Deane's Dream Comes True

Before we left Ancient Olympia (which really is the name of the town), we visited the archeological site, even though it wasn’t on Deane’s original list. It was quite impressive -- the track where the original Olympic games were held was well preserved, and there were ruins of temples, training centers, baths, and one prehistoric house on the site. Deane is still in awe that Plato and Aristotle visited the games there. The museum was even better, containing artifacts from the entire course of human history on the site. There were little bronze animals used as offerings, pottery of all sorts, marble temple facades, battle helmets and armor, and a beautiful statue of Hermes.

From Olympia, we drove across the mountains to the eastern side of the Peloponnese, coming out onto a view of the Aegean Sea. The GPS failed us here, having no maps of the area where our hotel was. So we navigated by signs, and found our way to Tolo, and the Hotel Nellys on the beach. Our room had a balcony overlooking the Mediterranean and this is the view. Best hotel so far!

For dinner, I had a plateful of a local fish, whitebait in English, which were fried and eaten head and all. I found that I didn’t really care for the heads!

Tolo was a base for us to visit archeological sites in Epidaurus and Mikenes. Ancient Epidaurus was once a major pilgrimage site for people seeking healing. Aesclepios, son of Apollo, was gifted with healing powers. People came to the site and went through ritual baths to prepare; water symbolized purification and resurrection. They then slept in the temple and waited for a dream, in which the God appeared with the cure. In addition, they had sacred meals, where people shared in meat offered to the Gods, keeping the Gods present with them in that way. Some of this sounds familiar, no?

Mikenes was the site of a fortified city built by the Myceneans around 1300 BCE. Not a whole lot is left of the city, but you could see why they chose the position -- you could see for miles around, and all the way to the Aegean Sea. The museum here had particularly interesting female figurines, and snakes, and some amazing gold jewelry and adornments.

We were sad to leave our beautiful room in Tolo, but had to move on to Athens. On the way, we stopped at Korinthos, where Paul once was hauled before the local officials, accused of violating Mosaic law. He was not in violation of Roman law, so was allowed to continue his evangelism in Greece. This beautiful mosaic of Dionysus was in the museum.

From Korinthos, we drove on to stay in Piraeus, where it is an easy train ride to Athens and the Acropolis. I have seen many pictures of the Parthenon, but it was quite different to step out of the Metro, turn the corner, and see it shining way up on the hill. Along with the Elgin Marbles missing from the Parthenon, the Temple was missing one statue, also in the British Museum -- this is an ongoing controversy. Seeing archeological artifacts in museums on the site where they were found has made me value of the importance of place in understanding what I see.

Big surprises for us as we were exploring cave shrines around the Acropolis hill were turtles, three of them, grazing the vegetation.

For fifty years, Deane has wanted to visit Crete, because of the Minoan civilization that once flourished there. On Friday, fulfilling that dream, we boarded the ferry for Crete. We left the car in Piraeus for a week while we ferry between three islands. We met Nicholas at a parking lot near our hotel when we were looking for parking for the week we’re away. He took us under his wing, and not only provided us a safe parking place, but gave us a tour of Piraeus and chauffeured us to the ferry. In addition, he recommended a wonderful (and reasonably priced) restaurant, where I had this amazing dish of lamb with lettuce (I would call it chard, and a lamb shank is underneath it) in an egg-lemon sauce.

The ferry ride was long, and we napped through it, arriving in Crete after dark. We spent our first day at the palace of Knossos, a major archaeological site from the Minoan era. The Minoans were prosperous and peaceful, in contrast to the Mycenaeans, who were also prosperous but warlike; the peaceful Minoan culture has been linked by some with their worship of the Goddess. The site was restored by Arthur Evans in the early 1900s, and he put so strong an individual stamp on it that I wasn’t sure whether what I was seeing really reflected the original site, or his ideas about the original site.

For our second day in Crete, we went to the Heraklion Archeological Museum, where most of the artifacts from Knossos and other Minoan sites on Crete are housed. The museum was undergoing renovations, so they had a temporary museum set up with a small subset of their much larger collection. It included enough examples to give some picture of the changes in art and society on Crete from the Neolithic era until about 1400, when Knossos Palace was abandoned. There were many highlights, but certainly the beautifully preserved statues of the Snake Goddess were among them.

We had an amazing meal at what we later learned is probably the best restaurant in Heraklion, feasting on grilled fennel pie and shrimp, stuffed grape leaves, and a beautiful salad. We passed the afternoon with a walk in the sunshine down the long jetty defining the harbor.

I have tried to concentrate on the sites we‘ve visited in this blog, but of course there‘s so much I haven‘t said. I watch as we drive through different places to see how the land is used, and in Europe it is used intensively and has been for hundreds, if not thousands, of years. Agriculture is intensive, but in most places, in a way that requires a lot of care, as in the carefully trellised and pruned fruit trees. There also is an awareness of energy conservation, not only in the tiny cars (a Fiat model in particular looks, as Deane says, “as if I could step on it and crush it”), but in the huge solar panel farms in Spain, wind turbines in all countries, and here in Greece, little solar hot water heaters on almost every rooftop. I think we could learn a lot from this place that has been inhabited so long!