Note 1: You can find more photos of the tour at kwilhelm.smugmug.com.
Note 2: You can read more about the Peloponnese, and the Rick Steves' tour in my entry for his scrapbook competition.
Rick Steves' tours begin with a late afternoon meet-and-greet. In Turkey, in 1999, we were served tea in the traditional, tulip-shaped glasses. Here, in Athens, we were treated to wine, soft drinks and assorted nibbles. Still, we sat in three stiff rows for the introductions, and I felt alarm bells go off early. The second speaker, disregarding the request for brevity, went on at loud length and concluded by saying he came from the east, not the left, coast. You could almost hear the thud as that one hit the floor - most Rick Steves' tour members come from the California - Washington - Oregon area. As he was followed by several upbeat extroverts, I almost skipped dinner.
Happily, the group improved on closer acquaintance. I enjoyed talking to my dinner companions, and then strolled towards the Plaka with an interesting couple from West Virginia who had spent considerable time in Nepal and India. True, two of us found ourselves in an uncomfortable discussion with a young woman in the Foreign Service, who felt she had to defend the administration's policies. Then 11:00 at night in a bar hardly seemed a good time to try to persuade me of the inerrancy of the Bible. Deciding that one generous gin and tonic was enough I beat a strategic retreat. But otherwise I found my roommates considerate and the companionship a fun change.
Things would have been different, I suspect, had the east coast right-winger stayed the course, but he had hurt his leg before the tour started, and had to go home on the second day. It seemed the Greek gods did require a sacrifice, but happily this time it was someone else's turn. Perhaps the libation I had poured at Dodomi had worked in my favor. Having been in the same position I should have felt sympathy, but I confess it was strongly colored by relief.
I had only admired the Parthenon from afar, knowing that the group would visit, but surprisingly it failed to thrill me. Our guide knew her stuff, and was entertaining enough, but I knew it nearly as well as she did, having prepped for this trip, and couldn't help thinking there is really no need to lecture us about the Acropolis actually in front of said Acropolis. Why couldn't we do the lecture sitting down in comfort in the hotel, or a cafe, and then wander the site at our leisure? As it was, we were rushed, and since we started at noon, also hot, although our guide did do a good job of finding shade for her talks.
I had similar thoughts the next day at Delphi, where we arrived too late to visit the museum, and where I found the stadium and the temple to Athena, which I visited after the guide finished, the most evocative. I poured another precautionary libation, this time to Athena, and really appreciated the sense of serenity in the ruins of her temple. The exact site used by the oracle is unknown, and instead the guides point out the "treasuries" where the city states stored their offerings, but it underlines the Greeks' low opinion of women to know that she was the only female allowed within the sacred precincts.
I had vague memories from history lessons of the Athenians as the highly civilized founders of democracy, and found reading history for this trip quite enlightening. Athen's "Golden Age", the time of Plato and Socrates, of Aeschylus and Euripedes, lasted less than a hundred years, and Athens followed the defeat of the Persians by using the Delian League (think NATO) to found an oppressive empire. Our tour leader, who had a nicely sardonic take on Greek history, even suggested that it was the hated Spartans who were the real supporters of democracy. (Surviving history was written by the Athenians, he pointed out.)
Our leader, David, had literally written the book (the Lonely Planet book) on the Peloponnese. Originally a Brit, his experience of public school life had so impressed him that he moved abroad soon after and was now an Aussie. Aside from two missed museums the tour ran smoothly, and I certainly don't fault him for the flaws in the itinerary.
A small mountain, anyway: the highest mountain in Greece, Mt. Olympus, is under 3,000 meters. From Delphi we drove across the new, expensive, toll bridge to the Peloponnese. Our bus was big enough for all the singles, at least, to spread out across a double seat, and with Spiros, a careful, friendly driver, I could sit back and enjoy travel that for once was someone else's responsibility. This day's highlight was a ride up the Vouraikos Gorge on a cog railway. Partway up we had engine trouble, and spent some time getting to know each other better while it was fixed.
This made us late for lunch, but the trout was worth waiting for - along with greens, salad, fries and delicious fried cheese, and wine provided free by the restaurant - no doubt a thank you for David's picking this place over the one next door. That owner glared at us from his doorway as we visited with an old man selling walnuts, herbs and honey, and wandered by the mountain stream that was home to the doomed trout.
Our home that night, Dimitsana, featured a pretty wooden hotel with super-comfy beds, and forested mountains that demanded more time than we had to give them. A small village, it still offered a grocery store and two tavernas - I visited one for coffee, alongside locals playing backgammon and watching soccer on the wide-screen TV, and the other for pizza and the ubiquitous (but usually tasty) Greek salad of feta, tomato, cucumber and deep yellow Greek olive oil.
I had expected to be bored next day at Olympia, thinking we would only see a grassy stadium, albeit a very famous, very old stadium. Instead it was a highlight, with an excellent museum, the remains of temples and a gymnasium in addition to the stadium, and with trees in full bloom. Indeed, flowers were everywhere we went, a bonus for a spring trip - in places their perfume rose around us like incense as we walked.
Later, more narrow, winding roads brought us to Kardamyli, on the rugged coast but backed by mountains. Here all four solo women got single rooms - in addition the injured right-winger, the tour was missing one woman, who had simply failed to show up, and this hotel didn't allow late cancellations. My room was dark and cold, but I appreciated the space, and loved the courtyard, sheltered by trees already bearing oranges and lemons. David organized a wine and olive oil tasting in the courtyard, but I found the oils indistinguishable and the wines undistinguished - drinkable but very, very light.
With a free day I slept in, before eating an early lunch in a taverna with an unobstructed view of a slightly stormy sea, and tackling a walk up into the hills. Going up I had to cede the footpath for a while to a large herd of goats: coming down, much more difficult for me, I enjoyed the company of some others from the tour. The views were worth the exercise even though we finished in the rain - my umbrella was now doing duty as such, instead of as a sunshade.
Later I went in search of coffee. The first cup I abandoned as undrinkable: the second, further down the village's one street, was better, but not that much better. In Greece, the coffee, like the food, fails to live up to the history and the scenery. The locals drink either Greek (a.k.a. Turkish) coffee - full of grounds, or a vile-looking mixture of Nescafe, condensed milk and ice.
The southern part of the Peloponnese is a remote and frequently lawless area known as the Mani, where small villages were home to feuding families entrenched in well-defended tower houses. Here Homer's wine-dark Aegean Sea breaks at the foot of steep and rocky mountains - beautiful but largely barren terrain supporting a diminishing population - a great place to visit, but not to make a living.
Our lunch stop, Gerolimenas, was especially idyllic, and we nearly staged a mutiny at having to leave for two nights at Gythio, a missable seaside town (although with a great restaurant, the General Store). Gerolimenas, where we ate wonderful artichokes and calamari on a verandah overlooking a U-shaped harbor ringed by cliffs, crystal-clear water at our feet and octopus drying in the hot sun beside us, was heaven.
That afternoon we visited "hell", the windy southernmost point of the Peloponnese, appropriately via purgatory, at least for Spiros. After taking the wrong narrow road Spiros had to execute a three-point turn on a curve to get the big bus turned around. Aside from the wind, hell wasn't a bad place. A Christian church faced off against a temple to Poseidon, and we walked through a field of flowers - red, yellow and purple, poppies, daisies and buttercups, roses and herbs.
Not only would Gerolimenas have been a better overnight than Gythio, so would Monemvasia, which we visited as a day trip. An almost-island at the end of a long causeway, looking like a miniature Gibraltar, Monemvasia is crowned by the ruins of a fortress - at various times the Byzantine, Venetian and Ottoman empires all held sway here. The ruins are reached by a fairly tough trek up from the "new town" by the water. Like Mont St. Michel, the new town is a tourist trap - narrow streets full of cafes and souvenir shops, but the setting is magnificent.
Monemvasia lived up to my expectations. Mystras did not. Built near the site of classical Sparta, Mystras, according to the guidebooks, is a collection of Byzantine churches and palaces stepped down a hillside and home to great frescoes. Maybe it is, but you couldn't tell it from the endurance test our visit became. Our local guide subjected us to a speed-walk, with precious little explanation. In most European countries official sites can only be visited with licensed local guides, even if your tour guide knows more (as David surely did) he can only talk outside the site. This was the only substandard guide on the whole tour, but she ruined Mystras for me.
Like most of Europe, Greece is much fought over. Originally, Greek fought Greek. Later, Greeks fought invaders, or invaders fought each other - notably the Venetians versus the Turks in the 15th century. Nafplio, our last Peloponnese stop, is a charming relic of Venetian occupation, with two castles and well-preserved buildings.
Since Greeks don't get around to dancing for fun until well after midnight, David had arranged a demonstration for us in Nafplio - two musicians and four dancers. Touristy but fun - the dancing was seriously energetic, although my best photo of the evening was of an elderly local man watching from a corner. David also arranged another wine tasting for us in Nafplio, this time at a local wine shop. Again, I found the wines quite drinkable but far too light to be memorable. We were given no list of the wines we were drinking, but my barely legible notes suggest that something called the St. George grape might be worth investigating.
Nafplio was our base for visits to Mycenae and Epidaurus. Perhaps I was suffering from a surfeit of ruins - too many in too short a time - but I was underwhelmed by both sites. Yes, they look like the photos. Yes, the acoustics at the theater at Epidaurus are remarkable. Yes, the beehive tomb chamber at Mycenae is impressive. But I found the much-photographed lions at Mycenae somehow smaller and more eroded in real life, and the ruins of the hospital at Epidaurus more ruinous and less evocative then I had hoped.
The tour was winding down, and I had little interest in our last stop before returning to Athens, the island of Spetses. In addition to the two nights in Gythio, and the timing that leads to most tours missing the museum at Delphi, this was my main complaint about the itinerary - I would far rather have seen the Corinth canal. Indeed, the island was so uninviting I took the ferry to neighboring Hydra for our "free" island afternoon.
Hydra, with a much smaller tourist town round a more compact harbor, steep cliffs dropping straight into the sea, and an easily accessible bathing cove near town, was much more the Greek island of everyone's imagination, and with donkey transport instead of Spetses' buzzing bikes, much quieter. (ETDB posts feedback on their tours on their web site. All the feedback on Spetses has been negative, and they are finally switching to Hydra next year - I would still prefer Corinth. The islands are easy to reach on your own, you don't need a tour.)
We returned to Athens by ferry for the last night of the tour on a Friday - the start of Greek Orthodox Easter, a week after Catholic and Protestant Easter. The boats leaving Athens for the islands were full to overflowing with Greeks heading out for the holiday, the inbound boats almost empty. The town would shut down until Tuesday.
I spent the afternoon at the Botanical Gardens with Bruce and Mia, the couple from West Virginia, and then took full advantage of the bath tub in my upmarket hotel room - a rare luxury. The farewell dinner that evening was graced by a view of the Parthenon, and later by a glimpse of an Easter procession: a flower bedecked bier accompanied by robed priests and worshippers carrying long candles.
"The tour is over after breakfast". After some final farewells I carted my pack back over to the Hotel Cecil. I planned a slow day that turned a little energetic - the well-organized Byzantine Museum, dumping photos to CD, a failed search for an English-language bookshop, coffee in the Plaka and net access up too many stairs.
The evening was the best part of the day - I met Bruce and Mia at the tour hotel and they led the way to a taverna tucked under the Acropolis' hill. The set menu (tzatziki and chicken souvlaki for me) came with plenty of red wine and was followed by grappa. After dinner we stopped a group on the street to ask about processions and got lucky - no procession tonight, one man said, but follow us. A theologian who had lived in Australia, he was the cantor at a small, half-renovated church. We squeezed onto seats with the locals, glad we had bought candles, and let the service wash over us. At midnight the dimly-lit church suddenly went completely dark, then the candles blazed into life as the good news was passed - "Christ is risen", "He is risen indeed". The congregation headed outside, then stalled, and I worried about the women's long hair near all those candles, but nothing caught fire.
Below the Acropolis I said a regretful goodbye to Bruce and Mia, who were heading home the next day, before walking alone through the almost deserted, darkened, Plaka to the Cecil. The tour was indeed over.
Sent from Krakow, Poland, 9 June, 2006
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