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| The Theatre at Epidaurus |
We were up at 5:00 to get an early start on our travel day. We would leave Athens and begin a driving tour of the Peloponnese Peninsula. We headed for breakfast at 7:00. I think I mostly ordered an omelet each morning. They also have a great selection of fruit, bread, cheese, and cured meats which I also sampled.
We figured out that there was a door to get outside the restaurant and onto the balcony. We slipped out to get some last pictures of Athens and the Acropolis.
After breakfast, Mike left the hotel to walk around the corner to a bakery called “Paul”. He wanted to get a few sweets. This was the same store chain as in the Paris airport where Mike tried to get chocolate croissants. This time he was successful, and the croissant was everything he said it would be, messy.
We finished checking out, then asked the concierge to get us a cab back to the airport. Mike's reasoning was that if we took a cab to the airport, he could pick up the rental car there and skip driving through city traffic entirely. But I don’t remember the cab ride at all, so we must not have had any trouble. I also don’t remember the airport or renting the car. I do remember that the car had that annoying “turn the engine off at stop lights” feature and Mike hated it.
My memory picks up on the highway heading towards Corinth. We wanted to stop and see the Corinth Canal, but we didn’t see a sign pointing us to an overlook, nor did I see any exit near the canal on my phone. Mike drove over the bridge as slow as he dared, but we couldn’t see anything. He took the first exit, then tried to double back to the canal but there were no roads in that direction. We found somewhere to see the ocean, but there was no sign of the canal. There were such high walls on the bridge that there was no point to driving back over. We never did se the canal.
We started following directions toward Old Corinth, aka the Corinth that the Apostle Paul visited and wrote letters to. When we got to the historical site, it was closed. There was some sort of strike going on. A letter taped to the gate made it sound like it was a one-day strike so we figured we’d have another chance at it before we left Greece.
We continued driving and an hour later we reached our next stop, the Theatre of Epidaurus. This theatre is renowned for its size and acoustics. It holds 14,000 people and all of them can clearly hear everything said on the stage. Mike decided to climb to the top and take pictures. My knee hadn’t loosened up yet, so I opted to stay on the stage.
About this time a large tour group came in and took over the whole theatre. The guide sent people up the theatre steps and started gently clapping. She told them to hold their hands up if they could still hear her. They all got to the top and were able to hear her all the way up. Hearing her clearly from that distance was genuinely remarkable.
In a normal voice I told Mike to wave if he could hear me and he waved. He tried to talk back to me, but I could barely hear him. After taking pictures of each other, we headed over to the other part of the site.
The Temple of Asclepius is an ancient hospital. Asclepius is the god of medicine, and this temple was where people came to be healed. The complex included a stadium for exercise, beautiful water features, an Odeon for entertainment, temples, and secluded rooms for meditation.
We spent an hour walking around Epidaurus and the site. Our last stop was a museum which I once again failed to take any pictures in. I really don’t seem to like pictures of museum displays.
We left Epidaurus and started winding our way toward tonight’s stop. Mike deliberately avoided the highway and took a route winding near the water to see all the views. The views were gorgeous — small Greek towns and coastal villages tucked against the water — and I regret not stopping to photograph them.
We reached the city of Nafplio on the coast of the Argolic Gulf. Nafplio was fortified by the Venetians in 1471 and significantly expanded in 1711. There is an isle fortress just off the coast and an even larger fortress on the hill above it. Because of how secure it is, it was the first capital of modern Greece in 1823.
We arrived downtown but there was nowhere to park. We quickly offloaded our bags, then went to park the car in a parking lot down by the ocean front. We tried to check into the 3Sixty Hotel, but the power was out in the whole town. The receptionist let us leave our bags in a locked room because the elevator wouldn’t run.
It was well past noon, so we went walking down the row of restaurants on the ocean front looking for some place that was open despite the power outage. We found a seafood place that was open and had outdoor seating in a large tent. I got a large bowl of mussels, but I don’t remember what Mike had, he’s not big on seafood. It wasn’t a long wait before our food came out, and since we couldn’t really do anything, we lingered over our meal talking about tomorrow’s plans. The mussels were great.
Finally, the power came back on, so we finished up and headed back to the hotel. Once checked in, we began taking our bags up to the room. The elevator was tiny. I think Mike went first with his bag, then I came with my 2 bags. The elevator stopped one floor below our room. From there, a very steep staircase led up to our room at the very top. I had to make 2 trips to get my bags up.
The room was still configured with a king size bed. It’s common in Europe to push two doubles together to turn them into a King. We went back down to ask the front desk to re-configure the bed into two singles. In the meantime, the power went out again, so we walked down the 4 or 5 flights of stairs and headed out into the city to look around.
With the power out, most of the shops had closed. You just wouldn’t be able to see anything in them without lights. We wandered the streets for a bit admiring the architecture when we stumbled across a shop that was open. They had large glass windows to let in the light. It was a combination convenience store, knick-knacks, souvenirs, and gelato. PERFECT!
We stepped in to get some gelato and at about the same time it began to pour rain. We were waiting to buy gelato when a group of 20 college-age tourists discovered the same place and piled in. We got our gelato but didn’t want to go out into the rain and neither did anyone else. Soon the place warmed up and got very humid. We all stood in the shop for about 30 minutes before the rain finally stopped. We all gladly left.
We walked back to the hotel. The room looked correct now, so we got our bags unloaded and rested for a while. Luckily the power didn’t go out again. The air conditioning was able to pull the humidity out of the air. We were humid and uncomfortable all afternoon so the dry cool air was a blessing.
When it was time to eat, we decided to go to the hotel’s restaurant. I have no memory of the 3Sixty Restaurant other than that it was fairly loud and very modern.
It was still early when we got back to the room, so I decided to turn on the massive 100-inch tv. It turned on and showed nothing. There was no antenna for local stations, it didn’t seem to connect to wifi, and I couldn’t get any of my HDMI adapters to connect. I finally downloaded a movie onto a thumb drive and plugged it into the TV. That worked. But what to watch?
Since we were in Greece, I told Mike he should watch “My Big Fat Greek Wedding”. He’d never seen it, so I loaded it on the thumb drive. I think he enjoyed it and I hadn’t seen it in several years and enjoyed watching it again. After a week surrounded by big, loud, welcoming Greek families, the film felt very appropriate.
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