Going on a roadtrip here in Greece has been on my wish-list for a long time, and when my roommate Jana suggested that we would do it together I was jumping for joy! In the end we were 8 people who planned the trip to the peninsula Peloponnesos that would be 800km and a total of 10h 40min driving. So we rented one car from
Europcar while one of us was going to drive his own car, and the plan was as follows:
- Day 1: Drive from Athens to Nafplion and spend the day there, then drive to Sparti and sleep at a Airbnb in the small village Mystras nearby.
- Day 2: Visit the monasteries in Mystras and Sparti, drive to Kalamata and see the city and eat good food before driving to Olympia and sleep at yet another Airbnb,
- Day 3: See Olympia, drive to Patras and then drive home to Athens in the evening/night.
Nafplion
Not more than 2 hours away from the center of Athens is the small city named Nafplion. In order to get there you will pass by several toll gates where you need to pay for road taxes. This can be done both by card and by cash and the price differ between €1-€3 per gate.
When you arrive in Nafplion you are met by a beautiful port full of restaurants, palm trees and bars. We parked out car and started walking by the coastline and in to the town with its small, narrow paved, streets and historic buildings. Some say that the city is like a bigger version of the Plaka in Athens, and I'm willing to agree on that.
On top of a hill above the city is the big fortress of Palamidi built in 1714 and then taken by the Turks the following year and held until they surrendered it in the 1821 Greek War of Independence. In order to get to the fortress you need to walk 999 steps, which we did. And the view from up there was incredible.
The city also has another fortress, which is the oldest castle in Nafplio, named Akronafplia that was used as a prison from 1936 to 1956. If you then take a look out from the port, you will see Nafplion Bourtzi Fortress built on a small island in 1471 and is today used for the Summer Music Festival.
We had lunch at an old taverna in the center and before leaving we had coffee at the square and enjoyed the sun.
Mystras
When the sun started to set we drove on to our Airbnb for the night in the small village Mystras which was built as an amphitheatre around a fortress in 1249. The site was inhabited throughout the Ottoman period when Western travellers mistook it for ancient Sparta. After several reconquers and occupations during the Greek war of Independence, Egyptians massacred the local population, destroyed the local area and the city became abandoned, leaving only the medieval ruins in the landscape and the new town of Sparti was built 9km away.
Things to do in Mystras are limited and there is nothing organized, but there are many old footpaths cross the region that lead to chapels, small settlements, forests and hilltops and the nature in this region is absolutely breathtaking. You can read more about the monasteries
HERE.
The Airbnb was an apartment in a house that belonged to an old Greek woman and her family. In the apartment she had left endless of fresh oranges from her garden to us, as well as a jar of homemade marmalade. For dinner Tom made a big pot of vegetable pasta for all of us, and later that evening the Greek woman came by with homemade pastries in form of tarts. The hospitality here in Greece is just something else! And there is actually a greek word for it:
"Philoxenia" literally means "love of the foreign", and stands for a state of mind, a way of life, a code of values with deep roots stretching way way back. It is about sharing their lives with others, but not for selfish reasons, or for self-gratification - but because they genuinely want to share their culture and customs with foreigners.
The day after we got up early and got to see the most amazing sunrise. We drank our fresh orange juice and had our coffee before getting into our cars and driving in to the small center of the village. Just to be safe, we decided to buy some rapid tests at a pharmacy, and from here the trip took a quick turn when 3 of us 8 tested positive... There was nothing else to do than to take on our masks and drive straight back home to Athens and go to quarantine.
Four of us who tested negative decided to move in together at our flat, and even though nothing turned out as we planed we still had a really good time together with good food, wine, movies and during the days we spent time on our studies.
Now I'm just waiting for my quarantine to be over, and then I'll hopefully do another try on a road-trip sometime soon. The situation is what it is, there is nothing else to do about it than to accept reality, adapt to it, and make the best out of it.
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