Mother.....Mycenae.....Musings

When I said that I want to rent a car to visit Mycenae, my Mom immediately said "No I don't want to you to drive outside of Athens when you do not know enough Greek to follow the signs or be able to ask for help on the way". None of my defenses worked out. In the end it dawned on me that after all I want Mom to enjoy the vacation and why ruin that for her. What fun it would be if one of us was worrying. So, with smiles I asked the concierge to book us in the tour for Mycenae.  The bus promptly left the hotel around 7.00am.  First we visited Corinth. The land bridge that connects the Peloponnese peninsula and the mainland Greece was built sometime in the late 1800's.  After some photo shoots we were heading towards Mycenae. The olive groves and vineyards greeted us. The yummy Kalamata olives comes from this area.

Today, Mycenae is an archaeological site with ruins from the bronze age, the skeletal remains of a citadel, a town near the city Argos. Through Homer's epic Iliad we know more about the history of Helen "the face that launched thousand ships", Troy, Mycenae's opulence, its famous King Agamemnon's victory in the Trojan war. Facts or Fiction, his epics dated 10-11th century BC remain immortal.

One name that always connected to Mycenae is Heinrich Schliemann who had systematically excavated the sites at Mycenae and brought to light the Agamemnon's mask. But the  bronze age citadel and the Lion's Gate was excavated by the Greek archaeologist Kyriakos Pittakis.  Our tour group made Ah... and Oh... sounds and with camera's clicking we looked at the famous Lion's gate that belongs to the bronze age architecture perhaps around 1600 BC -1000 BC that represent the connector of bronze age into classical Greece.  My  Mom was quite happy to see the sites and said that she always imagine the big picture of how this would have looked in the ancient past.

The arid mountains and the dry summer breeze rustling thru the Olive trees whispered that humans are part of that history, integrated event of migration, knowledge sharing, and continuous improvement or detriment. In our journey on this earth, we can only rediscover or reinvent, but cannot create a universe with a sun and a moon.

The tour guide announced that lunch will be served in a nice vineyard boutique restaurant and the vegetarians will get a special Greek salad with fresh feta cheese and yogurt.





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