the wandering Waddy's in the Peloponnese, part two...

A room with a view in the hotel Byron.

 Well here it is the end of our Peloponnese odyssey.  We moved from Sparta to Nafplion last Thursday and wow, I think this is my new favourite area in Greece.  With places like Epidavros and Mycenae on the doorstep and the islands of Poros, Hydra.Dokos and Spetsies just up the coast it has to be a place where you can spend time.

Eating al fresco in February.

The Corinth Canal taken from the "sinking bridge".

 Nafplio is a beautiful town with great history culture and food to be had there.  It was the original capital city of Greece and beats the current one hands down for friendliness and cleanliness, we were impressed.

We stayed at the Byron Hotel a quintesentially quaint and quirky place, just beneath the walls of one of the town's forts with views over the rooftops down to the harbour.  Great little place and for our three night stay it was only €114 (£88) with breakfast and good fast internet.

The only thing which may affect some people visiting is that being built on a mountain side there are very steep slopes and many stairs both in the streets and in the hotel which has no lift.  That said it is a very small price to pay and it does aid sleeping when you get home exhausted on a night.

The sinking bridge in the up position.

As you can guess we didn't manage to visit all the local archaeological sites as we only had three nights so really two days to do it in.  So we missed the main Site at Epidavros which I would guess is the best part of a days visit in itself.

The small Theatre at Epidavros.

We visited the small theatre though which you can get directly to with your car but we walked about a mile through orange groves to get there, sampling the wares en-route.  On returning to the car there was an old jolly Greek guy sat nearby who gave us another Orange, he said "they were the best" and he was correct, like nectar.

Waterfall in the city walls at Nafplion.

We also Visited the Corinth canal to see the sinking bridge which is dragged down bodily through the water to allow ships to travel over the top, a very novel way to solve the problem.

 Onwards to the world famous vineyards (well it is to the Greeks) of Nemea.  We sampled and delighted in their really very good produce although I'm certainly no expert and ended up buying a couple of bottles to take home with us.

Unloading turbine blades in Nafplion harbour

 On returning to Nafplio we notice a large ship in the harbour with wind turbine blades being unloaded.  Being always one to have a look at the unusual I had a walk down there to nosey.  Not a lot of health and safety going on with the riggers who were climbing all over the blades getting straps in place in order to transfer the blades to the awaiting vehicles.

70 foot low loader not big enough then.

I would estimate each blade being about 150 to 170 foot long and the wind was blowing but it didn't stop them shifting their cargo.  The low loading wagons were perhaps 70 to 80 foot long but as you can see from the picture there is a monstrous overhang at the back.  I was wondering how they would get them onto site but as it happened they moved them about a quarter of a mile to the other end of the harbour and lifted them onto terra-firma.  Overall a very interesting thing to witness.

Galatas looking from Poros, our water taxi.

Fisherman giving the cat his share.

The next day we decided to visit Poros and Galatas where we had intended looking at perhaps overwintering when we went looking at marinas around Athens last year.  I wish we had gone there then I think we could well have moved last spring before I had my stroke.  It's fantastic, only really a town quay but you could still moor up there very comfy as there is electricity and water laid on all along the quay and showers available at several places even in winter.  There is a hydrofoil runs all year around between the islands and across to Athens so it would have been a great location for the winter months.  Ah well it was not to be.

We found a small restaurant in Nafplio which was exceptional in it's quality and presentation, the latter of which the Greeks are not famous for.  It was called Kitton and positioned in one of the town squares, beautiful food in a really nice setting slightly premium prices but generally the food there is a little dearer than it is here.  I would whole heartedly recommend it.

Our residence, Hotel Byron

In our minds the best restaurant in Nafplio, Kitton.

 Next Morning the trip home was meant to take in the rack and pinion railway which goes through the Vouraikos Gorge from Diakopto to Karavryta and takes around a hour each way.  Unfortunately the train was full until the 14:30 train, this would have meant a four and a half hour wait and also getting back to Lefkas very late bearing in mind that we knew the farmers were on strike and block major roads in a very random fashion you really don't want to finding a new route home in the dark.  So with this in mind we set off without doing the train trip but we can always do it again at some other time.

As it happened we did the right thing as access to the motorway was blocked at Messalonghi and we ended up coming home along the old coast road to Asterkos and a lovely ride it was too.