999 steps

Cas and I just climbed down 999 stairs from the Palamidi Castle. At one point, it was a fortress used for defense. In another moment, it was a prison. Now, it's a tourist attraction. Things evolve that way. 

There are beautiful views on all sides. 

There are worse places to be incarcerated. 

We have time for more exploring today before we leave Nafplio. We get on an overnight ferry to Crete this evening and wake up in Chania on the island of Crete tomorrow. 

We've made a quick stop for some thoroughly necessary refreshments. We may head to the street market next, or we may visit the "floating" castle out in the water. A lot depends on how functional our legs are when we stand up. 

The play's the thing

Hey, everyone- I appear to have fallen asleep waiting for this post to publish.  I think it would have been up eight or nine hours ago, but alas, we were exhausted, and the Internet around here is not optimal.

So, here it is, written last night:

This morning, we left Delphi and got on a bus to Nafplio. Our particular tour probably works out better when it's not the dead center of summer, though, because we arrived just in the worst part of the day's heat. We keep doing that. It would be so much better if we could come early and get in a walk around the place we've arrived before noon.

As it happens, we keep having a quick walk around in the middle of the day. Today's quick walk took us to a gelato place. Cas and I each got a sorbet that was half lemon and half strawberry. 

We took a pit stop at Isthmos Canal in Corinth today. It was a real marvel of engineering in digging it out and making a passage for ships. 

It was that stop that put our arrival time at around 1:15. 

We had a half hour to shake off the drowsiness from the bus and get ready for a walk.  Charlie took us through the city, showing us some of the things we may wish to explore on our own. Her walks are brisk, and often punctuated with pauses for shopping recommendations or tourism suggestions. I would love that a lot more if those suggestions were being made in the high 80s, not the high 90s. 

I paid just a little bit of attention.  Not much.  After our brief orientation, Cas and I elected to stay behind as the rest of the group went back to the hotel.  We stayed at a restaurant and had what turned out to be a really big lunch.  

We wandered around a little bit after that, ending up at a bar for a small piece of time until our wine tasting event.  Our local expert had us try two white wines, three red ones, a small amount of Ouzo and Ciporo.  I thought the first white was too bitter, the second one was okay, and I liked all three reds.  The Ouzo was fantastic, and the Ciporo (nobody told me it was the same thing as Grappa) tasted like what I imagine fingernail polish remover would have tasted like.  

In the end, we decided to purchase a bottle of red for our ferry ride, and leave the Grappa for someone who needed to remove furniture varnish.  

The final event of the day was a Greek play in the Epidarus festival.  It was a production called The Bacchae written by Uripides in 400 BC.  I have to be honest, I kept falling asleep.  The heat combined with the exhaustion of the day and the fact that the play was hard to follow was about to lull me to sleep right there in my stone seat.  The play was in Greek with English subtitles.  They did this by projecting the English words on these small horizontal screens to the left and right of the stage.  Looking back and forth was dizzying.  It made things a little more taxing than my already worn out attention span could do.  Still, it was great to see a play with a chorus in a real Greek amphitheater.  they used no audio equipment, and we heard every footfall.  Those old Greeks knew what they were doing.  

It's time for bed, for sure.  I am only staying up long enough to post this last photo from our seats, then it's lights out!  

Is good goat

Turns out the wifi at the Delphi Archaeological site is free.  There goes our big question to the Oracle.

There are two actual streets in Delphi worth mention.  Our hotel is on one of them, and the Archaeological site is on the other one.  We walked there.  Although the distance was not that great, I think a lot of people in out tour group are looking forward to the cooler island temperatures later in the trip.  

Our visit to this place started with a guided tour through the museum.  We had a bona fide art historian talking us through the place, and we could all tell that she had a firm grasp of the subject matter- above and beyond some of the other tour guides.  Many of them read from paper.  Some of them were clearly new to it. Our lady spoke of the statues like they were old friends she had known for years, and she spoke about the site as though it was her childhood backyard.  She was very good at her job.  My only complaint was that she wasn't at all aggressive in quieting down less well-informed people.  I guess it's tour guide courtesy.  

Here was a particularly decent Delphi selfie with some good background: 

Cas and I made it up all the stairs and saw many things in their states of disrepair.  There had been some great effort made to restore the treasury building from the old city, and you could tell they did the best job they could do.  

It was about 95 degrees with plenty of direct sunlight, and we climbed a lot of stairs, so when we got back to the hotel, it was time to scrub our feet (we have some pretty great walking sandals, but the feet get dirty).  After that, we went to the hotel lobby and grabbed a glass of Ouzo each.  They are 2 Euro, which is about $2.20 with the current exchange rate, so our bar tab was under five bucks.  Unheard of.  After that, we went to join the group for dinner.  We had a beautiful meal.  I had goat.  

When Cas and I got married, he joked that he wanted a dowry from my parents.  Nothing big- just a goat and a few chickens.  This became a running gag.  My parents placed flat cardboard barnyard animals on our house while we were off getting married, and we we got back to our house, there were two chickens, a cow, a donkey and a rooster.  No goat.  

Cas remarked at the lack of goat.  

No goat.  

When we had our reception, Mom made a card for him with a picture of a goat on it.  There was an old Eastern block looking woman in a head scarf saying, "I know you wish for goat.  Here is goat."  Open the card, and viola- a goat.  

Cas retaliated.  He wrote out a thank you card like you do after a wedding.  I delivered it personally to my parents.  He wrote, "Thank you for goat.  Is good goat."  

So, when I ordered my meal today and the plate arrived, I tried the goat.  I looked at Cas and said, "Is good goat."   

He was amused.  

Anyhow, I pretty much had to stay up late enough to tell that story.  I can will my eyes to stay open for something I consider a good laugh.  

On to Nafplio tomorrow.  More then.  

Off to see the wizard

Or the Oracle.  Or something. Today, we head out to see the Oracle of Delphi.  We have been thinking of questions we could ask the Oracle.

We could ask about profound things like the meaning of life or the true nature of mankind.  We could attempt to have it estimate the ability of a woodchuck to live up to its name.  In the end, though, I think Cas wants to ask the Oracle, "Hey, Oracle- what's your wifi password?" 

We just went for a walk around Kalambaka for a cup of coffee with a view.  It was really pretty out, there was a light breeze, and we were up early for no real reason.  

It's pretty much our last shot at seeing these oddball rocks.  They are outside the balcony window of our room, too, but when we get on the bus to Delphi, that's it.  

On the way to Delphi, we are scheduled to stop at Thermopliae for a brief visit.  It's almost time to pack up and head out, though, so I will leave you with this photo of the view just outside our balcony: 

Monk pants

Today, we climbed a whole lot of stairs to make it to the Great Monastery, higher up than anything else in Meteora. In total, there are seven Monasteries and nunneries built on top of these rocks, which, we've been told, came up this way when the European tectonic plate and the African one shifted against one another.

The Great Monastery is the biggest and highest up, ad in order to enter it, we had to be modestly dressed- a tall order in Meteora in the summer.  I had to borrow a skirt at the door (about half of the women did) because women had to wear skirts, and those skirts have to cover the knees.  Cas had shorts on, so he had to borrow a pair of long pants.  Men are not to show their knees, either.  He was calling them his "monk pants." 

I will not be sharing any photos of monk pants or my nun-approved skirt.  Just know that borrowed skirts and pants from a Monastery are about as pretty as you imagine.  

From the first Monastery, we had the option to see two more, but when we asked if the next two were particularly unique, we were told no.  They were pretty much like the first one.  We learned yesterday that all Byzantine churches have the same frescoes in the same places.  Over the door, they have the scene of the death of the Virgin Mary.  On the left and right sides of the doors are always the same row of saints and holy men in the same order. Lovely though they are, if you've seen one, you can make a lot of inferences about the rest of them.  We decided to save ourselves from the weather a little by seeing the greatest and grandest Monastery and leaving the other two on the list to the imagination.  

Good thing, too, as we got back from the bus stop, went swimming, took a nap and headed out to purchase more sunscreen before we saw the folks walking back who had been on the full day tour.  No thanks.  They were walking back to the hotel at 5pm, having headed up with us at 9am.  There are no restaurants atop the mountains, and I am sure they packed a lunch, but I don't think I could have spent that much time marching about in the sun today.  The nap was pretty great, and the pool was very refreshing.  

The Monastery itself was impressive.  They had museum pieces in rooms for everyone to look at, but most of those rooms forbade photography.  Here was an outdoor copy of some of the indoor frescoes, albeit this one was newer and in much better shape: 

I was taken with the old kitchen: 

Of course, you can't beat the view:
 
Cas has lots more photos in his album (in case you need the link again,) here you go: https://goo.gl/photos/zxmxAmDBqhc4hPHD7

Monks must really hate people

This morning, we left Athens for Kalambaka, which is the actual city at the base of the most interesting rock formation I have seen all year, Meteora.  

It turns out that July 11th was the day last year when Cas and I visited Uluru (Ayer's Rock), and today, we saw the monestaries on top of the large stones here in Greece.  

A sample: 

It looks like the buildings grow out of the top of the rocks.  Pretty amazing, and certainly hard to visit.  It's probably easy to be devout in your worship when you are so split apart from the rest of the people.  We actually went inside a nunnery and an extremely old Byzantine church, but one of the rules in these places was that you are not allowed to take photos inside.  Enjoy the garden just outside of the nunnery, as it was the last thing we could photograph before entering: 

We went from there to a Byzantine church,  Our tour guide was a local guy with a big personality.  He was baptized as a child in that very church.  The thing I kind of knew in the back of my brain but nearly forgot was how completely gaudy and fancy the Byzantines were.  There was so much gold leaf and so much gold-thread embroidery.  It was all beautiful in its own way, but not my speed, exactly.  I don't even wear that much jewelry, and what I do wear has been chosen for its ability to achieve beauty in its simplicity.  

After a lot of marching about and some serious perspiration (it was over 100 degrees here today) we got a treat.  We were able to watch the sun set over the rocks.  There is a lookout point that is actually pretty crowded, but there was room for us among the tourists and the couples doing their bridal photography.  

We have a hike to go on tomorrrow, though Cas and I aren't ruling out the option to skip it and jump in the swimming pool.  In the meantime, though, enjoy a susnet: 

Ticket to ride

This morning started out with breakfast at the hotel in Athens, followed by a brisk walk to a metro station. I was not aware that the city sat atop such a robust subway system. We finally have our whole tour group assembled, so it was seventeen people (one of whom is our guide) wheeling and carrying luggage to the station, on a commuter train, then to the station that shares its location to the larger, over-land trains. I'm writing from a passenger train on a five hour trip today, though I won't have wifi to post any of this until we get to our destination.

Today, we are headed to Meteora, where we are supposed to see monasteries and a great Byzantine church.  I go really have no idea what to expect on this one.  I know it's the manifestation of the poor student in me from my younger days who didn't do homework or learn a little about the destination in advance, but I'm hoping that it's good to be surprised.  

I do know that we have signed on for a sunset tour this evening, at which time we are to see some form of nunnery or church.  Tomorrow should be the "hanging" monasteries, which are very high up in the mountains- hence the name.  

Anyhow, this has been a really pretty great ride so far- we're over halfway done with it, but there's still time to go.  Meantime, enjoy a few photos. 

The Metro Station:

Cas on the commuter train: 

A really pretty mountain outside the train window on the scenic route to Meteora:

That's all I have for now!  On to Meteora.