GREECE, November, 2005 Trip Log - Sandra Kohler NOTE: The “better half” of this trip log can be found at: http://walt.horde.org/ where you’ll find my husband Walt Hagenbuch’s photos in the “Greece” folder. Introduction: After a long but comparatively smooth journey from Harrisburg, PA to Philadelphia to Frankfurt (my nominee for the airport most likely to give one nightmares), we arrived in early afternoon of a mild November day at the Athens airport. After a brief wait we were greeted by one of Untours drivers, Paris (I loved it – come to Greece and be met by a Trojan hero), who told us that we were going to be driven to Nafplio, along with two other Untourists, by Franz, who’d been pressed into service to spare the four of us a wait at the airport. As we soon discovered, this was a boon in more ways than one: Franz, a Dutchman who lives in Greece for most of the year, was a wonderful first guide, entertaining us all on the hour-long trip to Nafplio with an account of why he loves living in the Peloponnese and suggestions for making the most of one’s time there. Jet-lagged and exhausted as we were, the rocky coast, the roads lined with orange groves, the flowering vines in gardens along back roads and the amazing canal at Corinth were nonetheless entrancing sights. Just before reaching Nafplio Franz made two quick stops, one to show us a tiny Byzantine church which illustrated what he’d been saying about being able to “see” all of Greek history in the local sites on the Peloponnese, and the other to give the photographers among us a chance to photograph the Bourtzi with the sun setting behind it. (The Bourtzi is a small island fortress in the Argolic Gulf off Nafplio). On reaching the bustling streets of Nafplio we were escorted to the Elina, a charming and extremely well equipped apartment just a block from the waterfront. It proved a comfortable and elegant home base for our stay. Rather than giving a day-by-day account of our Greek experience, I will talk about our experiences in Nafplio, the day trips we took from Nafplio, our one overnight excursion to Monemvasia and Mystras, and then our “add-on” of two and a half days in Athens. But first, as usual, our Untour began with an orientation on the day after arrival; Christos, the new staff person in Nafplio provided maps and possible destinations and routes, and also invited all of us to what proved to be the first of two Untours events in Nafplio, a dinner with typical Greek food and wine at an extremely pleasant local restaurant. (More about this and the other Untour gathering in the Nafplio section below). Christos was unfailingly helpful during our stay, as were the staff of the Avis office in Nafplio where one could drop in for advice about parking, driving and such and receive polite and friendly counsel. A note about timing: our Untour was from November 2 to 16. The weather was just about perfect for all but one day (described in the Athens section below): low seventies and sunny during the day, mid-fifties at night. And even the most visited sites in the Peloponnese were comparatively free of tourists and tourist buses at this time of year. Untouring Nafplio: What we found in Nafplio was an incredible collage encompassing different periods of Greek history and styles of architecture, narrow streets (reminiscent of Italian towns) strung with bougainvillea, broad boulevards lined with exotic palm trees, numerous good restaurants, cafes ranging from the laid-back to the fiercely stylish or high-decibel rocking, shops selling everything from the precious to the flashy in clothes and jewelry, beautiful small churches, the wild beauty of the cliffs beneath the Akronafplia, the overwhelming height of the Palamidi fortress looming over the town, views of the Argolic gulf with the offshore Bourtzi fortress. The quality of collage is perhaps our overwhelming single impression of Greece, in large part because of the almost unimaginable span of time and consequent layers of history that have made their mark here. Our day trips to Mycenae and other ancient sites within an hour of Nafplio gave us a sense of the earliest millennia involved, but even in Nafplio itself there’s so much history to take in: settlement here goes back to Neolithic times (that’s 7000 – 3000 BC) and the town was an important port in Mycenaean times (1500 – 1200 BC). But it is more recent history, since Byzantine rule began in roughly 1200 AD, which is so much in evidence in the city. Byzantines, Franks, Venetians and eventually Turks all ruled Nafplio at some time during the period from the thirteenth to the early nineteenth century and their struggles to fortify and hold the city created the Akronafplia and the Palamidi fortresses as well as leaving marks on the city’s domestic and public architecture. The history of Nafplio in the period since Greek independence (1822), when it was the first capital of the nation, is also rich and complicated. In addition to being evident in the city’s architecture, there are statues and monuments and memorials everywhere in the town to various figures in this amazing tapestry. We discovered some of them on our walks, understood some of the references, and were puzzled and fascinated by others. There were two walks that we took in Nafplio, one repeatedly and the other once in its entirety and again a few times in segments, that were especially rewarding. The first is the walk around the “point” at the western end of the town, which takes you on a path overlooking the Gulf at the base of great cactus-covered cliffs on which the Akronafplia fortress stands. If I lived in Nafplio, I’d take this walk every morning, and from taking it several times during our stay I suspect that there are many locals who do just that. It’s something to be enjoyed at different times of day, with the light on cliffs and water coming from different directions. Walt took lots of pictures while we did this walk – they’re more eloquent than anything I can say about it. The second walk was one that we found in the Lonely Planet guide, The Peloponnese, which we’d bought some months before the trip. It’s simply a stroll through the Old Town, with comments on various sights, but it took us to a section high up near the Akronafplia, along a street, Zygomala, that wanders across the hillside, through the oldest part of town, lined with houses that have been rebuilt over and over again during the past two thousand years, along with some wonderful modern houses. There are flowers everywhere, ubiquitous bougainvillea, other plants, wonderful views, and old stone staircase streets climbing steeply down into the center of the old town. I don’t think we’d have seen this area without the guidebook’s suggestion, and we were very glad we did. Another discovery that we made in Nafplio, with the help of notes in the apartment, were the elevators to the top of the Akronafplia, where there are now luxury hotels (much to the dismay, we gather, of some archaeologists). The entrance to the elevators is marked by several flags, but it’s hard to find unless you’ve been told just where to look. It’s worth searching out because of the views from the top, especially at sunset. There were two Untours events in Nafplio while we were there: dinner at a restaurant, To Fanaria, to introduce us all to typical Greek food, and near the end of our stay, another dinner, at a different restaurant (the name escapes me!) where Christos kept his promise to introduce us to Greek dancing. There is live music, though not often dancing, in several of the restaurants in Nafplio, especially on the weekends. (Yes, it’s true that Greeks dine around 9 p.m. or later, and we were usually, at 8 or so, the earliest arrivals for dinner). We gathered that there was much nightlife we slept through, particularly along the waterfront. However, we enjoyed our taste of the music, especially in our favorite restaurant (very close to the Elina), To Byzantio, which we discovered was owned and run by Serbian immigrants from Sarajevo (yet another strand to the Greek weave of “invaders.”) We found the recommendations in the “journal” in the Elina helpful for restaurants, and also shared discoveries with some of our fellow Untourists. One of the things that made this Untour particularly delightful for us was that Rod Tull and Dick Pope, who we’d met on the Umbria Untour in October, 2004, were also on this one, and we dined together in Nafplio several times as well as taking some trips together (more below). We also introduced each other to our favorite Nafplio hangouts: ours a café where we’d lunch or have a coffee or beer late in the afternoon and linger to watch the backgammon players around us; theirs a little spot for breakfasts of freshly baked pastries and hot chocolate. Our final adventure in Nafplio was to climb the 999 steps to the Palamidi fortress, and, perhaps even more strenuously, climb back down. Our first view of this amazing structure convinced us it was beyond our powers, but after our experiences at Monemvasia and Mystras (described below), Rod assured us that if we’d made those climbs we could easily do the Palamidi. In all truth, it was less strenuous and less scary than I’d anticipated. Walt took photographs all the way up – a great excuse for pausing and resting – and the views were as amazing as we’d been promised. It was satisfying to have done this, especially as we watched people forty or fifty years younger gasping on the climb up as we were coming down. The day trips we took from Nafplio were mainly drives of under an hour: to Mycenae, Epidaurus, Nemea, Tiryns. Tiryns was disappointing because much of the site, including the famed staircase, was roped off; it’s being restored. Mycenae, on the other hand, gave us both what we expected – the cyclopean walls, the Lion Gate – and something we hadn’t: the amazing tholos tomb called the Treasury of Atreus, with its eerie combination of immensity and utter enclosure: it goes up and up and up, yet is all buried, dark, tomb. We found both Nemea and Epidaurus a wonderful contrast to the sense of being embattled at Mycenae and in the fortresses of Nafplio: both of them were open, peaceful, pastoral. The drives to both of these were along rural roads, through orange groves (that’s true for Mycenae too) and unlike Mycenae where “modern” or “new” Mycenae offered such delights as the Iphigenia Restaurant and Clytemnestra Inn (would you really want to eat in the “Sacrifice Victim’s grill” or sleep at the “Murderess Motel”?), both of them seemed fairly remote from touristy offshoots. We enjoyed driving through small villages on the way to Epidaurus, while “Modern or New” Nemea proved to be a sleepy small town, where since we couldn’t find an open taverna for lunch, we managed to buy bread and cheese and fruit in various little stores using lots of gestures and one or two words of Greek. The theatre at Epidaurus is the big attraction there, but we found the pine groves and the sites connected with Asklepius, the god of healing, and his cult even more fascinating and evocative. Our two longer day trips from Nafplio were to Delphi and Poros. Delphi is an amazing place, but unfortunately the drive to it, which we made with Rod and Dick, took longer than we expected, and the early closing (at 3:30 p.m.) curtailed our time there. We were all glad to have gotten there, but would have planned it differently had we known just how long the drive would take. (We chose the route that took us over the new suspension bridge at Rio, a sight well worth seeing.) The drive to Poros, which Walt and I did alone, offered wonderful views both of the coast and the mountains. Poros itself was charming, and in November at least relatively free of tourists. We took the road around the island, and by exploring the dirt roads leading off it found ourselves at points at deserted beaches. What we enjoyed most was what one guidebook refers to as the “scant remains” – called “the five stones” by locals – of the Temple of Poseidon, with its ancient olive trees, wildflowers and wonderful views across the Saronic Gulf. Monemvasia and Mystras: On the advice of both previous Untourists and Christos, we decided that the way to see Monemvasia and Mystras, two places we didn’t want to miss, was on an overnight excursion. Dick and Rod offered to drive, and so after an early breakfast at “their” café, the four of us set off. The drive was along the coast at first, and we made several stops for the photographers – the views were wonderful. Then we turned inland, through mountains for which the word “awesome” should be reserved. On the narrow turning roads we gaped and gasped and exclaimed to each other, at the heights and valleys, monasteries clinging precipitously to the side of impossible cliffs, the rock formations, the streams far below. Monemvasia itself seemed another world: the Gibraltar of Greece, a massive fortified rock, connected to the mainland by a narrow isthmus (“Monemvasia” means “one entrance”), it was a stronghold held in turn and fought over by Byzantines, Franks, Venetians, and Turks. Inhabited now by a handful of people (except in summer), it’s an amazing place, with its heights, fortifications, half-ruined churches, winding walls, oleander, bougainvillea, roses, jasmine, white arbors of what looked like wisteria or clematis, its ubiquitous cats – who look all related – its narrow cobbled main (almost sole) street, its ancient buildings climbing the hillsides. And everywhere, the sea, the Myrtoan Sea, clear deep blue, surrounding us with its sound. Our hotel seemed to consist of a range of picturesque old buildings tucked into the walls, the hillside. (Many of the crumbling Byzantine and Venetian palaces have been restored as hotels, restaurants and holiday homes, strictly adhering to preservation laws.) We climbed to our rooms by winding stairs, found fireplaces, dark woodwork, and balconies giving on the sea. (To puncture the idyllic tone a little, our room also had a bathroom the size of a small closet, with a shower whose drain was so inadequate that any attempt at ablutions other than in the sink would have flooded the whole place.) We spent what remained of the afternoon roaming the island, rested weary legs for a while, then had an excellent dinner in a restaurant just down the alley. At dinner the four of us talked, as we often did when together on this trip, about our families, our pasts and futures. I was struck thinking about it by how each of us brought our own tiny slice of history, a few fragile generations, to this place where man has lived for over four thousand years. The next morning Walt and I watched the sunrise (which he photographed) from our balcony. We went out for a walk before breakfast and found (following Dick’s directions) the house where the Greek poet Yannis Ritsos was born and lived much of his life. Then after breakfast in a café, the four of us set off for the mainland and Mystras. The drive to Mystras wound through the spectacular mountains of Lakonia. As we neared Sparta (which we’d decided not to visit) we saw the Taigetos Mountains that are a backdrop to the city rising sheathed in haze, amazingly high, bare, and impressive. Mystras itself is a city of ruins that spills from a spur of Mt. Taigetos. Approaching the city, we all thought there was no way we were going to climb from the lower city to the highest (there are three “levels”); we’ll drive from the lower to the upper parking lot, we thought. Well, we climbed it – and partway back down too. It was fascinating, beautiful, arduous, and strange. Mystras was an enormously important stronghold and center of the Byzantine Empire from roughly 1250 to 1450. Art, architecture and philosophy flourished here; in many ways it was a precursor of the Italian Renaissance. Though it declined under later Turkish and Venetian rule until it was almost completely in ruins at the time of Greek Independence (1822), a great deal of restoration has taken place since the 1950’s and it’s now a World Heritage Site. Our climb from the bottom to the top of Mystras took us to churches, including a convent and the “cathedral” with frescoes, which are moving and powerful despite their partial deterioration. The climb also featured wonderful plants and flowers, and at almost every turning spectacular views. We met a Greek orthodox priest from the United States on the way, and at the upper level some of our fellow Untourists. And after reaching the very top, the ruined castle, we realized that the “upper” parking lot was a level below, just above one of the churches; there was no exit at all from where we were. Wearily, we climbed back down to the parking lot. At this point, pace Darwin, we opted not for survival of the fittest but rescue by them: Walt, Dick and I waited in the parking lot while Rod, youngest and fittest by far, climbed down the rest of the way and brought the car back up for us. (This felt like just retribution for Rod’s having announced, on each leg of the hike up, from his position leading the way, “we’re almost there….”)We noticed as Rod left that a tiny old woman carrying two heavy-looking shopping bags appeared out of what looked like a shed at the side of the parking lot and also started the climb down. Rod told us afterwards that she’d beaten him to the bottom. Our conclusion was that she was really only about forty but looked older than all of us because she did this every day. In truth, we were all immensely proud of ourselves for doing the climb and enjoyed it thoroughly. Athens: We had decided when planning this trip that we’d “add on” a few days in Athens after the Untour itself, rather than making a trip to Athens during our stay in Nafplio. We’d been told that it was absurd to think we could “do” Athens in three days; that’s true, of course, and yet our experience there, mixed as it was, was worth the doing. There were two problems that limited us in Athens that we couldn’t have foreseen: first of all, I’d pulled something in my knee while dancing with Christos just two days before we left Nafplio, so I was hobbling for the rest of the trip. Second, the weather on one of our two full Athens days was the only foul weather of the trip: a terrific rainstorm, so drenching that there was widespread flooding in Attica. To add to the disruption of our plans, we thought that given the weather we’d devote that day to the National Archaeological Museum. A fine plan – only it happened to be November 17th, on which there are political demonstrations to mark the anniversary of a student protest, bloodily suppressed, which helped bring about the downfall of the Greek junta in 1973. Demonstrations were planned in Athens (though it turned out that the rain kept their numbers smaller than expected), police were everywhere, and the museum closed as a precaution. In a way, our time in Athens turned out to be very much in the Untouring spirit, since we had to “go with the flow” and found unexpected pleasures and adventures because of unforeseen impediments to our plans. We took the bus from Nafplio to Athens on November 16th and found it an easy and convenient way to make that trip. The taxi ride from the bus station to our hotel (the Achilleas) certainly confirmed the advice we’d gotten about not trying to drive in Athens – along with providing some Greek language instruction from the driver. After settling in at the hotel we set out for the Museum of Cycladic Art. We’d read in the NY Times months before our trip about an exhibition there that would be ending at 4 p.m. that very day, and decided to make a visit there our first expedition in Athens. The walk there took us through Syntagma Square, past the Parliament building with its picturesque guards, down the broad avenue of Vass Sofias past embassies, museums, and other beautifully landscaped buildings. We stopped for lunch at a TGIF (of all things) – we were footsore at this point and it was all we found – around the corner from the museum. The museum was elegant and modern; the special exhibit focused on an ongoing dig in Eleftherma, where artifacts over three thousand years old have been found. A marvelous video about the dig was a combination of scientific rigor and brilliant imagination: students at the dig did a reenactment of the cremation and burial of Patroclus, the Greek warrior, as it is described in Homer and as their discoveries at the cite made it possible to replicate. The archaeologists have even recovered fragments of the fine material used to cover the clay pots in which bones were placed after cremation. Fascinating to think that three thousand years after a hero burned to ash the fragile cloth laid over his burial urn survives, literal fabric of a past which is not dead or totally forgotten. The following morning we woke to rain and frustration. We didn’t want to try to negotiate the slopes of the Acropolis in these conditions, and we discovered that our other “must-see,” the National Archaeological Museum was closed. We took a walk to a music store where we bought CDs of what we hoped was the kind of Greek music we’d enjoyed so much in Nafplio. When we consulted the desk clerk at the Achilleas about where to go for lunch, he urged us to explore Psirri, a neighborhood we hadn’t even heard of. Even in teeming rain, this was a wonderful walk. Psirri is like the Lower East Side of New York City: a crowded bazaar of streets lined with shops that spill out onto the sidewalks, where you can buy spices or bulk food or brassieres or linens or fur coats or loofahs or housewares, incongruous goods cheek by jowl, people bustling everywhere, signs in all languages (a lot in Chinese), the scent of cinnamon pervading it all. We wandered and looked and sniffed and took it all in, eventually finding a simple restaurant where we had probably the best meal of the trip. There was a page of specials in Greek with no translation on the menu, and when I asked what they were, the waiter took us back to the steam table and showed us the array to make our choices. I was struck too by the waiter: he seemed the only one we’d encountered on the trip who didn’t seem to be playing a role, but rather was simply a man doing a job, perfectly friendly, but on terms of equality with his customers, neither ingratiating or manipulating. The whole experience of Psirri was wonderful, in contrast to some we had the next day at over-priced and touristy spots in Plaka, the much-touted area just around the Acropolis, which should be flagged “travelers beware.” We were grateful to the desk clerk at the Achilleas who suggested it. The hotel staff was helpful and gracious throughout our stay, with restaurant recommendations and other advice, and on the morning of our departure a specially prepared breakfast at 3 am as we waited for our taxi to the airport. I should add that the hotel was comfortable and excellently located. Our final rain-day adventure came late in the afternoon when, after resting tired legs and drying off a bit, we went out to find a place for coffee and people-watching. We ended up at a big café on Syntagma Square, where a petite lady of a certain age, dressed and made up with flair, made room for us at a table under a sheltering roof. When she drew a large knife out of her handbag, it was a conversation starter. She explained that she never cooked, ate in restaurants all the time, and since their knives weren’t sharp enough, always had her own along. She eventually sang the one American song she knew for us (Irving Berlin’s “Always”) and demonstrated her ability to yodel. It was a delightful and totally unexpected interlude. Given that the next day was our last in Athens, and the weather was uncertain, we decided to sign up at the hotel for a city bus tour that would get us to the Acropolis. Though the next morning proved sunny and mild, we were glad we made this choice. The bus tour gave us some glimpses of Athens that we might not have managed on our own, and the guide was knowledgeable. The main stop before the Acropolis was at the Temple of Olympian Zeus. I was fascinated to learn that in the early Christian era the temple was used for hermit’s “poses” by the Stylites: that is, a hermit would perch on the top of one of the huge columns and make it his ascetic dwelling place. As to the Acropolis itself, I won’t try to rival the guidebooks. One of my favorite moments there was noticing a young Japanese tourist squatting down to photograph a cat. There are cats everywhere in Greece, even on the Acropolis. And one ancient olive tree, and a Greek flag that has a special meaning for Athenians. The Nazis added a swastika to this flag as soon as they occupied the city. Immediately thereafter, on the night of May 30, 1941, two Athenian teenagers climbed the secret Mycenean staircase up to the top and stole the flag from under the guards’ noses, an act later seen as the first foray of the Greek Resistance. We chose to make our own way back from the Acropolis, taking our time there (of all we saw there what I carry with me is the image of the Caryatids’ amazing grace), rather than taking the bus. We wandered down into Plaka, and after an overpriced coffee at a café with a smarmy waiter, found our way through some interesting if touristy streets. We passed the monastery where Byron lived for a time during his stay in Greece (the Monument of Lysiskrates is incorporated into the Capuchin friary here) – there are statues of Byron and monuments to him all over in Greece –, walked past the “little Cathedral” which was closed for restoration and peeked into the Metropolis or “big” cathedral, and finally ended up having lunch at a restaurant, Thanasis, at the bottom of Mitropoleos Street, which we’d been told by the desk clerk at the Achilleas has the best souvlaki in Athens. The food and the people-watching were both wonderful: the area is carnival, a festival, with strolling musicians, old ladies selling embroidered linens and scarves, people from all over, yes, some tourists but lots and lots of Greek businesspeople taking their long lunch break. We spent the rest of the day packing and after a comparatively early (for Greece) dinner, tried to get as much sleep as we could before our alarm went off at 2 am. The kindness of the Achilleas’ night clerk in providing coffee and breakfast made our departure much less bleary-eyed than it might have been. The trip back was uneventful, except for a long conversation at a café in the Frankfurt airport (where, for a wonder, we had a long layover rather than a mad rush) with a charming young man from Tunisia who works in Ann Arbor, Michigan: the final unexpected pleasant encounter of a trip full of them.