On Travels... Nafplia
Headed off, and caught a bus to Nafplia at a time that was waaay too early... (Grrr - travel buddies that are morning people...)
Nafplia is a kinda central town in the Peloponnese area, which is sort of a really big attached island, down in the south west of Greece. The plan was to use itas a base to explore the rest of the area. On the bus, we met a pretty cool American - Kevin, who was heading to the same place.
Due to one of the lovely curses I live with, I ended up with a lovely migraine, and slept the day away. Apparently I missed out on a good day of exploring the town, but, well, thems the breaks.
But, Nafplia is a pretty cool place. Its sort of on a point, between a couple of bays. Quite a nice place, with quite a few nice restaurants there. Its also got a pretty cool fortress on a hill above the town, which they light up at night. Looks pretty cool.
<P align=center><IMG alt=”The Fortress at Nafplia by night” src=”/common/photoalbum/generatethumbnailimage.aspx?img=..%2f..%2fmatt%2fphotos%2fallphotos%2ftravels%2f03+-+TheTrip%2f09+-+Greece+-+October+25+to+November+8%2f03+-+Nafplio%2fPB030095.JPG.lnk&thumbnailtype=photoalbumpage” border=0> </P> <P align=center>The fortress at Nafplia, which they light up every night. Pretty darn cool.</P>
So, we headed up, and climbed lots of steps up to this fortress, and spent the morning exploring. Pretty cool. Quite sad, but I spent the time while I was exploring listening to the DotNetRocks internet radio talk show. But, well, I’m a computer nerd, so what can you expect?
We also headed out to a place called Epiduras, which has a really cool, pretty well preserved amphitheatre. The cool thing is the acoustics. There’s a round stone, about a foot across, in the dead centre of the amphitheatre, and if you stand there, and talk normally, you get an echo of yourself, so, it’s a natural fold-back setup. Move a foot to the right, and it stops. Very freaky, but cool. Those builders knew what they were doing.
Other than the cool amphitheatre, there was lots and lots and lots and lots and lots (et al) ruins. They weren’t even buildings. Just ruins. Big blocks of stone, being quite lazy, sitting back, and enjoying the sun. Apparently the site used to be a “health spa”, where they practiced all sorts of healing type things. Kinda interesting.
But, after wandering around all those terribly exciting ruins, in the hot sun, we went and found some dinner, and a pretty cool bar – it had some very weird stuff in it, from old tv’s (still displaying logos), to things on wires and motors that ran around the roof. Was very cool. He even had a visitors book that we all got to write in. Only slightly disconcerting thing was when the Ajax was sitting up on the shelf with the alcohol… <IMG alt=:| class="emoticon" src="/images/emotions/emotion-8.gif" border=0>
Other than that, I was planning on heading down to Olympia, as its got the Temple of Zeus, which was one of the ancient wonders of the world. But, the whole thing seemed like too much effort, so I thought stuff it, and slept in instead. Then, once again, it was back to Athens, stopping briefly in our friendly HI hostel to say hi, before heading off to catch the midnight train to Meteora, which is definitely a topic for another blog entry (cos it was way cool).