All in Greece 2019
The next day we woke up to mist with Meteora peeking out between the shifting clouds. We drove back up to a lookout point. Completely white. It felt like standing on the edge of the world. Slowly the mist shifted and monasteries emerged. (excerpt from Jenn's journal)
Asclepius was the son of the sun god Apollo and a princess named Koronis. Instead of being raised by his parents, Asclepius’s caregiver was a centaur. The centaur taught him how to practice medicine and Asclepius got so good that he could bring people back from the dead! If Zeus hadn’t intervened and stopped Asclepius from bringing back the dead we might all be immortals today!
Epidaurus was an ancient healing place. It was a beautiful place in nature that let people who had been injured in war or had gotten sick to escape from the city and heal. Epidaurus was dedicated to Asclepios. Asclepios was the god of healing and medicine. He was not as famous as Zeus or Athena, but he was still very important. The patients believed that Asclepios would visit them at night while they were sleeping in the form of a snake! If Asclepios visited them they would wake up healed!
The path curved around the outside of the high cliffs, prickly cacti growing sideways off the rocks. “Ahhhh!” my one year old, Felix, would scream in a high pitched squeal of delight every time we saw a cat, which were plentiful along the path. We had started the trail from the parking lot that sat just below the Palamidi Castle. There had been a camper van parked there, full of kids, laundry hanging to dry on the outside. I was tempted by the idea of renting a camper and making a road trip of our time in Greece.
Cats were the first thing we noticed as our car came to a halt in the parking lot of Epidaurus historic sight. Cats that were lounging on the edge of the parking lot, or spread out across the pavement lifted their heads to watch our car approach. Stretching, their unblinking eyes fixed on our vehicle, all at once they got up, and slunk in towards us from every direction. By the time we had the doors open the whole glaring of cats surrounded us. There must have been 20 or 30 of them, and clearly they had come to associate tourists with food. Felix was delighted! At one and a half, he had a near obsession with cats, and here there was a whole bunch of cats close enough for him to reach out and grab with his pudgy fingers.
In 1715 Fortress Palamidi was captured by the Turks, continuing the rule of the Ottomon Empire in the area (Papathanassiou). 1821 was the beginning of the Greek revolution, and the leaders of the revolution saw Palamidi as a stronghold that could give them a seat for the government. Palamidi was put under siege, and the though the attempts to storm the fortress failed, the Turks were unable to re-supply and began to starve (Papathanassiou). The Turks agreed to surrender if they were not relieved within 25 days (Phillips & Walter, 1897, pp. p.96-107).
It has taken us a long time to adjust to these hours, especially since my VIPkid hours have me working until around 4:00 pm local time. We would try and go into town after work only to find it a ghost town! The shops would finally be opening up again as we headed back home to make dinner. We also made the mistake of trying to buy diapers on a Sunday. We were on our way to Olympia, and we figured it would be easy to stop in at a store on route. Every store we came across was closed! We were down to our last four diapers! We ended up finding a small family run convenience store that was open and had diapers, but the frantic search definitely added a twist to our adventure that we had not anticipated!
As the days went by we noticed more and more oranges on the ground and started to wonder when the farmers were going to harvest their crop. We asked a local, and we were told that the farmers were trying to negotiate prices.
“Turn left!”
“Here?”
“Yes! Wait, no, not here, there.”
Our GPS was taking us on some crazy route from Athens to Nafplio! The views were spectacular, but the roads were not. They were narrow, badly maintained, and weaved up and down hills and through towns. The locals passed on corners and zipped down the road as if it were a freeway.
Seeing the acropolis at night was an unexpected treat, and a view of the famous site devoid of crowds that not everyone gets. We were moving on to Nafplio the next day, and check out was at two, so we had enough time to go back when the acropolis was open. We had been discussing whether or not to go back, as we felt we had seen it all the night before, but we decided it was worth it. Despite very little sleep, Nate was up making breakfast early enough for us to get out and back before our 2 pm checkout.
“Careful, careful!” a vendor said to Nate as he ducked below the overhanging tent roof of the fruit stand. Nate had our one year old, Felix in a backpack carrier. Nate is already 6’4”, and Felix stuck up a few inches above his head. The street market was full of locals out buying big bags of fresh produce. There was a large variety of fruits and vegetables, but what stood out most to me were the booths were loaded with fresh oranges, tomatoes, olives, and bananas. We walked from one end of the market to the other, surveying the selection and discussing our lunch and dinner plans.
Nate eased onto the roads, careful to obey the traffic rules and speed signs, as Athenians zoomed past us, motorcycles weaving in and out of traffic! The signs were all in Greek, which we could not read, so the directions on Google map were no good for us. Instead I adapted by saying “Turn left in 500 m, 200 m, 100- must be the next turn!” The stop lights were right above the intersection, making it nearly impossible to see when they turned green if you were at the front of the line up.
