Marders in Greece: Day 7: Corinth, Epidaurus, Mycenae

Patty at the Epidaurus Amphitheater

Marders in Greece: Day 7

Corinth, Epidaurus, Mycenae

We disembarked from our ship and joined our new guide, Helen for our 4 day, "Classical Greece Extension" tour. This was a motor coach tour of some famous geography from the classical Greek period. The biggest problem we were to face today was the weather: cool and wet. When we booked this trip, we never felt like we would be enduring wet weather. Greece you see, has an arid climate. But here we were on Day 7 and it was the third day that we were having some heavy rain. Oh well.... We drove for about an hour out of our cruise port near Athens sort of west-northwest. Our guide (Helen) was a pleasant, older woman who had been guiding for over 30 years on trips just like this one. She also informed us that our bus driver was one of the best. That was good to know as we experienced a very rainy day driving on narrow, hilly roads. Our first stop was near the town of Corinth. Here we saw a canal that was built to connect the east and west shores of the Greek shipping lanes. Although Greece was in the middle of the Mediterranean Sea, on the west of Greece lies the Adriatic Sea and Italy and on the east, the Aegean Sea and Turkey. So this canal was an important improvement for the shipping industry. The canal is way too narrow for big cruise ships but it serves its main purpose well. It also serves to completely divide the most southern portion of mainland Greece from the north. This lower section is called Peloponnesia. Somewhere in your memory, you may recall the Peloponnesian War from school. Well, here's where the land of Peloponnesia is. It was named after the mythical king from Greek mythology, Pelops. This area was also home to the Myceneans, the second oldest culture from ancient Greece (the Minoans were oldest) dating back to 2000 BC. Our next stop on our tour was at Epidaurus. Epidaurus was an ancient medical center of the Myceneans dating back to this period of 1600 BC. It was supposedly the birthplace of Asclepius, son of Apollo and god of healing. We got out of the bus and hoofed (in the rain) to its most famous landmark, an outdoor amphitheater that could hold a 14,000 person audience and had perfect acoustics. They still hold classical Greek tragedies and comedies in this theater. We also visited the museum on this site where we saw beautiful sculptures most notably of Asclepius, with his famous snake in hand. We re-boarded the bus and drove for another hour until we were in the heart of ancient Mycenae. During this journey, our guide recounted the well known history of the war between the Mycenaens and the army of Troy. While still raining hard, we visited an excavation (from the Bronze Age) of the Mycenaens, viewing their lion-gated sculpture at the entrance and tombs built for their royalty dating back to 1300 BC. After this, we drove the rest our journey across the mountainous terrain of Peloponnesia, viewing the burnt out forests (from last summer's great fires in Greece) until our arrival on the west coast in Olympia where we de-boarded for our overnight stay at a very nice hotel.

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