And now, back to Greece:
Nafplio (Days 5 and 6)
Nafplio was our base for the next two and a half days of the Greece trip, from which we took day trips to see nearby places of interest. The city itself was very nice - relatively quiet and free of tourists, and much cleaner and calmer than Athens. The architecture in the city gave it a very interesting character; there were ancient mosques from when the Ottomans took over the city in the 16th century, alongside Venetian-style buildings (who retook the city, then lost it to the Ottomans again, who then lost it to the Greeks, whew!) among all the Greek buildings as well.
We left the first morning for an excursion to the archeological site of Mycenae, what was once the center of Greek civilization from as far back as the 2nd millennium BC (sorry if I sound like a guidebook). It's also where the king Agamemnon, the inspiration for Homer's poems, resided. We walked among the ruins and Cyclopean walls (described as such because only a cyclops ought to have been capable of building them) and took some time to soak in the history. We also stopped off at the Tomb of Agamemnon nearby, before heading to another archeological site, the Theatre of Epidaurus.
The theater dates from the 4th century BC, where it was built in the asclepieion where Greek citizens would go for healing and relaxation. Ancient playwrights such as Aristophanes, Euripides and Sophocles staged plays at the site. What's fascinating about the theater is its amazing acoustics. We climbed all the way to the top row of seats, and from the center of the stage we could hear our professor dropping coins on the ground. Apparently there have been attempts to replicate the theater's natural acoustics, but no one has been able to.
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| You could hear a coin drop even from the top row! |
We returned to Nafplio late in the afternoon, where we had free time to do whatever we wanted. And what did me and a few friends want to do? Climb nine-hundred and ninety-nine steps to visit an eighteenth century fortress on the top of a giant hill. Let me just say, I don't think I have ever climbed so many stairs in my life as I have on this Greece trip. After a sufficient work-out getting up to the fortress, we spent several hours exploring every nook and cranny of the place, of which there were many. We intrepidly traversed the entire fortress, climbing through pitch black tunnels and shimmying along walls, at which point I felt a little like Indiana Jones. Then, about a hour or so before sunset, we headed back down the stairs (another trek) and went to the beach nearby to go swimming and cool off from all that exercise! For dinner, we ate gyros and gelato from a local Italian gelateria run by friends of our professors (even in Greece you cannot escape gelato)!
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| 999 stairs (because having 1000 stairs would be too obvious) |
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| A small portion of the Fortress of Palamidi |
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| Infiltrating the fortress walls |
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| The view from the top was worth the climb |
We returned to the mountains the following day, driving about two hours to the ancient and well-known city of Sparta, where we climbed more ruins (I'm getting very good at ruin-climbing; I'm thinking about doing it for a living).
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| Spartan ruins |
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| More Spartan ruins |
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| Ruin-climbing professionals |
After that sidetrip, we reached the village of Karyes on Mt. Parnonas.
Karyes is an extremely small village; it's population is less than 1000
(so less than the amount of steps I climbed the day before) and it's
where our guide Ioanna's family is from. As a result, the locals were
extremely inviting and ridiculously friendly. We had a delicious meal of
local foods, followed by a scavenger hunt in the village, and a visit
to one gentleman's very own wine cellar, where we tasted some really
amazing local wine. In the evening, we sat outside the cafes in the
village's main square and they gave us Greek coffee (very strong!) and
oukoumades, which are something akin to homemade donuts, served hot and
doused in honey.
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| And insanely delicious! |
While we were eating, the lights in the village
went out, so after the sun set, the locals brought out candles and we
all sat around talking and eating in the dark, with a little
candlelight. It was really a wonderful time. We returned to our hotel in
Nafplio very late, and I went to sleep almost instantaneously! We said goodbye to Nafplio the next morning, setting out for our final destination: Mykonos!
