Mycenae
Today, I decided to go to Mycanae. Mycanae has a rich history incuding being the palace of Agamemnon. In the morning, Walton asked me if he could join me which I was happy about cause he's a huge history buff and can teach me a lot.
I met Walton and his Mom at the U.S. Embassy to pick him up then we took a taxi to a different bus station than yesterday. Once we got there, we realized that not many people spoke English. We managed to find the ticket window for Argos which is near Mycanae bought our tickets and once again had to run to catch the bus.
It was a 2 hour ride to Argos but 1 hour into the ride we both had to go to the bathroom. Once we arrived in Argos we asked the bus station dude for the bus to Mycanae and the bathroom and he told us that the bus was leaving. With no time for the bathroom we ran after the bus and hopped on with the bus still in motion.
10 minutes later, nature was calling and we asked if we could use the bathroom at the next stop. The door swung open and Walton sprinted for the bathroom. I was right behind him.
The site was amazing, probably one of the highlights of my trip thus far. To enter the palace, you walk through Lion's Gate. The Palace is strategically located at the top of a hill, making attack very difficult. The view from the top is awesome.
The coolest part of the site for me was the legendery ancient stairwell that Agamemnon's kids escaped the palace from. The story goes that during the Trojan War, Agamemnon and his 10,000 ships were sailing to Troy and they had no wind. A fortune teller with Agamemnon told him that if he sacrificed his youngest daughter it would bring great wind and take them all to Troy. He stabbed her in the heart and the winds tooks him to Troy. When he returned home, his wife killed him for revenge. Agamemnon's kids, Orestes and Elektra, murdered their mother for killing Agamemnon and escaped through the 99 stair passage leading out of the palace.
This was that passage and Walton and I were determined to make it down to the bottom with only a keychain flashlight. The stairwell was pitch black and cordoned off with a rope. We stepped over the rope and continued down stairwell. About 10 meters down, there were thousands of flies all over the place that we turned around and went back. We tried again, this time using Walton's pant legs that I had cut off earlier as a mask from the flies. I used the flash on my camera to illuminate the passage for a little bit, then walk down 5 stairs. After 15-20 minutes and about 75 stairs we realized that our bus (and last bus of the day) would arrive in 10 minutes. Unfortunately we couldn't make it to the bottom but it was a valient effort. We hurried back and caught the bus back to Argos.
Argos was a ghost town and probably 100 degrees F. After realizing that NOTHING was open, we managed to find an open cafe and ate a delicious Greek pizza. We caught our bus back to Athens and caught the Metro back to Halandri. Great day!
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