we ate breakfast from the bakery then headed out to the nearby theatre of epidavros. navigating the car out from nafplio was much more straightforward than athens, and since we had arrived after dark this was our first chance to really get a sense of the local scenery.

epidavros is a massive construction, and features one of the best-preserved ancient theatres in greece. the acoustics there are so ideal that you can hear almost flawlessly from the top row, a fact which the tour groups continually demonstrated with various songs and calls. the theatre is in such good condition that it is used for local music festivals and theatre events. the rest of the site is an ancient shrine of healing, where the sick would come to be healed by the gods, and later, medicine. parts of the site were being restored and it will certainly be a better site in a few year’s time.

from epidavros we took a few wrong turns attempting to head towards ancient corinth.. it worked out alright, until we actually reached corinth. then we accidentally got on the national highway and travelled for about 45 minutes and through a tollboth (€2.00) before the next exit. after considering how time-consuming backtracking would be, we decided instead to continue on to mycenae and perhaps leave ancient corinth for another day.

we headed back towards nafplio and the massive fortress of ancient mycenae. situated on a hill between two mountains it has an impressive and easily-defended location. unfortunately, with the pacification of the greek countryside the location became simply inconvenient. the site is famous for several large grave sites that had not been looted, as well as impressive tholos tombs. we hiked down the dark, treacherous stairs into the cistern but unfortunately i had brought my zipka a few thousand miles just to leave it at the hotel. we toured the impressive museum and got our requisite shots of the lion gate before hiking a few hundred meters down the road to the treasurey of atreus. we were lucky enough to see it empty, as we were leaving two tour bus loads were entering the tomb.

after we got back we had some daylight left so we decided to check out half of the fortifications in nafplio. we hiked up and got some excellent views of the city and saw the sun setting behind the clouds brilliantly. we then hiked back down to the beach and into town for some lunch. with a few more hours to kill, i wandered off and saw the city outside the square. after i got bored of sightseeing i found a taverna and had rabbit stifado and house wine for dinner, a delicious bargain at only €8.30!