Nafplio

We said goodbye to Sarah and wished her good luck in her job-hunting, and headed off for Nafplio.

Nafplio is one of the prettiest towns we saw in Greece. It was the capital of Greece for a brief period following independence. Built on a narrow stip of land beneath (you guessed it) not one but two hillside fortresses, it has attractive narrow streets, elegant Venetian houses, and flower bedecked balconies. Athenians flock to this lively seaside town for weekend get-aways, thronging its quayside cafes and upscale boutiques and restaurants.

We were entirely unaware that there would be weekend crowds, but luckily we arrived on a Sunday at mid-day, when all the Athenians were getting ready to go home. We secured a room in a charming but excessively vertical stone hotel. Fortunately our room was on the ground floor, even though the office and restaurant could only be reached via four flights of stairs. We thought it best to get out of town while the crowds dissipated, so we set off to find the famous ancient Greek Theatre of Epidavros, reputed to be some 30 km distant.

We thought, quite reasonably it seemed, that the ancient Theatre of Epidavros would be found in or near the town of Ancient Epidavros. We dutifully followed the signs leading there, and in the town followed more signs directing us to the "ancient theatre". This theatre turned out to be indeed ancient, but it was a tiny amphitheatre that might seat 200, if they were all good friends. Barb was especially disappointed when we soon concluded that we were in the wrong place.

A couple hours of driving down various rural roads with precipitous mountain hairpin turns did not result in our getting any closer to the theatre so we finally turned, disgruntled, back towards Nafplio. We did find a small bridge that was built by the ancient Mycenians 3000 years ago. We convinced ourselves as a sort of consolation that the Spartan army must have marched over this very bridge on their way to attack Athens. After we left the bridge, Nikos was studying the road map in the back seat, and proposed that we try one more place before giving up on the theatre. It sounded improbable to me, but after a few kilometers and a wrong turn, we wound up in a large parking lot, mostly empty in the late afternoon except for a couple of tour buses and a few cars. We had finally found it!

The theatre is spectacular, and in very good condition. It is huge, capable of seating 14,000, and amazingly well-preserved. The acoustics are incredible. The acoustical centre of the stage is marked by a round flat stone about one metre in diameter. A person standing on that stone speaking, or a coin dropped on the stone, can be heard perfectly well in the highest row of seats. Additionally, some of the sound reflects back to the speaker, a sort of natural monitor. The theatre is still used today, with the annual Hellenic Festival offering both modern and ancient Greek dramas during the summer.

We were fortunate that when we arrived, a tour group of Russian women, some of whom were a choir, were moved to give an impromptu performance. They sang several songs in four-part harmony, filling the whole theatre with their beautiful voices. We left the theatre and drove back to Nafplios, still thrilled by the fabulous experience.

The next morning, we climbed the four flights of stairs for breakfast, and enjoyed a great view of the harbour and the small island fortress of Bourtzi. After breakfast, I climbed up to the small fortress at the top of the hill behind the hotel, while Nikos climbed the 999 steps to the large Palamidi fortress.(photo) We then drove back to Athens, as we had to return our rental car and prepare for the next leg of our journey

Lakonia Region

English speakers can thank the Lakonians for the word laconic (terse or concise; of few words), which many still are.

This region contains Sparta, which was rebuilt in the 19th century on the ruins of the ancient city. This causes complications for the modern citizens. Every home addition or excavation for a new water line is accompanied by prayers to any appropriate deity that ancient ruins will not be uncovered, because then work must stop immediately, and the site must be investigated and catalogued, which can take many months.

The ancient city of Mystras, a centre of culture of the Byzantine Empire, is 7 km west of here. The ruins of a Frankish fortress dominate the hillside, with the remains of many churches, libraries, strongholds, palaces and monasteries contained by the upper and lower walled towns descending below it.

Our host in Sparta was Stathis Stathopoulos, yet another old friend of Barb's (an activist she knew in Toronto) was more loquacious than most Lakonians. He took us for dinner, and we discussed the political and economic situation in Greece. His opinion is that the Greek economy is hanging by a thread. He is a part-time community college teacher, who, although he has been diligently teaching his courses, hasn't been paid since October. While we were at his house, we saw a demonstration of firefighters on the news, the same guys who were called heroes for fighting the forest fires in 2007, who also haven't been paid in months.

The next morning we went to the Museum of the Olive, which traced the roots (get it?) of the olive and olive oil from earliest times. We now know more about the history and production of olive oil and other products than any reasonable person should, but it was a lovely museum.

We then drove to Monemvasia, a perfect fortress town built on a tower of rock with sheer cliffs rising hundreds of feet from the sea. This town was the leading commercial centre for the region during the Byzantine era. It was famous throughout Europe for its highly-praised Malvasia-grape wine.

The only access is via a single causeway. We drove across it and followed the narrow road along the base of the rock. This road stopped abruptly at a massive fortified stone gate, where we had to park, as this town was built centuries before the automobile. The narrow passageway through the gate turned sharply to the right and then went straight ahead,, where we emerged into a fabulous stone town. The medieval town is mostly restored, and has stores and restaurants, as well as guest houses. Narrow cobbled streets lead ever upward, and the views of the Myrtoon Sea become more spectacular the higher one goes. These streets are soon stairways, then steep paths that lead to the ruins of the upper town and also those of a large fortress that crowns the hill. Much of the curtain wall at the top of the cliffs is intact, and the ruins are spectacular. We had a lovely lunch on a terrace overlooking the sea, and then Nikos and I climbed to the top of the highest peak. The view was stunning.

We then returned to Sparta where Stathis made us a wonderful avgolemono soup, and we talked for hours.

Kalamata

After driving through yet more mountains, we emerged in the sunny city of Kalamata, home of figs, olives, and Sarah and Nikos' relatives on their father's side. Kalamata is home port to many fishing vessels. Orange and olive groves surround the city, and many residents have orange and lemon trees right outside their back doors.

Sarah and Nikos stayed in their family home, a small old-style farm-house soon to be developed into a block of flats. The house stands on a piece of land between the downtown and the port which have now grown together to become one urban area. There are still about 40 orange and lemon trees on the property. It is a five minute walk to the sea. Apartments have been built on all of the adjacent land, and only the poor economic times have slowed the development of their family's remaining plot.

Kalamata celebrates its independence day two days early, because they declared independence and rose against the Turks two days before the rest of Greece in 1821. We went to the independence day celebrations, which were marked by many wordy speeches and a reenactment. The reenactment involved many Greeks dressed in traditional costumes, some shooting very loud blanks from antique firearms. Prior to the festivities getting started, the shock waves from their practice rounds set off several car alarms, much to the delight of the young men who fired them. After the speeches these young people walking in a procession led by Orthodox priests carrying a large cross. When they got to the main square, the crowd surged forward, going around the crowd control barriers and getting in front of us, while the police who were supposed to keep order shrugged and disappeared. We assume they reenacted driving out the Turks, but we saw no-one dressed as Turks. I guess it would be difficult to get someone to volunteer to play the side that were both the villains and the losers.

Some of our time in Kalamata was spent on family concerns. Sarah needed to get her taftotita (Greek identity card) so she could work, as she is looking for a job and wants to work here for six months. This took several trips to the municipal offices and the police station. Uncle Kostas took us all out for dinner one night to a taverna that had wonderful food and a bouzouki player who played traditional music. The bouzouki player had spent some time in Canada and, when told we were from Canada, came over and shook my hand.

Barb and I stayed with a friend of hers, Giorgos Kelarakos, and his partner Carol, a most hospitable woman from Baltimore. They both made us feel right at home. After a few days we continued our tour of the Peloponesse, starting with Sparta.

Olympia

We traveled on to the town of Olympia, where the ancient Olmypic games took place quadrennially for over 1100 years. These games were the ancient world's biggest sporting event. Warring states suspended hostilities in order to send their athletes. Wealthy sponsors vied to outdo each other, victorious athletes won great fame, and could parlay their feats of strength and speed into a considerable fortune. It sounds very familiar, except women (and slaves) were not allowed to participate. Any woman who even attempted to attend was hurled off a nearby rock if she was caught.

The festival lasted five days, and events included wrestling, chariot and horse racing, the pentathlon (wrestling, discus and javelin throwing, long jump, and running) and pankration, a vicious form of fisticuffs in which the only prohibited tactics were biting and eye-gouging (except in Sparta, were eye-gouging was allowed). Writers, poets and historians read their works to large audiences. The citizens of various city-states got together, drank wine, clinched business deals, and occasionally settled their differences without resorting to the battlefield. The ancient games were last held in 394 AD, when the emperor Theodosius I decreed their end as they were a "pagan" festival.

The site today is much visited by tourists, so we arrived early in the morning. We were rewarded by having the ruins of the ancient stadium to ourselves for the first 20 minutes.Within the stadium, the start and finish lines of the 120 metre sprint track still survive, as do the judges seats. The stadium could seat 45,000 spectators.

It was thrilling to walk the very path that the athletes took so long ago, and enter the olympic staduim through the arched tunnel, of which only one span remains. As an incentive for honest competition, the athletes had to walk by a row of statues of Zeus on their way to the tunnel. The cost of the statues had been paid from the heavy fines levied on athletes who had been caught cheating in previous games, an object lesson which subsequent athletes were supposed to find obvious.

The site also contains the ruins of many buildings that were important to the games. The stone remnants of a gymnasium where wrestlers and pentathletes trained is the first ruin encountered on entering the site. The most imposing ruin is that of the Temple of Zeus, which was destroyed by two earthquakes in the 6th century AD, after having stood for more than 1000 years. The huge round fluted pillars, made up of massive blocks of limestone perhaps two metres in diameter and well over a metre thick, were knocked over like stacks of dominoes, and remain where they fell 1500 years ago.

We spent the morning looking at the many ruins, and imagining the grandeur of the buildings in their heyday. We saw the spot where the Olympic flame is lit every four years, to be carried to the city hosting the games.

In the afternoon, we went to the archaeological museum, where the famous statue of Hermes carrying the infant Dionysis is kept. We saw many artifacts and sculptures that had been found at the olympic site, including the magnificent western pediment from the Temple of Zeus, showing the fight between the Centaurs and the Lapiths.

The modern town of Olympia is unabashedly a tourist town. The main streets are lined with stores selling souvenir t-shirts and trinkets of all kinds, bars, and restaurants. Fortunately for Barb, we did find a book store that sold English language novels, including some impenetrable and turgid Greek fiction translated into English. We also managed to find a taverna on a side street near our pension that served fine home cooking, Greek style.

We spent the night in a cheap and cheerful pension, and then set off for Kalamata.

Kalavryta

We entered the town of Kalavryta after a drive of several hours through the mountains. The roads had to be driven with caution, as they snaked their way up, down and around the steep slopes. We passed dozens of roadside memorials, mute evidence of the danger in taking the highway too lightly.

We felt that it was important to go there. Kalavryta was the site of a horrible massacre ordered by the Nazis during World War II. There had been partisan activity in the mountains around the town, a unit of 80 German soldiers had been captured by the partisans and some had been killed in that action. The partisans had started negotiations to exchange the prisoners On December 13, 1943, the Nazis took revenge for this on the civilian inhabitants of the town. Every man and boy over the age of 15 years was taken to a hillside outside the town and shot dead. The total number killed in the region was 1436. The women and children were locked in the local schoolhouse and it was set on fire, as was the rest of the town. The women and children managed to escape the fire, but they could do nothing after they escaped but bury the dead, digging with sticks and their bare hands in the frozen earth.

The school house has been rebuilt, and it has been turned into a museum that relays a history of these horrific events in a dignified and even understated manner. Video recordings of survivors tell their personal memories of this atrocity. Especially moving was a wall of the museum that is covered with hundreds of photos of the boys and men who died that day.

Kalavryta today is a lovely town set among snow-capped mountains. There is skiing in the area, so tourists and Greek skiers are in town all winter. But all Greeks live in the middle of their history, and this is certainly no truer anywhere than in Kalavryta. In many tavernas and shops, there are paintings that commemorate this massacre. The hands of the old cathedral clock in the main square are stopped at 2:34, the time that the shooting began. On the road out of town, a memorial and a large white cross stand on that fatal hillside, a stark and poignant reminder of the mass murder that was committed there. With white stones the following messages are spelled out in large letters at the base of the hill "OXI STOPOLEMO" (No to war) and "EIPINH" (Peace). We hope this message resonates with the thousands of people who pass the memorial, as it certainly did with us.

Dining and Wining in the Peloponnese

We stayed overnight in Piraeus.The next morning we rented a car to drive to Patras, where the fabulous Mavrodaphne de Patras, my favourite dessert wine, is made.

We drove through Corinth and along the coast highway. After a few hours, we decided we were hungry so we stopped in the small town of Derveni and found a taverna. It was unfortunately empty, never a good sign. The owner ushered us to a table, sat down with us, took out a pad of paper and explained to us what we would like for lunch as he wrote it on the pad.

We need not have worried. We started with a fabulous fish soup, then skordalia (potatoes mashed with a near lethal amount of garlic), grilled squid stuffed with feta, a whole cod perfectly fried in cornmeal batter, and horta, a green vegetable, cooked in olive oil. We declined to order wine as we were driving, but the taverna owner was convinced that his food could not be fully enjoyed without it, so he gave us each a small glass on the house. Then he brought us dessert, candied orange peel in honey syrup, the perfect ending to a wonderful meal.

Thus fortified, we continued along the coast to Patras, the sparkling Gulf of Corinth on our right and scenic mountains on our left. We stayed at a nice hotel in Patras, and headed out the next morning to visit the Achaia Claus Winery. This winery is older than Canada, having been founded in 1860 by a German winemaker, Gustav Claus. It sits atop a high hill, with grapes growing on the slopes below. The several stone buildings include large storehouses in which there are hundreds of barrels of Mavrodaphne de Patras, each holding 2500 litres. Some of these barrels date as far back as 1907. There are some barrels that are even older, but these are commemorative vintages and the wine is not for sale. There are two barrels from 1873, and we were told these are the second oldest barrels of wine in the world.

This is not the only production facility, as the winery produces 25 million litres of wine per year, mostly for export to Germany, the USA, and Canada. They make many different wines, including dry reds and whites, plus a very good sauterne-like dessert wine made with muscat grapes, as well as the Mavrodaphne. Mavrodaphne is the variety of dark red grape from which the wine is made. It is named for the dark-eyed fiancee of Gustav Claus, (Mavros means dark, and Daphne was her name) who died before they could be wed.

The winery has survived many challenges, including being occupied by the German Army during WWII. Apparently, the German founder had laid down commemorative barrels on the accession of Kaiser Wilhelm, and honouring Baron Otto Von Bismarck. When German officers came to these barrels during a winery tour, they immediately snapped to attention and saluted them. There were also members of the Greek resistance working at the winery, so the British never bombed it.

A group of school children, about ten or eleven years old, was about to take a tour of the winery when we arrived. The tour guide, Tonia, insisted that we join that tour because the next one wouldn't take place for another hour. She told us later that she immediately told the kids in Greek that foreigners had joined the tour, and the kids had to be on their best behaviour so the foreigners would not go back to their country and report that Greek school kids were badly behaved. It seemed to work, as the kids were quite attentive to her talks about the winery, and didn't even become restless when she switched to English at each stop on the tour for our benefit.


When we were passing the oldest barrels, we noticed that two of them had a slight leak, and a substance like dark molasses had collected where the wine had seeped out. I tasted this on my finger, it was sweet and sticky, tasting wonderfully of dried figs.

When the tour finished the school kids got back on their bus, and we went back to the tasting room to sample the wines we had seen being made. After the teachers from the school tour had finished buying their wine, we started to have an interesting conversation with Tonia about the wines she was giving us to taste. I told her of a dessert I made using dried figs poached in some Mavrodaphne de Patras. She responded by giving me a recipe book of dishes using the wine, some of which will undoubtedly be served in Yarker.

And then, all hell broke loose. Two busloads of senior citizens had turned up unannounced, on a day trip from Athens, and they all crowded up to the bar, pushing and jostling, for their free tasting glass of wine. They were lined up four deep, pressing us helplessly against the bar, as Tonia frantically filled plastic glasses and passed them out to the insatiable seniors, who seemed to come back several times for refills. There was a lot of muttering in Greek about foreigners taking up space at the bar, and having wine that they weren't being offered. One elderly gent, tired of waiting for a refill, grabbed one of the open tasting bottles from the end of the bar and started drinking from it. Then they started buying bottles of the cheapest wine, shouting out their orders over each other as they continued to jostle and elbow at the bar. While all this mayhem was going on in the tasting room, several of them slipped outside, got out their kitchen knives and began harvesting vegetables from the winery grounds into plastic bags.

After they finally cleared off, poor Tonia had to take a few minutes to collect herself, and we bought our wine, including a bottle of ten year old Mavrodaphne de Patras. We resisted buying the collector's special vintage blended from wines dating back to 1896, bottled in 2004 to commemorate the Athens Olympics. Only 108 bottles of this were made, they are all numbered, and they cost around 1400 euros.Only a few are left.

We left the winery in high spirits, promising to sent Tonia the picture we took of her. We continued on through the mountains to Kalavryta, for our next stop.

Splendid Syros

(March 14) A very early morning subway ride brought us to Piraeus (the port for Athens) where we boarded a large and quite comfortable ferry. Four hours later we arrived at the island of Syros where we disembarked, to spend a couple of days experiencing the sunny and relaxed atmosphere of a Greek Island.

The main town on Syros, Ermoupolis, was the commercial, naval, and cultural centre of Greece in the 19th century. It has declined economically since then, but still has a textile industry and some ship building, as well as being the legal, administrative and service centre of the Cyclades archipelago. Its current population is about 13,000.

Ermoupolis is very beautiful, curving around a natural harbour. As we arrived on the ferry we could see the town rising up the two hills before us, splendid in the bright clear Aegean sunlight. The buildings were painted in whites and pastel yellows and pinks, with the requisite red tile roofs. One of the main hills is topped by a Greek Orthodox church, the other boasts a Catholic church. The main street is paved with marble blocks the size and shape of patio stones, as are the sidewalks and many of the streets and walkways throughout the town. The main street follows the harbour, and is quite lively, lined with shops and outdoor cafes. The rest of the town is a constant delight, with beautiful streets, walkways and outdoor stairways that invite you to leave the harbour and wander uphill to explore. The main square, just two blocks from the harbour, is surprisingly grand, and also paved with marble. The entire north side of the square, a long city block, is occupied by a large three-story neoclassical building with a tile roof that houses the municipal offices and law courts. The opposite side is lined with palm trees and outdoor cafes. Children were playing and adults were walking and socializing whenever we walked through it.

We checked into an inexpensive but comfortable pension with a terrace overlooking the harbour and a small kitchen. After settling in we set off to walk along the harbour. Later on we visited some old friends of Barb's, Seraphim and Soula Kechayoglou, who came to pick us up and drove us to their beautiful house on the other side of the island, about 20 minutes away, in Poseidonia. Their house was quite beautiful and had a marvelous view of a bay dotted with several small islands. We returned to our pension and ate a late supper at a cafe on the west side of the main square that had the best gyros we had in Greece.

The next day Nikos and I went for a long walk past the shipyard at the southern end of the harbour, and around the peninsula that guarded the southern approach to the town. We passed the ruins of a large stone factory building, quite beautiful, which had been constructed during the 18th century by Venetians to make leather goods. Further out along the point was the ruin of a stone prison, also quite beautiful, which we explored. Nearby was the abandoned stone building of the Eastern Telegraph Company (picture), in quite good condition and right by the sea, that would make a splendid bed and breakfast, or even a tea room, should we get the urge to move to a Greek island.

That evening we were taken to a marvellous restaurant by Seraphim and Soula, which specialized in meats simmered in succulent sauces and flavoured with cinnamon. My veal was cooked in a very rich sauce of plums, onions and sundried tomatoes, all washed down with good taverna wine. The dessert was scoops of rich Greek yogurt, which is the consistency of cream cheese, mixed with halvah, a sublime combination.

The next day Barb and I explored the town, up and down the stairs, and discussed moving there, as we do in most of the fabulous places we visit. Later that afternoon it began to rain and as soon as the sun was gone the chilly winds of early spring reminded us reminded us that every silver lining has a cloud. We got back on the ferry to return to Piraeus, and the next phase of our journey.