Epidauros and Olympia

On June 14th we left our Athens hotel and hit the road to Epidauros and Olympia. We passed the port ...

... and headed West on the highway. 

It isn't unusual to run into a herd of sheep or goats on the road and we had our first encounter with goats on the side of the road a little ways out of Athens.

The landscape was wide and beautiful.

   

There was a gorgeous view around every curve.

 

What follows is a series of pictures of the mountains we passed by.

 

This seems to be some kind of fishery below on the right.

 

Eventually we got to Epidauros. This was supposedly the birthplace of Apollo's healer son Asclepius and the town had a large healing facility (the Asclepeion) in ancient times.

The ill would come to the sleeping hall and hope that the gods would visit them in their dreams and tell them their best actions for a cure.

Although there are a variety of ruins here and a little museum, ...

 ... of primary interest is the theater, which has phenomenal accoustics, such that all 14,000 viewers can hear unamplified speech from the stage.

The greeks originally built 34 rows of seats and hte Romans added 21 more wihtout affecting th accoustics.  Contemporary scientists believe that the amazing sound quality is created by the use of limestone for the seats which absorbs the lower tones and enhances the higher frequencies coming from the stage.

 

This is  a Greek style theater meaning that there is a beautiful view of nature behind the stage (skene). We were fortunate that high school students came and performed scenes from Antigone (or maybe Iphegenia).  One could indeed hear every word from the top and well enough that I could recognize the names and guess the play.

The vast site also contained a banquet hall and thermal baths.

This guy kept an eye on everything - perhaps a representative of the Moon goddess Artemis!

Sooner than we wanted we were back on the road again headed this time for ancient Olympia.

Often we would pass by large old fortifications at the tops of mountains.

 We stopped at a little sandwich place with a great view of the mountains.

This gentleman had a very interesting beard which was two long strands on either side of his chin- and it blew furiously in the wind. Wish I could have caught him from the front.

 

There was a lovely display of Greek desserts to purchase too. Makes me wish now I had bought some then!

The next part of our journey ever westward had mountains of a slightly different character. 

I just photographed whatever caught my eye.

It was a longer drive, but eventually we made it to ancient Olympia.

 

This was a sizable archaeological site with many very interesting places to explore.

Our fearless leader informed us of the salient points of the location. This was where  the original Greek "Olympic" games started in the 8th century BC/E.

 

For this reason he was very eager for us to see the ancient "stadium" where the runners competed.  The stadium is 212.54 meters long and  30-34 meters wide and was used for speed races. In 2004 they used this locus for the shot put event in the Summer Olympics. It was very hot, but we ran a mini-version of the Olympic games.

I really wish we had had more time here, there was so much to see.

There were all kinds of remains of dormitories for the players, baths and hellenistic builidings.

There was a big temple to Hera and one to Zeus.

The Temple to Zeus housed a very famous statue of the "King of Gods" made in Ivory and Gold and designed by the sculptor Phidias.

This is the Philippeion a meorial to Philip II of Macedon and the family of Alexander the Great (built in the 3rd centruy BC/E).

This is the so-called crypt which is hte entrance to the stadium where the runners competed.

Most interesting to me was the studio of Phidias the sculptor.

He lived from 480-430 BC/E and designed the staue of the goddess Athena for the Parthenon.

They found molds for the sculpture of Zeus in the workshop along with a cup that said Φειδίου εἰμί. (Of Phidias I am).

The sculpture of Zeus was considered one ot eh Seven Wonders of the Ancient world and one story says that the people of this area put him to death after he bilt the statue.

 

I thought this was a very interesting method of construction and decoration!

I did not see it, but there was a Nymphaeum too.

This is a Hellenic building

and behind it was a Villa for Nero.

The palestra was huge and there were many, many pillars.

All too soon it was time to reboard the bus and find our next hotel.

We saw this really cool super modern bridge.

 

Our goal was Loutraki and we had a long drive ahead of us.

Eventually we arrived at the  Hotel Poseidon Resort. This was a hotel complex (two in fact) built on a hill. The bus couldn't get to the actual hotels so we had to unload and head down the hill on our own.  There were all kinds of little cabanas leading down to the Ocean.

At the ocean was a beautiful pool.

I just managed to capture this guy as he scuttled away from me into the ocean.

Here is another one of my favorite photos:

Here is the room that we ended up in. It was quite lovely and had a big picture window opening onto a little veranda where one could sit and drink coffee and enjoy the air.

The inside looked like this.

It had been a long day and we slept long and hard.