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Well, just for the record, I didn’t sleep soundly. It could have been the four glasses of grappa or the enormous amount of food that I ate yesterday, but it is also the fact that our room has no air circulation. Everything in this town is either built of rock or built into the rock, so the walls are quite thick and energy efficient. Our pension also does a great job of conserving water and electricity. You get a credit card when you check in. When you go into your room, you insert the card into a reader and that allows you to turn on and off lights. When you take the card out of the reader, the lights go off automatically after one minute. The only windows in our room are in the door and are triple glazed. Tonight we sleep with the windows open.
Woke up this morning to the sound of multiple church bells ringing.
Today is Ohi Day, a national day of celebration. At 3 am on this date in 1940, a representative of the Axis forces arrived at the Greek Prime Minister’s residence and demanded Greece's surrender. He also demanded Greece allow Axis forces to enter Greek territory and occupy certain unspecified "strategic locations" or otherwise face war. It was allegedly answered with a single iconic word: όχι (No!). However, his actual reply was, “Alors, c’est la guerre!” (Then it is war!). The prime minister’s refusal became famous around the country and the people came out to the streets shouting, “Ohi!”. This is remembered as a brave decision by the prime minister and is believed by millions of Greeks to be a heroic act. (Thanks Wikipedia!).
The bells were followed by a marching band playing patriotic music and all sorts of activities in the streets. The holiday is also a special remembrance for those that lost loved ones during WWII. Since it is a national holiday, it feels like all of Athens is in town for the weekend. Every parking place in town is taken and the restaurants are stuffed with people. We took the day to escape the crowds and to visit Epidaurus and Mycenaea. Both are just a short drive away and are important archaeological sites and officially listed as World Heritage sites. Epidaurus is the site of the best preserved theater from ancient times. It was built in the 4th century B.C. It is estimated that the theater could seat up to 12,000 people. The acoustics are such that you can speak in theatrical tone of voice and be heard at the top of the arena. The theater sits in a beautiful setting several miles off the beaten path. Of course something this cool means fleets of tour buses and shuffling old people in slow moving groups.
We snapped some pics and headed for Mycenaea. Mycenaea lies about 40 minutes away. There seems to be scant history on the Mycenaen culture. Their empire thrived from about 1600 to 1110 B.C. If you really want to know more about it, I encourage you to look it up to save me from writing all about it. Thanks. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mycenae
What is known about the Mycenaens is they were a warlike culture who built what seems to be an absolutely impenetrable fortress on the top of a very steep hill overlooking the surrounding valley. The stones used to build the castle are immensely heavy, so heavy that it was said that the castle could have only been built by the giant cyclops. The views of the valley are astonishing.
The valley is wide and long and goes all the way to the sea. It is absolutely covered with olive and citrus groves and extensive vineyards surrounded by very high hills. We spent about an hours exploring the castle ruins and then visited the accompanying site called the Treasury of Atreus or Tomb of Agamemnon. It is a beehive shaped building built entirely out of stones for the purpose of burying royalty. After the body was placed in the chamber along with all of the deceased’s swords, jewels and personal possessions. Then the entire building was covered with a mountain of dirt.
When we completed our tour of Mycenae, we decided to explore the wine producing area of the Peloppenisan peninsula. The town at the center of the area is called Menea. It’s a pretty drive through miles and miles of vineyards surrounded by steep hills. The are several wineries along the way that were clearly destinations for the tour bus crowds.
We bypassed that experience in hops of finding a place to eat lunch. By now it was past 2 pm and we were getting hungry. We pulled into Menea and realized that the whole town was shut down due to the holiday.
There were several restaurants and tavernas open and serving crowds of people. We had randomly picked one that was pretty highly rated but got lost trying to find it. Along the way we inquired as to whether we could get into any number of other restaurants and were told that there were no openings. At one place Susan asked the greeter if there “was any room in the restaurant. The woman babbled something in Greek and then gestured to us to wait. After several minutes she beckoned up the stairs and away from the restaurant. We went up to the second floor and a narrow hallway. An ancient man kind of tottered out of a small bedroom and past us. The woman explained that the man was her father in law and showed us his room, a tiny room with two single beds. Confused of course, we explained that we didn’t need a room and certainly didn’t want to kick this centenarian out of his room. Now she seemed confused. “But I thought you wanted a room!”, she exclaimed. With several apologies, we exited as quickly as possible. Still no food.
We kept striking out all the way back to the car and finally decided just to punt and head back to Napflio where there are ample places to eat. We parked the car and stopped and headed downtown. We decided to go for fish and found a restaurant that had been recommended to us as a great place. The restaurants were so packed with people that we weren’t sure that we could get into one. Luckily the agreed to seat us and after a long wait we got a table. We ended up getting a fried cheese and honey appetizer (wow!) and bream fish for two.
The fish is fresh and displayed right there for you to see. It was beautiful and accompanied with a nice salad of black eyed peas. It had been very windy all day with wind warnings. We were seated on the sidewalk and it began to get very cool. After eating, I required coffee and baklava. So we went uptown for both. Susan then went in search of a bottle of wine and while she was going, I decided to explore the Greek War Museum across the street. It is housed in a very old four story building and has a history of ancient Napflio as well as exhibits from WWI and WWII. There are displays of uniforms and weaponry from the wars and stories of Greece’s involvement, which like every other time in their history is fraught with complicated conflicts and alliances.
Fully satiated and tired from a long day, we made our way back to our room. It’s delightful just to sit at the table on the small terrace outside our room and look down on the city and watch the sun go down. I decided to check out the sunset from the fortress just above our location and to hopefully move our car back to a parking spot closer to our pension. No luck on the parking due to the massive number of new arrivals in town but the view from atop the fort was excellent. It’s a new moon tonight. We intend to witness tomorrow’s sunset from there together.