Day 9: February 27

February 27:

riddle answer: candles shorten when burned
fail: that never occured to us. Enough said!

dare: to just go ahead an buy it
success: I bought a ring from a man who handmade all of his jewellery. He made it in the back of his shop for me in about 5 minutes. It was impressive!

quote: "The traveller sees what he sees. The tourist sees what he has come to see." - G. K. Chesterson

riddle: Though liquid in nature, don't push me too far; for when I will break, and damage may scar...

Today we went to Mycenae and Epidaurus. Mycenae was pretty interesting with the Cyclopean walls and the corbel vault to the cistern. We got our customary picture in front of the Lion's Gate, and the stones were literally taller than me. I have the pictures to prove it! As for the cistern, that was amazing. It is this incredibly long tunnel that leads to the water supply in the event of an attack. It is also pitch black, and everyone of us forgot our flashlights except for Ceilidh. So we used one mini-flashlight to guide us all down these treacherous steps to the bottom. At first it seemed like there was no end to the tunnel. It was pretty fun. Besides that, we generally could not get over the fact that this place was so incredibly well situated. The Mycenaens definitely chose the perfect site. You could see everywhere in the valley, all the way down to the water, and the area they built their city was practically impenetrable. We also saw the so-called Treasury of Atreus, which was this incredibly large tholos tomb. We were impressed! We danced on top of it.

Epidaurus was also pretty fun. The site itself was very interesting, including the tholos and the temple of Asclepius. They were doing reconstructions there, so it gave us an idea of what the columns of different sections looked like. The theatre itself was spectacular of course. It's this giant theatre that holds anywhere between 13 000 - 15 000 people. We ran to the top, and someone dropped a coin in the middle. It was amazing that you could still hear it from so far away. Afterwards, when a large group of tourists had arrived, Emily-Jean, Halcyon, Seonaid, and I sung "Hey Jude" in the middle for the crowd. It was worth it!

Afterwards, George drove us to the top of the mountain overlooking Nafplion and the Argive Bay. There is this giant fortress there with 1000 steps from it to the city below. He tried to convince us to walk to the bottom, but fortunately (or perhaps unfortunately), the fortress was closed by the time we got there.

Besides that, we were pretty exhausted...especially from running up and down the theatre steps at Epidaurus. Of course, we still found the energy to shop! Tomorrow we're off to Eleusis and Athens for our ferry to Santorini. I doubt I'll be blogging tomorrow as the ferry leaves at 7:30 AM the next morning. We're planning on either being exhausted from waking up so early or wired from never going to bed! In fact, I might not be blogging in Santorini either, since it's not tourist season and I doubt they really have internet cafes there at this time of year...but you never know!

We heard about the storm, by the way. Enjoy the snow! We're definitely enjoying the sun!