Mark & Linda's Tzatziki Tour of Greece, October 2017.
Nestoros, Pylos, Friday, 2017.10.13.
Nestor's Palace, Pylos, highly evolved since I saw it on December 21st, 1979.
Until today we've visited Classical sites. This is our first Bronze Age dig, the civilization which Homer sang about in The Iliad.
It's unfortunate that visitors are nowadays unable to walk around unobstructed. You can understand why. The sites are far more visited now than two generations ago, and not every visitor is a university student who can be reasonably relied on not to carve their initials into things. In 1979 there was a roof, but the dig itself was wide open: we could walk inside the rooms, touch the queen's bathtub, climb between the walls. Now movement is restricted, and there's a charge for admission. It's still extraordinary.
There's a lovely nearby Archaeological Museum of Chora housing artifacts from this dig: gorgeous. Difficult to find, but all kindsa worth it.
In 1979 after exploring the site, my friends Annie and Margie and I hitched a ride into Chora on the back of a tractor piled high with bags of freshly-harvested olives on the way to processing. Vivid, happy memory.
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