Dec 8 – 13, 2008 – Nafplio, Greece – The theatre at Epidavros

Epidavros is about 30 kms from Nafplio and home to one of the best preserved theatres we found.  Like the one at Orange, France, this one still hosts performances in the summer.  It also has a museum but it was getting late in the day when we arrived (we had visited Mycenae earlier in the day) so we decided to focus on the theatre.

First off, it is remarkably well preserved.  The photo below shows the condition of part of the seating for approximately audiences that could reach 12,000 – 14,000 people.  That’s Allister and Charlotte at the top of the aisles.

But its condition was not the theatre’s most remarkable characteristic.  It was its acoustics.  I’m standing at the top of the theatre (where Allister and Charlotte were in the previous picture) and Allister is down in the middle of the stage.  He is talking in a voice not much louder than if I was standing next to him and I can understand every word he is saying.  We had heard and read about this but it was really neat to experience it first hand.  This place was very cool and in a great natural setting.

Another Greek innovation was creating seating with backrests, here being demonstrated by Laura-Lyn and Charlotte.

On either side of the stage there were these large entrances which were the primary entrances to the theatre seats.

Dec 8 – 13, 2008 – Nafplio, Greece – Mycenae

One of our day trips from Nafplio was to the site of the ancient city of Mycenae.  This is one of the many sites we’ve visited that is included on the World Heritage site list.  Like Delphi, the site included both a museum and an archaeological site.  We followed our guide book’s advice and visited the museum first.

I took this photo as much to record the quality and design of the stone sidewalk as to record it as the entrance to the museum.

All of the museum’s artifacts were found at the site which dates to 1500 BC.  For approximately 400 years (1600 – 1200 BC) Mycenae was the most powerful kingdom in Greece.  The location of the site was never disputed (unlike some sites) because it was never buried.  Excavations of the site and the recovery of the museum artifacts was begun in 1876.

This and the other pottery in the museum dates to 1500 BC.

A range of weaponry, all of which is at least as old as 1100 BC, was also on display.

I don’t think we saw jugs this size in too many other museums.

This was a grill for cooking meat.   Could these have been the first souvlaki skewers?

 

The Mycenaens also users of script, which the museum said appeared first in 3300 BC in Mesopotamia and looked like what we might think hieroglyphics look like.  The first use of script in what is now modern day Greece was the apparently the Minoans on Crete in 2500 BC.

The view from the path leading up to the archaeological site.  There was evidence of some fresh excavation in the foreground.  The city of Mycenae was essentially a fortified citadel and the surrounding city.  At the top of the photo is the citadel area – the areas in the foreground are the surrounding city.

This path leads up to the main gate to the Mycenae Citadel – the Lion Gate.

The main entrance to the citadel of Mycenae is through the Lion Gate constructed of the largest blocks of stone found anywhere on the site.

This is the citadel’s cistern (for water storage) and is in one of the corners of the site.

 

As we strolled the archaeological site we came across these some interesting images.  There was evidence that a forest fire had swept through the site and burned some of the trees and forced sap from them.

Charlotte spotted this interesting flower.

 

Dec 8 – 13, 2008 – Nafplio, Greece – More Nafplio scenes

We really enjoyed Nafplio (at 6 days – it was one the longest stays of our trip) and accumulated quite a few photos that I’m going to inflict on our readers whether they like it or not.

This is a photo Charlotte took nearing the end of day of Nafplio’s old town harbor and the fishing and other craft anchored there.

One day while taking a morning walk along the promenade we saw a crowd of people gathered around this fishing boat.  We walked closer and saw the fisherman separating their catch from their net and sorting it by species.  They were also selling some of it to those gathered onshore – its hard to get fresher fish than this!

We don’t know all the species represented here but the in the lower right corner of the photograph appeared to be barracuda.

The front deck of this boat also had some surprises.  This is an octopus against the side of the storage logger.

Above Nafplio old town on the promontory, was a very ritzy, but mostly deserted hotel that could be reached by taking a 30 second elevator ride up from the city.  Charlotte took this night photo of its outdoor infinity pool with the city of Nafplio in the background.

Pension Marianna was our hotel for the last 4 days of our stay in Nafplio.  It was located in the old town, right underneath one of Nafplio’s three fortresses.  This is the view up from the courtyard to the rest of the hotel.  The hotel almost seemed to have developed through acquisition of old town properties because it was on multiple levels and spread over the side of the hill.

It was operated by three brother – Takis, Peter, and Panos Zotos – it was one of the nicer hotels we encountered (and we stayed in lots) on our trip.  That is the breakfast room with the big windows on the top level of the yellow building in the photo below.   It offered a panoramic view of Nafplio (and that great Greek yogurt!).

This was the courtyard on which our room (its behind the green door on the left side of the picture).  Yes, that’s an orange tree in the courtyard.  We awoke after one stormy night to find a couple of those oranges on the ground of the courtyard.  We sampled at least 3 of them and they were all delicious.  Citrus fruit is one of the big agricultural products of this area, along with olive oil, and we saw field after field of oranges.

Did I mention there were lots of cats in Italy and Greece?!  Anyhow, Nafplio was no exception and both Allister and Charlotte enjoyed befriending this big kitten.

We enjoyed Greek food before we came and our visit has done nothing to dampen our enthusiasm.  Here Allister bites into one of Mary’s pork gyro pitas – one of the great bargains in snack food – this one was 2 Euros but we found these as low as 1.50 Euros.

Moon rise over Nafplio.

Dec 8 – 13, 2008 – Nafplio, Greece – Street scenes and the beach

On one of our first days in Nafplio we decided to go exploring and started up the promenade that lined the old town harbour.  We knew that you could walk around the point of land that sheltered Nafplio and get to the beach but we weren’t in any hurry.

This is a picture from the harbour looking across to the fortress of Bourtzi which is located on an island about 600 meters from land and is 1 of 3 Nafplio fortresses.

In season, these boats take tourists out to explore the island fortress but they weren’t running at this time of year.

For perspective, we were on the far side of this point of land.  Nafplio’s harbor and old town are on the far side and its beach is in the lower left corner.  Our objective on the day we went exploring was to walk around this point of land and get to the beach.  We learned the big, institutional looking building on the hill was a hotel that was built by the Greek government some time ago and abandoned for many years.

It turned out there was an excellent sea wall walk around the point.  Here Charlotte and Allister enjoy the walk in the 21C sunshine.  Those are prickly pear cactus in the background – they were all over this point.

Laura-Lyn and I wanted to give credit to the city for having built such a beautiful and enjoyable seawall.  Not only were there tunnels like these, there was also seating built into the cliff and stairs down to the water at a number of points along the walk.

This was the view of the Palamidi fortress from the seawall walk.  This was a very pleasant day.  To our right in these pictures was an unobstructed view of the ocean (the Argolic Gulf).  Very nice.

There are sandy beaches in Greece but these rocky ones are more common.  There were a number of locals swimming here when we visited and using these ladders built into the rocks to get themselves into and out of the water.

Laura-Lyn is determined to swim in Greece before we go.  This is the closest she’s got so far.

One of the gentleman swimming in the ocean that day (there were also women, and most of them were in the 50s and 60s) approached us and asked us where we were from and although it turned out he lived in Nafplio, his English was excellent and we had an excellent conversation.

His name was Constantinos and he had also lived in the US at one point in his life.  He said his wife was from Seattle and their two daughters – aged 22 and 25 – lived in London, England and San Francisco, respectively, and had what sounded like great careers.  The one in London had studied at Oxford and the other had recently been accepted into a PhD program at Georgetown University in Washington, DC.  He claimed to almost have married a woman from Victoria so he knew where we were from.

We asked his advice on where we should visit in the Peloponnese and he was a wealth of information.  As our time here has unfolded, we’ve confirmed most of his opinions and taken most of his advice.  He was a born storyteller so his advice was interspersed with the history of the Peloponnese. 

I’ll save you the details but he suggested we visit Monemvasia (we’ll include some information in a later post), Pylos on the west coast, and the three islands of Poros, Spetses, and Hydra which lie a short distance off the east coast of the Peloponnese and you’ll see from subsequent posts that we’ve followed most of his advice.   He also warned us off certain cities such as Finikoundis, calling it a “beach town” that had no history and probably not too much open at this time of year.

Dec 8 – 13, 2008 – Nafplio, Greece – Fortresses

The Palamidi fortress was open until 2:30 pm.  We didn’t know this and hiked up one day as far as the admission booth; great views, but we couldn’t get onto the site.  Our second last day in Nafplio we hiked up first thing in the morning and walked around the extensive site.  The stairs to and from the site are shown on the left of this photo as a series of switchbacks.  Allister counted 912 steps from the edge of the site to the Nafplio street.

The Akronafplia fortifications above the old town (see the following two photos) are the third set of fortresses in the Nafplio area but the focus of this post is the spectacular Palamidi fortress on the hill above Nafplio.

 

 

This fortress was large and sprawled across the top of the hill above Nafplio.  This photo shows about 50% of the site.  The rest is off to the left.  There was also a road and parking lot that provided tourists another way of getting to the site and it was off to the left of this photo.

A view through the fortifications out to the city of Nafplio.

 

Looking back into the fortress from its walls.  It was a significant structure.

Another view of the western bastion.

In contrast to Canada, where all manner of guardrails, safety precautions, and disclaimers would have prevented a visitor from getting close to the sheer cliff that dropped off from the fortress walls, Greek sites (and roads, for that matter) offered little in the way of protection or restriction to the tourist wanting to get the most from the experience.  This drop was probably 200 – 300 meters right to the beach area.

 

The lion symbol over the archway in the photo below identifies the fortress as of Venetian construction.  There were several of these at various locations on Nafplio’s fortifications.

Dec 8 – 13, 2008 – Nafplio, Greece – Gateway to the Peloponnese peninsula

Before we’d left Athens we’d thought about whether it was practical to visit one or more Greek islands.  Its easier to get to them from Piraeus, the port of Athens, and at this time of year boats to islands run only from Piraeus – there is no inter-island ferry service.  We also had our car to think about; we thought we would go as walk-on traffic if we went to an island and that raised the issue of where could we safely leave our car.

Our plan was to visit some of the ruins on the Peloponnese peninsula – Mycenae, Epidavros, Olympia – and we wondered how we could combine Greek island experience with these plans.

In the end, we decided to leave Athens and not use it as a jumping off point to a Greek island and spend our time on the Peloponnese peninsula.  There seemed to be enough places we could visit to occupy the 20 or so days we had before returning to Patras for our departure to Italy on the 28th.

We decided to leave the dedicated Greek island holiday for another trip and headed for the Peloponnese.  It also seemed like a good time to be leaving Athens.

After picking up Jean-Pierre Peugeot at the Athens Airport we drove about 3 hours to the Nafplio area, the nearest Peloponnese peninsula city to Athens.  We wanted to visit Nafplio but hotel we booked was in Tolo, about 8 kms south of Nafplio and we thought we could commute to Nafplio and surrounding areas from here.

As we had done elsewhere we booked through an Internet site, www.booking.com but when we arrived, we discovered Tolo was an example of a “beach city” that really operated fully only in the tourist season – May – October.  We found our hotel but there was no one there to greet us and show us our room.  We inquired at some other hotels around town and found that most of Tolo was closed for the season and then, since it was 3:00 pm, headed to Nafplio to look for alternate accommodation for the evening.  Here is the beach at Tolo.

We found accommodation for 2 nights at the Hotel Ilion where we were greeted by a recent immigrant from Russia.  They put us in two double rooms which was not ideal for us so we decided to stay for 2 nights and then move to another place called Pension Marianna that we’d encountered that was closed for 2 days for some renovations but had rooms available then.  The Hotel Ilion was very funky, filled with interesting antiques, photos, and pictures but we wanted to find a place where we could all be together.

Here is a view of the Nafplio old town, looking out on Bourtzi fortress on an island 600 meters west of the old town.  There is a ‘new’ Nafplio that is to the right of this the area shown in this picture.  In all, Nafplio is home to 12,000 – 15,000 full-time residents but close enough to Athens to act as a weekend getaway.

There is no parking in the old town but the town has thoughtfully provided free parking at the port area.  There is also some industry in the Nafplio area that keeps ships of this size busy.  These docked just on the edge of the free public parking area.

Nafplio also had a very nice promenade, lined with coffee shops and restaurants which, at the weekend of our stay, because quite busy.  Nafplio had the feel of an upwardly mobile town that was doing many things right to encourage industry and tourism to grow alongside each other.   I have included more photos from the promenade in a later post.

Standing on the promenade, looking over the old town to the principal fortress of Palamidi that was built by the Venetians between 1711 and 1714.  More about this fortress in a separate post also.

While wandering along the promenade on one of the first days of our 6 day stay in Nafplio we came upon this boat whose transom showed its home port was Toronto (we assumed Ontario).  It made us feel a little closer to home but it was obvious from this boat’s design and the way it was equipped that it was on some type of extended cruise and we pictured Nafplio as just one more stop on its trip.  This boat was still here when we left Nafplio but there was another boat, a catamaran from Hamburg, that we saw when we arrived that had come and gone by the time we left.