Art Menalon Hotel Peloponnese

... and descriptions of landmarks to find the ancient city and excavate it.

When you visit Mycenae now, what you see is some pretty well-preserved foundations of the city walls and rooms within the walls. We got to walk through the ancient city and go past regular homes, shops, and even the kings’ quarters. We saw the huge grave circles where most of the treasures were found (now mainly exhibited in the National Archaeological Museum in Athens ...

Rising early, we sorted out most of the packing and set off to have a look at the medieval house. We were now able to get right up to it (as we had not been able to do in previous visits) and could see the fine tiled decoration much more clearly. On the ground floor level, there is a large plastered cistern with runnels at each end; above this there is a high plastered room with decorated window-arches. At the back, a narrow ...

... for me to dangle my feet in the fast-running river. The music was beautiful and the river water ice-cold. We decided it would be worth seeing how far this path went - maybe this could be a route south to the Atsiholo bridge? We followed it successfully for about another eight minutes; however, after another up-and-around detour to pass a further rocky outcrop it became more and more impenetrable and we duly retraced our steps to the car park ...

... every one. The walk down was equally as hard as the steps have been polished by 1000 years of passage. We explored the tiny streets, only wide enough for walking and donkeys and were rewarded with some amazing gelato icecream. (It may be the downfall of us all when we reach Italy)
Next, we traveled back north near the town of Argos where the Mycenean civilization flourished 1600-1000 BCE. It is an amazing place and we essentially had it to ourselves. The Greek sites are all ...

... the archiological site of the Ancient Olympic games. The best part of the whole area is the old stadium. It is much as it once was 3000 years ago. The track to run the 100 meters is still kinda there cause they really didn't have a track and it was just a dirt path to run on. We ran the 100 meters twice and both times won the gold medal for Canada. No performance enhancing drugs were found on either of us so we were allowed to keep our medals. (Stupid Ben Johnson!!) The ...

Today, we took a trip to the Corinth Canal and the Epidaurus.






< br>



See, we managed to capture the canal with boat!









Mycenae, Peloponnese, Greece songwillie

After leaving ancient Olympia, we traveled on to the small town of Kardamyli. It is one of the oldest names in Greek history being mentioned in Homer's Illiad. How cool is that??The town has about 300 people now and twice in history has been desterted. Once after the 6th century until neaarly the 18th century. Most had gone to the hills. The town was again abandoned during the Greek ...

We visited the site of the ancient Olympic games. The games were held for more than a thousand years between 776BC to 393 AD. The games were held in honor of Zeus. In the temple of Zeus was a 4 story tall statue of Zeus and the winners of the events would stand at the front of the temple. There was only one winner for each event. The original olympics had only one event, the sprint and later other events were added but they all had to do ...

Olympia was the site of the first Olympic games as well as the sanctuary of Zeus. The Olympics were the only purely athletic pan-hellenic games, and began in the 8th century B.C. In the museum, we saw a model of what the site would have looked like back then. Outside the sacred enclosure called the altis was the gymnasium, palestra, stadium, and hotel. The gymnasium and palestera were both used as training facitlities for the athletes with open courtyards in the middle ...

... we fumbled in communication with the train station ticket attendant and purchased a cheap ticket back to Pyrgos. It left in an hour. During that time we bought much needed food and sat in what was probably the central plaza in town. The plaza's fountain was very sad, to say the least. It was basically a sprinkler. It slowly circled around and sprayed the water into a tiny pool of water. It seemed like a good time to leave. After another strange train ride - with a ...