On Day 2 in Athens I knew I'd be jet-lagged, so I signed up for a 1-day tour. And I was off to Argolis. Our first stop was the theater at Epidaurus. It's a technical marvel for its acoustics. It can seat 15,000 people, but if you strike a match or whisper at the center of the stage, you can hear it as clear as day all the way in the 55th row. I had read about this, but hearing people test it out, I was still shocked that it works.
Stop #2 was Agamemnon's Palace in Mycenae. That name probably rings a bell - he was the king of Greece during the Trojan War, and he's mentioned in the Iliad and the Odyssey. The palace is largely in ruins, but the fact that it still exists from 1,600 B.C. is amazing. It's also surprising how accessible everything is in Greece - the sites aren't behind barricades, you can just walk around them. Although I suppose it's hard to do much harm, since everything is stone. The walls around the palace are massive.
The last stop of the day was the Treasury of Atreus, aka Agamemnon's tomb. This pic is from the inside looking out. I was pretty sure Indiana Jones was going to jump out from the shadows and crack his whip. The entrance was especially impressive. It turns out that the top stone is a single slab that weighs 120 tons, and literally nobody can figure out how it got there. The technology to move or create something that heavy didn't exist in 1,600 B.C. Stonehenge (earlier and ending aroud the same time) stones weighed 4 tons. The stones in the Egyptian pyramids weigh 2 tons.
On Day 2 in Athens I knew I'd be jet-lagged, so I signed up for a 1-day tour. And I was off to Argolis. Our first stop was the theater at Epidaurus. It's a technical marvel for its acoustics. It can seat 15,000 people, but if you strike a match or whisper at the center of the stage, you can hear it as clear as day all the way in the 55th row. I had read about this, but hearing people test it out, I was still shocked that it works.
Stop #2 was Agamemnon's Palace in Mycenae. That name probably rings a bell - he was the king of Greece during the Trojan War, and he's mentioned in the Iliad and the Odyssey. The palace is largely in ruins, but the fact that it still exists from 1,600 B.C. is amazing. It's also surprising how accessible everything is in Greece - the sites aren't behind barricades, you can just walk around them. Although I suppose it's hard to do much harm, since everything is stone. The walls around the palace are massive.
The last stop of the day was the Treasury of Atreus, aka Agamemnon's tomb. This pic is from the inside looking out. I was pretty sure Indiana Jones was going to jump out from the shadows and crack his whip. The entrance was especially impressive. It turns out that the top stone is a single slab that weighs 120 tons, and literally nobody can figure out how it got there. The technology to move or create something that heavy didn't exist in 1,600 B.C. Stonehenge (earlier and ending aroud the same time) stones weighed 4 tons. The stones in the Egyptian pyramids weigh 2 tons.
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