our next stop was to be Ancient Corinth but we got confused and ended up at Acrocorinth...way at the top of the hill. A herd of sheep delightfully slowed our progress. I had seen photos of Acrocorinth but it is even more incredible in person. Think of the Acropolis on steroids.
We parked and began our ascent on foot. The road up is so steep and requires you to go through three gates. The first was built in the 14th century, with a moat.
The second gate was built by the Venetians.
The third gate is mostly from the 4th century B.C.
The site has the ruins of a church, a mosque and a Temple to Aphrodite. But the most impressive structure is a medieval tower at the very tip top of this steep site. The day was excruciatingly hot. By the time I made it through the third gate, I was done. Matt took his camera and went to explore. It wasn't long before he was back and I asked him if he was going to the tower on the top. He said, "Should I?" I said, "You're here, aren't you?" He hurried off in the heat to make the ascent. I went in search off a shady place to wait and watched for him to conquer the beast. He did! Can you see him up there?
But by the time he returned he was overheated and dehydrated. We slowly made our way back to the car and blasted the air conditioner. We headed down to Ancient Corinth, our original destination, but at this point neither of us had the desire to get back out into the hot sun. We admired the Temple of Apollo through the gate and headed off for Mycenae. Mycenae was one of the major centers of Greece in the second millennium B.C. At its peak (around 1350 B.C) it had a population of around 30,000. Suffice it to say this place is old! We started by visiting the Treasury of Atreus (also referred to as the Tomb of Agamemnon).
Then we headed over to the citadel and hiked up through the Lion Gate...notice the bodies of the lions that remain.
We climbed to the palace, wandered through the remains of homes and artisan workshops and finished at the inventive cisterns.
It was another steep climb. Matt's iPhone tracked him as climbing 68 flights this day.
By then the heat and lack of food and water hit me and I got the chills. We hurried back to the car and blasted the air again as we headed for Nafplio, the former capital of Greece. We were in search of food. We had read about a seafood taverna by the water 11 km from Nafplio. Matt had also read that you shouldn't visit Greece without eating seafood at a taverna next to the water. We found it and enjoyed every delicious moment of our lunch...at 4 p.m. Matt ordered the catch of the day which required a trip to the kitchen to select just how much fish he wanted for lunch. We enjoyed our first breeze of the day.
We had a hotel reservation this night near the site of Ancient Olympia. We headed that way not realizing we would spend time traveling back and forth along switchbacks in the mountains.
Along the highway there are miniature churches on poles. They look like mailboxes but they are placed at the spot of someone's vehicular death, or a close call, much like people place crosses in the US. On one particular switchback we counted six little churches. It was a scary road.
Matt is a good driver and we arrived at our hotel by 7:30 p.m. The hotel desk clerk met us in the parking lot, checked us in, showed us to our room and carried our bags up for us. He recommended the hotel's restaurant overlooking the valley below. We took much needed showers and made our way down to the garden restaurant. I had chicken in mustard sauce and Matt had shrimp and mussels with pasta. It was a perfect meal at the end of a long, hot, tiring day.
At 11 p.m. I got a text that Brett and Brendon had made it to Rome!
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