Reflections on a Week in Greece

We have now arrived in Venice, after an all day trip yesterday by car, plane, bus and train. Greece was gorgeous, there's no two ways about it. The sun shone every day. We never had a drop of rain, and it was hot, but a dry hot.

Nafplio, the town where we stayed, is a wonderful spot that I would highly recommend if you're ever thinking about spending a week or so in Greece. It is about 100 miles southwest of Athens, past Corinth, and situated close to several ancient ruin sites, including Epidauros, Mycenae, Tiryns, and ancient Corinth. But the town itself is well worth a visit, and has a charming old town section with houses dating from the era during th 1500's and 1600's when Venice controlled it, wresting it away from the Ottoman Turks. There is a spectacular fortress perched high on a cliff over the town and harbor, with views all over the Argos region of Greece.



We followed a pretty ambitious agenda for seeing Greece from Nafplio: the first full day after Lucy arrived from Scotland we just did the things I described in my last posting entry on this blog. Then the following day we set out for the ruins of Epidauros and Mycenae. Epidauros, about 15 miles up in the dry hills north of Nafplio, is the site of an incredibly well-preserved Greek ampitheathre, the best one in all of Greece.

Here's Lucy, sitting on one of the 55 rows of seats, which altogether could seat 14,000 spectators! The acoustics are just about perfect. You can hear a coin drop at the bottom when you're sitting at the top.

For some reason the blog doesn't seem to want to let me post any more photos in it, so I will have to do so in a subsequent entry. But to continue: We saw Epidauros and Mycenae one day, then drove 11 hours round-trip from Nafplio to Delphi the next day, then a similar length day in the beating sun to Athens te next day, where we took a three hour walking tour of the Acropolis, then the following day we did an all day boat trip to the Greek isles of Hydra and Spetses. They all were gorgeous and interesting to see, but as you can imagine, it was pretty tiring to do it in such a concentrated dose, and Chris, then Anna and now I have come down with colds. But if it were you, and you had just a week to see as much of Greece as you could, would you have done it differently??

We had been hoping to get a lot of good Greek food this week, but were a bit disappointed in that. Most of what we had was just mass-produced stuff for the tourists, since this is the height of Greek vacation season. The restaurants were jammed in Nafplio every evening we were there, with large family groups on vacation. Everyone was enjoying themselves it seemed, from Grandma & Grandpa to the little kids who were running wild in the streets and squares of Nafplio even at 12 Midnight as their parents sipped ouzo or drank coffee and smoked (and smoked and smoked!) in the sidewalk cafes, that stay open till the wee small hours of the morning. It was an intergenerational happening that just kept on rolling, almost till dawn!

Finally Anna, who was feeling sick off and on throughout the Greek week said that she just wanted to go home and have really good Greek food at Dinos Gyros on Snelling in Falcon Heights. O.K., so many of you know what it's like to be on a vacation trip with kids who get burnt out of sightseeing, etc.! But she's perked back up now that we've arrived in Venice and had some good Italian food! And what a unique and amazing city Venice is, even in August when it's muggy and sultry and swarming with American tourists! More on that later.