| Submitted by: Mark NowakUnited States |
| Submission Date: 10 February 2005 |
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People were parking on the side of the road. The driver took us all the way in, an a meeting place was chosen -- the driver was going to wait for us! Well, they were sold out. They were more than sold out. The Theater of Epidaurus has a capacity of around 12300, and they had sold 19000 tickets. People were, oh, upset. It was something close to a mob scene with lots of yelling going on, but people were still well behaved. We moved towards the gate anyway. Nick slipped through in the crowd of people who had been turned back. He kept asking the same question repeatedly until the answers started to change. We just wanted to see the setup of the theater with all those people in attendance. As more people left, we snuck in as well. We moved up the hill and past some more guards who gave orders to prevent anymore people from going up.
The theater was an incredible sight. All those people in that ancient theater. We were standing, but when a seat opened up, the people called to us to have one of us come down to the seat. Mary Jane went. The rest of us found spots together higher up. Across from us was a big student group who started shouting cheers that made the crowd laugh. They even knew an American one. Whenever someone would move in front of you, they would ask if you could see. I was very much impressed with the courtesy and good cheer of these people under such crowded circumstances.
It was close to 11:00 when the play actually started. A little girl walked out and gave a little speech. The noise of the crowd made her hard to hear, but even so the acoustics were very good. The lights died, and I had such a thrill just being there among all the people in that famous ancient theater under the light of the full moon watching the opening night performance of Aristophanes' Lysistrada and knowing we had a taxi waiting in the parking lot. Yeah, I was having fun. You could see little points of light that were the lit cigarettes of the people around you. Actually, so many people were smoking I was amazed at how much second-hand smoke I was inhaling in an open-air theater.
The comic play is about Athenian women who withhold sex from men to get their rights. The women were played by men, but I couldn't say for sure that there weren't any women on stage. The sight gags were funny, but we didn't get the puns. Even Nick had some trouble, but he told us that it was very raunchy material.
We left about an hour into the play -- Nick threw coins at Mary Jane's head to get her to turn around and notice us. The taxi took us back to Tolon where we walked down the main strip and had ice cream and coffee at a cafe. One thing I missed was the concept of a bottomless cup of coffee. Every time you wanted a refill on coffee, you had to pay for it everywhere we went. Throughout Greece you can see children helping in their parents' businesses -- in cafes, hotels, whatever.
The taxi wasn't as expensive as you might think. Normally, I'd say fares were less than half of what they are in Chicago, and the fare had been set to include the wait for us. Afterwards, Mary Jane went for a swim, and I went for another walk. Anne, Erin and Luz were out meeting guys. It was an especially bad mosquito night. It seemed that throughtout the trip Tae was being bitten about ten times more than I was. His theory was that by the time I got in they were full.
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MYCENAE, TIRYNS, EPIDAURUS, CORINTH, ISTHMUS CANAL, ATHENS
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In the morning, we drove to Mycenae where Agamemnon and the famed Greeks of the Trojan war came from. We walked through the Lion's Gate and visited the nearby beehive tomb. Afterwards, we visited Tiryns, the hometown of Heracles himself. The walls of the city are made of rocks so massive that according to myth they were built by Cyclops. The city had been closed because of the danger of falling rocks, but it was open the day we were there. Then, we returned to Epiduarus and toured the massive complex there that had been a major healing center. Plays at the theater were often part of the remedies given. Asclepius, the great doctor who had been taught be Chiron the centaur and killed by Zeus for bringing people back from the dead and later made a god, was prayed to there. People would come, pray to Asclepius and dream. Asclepius would come to them in their dreams. Their dreams would then be interpretted by the healers and remedies would be developed accordingly. Some of the remedies would include seeing certain plays in the theater. Way back then the Greeks believed in a connection between the mind and the body.
The theater was quite a sight in the daytime as well but very different from the previous night. After a brief walk through the museum, we continued on to Corinth where we were able to walk over the impressive canal there. Then, it was back to the Grand Hotel in Athens. We had a meeting to discuss changing our itinerary. Mykonos and Delos were not in the original plan, but there was enough interest that we altered our schedule and decided to pay a little more if we had to. I decided at the last minute not to join Anne, Erin and Luz with the guys they met in Tolon for a night out. Turns out I made the right decision because they didn't go dancing as expected.
Instead I joined Nick and Mary Jane on a trip to an expensive night club. It was called the Can Can club, and the musical acts reminded me of something you'd see in Las Vegas. It was very expensive. Wine cost the same as whiskey. We ordered a half bottle of whiskey and fruit dish -- the bare minimum to stay. A full bottle came and Nick protested. The waiter told him to only drink half of it. Nick wanted to see a certain singer he'd seen before. I could tell why when I saw her. She was gorgeous. Dressed in a black gown and sporting, oh, a perfect body with dark hair, she sang for a while. People would have waitresses dump aluminum plates and flowers on the performers. Sometimes they would order a bottle of what looked to be champagne. While the performer was singing, waiters would open the bottle next to him and pour into a champagne glass which they would then hand the performer. He would then raise it to his benefactors, not take a drink, hand the glass to a waiter and the waiters would take the glass and the bottle away. Also, women would dance on tables, and a performer could find himself surrounded by people from the audience dancing on stage. We left around 3:30.
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We had a free morning for a change, so I slept late enough to just make it for breakfast at the hotel. Tae and I went to exchange some more money, and on our way to the bank we were approached by a guy who wanted to trade $200 in cash at an exchange rate of about 270 drachmas to the dollar. You gotta love the black market. We should get one in the States. Unfortunately, Tae and I didn't have that much cash on us and he wouldn't trade anything less than that. We had to settle for the the bank with its commission. We then went to the Monastiraki bazaar. We bought postcards and Greek music cds -- we even had to haggle for the cds. Tae ended up haggling for a very expensive elaborate chess set with brass pieces in the shape of mythological figures -- each pawn was a sphynx. The whole set weighed about 50 pounds, and he got it for 37000 drachma (about $160). They let him have some theater masks at a discount as well.
We had to be back by noon, and time was running short. Tae exchanged some more money and we made our way to the nearest post office to send his new set home. The line was moving slowly, so I took the rest of Tae's stuff, ran back to the hotel, packed up our belongings and told Nick the reason we might be delayed. It was close to 12:30 when Tae finally made it back. It had cost him another $150 to send the set back via airmail -- shipping it wouldn't have been much cheaper. He said that if he'd known that it would cost that much, he wouldn't have bought it. The last I had heard from Tae was that only half of the set had arrived and in twice as many pieces -- it was pretty sad.
We didn't have time to go to the local souflaki place, so we decided to stop someplace on our way to Sounion where the Temple of Poseidon is. When we did stop, it was at pastry place that had me drooling. I had some chocolate milk, some chocolate pastry, a Pepsi and what was basically a corndog -- yum!
We continued to drive down the coast of Attica enjoying the beautiful sights. The Temple of Poseidon was impressive. It was very bright in the sunlight. It was quite a sight. The Athenians built it after they chose Athen to be their protector as a kind of consolation prize to Poseidon whom they didn't want to offend in the 5th century B.C. The temple is also located at a spot where it would be the last thing they saw as they sailed away or the first when they came home. There was quite a bit of grafitti on it -- some even said to be Lord Byron's (who gave his life fighting for Greece). We then returned the way we came and spent some time at Varkissa beach before driving to the port at Pireas where our ferry to Crete waited.
We were booked in first class cabins on the King Minos of Minoan Lines. Tae and I were in Cabin 336. We watched on deck as we pulled out of port. We could see Lykavetos Hill and the Acropolis in the distance. We also went by the Achille Lauro, the ship where that terorist attack took place a few years ago. Bunk beds aren't quite what I'd expect from first class, but it was luxurious compared to the arrangements the people sleeping on deck had. We also had a fantastic dinner on board. Tae felt like he was getting spoiled since he wasn't used to traveling so well. Afterwards, we sat on deck and talked before turning in. The trip to Crete was about 12 hours, and we had to be up early.
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CRETE: IRAKLION, KNOSSOS, AMNISSOS
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I woke up around 5:00 AM. At 6:30 we arrived in Iraklion which used to be called Candia. The word candy comes from the name of the city because of the sweets they made there. As we pulled in to dock, we could see what is left of the old Venetian battery. A female travel agent and bus were there to meet us when we disembarked. Carol had fallen from her top bunk and hurt her foot. We were taken to the Daedalus hotel, named after the mythological engineer who designed the Labyrinth and built wings for his son Icarus and himself to escape the island -- Icarus never made it because he flew too close to the sun and melted the wax that held his wings together. There was a painting of Daedalus in flight in the lobby.
The owner of the hotel greeted us all with handshakes. |
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