greece 2002/03

greece 2002/03

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Athens - Acropolis

Athens - Agora, Hotels,
Kerameikos & Roman Agora

Athens - Temple of Olympian Zeus, Theatre of Dionysus & Friends

Delphi

Epidavros

Ferry Crossing

Festos

Gortina

Iraklio

Knossos

Malia & Mikines

Nafplio

Olympia

Ossios Loukas & Airplanes

Introduction

First, a confession. We hadn't intended to go to Greece this year. Rather, our plans revolved around Egypt. Dannette and I had been studying up on the dynasties, listening to lectures, watching documentaries, and, in fact, D was learning hieroglyphics... But, as Fall arrived, there were more and more travel advisories from the State Dept, war seemed more and more likely, and we let fear get the better of us.

So, we switched gears to another ancient culture, in a place that was likely to have a reasonable climate during December. Greece has several things to recommend it -- beyond the lack of potentially strong anti-American unrest and the lack of heavy rain. "Cradle of western culture" is probably at the top of the list of attractions in Greece, in winter, when the beaches are chilly and the Mediterranean's water is cold (even if it was really the Roman view of Hellenism that shaped western culture until the 19th Century rather than Greek culture per se).

We were also able to make use of personal connections in planning and executing our travels: A colleague of mine and his wife are Greek, and offered useful advice. The sister and brother-in-law of one of Dannette's colleagues live in Athens -- and so were able to offer advice and some entertaining. My folks had covered some of the same territory D and I would cover, during the war against Afghanistan.

The Trip

If you step through the pages, you'll be following our trip in alphabetical, rather than chronological, order. (But at least the pages are grouped well this time, by location, rather than at random, as with previous sites...) We tried to travel in historical order. That means we started with four days on Crete, checking out the Minoan civilization that started more than 2000 years BCE. We then moved on to Nafplio, where we stayed for two days while we visited Mikines (Mycenae, from Homeric times about 1000 BCE) and Epidavros (from classical times, c. 450 BCE). The rest of the trip consisted of classical era sites: One night in Olympia, two nights in Delphi (to allow a side trip to Ossios Loukas), and then four nights in Athens. Of course, we saw things other than ancient Greek stones: There were some Roman ruins, the occasional Byzantine site, some elements left from the Venetian occupation during the Renaissance, and some Turkish stuff from afterwards. And a lot of cafes playing a combination of trance and house music.

So it might go without saying, but Greece is "southern europe" both culturally as well as geographically. That meant it took me a week of driving in the US after our trip to get used to the idea that driving in the shoulder, passing on any road, at any time, at any speed, is not the norm everywhere. The language is a bit more of a challenge than just about anything else in Europe, if for no other reason than there being no Roman alphabet. You'll note that within this site, the same Greek word may be written more than one way, and that the links to other sites will take you to places where the same word(s) may again be written differently. This is the nature of the language. Luckily, many road signs in Greece have both Greek characters and a transliteration in Roman characters. But since the same Greek town can be written three or four different ways in Roman characters, it can be a challenge to go the right direction every time.

Books, etc.

In preparation for the trip, we, of course, reviewed all the information we could. In addition to speaking with all those mentioned above; we read, listened and watched what we could. We can recommend the Learning Company lectures titled "Ancient Greece" -- even for those who have no intention of going to Greece. The other series we listened to, "Famous Greeks" was less compelling but interesting, nonetheless. Dannette listened to a few "How to Speak Greek" tapes/CDs, but in the end it turned out that we confused people less by saying even the basic things in English. Etc. Etc.

For guidebooks, we started with Lonely Planet (both the complete country book and the Crete guide). These were useful, but not as good as they are for some areas. Our Athens hotel was one example. But even before departing, the recommendation to use the Blue Guides for cultural background was not ideal: I ended up liking the Oxford Archeological Guide to Greece much better, though it does overlook Crete completely, which was annoying. The Blue Guides stayed home, in fact. The Michelin Green Guide turned out to be pretty useful. A little sparse for some spots, but if I only had one cultural guide it would have been the one.

Photos

This may be the last trip on which I shoot film photos. (I'll still bring a film camera as a backup.) Most of the single shot photos you see here were shot with an *excellent* point-and-shoot 35mm camera made by Yashica with a Zeiss lens. The negatives were then scanned by a professional scanning service. Part of the problems with them (graininess and excessive contrast range) are my fault: I decided to shoot the whole trip on 800 speed film, which was nice when shooting indoors, like at a museum, but which wasn't ideal anywhere else. (400 speed would have been a better choice.)

All of the panoramas you see were shot with a digital point-and-shoot camera (a Canon Powershot S10). Some of the single shot photos are also from this camera. In comparing this camera's pictures with the film pictures, it is true that a good film negative has higher resolution that what I can shoot with my 2 megapixel camera. But other than that, the digital wins in every way: Easier to transport a few hundred shots on a memory card, rather than in endless rolls of film; nice to be able to review shots to make sure we got what we want; quicker to get things online; etc. etc.

So next time I'll invest in more memory for the digital camera, and shoot exclusively on it so long as it's working well. (Maybe a higher resolution camera is in order at some point. Ideally, I'd find a digital Olympus body that could use OM series lenses. But these are for another trip.)

Panoramas: And for those that have an interest in panoramas -- how I made them, etc., there is a great site that knows far more about it than I do: http://www.panoguide.com

Bandwidth: If you're going to view this site via a dialup modem, you will have to be patient. The pictures (especially the panoramas) are larger than ever, some exceeding a half megabyte. To help matters, we can burn you CD of the site, which means you can view it on your computer, without connecting to the Internet. If that appeals to you, please let us know.

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