Greece #2: It's all ruined!

We've been traveling for a little over two months. At first it felt like a long vacation, but now it's really sunk in what an amazing thing this is. Yes, we've had our moments of museum overload, travel frustration, and tourist crowd fatigue, and I've had a bit more homesickness that I would have expected (Kenzi here), but we are LOVING having the time to learn lots of history, be outdoors walking a LOT, experience lots of new things, enjoy time together (feels a bit like a year-long date with Bill), and just really live. Thanks to all of you who have been following our travels for reading along and encouraging us. We so appreciate hearing from you, especially since we don't get a ton of longer interactions with other English speakers (aka it's a bit lonely). 

Thanks for following our travels!

Here are a few day to day tidbits before I jump into the rest of our Greece travel:

Showers - Europe doesn't much seem to like shower heads or shower curtains. Well, they have shower heads, but they're not usually fixed to the shower wall, they're just hand-held. We find this different...and not quite as efficient.
Smoke - And while there aren't nearly as many overweight people here as in the US, there sure are a lot of smokers! I have inhaled more second hand smoke in the last two months than in my entire life combined.
Travel tip - When buying produce in much of Europe, you need to find the scale that spits out the stickers and put your sticker on your produce so the cashier will know how much to charge you. We have been incredibly fortunate so far that most of Europe speaks English.
Howdy! - We learn the basics in the local language (hello, thank you, etc), but they really take care of the rest.
Dryers - We do laundry regularly since we are traveling light. Much of Europe air dries clothes. You really gain an appreciation for clothes straight out of the dryer once you've had clothes line dried for awhile (especially towels!). 

Greece has been the first country on our trip in which you can't always count on a toilet seat, or being able to flush toilet paper (just means you have to throw it in the trash instead). As for the Greek crisis, we've seen plenty of closed and abandoned buildings, plenty of trash in places it shouldn't be, and many idle shop owners in touristy towns bored from nothing to do and lack of visitors. However, if you didn't know there was a crisis, you wouldn't necessarily figure it out just by visiting. The EU has definitely poured money into Greece, which we benefited from multiple times as we drove on nice freeways, tunnels, and bridges.   

With all our driving, we have seen lots of the Greek countryside including: mountains, sandy beaches, rocky beaches, bamboo, palm trees, pine trees, SOOO many olive trees(!), orange groves, MANY archaeological sites, and much more.

This is what an olive tree looks like. Their leaves area bit more green/gray or green/silver.

But my personal favorite was Meteora, which I had never heard of until we started researching where to visit in Greece. Meteora is an amazing place with surprising rock formations that look really out of place, and several of the rocks still have medieval monasteries atop the rocks. Wow! This place really knocked our socks off. We drove many hours out of our way to get there, so we were pretty bummed that it was raining when we arrived in Kalampaka, where we stayed. On an evening walk through Kalampaka in the rain, you could see the huge rocks just behind the town, but the tops were hidden by clouds.

Tops hidden in the clouds

Impressive rock formations

The next morning, it was still raining and the low clouds were still obscuring the tops of the rocks, but being the hopeful tourists that we are, we went ahead and drove to the monasteries in the hopes that it would clear up enough to see them. Only four of the six monasteries were open the day we went. We started by visiting the Roussenou monastery (which is now a thriving nunnery) first. We never really got to see the view from Roussenou because it was in the clouds, but we got to climb up to it and go inside. It was built in the mid-1500s as a monastery. It sustained some damage in WWII, but has been restored, and has a tiny lavishly decorated (but dark) Eastern Orthodox Church at the top (as do all of the monasteries). NOTE: Greece is 98% Greek Orthodox.

We climbed lots of stairs to reach this entrance to the Roussenou nunnery

The next monastery we visited was the Great Meteora, so called because it is the largest monastery remaining. It had a lavish Orthodox dark church as well (we weren't allowed to take pictures), but also had a museum with lots of interesting old medieval books and religious relics. It was built in the mid-1400s.

Grand Meteora looks pretty cool in the clouds

12th century Lectionary. Old books!

As we were leaving, the clouds were starting to clear and we were able to walk to a nearby perch and get some great photos of the Varlaam monastery, admire the incredible rocks, and wonder at how in the world those medieval monks were able to scale the rocks, let alone build structures on them, and feed themselves. Truly amazing! Once they got themselves up there and situated, they would bring other people and supplies up with a net on a pulley. Now all the monasteries are fairly easily accessible, several even have funiculars for handicapped folks who can't climb all the stairs.

Varlaam monastery. So cool!

In the mist, you can see the little cable car transporting a handicapped person

It's clearing up - yay! Some of the views around Meteora

Meteora views (you can see the town of Kalampaka peeking through the rocks)

We also visited the Holy Trinity Monastery and took pictures of the St. Stephen monastery. Needless to say this was one of the best experiences thus far on our trip, which is really saying a lot since we've seen so many incredible things.

St. Stephen monastery

Next, we traveled to Olympia, the home of the first Olympics in 776 BC. They were held every four years for about 1000 years until they were banned by Christian leaders because of their pagan history. Now Olympia is just a series of ruins, but we learned that the original Olympics were closely tied with religious ceremonies and sacrifices to Zeus. In fact, there was once a large temple there with a ~40 ft statue of Zeus inside, which is one of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World.

Ruins in Olympia

An artist's rendering of what the giant statue of Zeus may have looked like

Ruins of the steps leading up to Zeus's temple in Olympia

The Olympic competitors had to arrive in Olympia a month early so that the judges (called Hellanodikai) could evaluate whether they were good enough to compete. The athletes were young men who were coached and selected for their strength, speed, agility, as well as their character and ethics. They competed naked, but smeared their skin with olive oil and sand, which acted like sunscreen. Instead of taking a bath after competition, they just used a scraper to get the oil and sand (and sweat) off. I just love imagining the smells back then (well, not really). The events included sprinting, long distance races, wrestling, boxing, chariot racing, pankration (combo of wrestling and boxing, where everything was permitted except biting and eye gouging - yikes!), long jump, javelin, discus, and racing in armor. Sadly, women were not allowed to compete; they weren't even allowed to enter the stadium to watch. Glad that's changed... The winners were given a crown made from a sacred olive branch to wear, as well as a statue of themselves in Olympia. Winners also enjoyed some lifelong privileges like never having to pay taxes, and getting the good seats at the theater and festivals.  

On our drive from Olympia to Monemvasia, we stopped in Kardamyli for a quick lunch and some really nice views.

Kardamyli views

We had some amazing Greek salads in Greece, but this one was different and delish. Instead of olives, it had figs, yum! Bill had a fried pastry with cheese inside, also yum! And the best part - it was cheap. We ate well in Greece, for less money. 

Next, we drove to Monemvasia. Monemvasia means one entrance. The ancient town is on a monolithic island rock, but it's difficult to see the town from the mainland. The island got separated from the mainland by an earthquake in 375 AD (yikes!) but now there's a road connecting them. The town and fortress were originally started in 583 AD. In spite of their nice fortress on the top of the rock, and the wall around the lower city, they have quite an interesting history of being conquered repeatedly by the Ottomans, and the Venetians, and back and forth. We hiked up to the top, which is mostly ruins of houses and the fortress, but there's also a pretty reconstructed church.  We explored the lower town too, which is very small and has no less than 26(!) churches. By the way, Greece has LOTS of cats. As Bill mentioned in our last blog post, Athens used to have a stray dog problem. We don't know what happened to all the dogs, but they seem to have been replaced with cats.

Monemvasia

Monemvasia, from the start of our hike to the top

Looking back on the mainland from the top of Monemvasia island

Looking down on Monemvasia from the upper town 

The ruins of the Upper Town on Monemvasia, including the restored church

On our drive from Monemvasia to Nafplio, we stopped at the ancient ruins of Mycenae, which we had learned about back in Athens at the Archaeological Museum. This place goes back even farther. The Mycenaean age is generally speaking from 1600-1100 BC. The ancient town has a really cool lion gate entrance, which is in remarkably good shape considering that it was never buried like most of the other ruins. There were two incredibly rich "grave circles", Grave Circle A and B, found at Mycenae filled with the kind of stuff that makes archaeologists swoon: pottery, jewelry, weapons, etc. They made no mention of bones, though, so we're not sure where the bodies were.

Us standing below the Lion Gate at Mycenae. The heads are missing. Archaeologists think they were made of different material. 

Gold jewelry found at one of the grave circles at Mycenae. Seems to me like jewelry hasn't really changed that much in 3500 years...

Grave Circle A at Mycenae

Nice view of the Greek countryside from Mycenae, including rows of olive trees

The final stop on our grand tour of Greece and the Peloponnese was Nafplio, a bigger town by comparison, with a huge 17th century fortress on the top of the hill. We only had one night here, so we toured the fortress and took a refreshing dip in the water at the beach before heading back to Athens the next day.

The town of Napflio from the hilltop fortress

Just a small section of the very large hilltop fortress in Napflio

Beach in Napflio. You can see parts of the fortress at the top of the hill

We made it back to Athens without having crashed our car! Driving in foreign countries is no joke. Bill has done a great job. With one last half day in Athens, we toured the Panathenaic Stadium, which has been heavily restored since it was first built in the 4th century BC. It is the only stadium made of marble. It is where the "new" Olympics first took place in 1896. They also house the Olympic torches and all the modern Olympic posters.

Bill sitting in the "King's Seat" at the Panathenaic Stadium in Athens

The Panathenaic Stadium

The London 2012 Olympic poster and torch

The Panathenaic Stadium

Overall, we really liked Greece. Crisis Shmisis. Lots to see and do. Friendly people and cheap prices.

We are officially leaving the European continent, and things are bound to get even more interesting. So stay tuned. 

Next up: Israel!