Greeking Out, Part 1

A fabulous find from our Worldschooling group this year is a podcast called Greeking Out which is all about Greek Mythology.  We have listened to the entire series and are sad we are at the point where we are only listening week by week now as the new episodes come out.  We have learned so much about Greek mythology.  There are stories I know or knew but forgot the details, but tons of stories I’ve never heard of!  Occasionally there are other mythology stories from other parts of the world, which are also fascinating to hear.  But it’s by and large Greek myths. 

They had a season each devoted to The Iliad and The Odyssey, but in a way that was engaging and interesting for both kids and adults.  Having read Homer’s Iliad in the past, I wasn’t too excited to make my way through reading the Odyssey.  So, this was perfect for me!  But often the myths are one podcast story or sometimes two.

The girls were thrilled at the prospect of going to see so many places we have heard about in Greeking Out podcasts and read in other Greek mythology books in the past.  Granted, there are so many places, many being on islands, in Turkey, and Sicily that we aren’t going to see everything.  But we are seeing a few of the key ones.

We are spending the first half of our time in Greece in the north of the Peloponnese region, in Derveni.  During our stay here, we are trying to see many locations in this region and a bit north.  We will see several others when we move down to the south of the Peloponnese for the second half of our Greece stay.  So far, we have made it to Athens and south of Athens, as discussed in a different post.  We have also visited Delphi, Corinth, and Epidaurus.

Delphi is the home of the famous Oracle of Delphi at the Temple of Apollo.  The original Oracle prophesized from a rock under the guidance of Gaia and the protection of Gaia’s python daughter.  Until Apollo killed said python and Gaia decided to leave Delphi.  Apollo took control of Delphi, building himself a temple for people to worship him.  The Oracle decided to stay and work with him, taking on Pithia as part of her name in honour of her python protector.  She moved into the temple for her prophesizing.

There were various ruins in Delphi, including various treasuries, a theatre, an agora, a few other buildings, and the crowning glory, the Temple of Apollo.  What we most wanted to see was the original rock that the first Oracle prophesized from, which we did get to see.  We enjoyed seeing all the other remains, as well, but that was the highlight for us. 

We were similarly banned from bringing Katia’s stuffy inside or taking photos with it, apparently as it is disrespectful for kids to bring toys into an ancient archaeological site.  But I took on the one woman’s wrath so that Katia could show her beloved stuffed owl, Hedwig, the rock and the Temple of Apollo.  Anyone who thinks my kid doesn’t respect the gods and ancient sites because she wants to share these sights and moments with Hedwig is ignorant and not worth obeying, in my opinion.  Katia is utterly devoted to the Greek gods and these moments are what she’s been waiting all year to experience.

Thankfully, other than the Acropolis and Delphi, no one else cared or said anything about the stuffy coming into any historical sites in Greece.

Ancient Corinth was an important location and also had a Temple of Apollo.  This god gets around!  We looked at the ruins from outside the gates.  Each site you go into is crazy expensive, minimum entrance fee of $50 CAD for our family of four.  Since we had seen quite a few remains up close by now, we decided that we were happy to walk along the exterior fence of the ruins and look inside for this one.

We did go into modern-day Corinth, as well.  We walked along the waterfront, saw the statues of Pegasus and Poseidon (Poseidon was a bit out of town), walked the pedestrian streets, and had some lunch.  It was a larger and more bustling city, and finding parking was definitely a stressful challenge.  But once in the town, it was cute to walk around and see.

As we were leaving Corinth, we made our way over to the Isthmus of Corinth, a man-made canal connecting the Gulf of Corinth to the Mediterranean, as that was something I was really interested in seeing.  We went down near where it opens into the Gulf of Corinth first, then to the main tourist area to view it.  It was impressive! 

Building this canal was something that many of the ancient Greek and Roman rulers wanted to attempt, as well as more modern historical era leaders.  It was finally achieved in the 1800s.  It’s too small today for most modern boats to go through, and there have been periods when they’ve needed to close the canal due to rock stability issues.  But there are still plenty of pleasure boats that make their way through here.  We saw many of them! 

We also saw signs that you can bungee jump here.  Good lord, the thought of that makes me nauseous!  Katia is our little adventurous daredevil, but even she thought the concept of jumping off that bridge was insane.  Thank God that child has some sense!

We went on a day trip down to the Theatre at the Ancient City of Epidaurus and the Stadium at the Asclepieion of Epidaurus.  This area was considered the birthplace of Western medicine.  It was a massive healing area where people went to heal and convalesce, but also to gather in general.  There were temples here for worshipping Asclepios, the god of medicine.  There was a hostel/hospital area that was partitioned into four sections, built so that two sections could not be accessed by the other two sections to quarantine as needed during contagious outbreaks.  There were feast halls, walking trails, exercise tracks and areas, and sooooo much more.  This site was massive and really impressive to see. 

This site also had the most impressive-looking theatre remains we have seen so far, and we have seen a lot of theatres!  And the acoustics were so impressive.  There was a disc in the centre, and when you stood on it the entire theatre of 14,000 spectators could hear every word no matter where they were seated!  We each took our turn standing there and speaking, and it was fascinating to feel the sound reverberate back to you in the air.  We also watched from afar while someone dropped a coin onto the stone disc, which you could also hear clear as day throughout the theatre.  I don’t know if even modern-day acoustics are this impressive!

We still have several places we want to go.  We put a hold on our trip to Meteora, which I really want to see.  That’s the only place up north we still want to explore.  We also want to go to Ancient Olympia where they had the first-ever Olympics and let the girls run on the track that the first Olympians ran on.  We want to go to Sparta, Mystras, Kalamata, Monemvasia, and several other places! 

We will be busy with day trips again when we get down to Valira.  But for now, we have been alternating one day on the road, one day relaxing or nearby for 2.5 weeks.  It’s time to ease off on the day trips, which are burning us out, blowing way past our daily budget, and exhausting us to be driving so much. On average, each site we go to costs us about $125 just for gas, tolls, and entrance fees.  It’s practically impossible to go anywhere without tolls, which are expensive and add up in a hurry! 

We also try to bring as much food as we can in our cooler bag, but these 10-to-12-hour days mean that we are inevitably needing to eat out more than we like on road trip days.  And Greece is insanely expensive to eat out!  We have found it to be either first or second place for the most expensive country to visit and eat out, either tied with or slightly behind the UK.  But it has been worth it to see and experience the places we have read so much about in the history books or heard about in Greek mythology.  The history and culture are amazing and we are so grateful for the opportunity to experience it firsthand!