Mycenae 1972

While going through some boxes of "stuff" on the 3rd floor I came across a photo album of pictures taken during my six month Navy Med cruise in 1972. 

You can see in the photo how the XO doing my evaluation came up with "Petty Officer Emery has a tendency to be lax about the need for a haircut and trimming of his beard".

This was also a time when sailors were recently allowed to leave the ship to go on liberty in a foreign port not wearing our uniforms. We were actually allowed to keep some civilian clothes on board the ship although there was not very much room to store them.

We spent a lot of time during that cruise conducting NATO exercises around Greece and Turkey. In June of that year we spent two weeks on an extended liberty call in Athens, Greece. Actually we were tied up to a pier in Piraeus which is the seaport for Athens and takes about 20 minutes to get there. We spent a lot of time in Athens itself but also took bus trips to the many tourist sites in the region. One of them was to Mycenae which was about an hour and a half bus ride.

Mycenae was an amazing place and worth the trip. I took a lot of pictures that day especially when we were going across the Isthmus of Corinth which was spectacular. 

Another amazing trip was to the site of the ancient Battle of Marathon which was about an hour north of Athens. 

We made several liberty calls in Greece and Crete during that six month cruise.