[/caption]May 18, 2009 post.
Here's the scene from Nafplio on Saturday night around 11pm: Hundreds of people at outdoor cafes; children running and playing in the open spaces; vendors selling bubble-makers and toys; young people are strolling and smoking cigarettes. At every single cafe they set up large screen TVs outside and people have their chairs facing them. Europop blared from the TVs.
We had no idea what was happening and were fascinated! Everyone was watching Eurovision's Moscow 2009 song competition final. Everyone! All over Europe. See news here: http://tinyurl.com/ppw42g
On Sunday we rented a car and headed out for adventure. We all had our jobs on the trip. Jim drove, Jan navigated, and Pat and I opined from the back seat. Our destinations were Mycenae and Epidavros. And lunch.
The trip to Mycenae went smoothly, only a few u-turns were required. We're pretty much incompetent at reading Greek, so would usually have to pass a sign before we realized that maybe it had some some information we needed.
Mycenae was the home of King Agamemnon, the head of the army that attacked Troy and brother-in-law of the famed Helen. That whole story happened around 1200 BC, just shortly before Mycenae's demise. But people had been in Mycenae for thousands of years before Agamemnon. That kind of history is unfathomable.
We went through the ruins pretty quickly. It was a Sunday morning and the place was crawling with Greek families and kids. The kids were boisterous and active, to use understatement. (And most of the women had on high heels.) Mostly it was powerful just to imagine the history that had taken place there. The views of surrounding orchards sweeping toward the Aegean were stunning. Off in the distance we could see a snow covered peak.
Now comes the fun part. Maria at Alma car rental had told us that we had to come back to Nafplion to get to Epidavros. (You have to get around the mountains.) But Jim was sure he could find a shortcut. During our 40 days in the desert, we saw many signs saying essentially, Mycenaean bridge this way. It seemed like all roads led to the Mycenaean bridge, but none to our destination and food. Eventually I told him that if we didn't find lunch by 2pm he would have serious trouble. Jan said I resembled a character out of The Exorcist. Just as we were all hitting the bottom of our blood sugar, we found the town we were looking for and had another great Greek salad. Jan and I also agreed to share a village sausage -- thinking it would be a light meal. Not. It was gigantic.
We were all pretty lethargic when we got to Epidavros. It has a huge amphitheater that is still used for concerts. We sat in the very top row and listened as people demonstrated the acoustics. A woman crinkled paper and then struck a match. We heard it all perfectly.
Then we wandered through the ruins at Asklepieion at Epidavros. People went there to get cured. They were to sleep and dream and then wake cured by Asklepios, who was worshipped as a god. There were also physicians there who did surgery and there was a temple of Artemis.
We were totally drained at this point and started heading home. But Jim wanted more adventures. He thought we should find that Mycenaean bridge. After much wandering and bottoming the car out and scraping the sides of the car along plants through olive groves, we tried leaving the car and walking along a path that seemed to be directed by a sign. Nothing. I kept feeling like someone was behind a tree laughing at their big joke on us. We finally convinced Jim to head out. We nearly ran out of gas, but eventually made it back to our hotel.
We decided to sit out in the courtyard and have a cold drink. The people across the hall were also out, getting ready to go have coffee. They joined in our conversation and pretty soon they invited us to join them. Antonia and Alex do organic landscaping and sell green products from their suburb of Athens. http://tinyurl.com/AntoniaAlex
They were delightful and pretty soon we realized it was 11:30pm. When we said it was probably time to go -- they ran in and paid the bill, saying that Greek hospitality demanded it. So gracious. Their next stop was to eat dinner and go dancing. They tried to get us to join them, but we were wiped out. It would have been fun, but how do you explain to people from this culture that we are usually in bed by 10pm? We were just proud to make it to midnight two days in a row.
Jan and Jim got up early today to go find the damn bridges before they had to turn in the car. (A google search proved them to be real phenomena, heightening the challenge.) Today we are going to take it easy. Getting laundry done and going to the beach. Happy Monday to you all!
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