Amphipolis - a scavenger hunt of ruins

In my initial research of Amphipolis, I described this location as having "scattered ruins", but they were Level 5 quality.  When it came time to make sense of that note, Google maps couldn't find a single archeological site because the ruins were, in fact, scattered all over town--a wall here, a lion there, a gymnasium located in the middle of something, a tomb off the side of the highway...  At Randall's encouragement, we started backward with the museum, figuring they would be able to tell us where to go.  The ever helpful desk agent told me the map was part of the exhibits.  No.  But the shot I took outside the museum ended up saving the day.



Now, I haven't navigated off a static map in years, and certainly not one that has no street names, but with the help of our designated museum monitor, we found the Tomb of Brasidas beneath the museum.  The fact that you had to approach it by going outside the museum, through the underground tunnel and around the back of the building, where there was no path or sign would have made this more of a challenge without our guide.



She gave us some other helpful directions-- that the North Wall was right from the museum, and the attendant would open the bridge.   Amphipolis is not a large city, but the museum is at an angle to the streets on a corner, to we had to guess at which direction "right" was.  We guessed correctly, and ultimately, it was hard to miss from the road.



The bridge was then further up the street (although the attendant must have been on a lunch break because we saw no one in either location).  Then following the river, I told Randall to turn right to cross whatever the next bridge was and take the left at the fork in the road, and suddenly we were confronted with this:



Yep.  The Lion of Amphipolis!  Emboldened by my victory, we then backtracked to the other side of the river, and followed the curved line past the first left, which was little more than a chromatodromos, past the second left, which went to a gated area, and to the third left which had a split road, and took the left fork north.  The road stopped being paved after about 100m, but we persevered, and found the gymnasium, surprising the attendant for approaching from the unmarked side.



Our guide told that the Macedonian Tomb was "not open", but we went for it anyway since there was a sign for it, not just on the map, but off the highway.  After all, why would they go to all that trouble of identifying it if there weren't something to see?  After a couple of false starts down some chromatodromos that led to olive groves, we realized that it was right at the intersection.  The issue however, wasn't that it wasn't open, although it was gated up and covered in corrugated steel, but that there really wasn't much to see.



All in all, I collected most of the items from the list, which makes it a good day!