Athens - Day 4 (Part 3)

16 July 2025

Inside the citadel, the path winds through Cyclopean walls, each stone massive, fitted without mortar. The ancient Greeks believed only giants could have built them – and honestly, I believed it too. Everything felt oversized: the ambition, the strength, the sorrow.

Then I stood before the shaft graves of Grave Circle A, where Schliemann unearthed golden masks and called one of them Agamemnon. Even though modern archaeology doubts that claim, the feeling remains: that you are standing above the dead who once ruled legends. There’s no gold here now; only dust, and ghosts. This reminded me of Percy Shelley’s poem, “My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings!”

I walked around the entire complex, and came across underground cisterns used for water all those years ago. I walked the ridge in silence. The wind picked up. In the distance, I could see the whole Argive plain: olive trees, roads, villages, lives being lived.

Below the citadel, I entered the Treasury of Atreus, the so-called Tomb of Agamemnon. The entrance is long, dramatic, like a ceremonial throat leading into the earth. Inside, the great beehive-shaped chamber swallowed me in shadow. No carvings, no words. Just perfect symmetry and silence. A place where someone powerful was buried, and everyone else was meant to remember. A cicada, now coming alive in Greece (after 17 years?) flew out of the tomb, almost like an omen of doom.

I stood there a long time. The coolness of the stone, the hush of the air; it didn’t feel like a tomb. It felt like a heartbeat, paused in time. I didn’t take many photos. Mycenae isn’t a place to capture. It’s a place to feel. And to leave, a little changed.

Then back to the hotel, and to await my dear friend Silvia who will be arriving from Slovakia today!

We met with much fanfare and warmth. I really missed her – my really good friend from across the globe, where we don’t always meet, don’t always talk and exchange weeks or months of woe that is life, but when we do meet, it’s like picking up where we left off. We walked nowhere, in search of authentic local food, and finally we found it – quite a hidden place in a corridor of the busy streets of central Athens, in Omonoia Square, a stone’s throw away from our hotel. A true gem, frequented by locals, with reasonable prices.

Here we had Greek salad, tzatziki, fried squid and fried spry. It was too much, we couldn’t finish. But we had a good chat, full of warmth, familiarity, friendship and love. She said she would join me tomorrow for my expedition to the Oracle of Delphi, and I was simply elated. To have a friend on the trip – a true blessing!