Ruins!

The view

One of the things they don't tell you about the ancient Greek rulers is that they liked to have their citadels or fortified city on the biggest mountain they could build on. I don't know if they had a Yertle the Turtle thing going on or they just wanted a really nice view. But almost every citadel or fortified city in Greece is on a really big mountain because it was strategically smart. Since all the  ancient sites are on mountains, that means there are signs to them to lure people like us or old-pile-of-rocks lovers to come look at their "archaeological site".  Of course "archaeological site" means any pile of rocks or a place that once HAD an old pile of rocks and that means lots of their signs are very misleading. For example, yesterday my dad saw a sign for an acropolis so he turned up the road which turned into a dirt road that climbed all the way up a mountain. At the top it was just a old concrete building with the sign for “acropolis”. Though the next time we stopped for a archaeological site sign it was a lot better .

Lets get artsy!!

We were on our way to Athens but stopped at Mycenae. At one time Agamemnon was the ruler there . It was said that at one point in time he controlled all of Greece from Mycenae .  He also had a really nice tomb that is shaped like an upside down ice cream cone and then covered in dirt so it was just part of the slope. He also must have had a thing for really monumental entrances. The walk way in to his tomb that cuts into the slope is lined with really big rocks on both sides then a massive doorway into the tomb. When you stand in the center of the tomb and just whisper it gets amplified and you can hear it all around the chamber. After that we had seen most of what there was to see so we continued our course to Athens.

The famous lions over the doorway

Inside

The tomb enterance