Nafplio and environs
Palamidi
The Palamidi is a fortress built by the Venetians on the top of Yet Another Hill. They spent several years on it--it's big--and then about a year after it was finished they lost it in three days to the Ottoman Empire. Whoops.
Hey, look at the view!
We climbed the hill. There were a lot of stairs. But hey, view! So really, we were morally required to stop and check out the view. Um, frequently.
That's the Akronafplia straight ahead (with the hotel that was built on top of it) and the Bourtzi out in the bay. Nafplio is nothing if not rich in fortresses. Really, it was a great little town and I highly recommend it; the old town was clearly living off of tourism, but it still felt like a real place. Plus, very Italian, what with being founded by the Venetians.
The main courtyard of the Palamidi.
Bastions
The view from one of the outer bastions of the Palamidi. We spent most of the afternoon clambering over walls and rocks; it was grand fun. (I also may have insulted a Canadian couple who took our picture. They were from Nova Scotia! I was telling my funny story about how weird I found it to go up there and visit museums where the history was from the Loyalist point of view and the American revolutionaries were the bad guys! I meant to make fun of myself! Sadly, I suspect they just thought I was an idiot.)
Mycenae
A shot of Mycenae from the road. As you can see, Yet Another Hill. At least this time it was a fairly small hill, but after the Palamidi it seemed unnecessarily tall.
Approach to the Lion Gate
A school group walking up toward the Lion Gate at Mycenae. The school groups were hysterical; these buses would pull up and disgorge teenagers, who would slouch off into the 3500-year-old city, then slouch back to the buses 45 minutes later. I wanted to take them and shake them and be all "MYCENAE! This is MYCENAE! It is more interesting than the ice cream you bought at the snack bar!" I didn't, though, because that would be rude. Also I don't know how to say "snack bar" in Greek.
The Lion Gate
Sadly, the sun was positioned in such a way that a good shot of the gate was pretty much impossible. I was really struck by... well, first of all by the fact that this gate has been standing right here for 3500 years, which is enormously cool, but also by how lively the lions were. I tend to have a perception of ancient art as being stiff and lifeless, but this pair were not.
The Lion Gate from behind. You can see the landscape beyond, as well; Mycenae is fairly isolated (I mean, not in a modern sense, but as compared to, say, the ruins in Rome) which I suspect helped reduce the number of stones that disappeared into other buildlings.
Tholos tomb
There are... four, I think?... tholos tombs in and around Mycenae--shaped like beehives and covered with earth. Anyway, they think they're tombs; my understanding is that no artifacts were recovered from them. (Greece was a country where I keenly felt the lack of a knowledgable guide.)
Tholos tomb, interior
This gives you some idea of the scale and shape of the tomb. That's probably a little less than half of the total height of the ceiling.
Creepy
They had a pretty nice museum there, which included these believed-to-be-religious artifacts. It was the snakes that first grabbed my attention, but the idols kept it, because they are FREAKY.