Let's Get Mythical

City where the walls were built by Cyclops? Box ticked.

Yesterday I went to the ruins of Mycenae, a town built by the son of a God; a man whose claim to fame was cutting the head off a gorgon. Home town of Agamemnon: a man who led the mythical ten year siege of a town that may or may not have existed.

Still the ruins were proper old. But then I guess they had to be seeing as cyclops have been extinct a fair while.

This trip is the first time I've used TripAdvisor. Not sure I get it. Don't get me wrong, I love a ranking as much as the next geek and (as, if you've read anything I've ever written, you will know) I'm not above a snarky dismissal of something of historical or cultural importance. I just don't know how you can filter through the mire of uninformed nonsense on there to find any way of benchmarking anything. Admittedly, my research was limited to something in the region of eight minutes, so there could well be an "ignore all idiots" button which I missed. But:

Case Study 1 - the Bavarian Lion
Synopsis of review: it's off the beaten track but well worth the effort of getting there.
TripAdvisor rating 4 out of 5.

Reality: A mediocre (but respectfully monumental) statue of a lion in a grave yard in the suburbs.

So what is that 4 out of 5 rating for then. Surely it can't be of all "tourist attractions" everywhere (I'm not even going to start on the semantics of what constitutes a tourist attraction). I would have said that the Parthenon was the only genuine five star-er in the country. Which would put the lion on par with the Agora, the monasteries in Meteora or the ruins of Delphi. It's not. On this basis you are looking at one star at best.

Is it of things to do in Nafplio? It's neither the biggest nor the most activity-packed town I've ever been to but it does have three castles, four museums, a beach, a "charming" old town and Unesco approved ruins. I wouldn't have thought that the lion would out muscle them.

So is it of lion statues? Well I'm no expert on lion statues but the ones in trafalgar square are better. And I think there's a pretty good one in the British Museum.  And a pretty famous one in Switzerland. If we're using the Lucerne Lion as our five star, lion statue benchmark then the Bavarian lion is a solid two, maybe nudging a three if you catch it when you're in a good mood. Rather than in the mood of someone who has sweated through suburbia to see a not-to-be-missed sight rather than a mediocre lion statue.

So what does the four stars relate to? Answers on a postcard marked "Too much time thinking about things that don't matter".