Weather: Sunny
Temperature: 35+
Today was the last day of our bus tour of mainland Greece and we made an early start with cases needing to be placed at our doors at 7.30am with a departure time of 8.15am.
We knew this was going to be our longest day in the bus when we booked the tour however it wasn’t too bad as we stopped every two or so hours and we visited ancient Pella on the way which managed to break up the journey for us.
Pella is only 40 kms from Thessaloniki and was the ancient capital of Macedonia from 413 BC until it was invaded by the Romans in 168AD. It is also where Phillip II and Alexander the Great were born. Pella was well placed strategically as it was near the sea and road routes. Today it sits 23 kms inland due to the silting of the delta into the Thermaic Gulf.
The museum supporting the site has magnificent displays of the items retrieved from Pella including several large mosaic floors, coins, pottery, votives to the gods and a reconstruction of a potter’s workshop as it was found on site. We watched a film about the site which was had a very quick rat-a-tat dialogue. It was very unlike yesterday’s video which was so slow I was nodding off!
The ancient Pella is set out in a grid like structure with two ancient roads traversing the centre. We were able to see the House of Dionysus which had its magnificent mosaics removed to the museum. The mosiac “Panther and Griffin tearing apart a Deer” is very large and made out of pebbles as are the other mosaics as well.
The old site of Pella comprised of 1000 acres and it is still being excavated. The site was uncovered in 1957 and had to be drained of marshland to excavate. The expansive palace is still being excavated (and not able to be accessed) and a vast majority of the site is yet to be touched. Like quite a few ruined sites we have seen it was badly affected by an earthquake and was gradually covered by silt over time.
We made our way down the coastline overlooking gorgeous little towns including Paraloria which has views to the large island of Evvoia.
As we had joined this particular tour after Delphi we once again visited the statue recognising the Spartan Leonaidos’ bravery against the Persians. Our attention was drawn to the 300 Cyprus trees planted in honour of the Spartan warriors who died in the second Persian invasion. Their immortal words: “come and get me if you can”…..a very loose translation has now made its way down in history.
We had a couple more stops and the temperature hovered around 35 degrees. We entered Athens from the north which presented a much more pleasant aspect of the Greek capital compared to the route from the airport and Piraeus – much less graffiti and half-finished or empty buildings. We were dropped off at the hotel about 8pm, had a quick tidy up and headed out the Plaka. We were determined to find a taverna with music and celebrate our last night in Athens and Desley and Cameron’s 20th wedding anniversary! On our first day in Athens we dined at a lovely little tavern in the middle of the Plaka which we loved so we set out to find it. After a few hit and misses we eventually found it at the same time enjoying an evening stroll which seems to be an Athen’s pastime. We had a lovely evening sitting outside the restaurant with our beers, carafe of rose and delicious Greek food including spinach slice, stuffed tomatoes and capsicum, Greek salad, stuffed vine leaves and deep fried zucchini balls.
We looked around at the tourist shops but as it was already about 10.30 pm we had somehow lost our energy and we made our way back to the Hotel Amalia for a 5.45am wake up to catch the taxi to the port. Next stop: Mykonos!
We voted for our favourite ancient sites as we did for Athens. See what you think:
1. Delphi – Temple of Apollo;
2. Meteora – where monasteries sit high on rocks;
3. Tomb of Phillip II – the intact tomb of Alexander the Great’s father;
4. Epidaurus – the ancient stadium with perfect acoustics;
5. Pella – ancient capital of Macedonia.
No comments:
Post a Comment