A longish Friday the 13th - Yes! We're Home!

Our Friday the 13th began at the Athens Airport Holiday Inn at 5:15am Athens.  Everything was fine until we encountered the truth of Mercury Retrograde, apparently the latter-day cult subscribed to by United Airlines, in which our 6 hour flight from Washington DC scheduled to depart at 4:00pm Eastern and arrive 7:00pm Pacific, and ended up departing at 11:30pm Eastern and arriving 2:30 am Pacific.  The choices were to sleep it off on a stone slab in the BART station or to pay the $130 cab (Fog City Cab) ride. (Images: A stereogram of Athens)

and at home in Walnut Creek at 4:15am Pacific.

Athens - 2

Dionysos, god of Nysos, is thought to have come to Greece from the East (Asia).  Nysos was a port city in the East.

Dionysos in the East Pediment

Athens - 1

Anna kindly went down to inform Guest Services Manager, Georgia, that she might want to learn there was a rattle in the airconditioning unit.  Before we knew it we were upgraded to a room with a view of the Parthenon, a bottle of Champagne, and a thoughtful card from the General Manager.  Go Anna!

Eleusis - Site of Eleusinian Mysteries

We drove from Korfos to Eleusis for a visit to the ancient site nearby to Athens.  Restoration here and at all the ancient sites is underway.

Later on, did Christianity appeased some of the locals by a more concrete adaptation of this "optimistic view of life after death"?  Life's journey, marked by the unavoidable experience of suffering, could be given quite a transcendental lift if one's consciousness became fully invested in the notion that things get better after death.  A dangerous self-delusion argues Zizek.

Anna at the Telesterion

Caryiatid from Eleusis

Caryiatid

These young men played cards on a Tuesday morning and left their coffee drinks untouched.  Unemployment, especially among the young is very high.

Korfos

Korfos Greek: Κόρφος) is a small port town located on the coast of Sofiko Bay, in the southeastern part of Corinthia, Greece.

Anna (on left) George (center)

Anna George with the fish caught on Anna by George

Mycenae

It was from this room (above), the throne room or megaron, at the Mycenean Acropolis, that the entire Mycenean empire was managed. The megaron and the attached residence was occupied by the families of the Kings (Atreus, Agamemnon, and many before, fewer after) over the years between 1600 BC until the culture collapsed in about 1300 BC.  It is thought that the entire culture collapsed at the same time, and may have been caused by earthquake or the "Sea People" also described in Egyptian history of the same period.

The water you see at the top left, close to Nafplio, could possibly have been where the Greek forces under Agamemnon launched against Troy.  Alas, they were not quite Greek yet, were they?  They were Achean of the Mycenean culture (if I'm reading this correctly) and had to wait until the Greek Dark Ages were over (about 900 or 800 BC) before the flowering of Greek civilization began.

Lion Gate: the possibly solid gold lion heads are missing and are thought to be in the hands of rich Republicans.

(from Princeton Univ:
In Greek mythology, Agamemnon (Ancient Greek: Ἀγαμέμνων; modern Greek: Αγαμέμνονας, "leader of the assembly") was the son of King Atreus of Mycenae and Queen Aerope; the brother of Menelaus and the husband of Clytemnestra; mythical legends make him the king of Mycenae or Argos, thought to be different names for the same area. When Helen, the wife of Menelaus, was abducted by Paris of Troy, Agamemnon was the commander of the Achaeans in the ensuing Trojan War.

Agamemnon - this original is in the Nat.
Archaeological Museum in Athens

Upon Agamemnon's return from Troy he was murdered (according to the fullest version of the oldest surviving account, Odyssey Book 11, l.409f.) by Aegisthus, the lover of his wife Clytemnestra. In old versions of the story: "The scene of the murder, when it is specified, is usually the house of Aegisthus, who has not taken up residence in Agamemnon's palace, and it involves an ambush and the deaths of Agamemnon's followers too".^[1] In some later versions Clytemnestra herself does the killing, or they do it together, in his own home.)

Nafplio

Nafplio (new city as in Napoli) a small city of 14,000 residents has a very long and somewhat brutal history including being named as the Capitol of Greece (1829-1835), and as a Crusader State during the Fourth Crusade.

We are in Nafplio, Greece for another 2-3 nights and then on to Mycenae and Eleusis on our way to Athens.  The travel values are great in Greece due to their busted economy marked by high unemployment and low productivity.  We booked a 5 star Athens hotel near the Parthenon for less than we paid for a Comfort Inn in a dusty town in West Texas last January.  Home late on Friday June 13 after a 24 hour three-legged flight through Zurich & Washington DC.

Bourtzi - Venetian design

 The Bourtzi, alternately a residence for executioners of prisoners at Palamidi Castle, and a hotel (1930-1970) is illuminated by night in yellow lights and appears as a small golden fortress; by day it's a larger fort in the channel into the harbor.  The main meal this date was fresh roasted fish, boiled vegetables (looked like chard or spinach) and fried potatoes.  Tonight we opted for an Ouzo Snack, a plate of tasty hors d'ouvres and a couple glasses of Ouzo with the customary icecube.

Palamidi (thanks to wikipedia) (Greek: Παλαμήδι) is a fortress to the east of the Acronauplia in the town of Nafplio in thePeloponnese region of southern Greece. Nestled on the crest of a 216-metre high hill, the fortress was built by the Venetians during their second occupation of the area (1686–1715).

The fortress was a very large and ambitious project, but was finished within a relatively short period from 1711 until 1714. It is a typical baroque fortress based on the plans of the engineers Giaxich and Lasalle. In 1715 it was captured by the Turks and remained under their control until 1822, when it was captured by the Greeks.

The bastions of the fortress were originally named after the Venetian provveditori. However, when it fell to the Ottoman Empire, the bastions were given Turkish names. Lastly, when the Greeks overthrew the Turks the bastions were renamed after Greek saints. One of the bastions, called the "Miltiades," was used as the prison cell of Theodoros Kolokotronis, a hero of the Greek Revolution.