Mycenae and the return to Athens

After visiting the theater, we went on and saw the location of "Agamemnon's tomb" (probably not his) and the city in which he lived, the city of Mycenae.

It was a neat place to see, and even with the large school groups of high school kids from all over the world (including the Italians, who seemed to be following us around--not that I minded too much, until the boys started making annoying noises in the acoustically reverberant tomb) it was still a neat site and you really got a grasp of just how real history can be, if you live in a place where just over the hill are the remnants of a civilization that predates your own by a couple thousand years.

While there, four of us (Myself, Oh-Oh!, Hipster, and The Magical E!) all continued on down into the cistern of Mycenae, used as a well and water storage point to help them hold out in case of a siege. There is no lighting and the steps descend what feels like hundreds of feet into the earth (in truth it probably wasn't more than 100 feet down, but the winding of the passage meant that within the first 20 feet of descent it was pitch black all around). Thankfully TME had brought along a lamp, so we tramped to the bottom and there snapped a photo I'll try and upload when I get home and acquire a copy.

It was a fun trip, especially because our journey into the depths of that completely silent and inky hole started by scaring the living daylights out of QoD, Oh-Oh! and SSW. We had rounded the first corner and were standing at the base, near the next corner down when we heard their voices at the mouth above us. We knew from our own experience at the first landing that if we extinguished our lamp it would become so black as to make us all invisible, but we were mere 4 or 5 meters from the turn, which was only two or three meters from the mouth of the descent. We extinguished our lamp and waited in silence as best we could until the three of them were standing at the turn at the first landing, still bathed in sunlight and staring hesitantly into the dark. Then we shrieked like all the tormented souls of hell (or at least I like to imagine that is how the three of us sounded to three girls with overactive imaginations staring into a completely pitch-dark pit) and they shrieked back and jumped back a step towards the opening.

Once they figured out who we were, we invited them to join us, and Oh-Oh! came all the way to the bottom of the stairs (several turns and a great deal of dark further down). Once we had safely taken our picture (nearly blinding my three fellow explorers) we exited into the now brilliantly bright landscape and basked in the glory of the Greek sun.

After that we headed for the Corinthian canal. It is much, much deeper than even that image can convey. 80 and I ate a simple lunch of groceries there at the edge of that 80 meter drop, which induced a sort of queer vertigo merely in the approaching of it. Then we climbed back in the bus and headed on to Athens.

In Athens, we dropped our bags at the hotel, then went directly to the Acropolis, where we said mock-tearful goodbyes to Yorgos and Vicky. They were wonderful to us, and we would miss them greatly (we had no idea how greatly until Rome, where the lack of an interpreter and some unforeseen disasters put us in quite a bind). Heartfelt farewells completed, we climbed the steps of the Acropolis, where we were told by a guard that they hadn't started their high season times yet, and we only had five minutes. (Nuts!)

So we saved our tickets for the next day and instead wandered down through the markets at the foot of the cliffs and then back to the Hotel Attalos for a night on the roof spent sharing snacks, drinks, dreams and memories.