More of Greece

FG has gone off to Birmingham for a miniature gamesday, to play with all the other geeks and to have several of his books signed...and I am at home, lazing about, planning some serious writing and various other boring things like catching up on some dvd's and reading.

I am also looking at which of our pics we took on our recent holiday I should copy across to CD so we can go have them printed off to carry on our giant collage. And here are some of them.

Parthenon at night.

Temple of Poseidon - Cape Sounion

Stunning bronze statue recovered from an ancient shipwreck. It is assumed that it represents Paris, holding out the apple of strive, to the three goddesses, which of course, was the cause (or the popular legend alludes to it being the cause) of the start of the war of Troy.

Shattered war helm from the museum.

Incredibly long, winding, mountaineous road to Sparta. The scenic route. Please note the miniscule monastery built on the side of the mountain - naturally, it is much bigger in real life, this is merely and indication of the size of these mountains.

One of the many shrines we saw on our travels - these are kept up by the local community, with either a figure or picture representation of a saint which they feel closest to. And most of them are roadside shrines.

The deserted city of Mistra - outside of Sparta. Beautiful and remote and exceedingly eerie. Because of the high threat of fires in the region, they had closed down the site, so we couldn't actually go wander around there. We did however have superb cameras and got some excellent shots.

So, instead of being able to see Mistra, we went toAncient Sparta instead - this rather camp statue of the Spartan King Leonidas stands a few hundred metres from the entrance to the ancient city. According to the concierge at our hotel, not many tourists visit Sparta. But a lot of Greek fathers bring their sons out for the day to walk around the ancient city and pay respects to Leonidas - to them, he still represents the way to deport yourself in the face of adversity. We thought was incredibly cool.

Theatre in Ancient Sparta.

On Zakynthos. The blue caves. I didn't actually believe water could be this colour...but it is. Amazing, or what?