The meltemi winds of the Aegean carried us to Nafplio, a delightful sheltered city in the Peloponnese. Peloponnese means the island of Pelops, so technically we were still on an island, even though it was in the mainland!
Some of our guests seized the opportunity to visit and climb the 999 steps of the early 18th century Venetian fort called Palamidi. They were then able to explore the very first capital of Greece, with its characteristic narrow streets and old architecture covered in gigantic bougainvillea.
The majority of our group opted to visit two highlight sites in the area: Mycenae, the city of Agamemnon who lead the war against Troy to bring back beautiful Helen, according to Homer; and Epidaurus, an ancient healing center with the best preserved classical theatre in the world! We set out to take over the impressive prehistoric citadel of Mycenae with the gigantic cyclopean walls that have been standing tall for over 3,000 years. We gazed down at the famous Lions Gate of the fort, looked at the six graves where Heinrich Schliemann discovered the bodies of a royal family showered in 30 pounds of gold, silver, amber, bronze and other materials objects in 1876, and finally made it to the top of the hill to see the Throne Room where Agamemnon ruled from. Below the citadel we also explored the underground Treasury of Aterus, which is the royal tomb of Agamemnon’s father. The tomb is over 3,000 years old and the domed structure still stands proud.
At the end of our exciting morning, we traveled a few centuries forward in time to Epidaurus to visit a unique Greek theatre from the 4th century B.C. The theatre has a 14,000 seats capacity and it still has the best acoustics one can get thanks to its excellent state of preservation. In ideal conditions one can hear a coin fall, a breath or even a match being lit, even from the top 55th row! There were all kinds of props inside the theatre as it is used every summer for evening performances.
The winds were so good that the crew were able to put all the sails up after lunch and several of us went out on the Zodiacs for a photo safari to capture images of this glorious ship with almost all its sails up!
