Soo many stairs....

We started this morning still in Napflion, ready to conquer the trek to the Acronafplia fortress on the highest surrounding hill. We made it up the 999 stairs (my mom attempted counting, but lost track at 850…really, loose track then?!). Anyways, it was so cool once we were there, not to mention all of the gorgeous views along the way. The fortress was surprisingly not in ruins! It’s got to be about the first site we made an effort to see that is actually intact. Check out some of the pictures below, you can see the hill that we made it to yesterday and where we went swimming!

The area on the to left is where we hiked to yesterday

This is the beach we swam at yesterday! So many people were already swimming at 11am

Center part of the fortress

My dad and I at the front part of the fortress

The walls had these pretty flowers scattered throughout

After we departed the beautiful town to head back to Athens. Along the way we stopped at Epidaurus and then at the Corinthian columns. Epidaurus consisted of ruins (duh) and a huge theater, which was the main highlight. The Outdoor Theater was absolutely huge, it seats about 14,000 people, with incredible acoustics. There was a flat middle stone in the center of the stage, that if you stood on it and spoke, you literally sounded like you were on a microphone. Needless to say, we all tried it out, but my dad got told that if you are going to speak, you must speak in Greek. That’s a joke. Pretty sure I’ve been told how to say thank you at least three times but I still have no idea how to—yes I am one of those people unfortunately.

Just a part of the outdoor theater

The most famous Corinthian columns at Apollo's palace

After we stopped at the Corinthian column since we missed them on our way over to Napflion. I was ridiculously tired and hot, so naturally I was stoked to get out of the air-conditioned car and walk around through some more ruins in the blazing sun. Glad I can say I went and the pictures are worth it! Plus, the picture on our travel book is of the Corinthian columns, so it was pretty much a necessity.

Side of the Apollos Palace

Done with our car sightseeing adventure, we headed back to Athens. My parents had done a remarkably well job driving through the crazy streets that apparently no rules apply to. Road lines, signs and speeds are merely suggestions, basically any maneuver that doesn’t hit anything or anyone is acceptable—props to my mom driving stick and to my dad who navigated quite well… I mean for the whole trip up until trying to get back to our hotel in the city. Getting through the city was a struggle and a half and that’s all I’ll say about that….

All in all, I’m so glad that we made the trip and stopped at all the sights along the way! Tomorrow we’re out of Athens and off to Santorini… soo stoked.

We pulled over to look at this gorgeous view