July 3rd - Day 23

Sanctuary of Artemis Orthia

We started the morning walking around Ancient Sparta and visited the Artemis Orthia and Spartan Museum. The Artemis Orthia was a site dedicated to the goddess Artemis and where the Spartans would carry out rituals to honor the goddess. One such ritual involved the whipping young boys (probably between the ages of 13-17) and by the Roman times this ritual had developed into a blood spectacle and a theater was built at the temple site in order to witness it. There were also dances performed by young men and choruses of girls.

Hector

After touring the sanctuary we continued our stroll through Sparta and made our way to the Spartan Museum, which is a very small site. I got to see the stele that were dedicated by athletes at the Temple of Athena located on the Spartan Acropolis, which is one of the things I talked about in my site presentation. I thought that was kinda cool. When we finished at the museum we got on the bus and started to make our way to Pylos where we will spend the next 2 days.

Mystas

One the way we made two stops: one at Mystras and another at Methoni. Mystras is a Byzantine fortification. It has several really cool Byzantine churches, which are said to have some pretty well preserved mosaics. However the majority of them were closed when we got there and I have to admit that I wasn't as excited about this site as some of the other things we have seen. We did make friends with a donkey which we came across behind one of the churches. We named him Hector and he was very friendly.

Methoni

When we finished at Mystras, we headed to Methoni, another Byzantine fortification. We couldn't go inside because apparently Bella got it confused with another site which was open later, and it was closed when we got there. We were able to walk around the outside of it and see some of the structure and I felt bad for our site presenter who couldn't really show us anything but the walls. As such, we spend only a short while there before getting back onto the bus and heading to Pylos and our hotel. Our hotel is located right on the beach and the town surrounding it is catered to tourists, so there are lots of little restaurants around. Our rooms all have balconies that overlook the water and the views are wonderful! We had dinner at this little place called Gregory's Tavern and the food was delicious. They didn't have menus, so the waitress took us back to the kitchen were the cooks showed us all the different foods they had. I ordered rice stuffed tomatoes and peppers and they were so good! After dinner we strolled around the town for a bit before turning in for the night.

View from hotel balcony :)