Sept. 2

Photo: Corinth ruins

Day 06 September 2, 2007 10:00 pm local time Nafplio

Our bus was not at our Athens Hotel at 9 am this morning. There was a small snafu. We eventually got on the road, but we had to cut everything really short in order to get into Nafplio at a decent hour. We went to Corinth which was really interesting. Most of the recreation in the city is of the Roman Corinth and not the Greek one. And yes, there is a big difference especially when you’re expecting Greek statues and you get togas. The ruins were very extensive. Of course you couldn’t get anywhere near the most interesting parts because it was roped off. Then we headed to Mycenae which was the home of one of the most famous prehistorical societies. After the fantastic museum which included short explanations of the famous myths associated with the city [Perseus, Troy, etc] I hiked up the hill to the famous lion gates. Unfortunately, it started raining. It rained really hard. Then it began to hail. I was still underneath the gates with some other students and Prof. After I think a half hour of some people going out to test how wet they got, we decided to call it a day. We got ran and got back on the bus and came to our hotel in Nafplio. This city used to be the capital of the modern Greek state. The person who made that decision was assassinated about a year after that and his replacement changed the capital to Athens. The city is surrounded by ancient fortresses for us to see tomorrow, but for tonight we just had dinner and walked around the modern town. In the main square of the town we watched children play soccer for probably two hours. Good times. I had some really good pizza, too.