Peloponnese

Let's see... Friday I was up at 5.30 for my 6am taxifor my 7am ferry, all generally uneventful. Well, I did overpay the taxi by accident but it wasn't too big a deal because I saved myself about 20 euro on the ferry ticket. There was a couple from NZ in my hostel in Istanbul who mentioned that if you're in the economy section then they don't check tickets so you can buy a ticket to the first port and hang out on the boat until the last stop so I paid 16.80 instead of 34.50. It worked a treat and I arrived in Piraeus without arrest or confrontation! Then the metro and bus to the bus station and a bus to Nafplio, where I am now!


The bus station was funny actually, it was full of men in uniform. Well, not full enough for it to be a group moving somewhere but there were police outside, Navy and Airforce inside... I think they had to wait for the Army and Firefighters before the strip show could begin!


Ok, on the weird keyboard front, this one is totally normal and acts exactly as expected... EXCEPT whenever I hit the apostrophe it jumps up a line so whatever follows the apostrophe ends up in the middle of the line above! It's crazy, but in a kind of fun way. Quirky, I like it.


Anyway, Saturday I got up reasonably early and headed out for an adventure. I just wandered around. It's a really pretty town, at least, Old Town is. I'm not a far walk away from Old Town so I spent most of the time wandering that way. I had moussaka for lunch! It's the traditional Greek dish with layers of eggplant and mince. It was so filling, I didn't have to eat for a long while after that but I'm not sure I'll be adding it to my daily diet soon!


The two main visitor attractions of Nafplio are the Palamidi Fortress and the Museum, but sadly the museum was closed and the Fortress is a 40 minute drive away! It's strange because you can see the fortress from the town, it looks the same distance as the Acropolis, which is walking distance. Turns out there's so access from the city side of the hill, you have to go all the way around the hill and up the other side! And there isn't a bus... how's that for tourist planning? So I just enjoyed my day in Nafplio, it is very pretty!

My hostel is awesome, the Hotel Economou. The owners are an old couple, George and Katarina. Katarina I think is a little OCD, she tidies the rooms every day, which embarasses me so I always leave it quite neat. Apparently my neat and her neat don't match - I come back to find everything lined up square or piled biggest to smallest in little pyramids! It's cute. And George makes me a cup of coffee every morning and is always checking that I'm okay. They're really sweet. And they have a Dulux puppy! I'm sure the breed has a name but it's like the Dulux dog, he's really sweet, only four months old.


Yesterday I went out to Mycenae, or Mikines as the Greeks would say, and was pretty well amazed! I walked through a 3000 year old gate and if Homer was right (and if I had to put my faith somewhere it might well be Homer) then Agamemnon walked out that gate to go fight the Trojans! And then back in to be murdered by Klytemnestra. She's definitely my favourite victim/villain from Greek legend, and I saw her tomb. Ok, the tomb which has been named the Tomb of Klytemnestra, but hey, it's like being told Elvis once at at this restaurant, you don't question it, you just believe it because you want to! Anyway, I spent over an hour exploring the ruins, trying to avoid tour groups, and then about an hour in the museum. I did visit the museum shop too which was a bit sad really, you can buy all these cheap looking copies of Greek artworks.

I had an hour to spare before the bus home so I decided to go for a walk, I found a nice looking path and wandered along it before I reached a main road and turned around to head back. Suddenly I discovered that my nice clear path looked neither of those things the other direction! I had been daydreaming a little (of course, it is me!) and I didn't really know where I'd gone, there were a few possibilities so of course I picked the wrong one! I wandered aimlessly for a while before acknowledging I was lost and deciding I should probably think practically about this. Also I seemed to be wandering someone's farm, lots of olive trees in neat rows. I figured I had mostly come down on my walk and that Mycenae is on top of a hill so up was the way to go. Yay for first practical solution, enter first practical problem: no path leading up. I was glad I decided to wear trousers since I ended up clambering straight up a hill, over little stone walls and through bushes. It was pretty funny! I ended up finding a little church on top of a hill, very Sound of Music, and I could see Mycenae from where I was so I followed a new path (this one with gravel, much more trustworthy) and ended up in the parking lot where the bus stop was, with twenty minutes to spare before my bus. Yet another brilliantly executed adventure.

Sigh... I was going to add photos for you all but no such luck, computer won't read camera. It'll have to be from Patra towards the end of the week.

Yesterday was Sunday and what that means that I didn't know is that no one who sells bread is open. No really, I have this massive collection of spreads so I can make sandwiches, but I need bread! So I wandered for about an hour trying to find any, all to no avail. I ate out a record three times in one day. Lunch was a "cheese pie" which was basically a spiral of pasty full of feta, I put sliced tomato on top and it was very nice, dinner was at a taverna where I had chicken souvlaki, pretty tasty.

So today I decided to go to Epidavros, it's the other common day trip from Nafplio and it has an ancient theatre and a shrine and a little museum... perfect! I knew where and when to catch the bus and was standing there on time. Sadly not a perfectly executed adventure. When the bus was late I asked a girl about the bus to Epidavros and she said "five minutes". Up pulled a bus and she pointed at it so I got on, said to the money taking man "Epidavros?" He took my money and I took my seat. I soon figured out something was a little off since we were going away from the sign I'd seen pointing towards Epidavros, but two people had heard my question and got me on this bus - could they be wrong? Well yes. Say you didn't really listen to someone because you figured you already knew where they were going then maybe you wouldn't hear the Epid- part and you might direct them to Agros, a nearby town. Yup, that's where I ended up!

It's not so bad, Agros has an ancient theatre, an ancient agora and a castle. I didn't make it to the castle, but the theatre and agora were very cool, plus a Roman fountain that Hadrian built (he was my favourite Golden Age emperor) so I had plenty of fun exploring the wrong town! Also I'd seen a little clothing store on the bus from Athens which I thought looked good so I was a bit bad and went shopping. Oh, and I wanted a sweet something (refined sugar and I have always been close but lately we've become pretty inseparable) so I wandered around to find a bakery and finally found a patisserie, I picked a croissanty thing which looked sweet enough but had no sign and discovered it was full of nutella! It was a magical moment for me.

So that's been my exciting five days... Off to Olympia tomorrow for two nights and then Patra. I probably won't bother interneting in Olympia so you've got a break from me for a couple days :)