Nafplio

We spent 3 nights in the small resort town of Nafplio.  The town itself is a great destination – with a pier, beaches, a cute downtown with shopping & restaurants, and cool castles from Venetian and Ottoman occupations.  We could have spent a lot more time there, but we were too busy exploring the nearby ruins…

Greece is literally covered in ancient ruins.  In Athens, if you dig anywhere you’ll probably uncover 2000-year old houses (I’ve heard this causes a lot of headaches for construction).  And the countryside is the same way.  Driving around, there are signs for Archeological Sites probably every 10 miles.  It’s amazing.  We were able to visit a few sights within a small radius of Nafplio, but I think we could return and spend months exploring the rest of the country.

Here’s some photos of Nafplio – we caught beautiful sunset one evening as we hiked around the castles.
 

Epidavros

On our way to Nafplio from Athens we stopped at Epidavros, which, among other ruins, has an enormous theater from the 4th century B.C. The acoustics in the theater are amazing, I climbed up to the top row, Ben stood in the middle and talked, and I could hear him perfectly.
 

Argos

The next day we explored various ruins in the area, including the nearby town of Argos. There was an ancient town (described by our hotel owner as the “first planned city in the world”), another large theater (carved directly out of the hillside!), and a Roman bath house and aqueduct. As a side note, there’s a lot of Roman ruins in Greece. As is the case all over Europe, many cities and buildings are occupied, added on to, and rebuilt over hundreds of years by different rulers. When Rome conquered Greece around 150 B.C., they moved in and built up the cities with their new modern techniques (running water, roads, great buildings, etc). So it’s very common to see a theater like the one in Argos which has had many modifications over the years. This one was built by the Greeks, and later the Romans added cages and nets to allow animal games on stage, and awnings to shade the attendees, and even later the ability to flood the stage for some kind of water performances. It’s fascinating to see these kind of ruins built on top of ruins.
 

Mycenae

Saving the best for last, we visited Ancient Mycenae on our 3rd day in Nafplio. The Mycenaean civilization existed in Greece between 1700 and 1100 B.C. which is basically before Ancient Greece really got started. In other words, this is OLD! The site is famous for the “Lion’s Gate”, a carved rock above the main entrance to the city. There’s also a huge tomb called the Treasury of Atreus, which has a 264,500 lb stone above the entrance. Nobody really knows how they were able to hoist up that huge of a rock. Crazy.
 

Athens is a huge sprawling city, but all of the tourist sites are concentrated near the Acropolis (a big rock in the center of the city with the Parthenon and other ancient temples). This area of Athens is really nice, with pretty pedestrian streets, shopping, cafe’s, museums, and ancient ruins sprinkled throughout. Most of the buildings in Athens are white or light-colored, giving the whole city a pretty Mediterranean look.  Overall we really loved Athens. Here’s some of our photos…

Acropolis from a nearby hill

The city of Athens

The Parthenon

Another temple on the Acropolis

Caryatids (columns that are statues of women)

Ben and the Parthenon

We hiked up that hill later

Parthenon

Ben and Alonna at the Parthenon

Ancient columns waiting to be put back together

Theater on the slope of the Acropolis

Theater of Dionysus

Ancient Agora (more Greek ruins)

The Acropolis

Temple at the Ancient Agora

Statue at the Ancient Agora

They loved double rows of columns

Ancient Roman ruins in Athens

Bronze statue from 460 BC

Greek Statue from 130 BC

Souvlaki (also known as Gyros or Kebabs)