Greece - Road Trip, Day 1

This is a continuation of my Greek holiday. So far, I have posted about Athens, where we actually spent 3 days.

If you want to see Greece with all its historic splendour, you definitely have to go out of the city into the outskirts and outlaying small towns/cities like Tripolis, Megalopolis, Olympia, Delphi, Trikala, Thermopylae etc. Yeah, they all certainly sound like names I read from my history books a long time ago! The best way to visit all these places is to go on a road trip... and that's exactly what we did.

We started our bus journey early in the morning, leaving Athens. Even at that early hour, the streets of Athens were already so busy...





... unless you opt for THIS mode of transportation...





If you think the highways here are jammed, wait till you see the highways leading out of Athens...





Haha, just as bad as in KL, right?

Anyway, traffic improved as we sped further away from the city. We were heading towards the Corinth Canal in "Korinthos", as you can see...





We made a short pitstop at the famous Corinth Canal - the very narrow canal (about 21m wide) which separates mainland Greece from The Peloponnese and connects the Gulf of Corinth to the Sarconic Gulf. Read this for more on the history of this canal.




The bus drove on... and the 1st historic site we visited was the ancient Theatre of Epidaurus - the best preserved Greek theatre and famous for its accoustics, in Mycenae.





Built in the 4th century BC, this huge theatre is remembered for its beauty and symmetry and marvelled for its exceptional accoustics. Do you know that if you stand at the proscenium - centre - of the theatre and make a small sound, it can be amplified to all 15,000 spectators (that's the estimated no. of people this theatre can seat)??





Is that an accidental thing or a product of astounding advanced design?





Perfect camouflage, don't you think?





Epidaurus, a World Heritage site also has other ancient ruins of temples, sanctuaries, baths etc.





Within Mycenae itself, the Lion Gate at the citadel guards the entrance to the fortress...





The other side of the Lion Gate, inside the fortress ruins...





Further down a bit, there's the Tomb of Agamemnon...

Note the perfect triangle at the entrance and inside it there's this "beehive" construction in the ceiling - really remarkable! Unfortunately, photos didn't turn out at all - it was pitch black & pretty eerie inside!
And then, when you get tired of walking & climbing all those ancient stoned pathways, you can take a rest amongst the trees & breathe in the fresh pine air, hehe!

There are lots of olive trees everywhere. Not surprising, as olives are one of the major export item for Greece. Along the countryside, you can see miles and miles of olive orchards! Olive trees have lovely silvery green leaves...

I love the colours of winter too...

We stopped for lunch at this classy but empty restaurant along the way...

We stayed the night at Olympia. By the time we reached our Hotel Amalia, it was already very dark. It's certainly a long bus ride that we had and all we wanted to do was just have dinner and went to sleep!

Stay tuned for Day 2 - will show you the sights of Olympia!