Peloponnese: Mostly photos

These are some photos from the Peloponnese trip from a few weeks back. There isn't much of a narrative to go along with them. Days generally started at 8:00-8:30 when we finished breakfast and hopped onto the bus, leaving the hotel behind to visit several sites in the day, which generally ended anywhere from 5:00-7:00. Long, long days.

On the left here is the view from Nauplio, looking down onto the city and into the harbor. Sadly, I did not get to the little island/castle in the middle there. The gelato in this town was delicious like nobody's business.

On the left is the temple to Apollo in Ancient Korinth.
On the right is the view from Akrokorinth, the acropolis of Korinth which is probably three or four times as big as Athens' Acropolis.

Below is the theater at the sanctuary to Asklepius, which had acoustics which were so good that you could literally hear a penny drop in the center of the stage from all the way at the top. I sang a Tom Lehrer song and recited some Plautus in front of a rather frightening group of old German tourists who kept shushing everyone whenever someone was on the stage. Good acoustics means that you don't have to be quiet, because everyone can hear you! I got applause and smiles from them, so I considered myself a successful performer.

The Mycenaean were all over the Peloponnese. Essentially, they were the precursors to the Classical Greeks as we know them, and lots of old Greek myths are traceable back to the Mycenaeans. In addition to being before the Greeks, they also built citadels and awesome tombs. This is one of those awesome tombs, a burial mound. Inside of that is a round, hollow chamber made out of stones which is holding the hill above it up.

Here we have the view from another Mycenaean citadel. Inside this citadel was found many, many tablets with Linear B inscriptions on them, all of which survived because they were baked and hardened when the palace was burnt down.
One of the tablets read: "We are sending troops to the north, because they are coming."
Ominous. Off in the distance you can see Sphacteria, which for us Classicists was important due to a battle fought between Athens and Sparta during the Peloponnesian war.

Sphacteria, seen here from Pylos, was where a bunch of idiotic Spartans were stranded when they landed on the island in order to blockade the water entrances to Pylos. I asked Decimus, who is wise in all matters military, why the Spartans would think that land-based forces could block ships from sailing? Decimus, in his infinite wisdom, replied that "Spartani stulti sunt. Stultissimi sunt." When Athenian ships arrived to break the blockade and captured the entire Spartan fleet, the land-based Spartans were stranded.

Whatever window tinting they had on the bus windows made the picture look weird, but as you can clearly see, I also saw the Eiffel Tower.
No, seriously. Some town in the Peloponnese has a scale model of the Eiffel Tower in it.
I'm not kidding.
I have no idea why.

Passing that piece of confusion by, we arrived at Olympia, home of the Olympic games. Astonishingly, Olympia was filled with marble columns!

And more marble columns!

And, of course, the Olympic stadium, looking about what it would look like back in antiquity. Thankfully, those low hanging storm clouds did not interrupt the games too much.

Then, of course, there was Delphi, home of the famous Oracle (about as useful as a fortune cookie if you ask me) and the belly-button of the world! Which I am clearly standing next to. An outy, from the looks of it. The Ancient Greeks considered this to be the absolute center of the world, the point where the two eagles Zeus released from the East and West met. Feel free to make a joke about naval gazing.

Before reaching Delphi, I had a bizarre glimpse of home. No, that is not the Bunker Hill bridge. I was thrown for such a loop when I saw it, though. I haven't taken the time to look up the architect and see who designed it, and if there is any connection to my beloved bridge back home.

More photos and words to come (I hope)!