The first four pictures today are the last from Nafplio. They are all taken at Palamidi, the 17th Century Venetian fortress that sits on the mountain overlooking Nafplio. We were "lazy" by driving up to the fortress rather than walking up the 857 steps from the town below. Can't swear she walked the whole way, but we saw a woman in stiletto heels coming up the steps.

The fortress is neat because of all the different constructions. There's a church up there, and a

prison/dungeon, different bastions built or

fortified at different times, and seeing wildflowers growing out of the walls is cool. Of course the most spectacular part of all is the view.

Athens is great, but I'm not a big city guy. My favorite Greece experiences have been the excursions we've taken outside of Athens, getting to smaller towns. Delphi was about 3,000 people and Nafplio is fewer than 20,000.

Tomorrow in Greece, as most of Europe, is a
holiday. May 1 is "labor day," which is slightly
different here: usually accompanied by a strike or two. But the strikes are scheduled, with start and stop times. For example, the Metro is not running tomorrow 5:30-9 a.m. and after 11 p.m. I interpret this as action against any businesses wanting to be open on the holiday, but still allowing people to use the Metro to get to the big May 1 celebrations that start at 10:30.


On Tuesday after Easter (Apr. 21), it was finally time to leave Nafplio and head back to Athens. But we wanted to be sure not to leave too early
because some people who went away from the
city for Easter would wait until Tuesday morning (Monday's a holiday) and drive back in time for work. We headed out of the hotel around noon and decided we would make a brief stop in Mycenae, a short distance from Nafplio and relatively on the way back to Athens.


<--Nafplio, NOT Mycenae

Now, we're talking really old. The civilization existed approximately 2000-1000 BC. What most fascinated me was the size of the stones that they used to build. They didn't have the sophistication of later civilizations, so they made
things strong by making them big.


This is supposedly the tomb of Agamemnon, though there is no guarantee. It's good for tourism to say it is, since it is still in perfect order. My camera couldn't get a picture in the darkened central room, but someone else has one here. Whether it's his or not really doesn't matter, as it's quite impressive. The acoustics in there are quite amazing and again, the size of everything is incredible. Look at the people in comparison to the size of the stones (no mortar - just stone on top of stone). The legend is that everything in
Mycenae was built by the cyclops. Actually that
explanation sounds about as plausible to me as believing that people 3000 years ago could have moved anything that big, and stacked it that high.

In the background is the Mycenae acropolis. In the foreground are the ongoing excavations of the cemetery. The following picture is also of the excavations, just looking down from above.


There is also a museum on the site with a lot of the artifacts they found at the location, but NOT the most important. The mask of Agamemnon is a gold funeral mask. The real thing is in the archaeological museum in Athens, but they've made a replica for the Mycenae museum. Actually the real mask is probably not his, either, since it's been dated to somewhere around 1500 BC - too recent for Ag., but still pretty damned old. The man who discovered the ruins in the 19th century and most of Mycenae - not just the mask - are mired in controversy (as Jim might say: Greeks, Controversy? How can that be?).


This is the Lion's Gate in Mycenae, the largest existing relief in Europe. The lions' heads are missing. Unlike the rest of the lions, they were protruding forward, so they would have been most susceptible to damage.

The drive back to Athens did take longer than normal. There was a back-up at the toll plaza between Corinth and Athens. There is a law in Greece that of the traffic is backed up more than 3 km (about 2 miles) they stop collecting tolls to get the traffic to flow better. We were just a few

minutes ahead of when they were going to stop collecting.

Back in Athens. Back to reporting about "everyday life."

Some streets in downtown Athens have wide sidewalks, but some don't, and almost none in our little suburb are big. I wanted to show why people walk in the streets. Cars want to park, but they want to leave enough room for traffic to get through, so they pull over as far as they can,

which often means pulling up onto the sidewalks. Since people then can't walk on the sidewalks, this means they have to walk in the streets, which further clogs the crowded street. You can see how there's just enough room for one car and one pedestrian to pass at the same time. I understood it a lot more when we were inside the wall of a medieval town, where streets were never built for cars, but here?

Today continues pictures from Easter in Nafplio.

I've posted several videos to today's blog, because the church ceremonies need to be heard
in addition to just seeing a still shot. The page may take a little longer to load than my typical blog entries, but it's appropriate.


Of course we ate our Easter meal in a restaurant,
but many Greeks gather at home or, if they have
a lot of extended family, they may gather at a

park or some other larger venue. They will roast a lamb over the coals as shown here. The smaller spit contains the lamb's innards stuffed into intestine. And, they are phenomenally hospitable. As we walked by this family sitting in the yard grilling their Easter lamb they invited us to come in and have something with them. OK, we were going out for our meal - we could just stop for a drink. Greeks are extremely hospitable. Mark also told me that there must have been a death in the family in the past year because the women are wearing black.

When we left Athens on Friday for Nafplio we left early to avoid traffic. The original plan was to spend three nights and return Monday. News reports spoke of how many millions of Greeks were on the road, and most would be heading back to Athens on Monday. Mark and Martha suggested that we stay an extra night in Nafplio and make our way back to Athens on Tuesday to avoid the craziness. Since the university has a two week Easter break, Kim and I were fine with that.

Each day as we drove into Nafplio from our hotel in Nea Kios, we had a tough time finding a parking place. It seemed quite a few Athenians were spending the holiday in Nafplio. We figured that Monday night it would be easy to find a parking place. We were wrong. Either other Athenians had the same idea of waiting an extra day, or locals from the surrounding area figured it would be safe to go to Nafplio now that the "city folk" had left their town. Either way, there was no discernible difference in the crowd Monday night than the crowds on Friday, Saturday or

Sunday nights.

Two of the four nights we stopped for authentic Italian gelato here. A brother and sister from Rome had opened this shop, where they make the ice cream - and even the cones - on the premises. We only managed to make it in there twice. Every time we walked by, the place was packed to the gills. I did get an opportunity to talk a little with the sister. Lots of fun to be able to speak the language, though she was a capable speaker in Greek and English in addition to Italian.

I will explain a little about the three videos below. The first shows the inside of a church on Holy Saturday. While the cantor is singing, some people are seated in the church, but the majority shuffle in and out. They come in to light a candle and pay a visit to the icons, most stopping to kiss one or more.


The second video shows the square outside the church, about 11:30 p.m. The soldiers are lined up and salute as the officers enter the church. The singing you hear goes on for hours.

The third video shows the square shortly before midnight. The priest has emerged from the church. The candles have been lighted as the flame has been passed. It started from inside the church and was passed from worshipper to worshipper.

This last video shows midnight. You hear the church bells and the fireworks (we were told this was the quietest of the churches for fireworks - others are much louder), and you can see the people wishing each other Happy Easter - more precisely, they wish each other "Good Resurrection."

More of the Nafplio trip, April 17-21.

The town square was a traditional European style, with restaurants and coffee shops all around. As you can see there were vendors selling balloons and other children's toys, and kids were playing games, riding bikes and having fun. It's great just to sit and watch people as they

stroll by - both watching and strolling are great
European pastimes. Most of the cafes have
backgammon boards available, and we played a
few games at this cafe as we sat.

Nafplio has great shops and squares, but the natural beauty has to be the highlight. This paved walkway stretches along the coast from the port area. Kim and Martha aren't more than a couple of hundred yards from the hustle and bustle of the cafes, yet you don't even know it because the path curves away and you feel away from it all. In the four days we spent there, each day included at least one walk in a different location that Mark and Martha have found over their years going there.


I was fascinated by all the cactus growing out of the side of the hill. Obviously they aren't cultivated but they have developed rather well. Most of the ones closer to the path have been carved with people's initials or some other territorial marking. If people were more like dogs at least their markings would not be so permanently visible.

Unfortunately I don't have pictures of the places we ate, and we certainly did eat. We had a good
breakfast each morning at the hotel. Our other
meals were influenced by the Easter season. On Friday and Saturday we were still "fasting," so we had seafood. Easter fast for Greeks is not so much about less food but rather not eating certain foods. Like Catholics, fish is traditional. Being in a coastal town, and having seafood restaurants that actually have a view of the water, eating seafood is hardly a sacrifice but it is still a remembrance of the season, and most important a tradition. I absolutely love the connections between food and culture.


For Greek Easter, lamb is almost obligatory.
Tomorrow I'll post a short video of the service on Easter at midnight, but as I'm talking about the food let me explain. After the big moment when Jesus is declared risen, people head off to eat (mind you, this is 12:30-1 a.m.). The traditional meal is to ceremoniously crack the colored hard-boiled eggs and to eat those with a special soup. But, since this is one of the biggest events of the season for restaurants, and every seat is reserved, they can't make enough profit on just soup and eggs, so most offer a fixed menu which includes those items but they also have lamb, wine, salad, etc.


The soup that's served is very important. The main ingredient in Mayiritsa is lamb organ meat. As Mark pointed out, this is why it's important to go to a restaurant you know and trust for this meal. Great care needs to be taken that the meat is properly cleaned and prepared. We found that "great care" doesn't come cheap. Our 1 a.m. Easter meal was the most expensive meal Kim and I have had in Greece. I don't fault the restaurant at all, though. I understand this is his biggest night of the year, and he's only going to get one use of each table - he's not going to turn
the table at 2 a.m. and get more customers. I am
a little amused at the fact that Mark reserved, and has been coming to the same restaurant for years, but he didn't know what the bill would be. When we eat with Mark and Martha, we never look at a menu. Mark orders based on specialties, season and his tastes. It's worked out well for us so far.


This picture is just outside Nafplio in the village of Kefalari. The church in the background is from 1928, built on the site of a 1634 church, rebuilt when an explosion destroyed all but the
altar and icon of the Virgin Mary.


Especially significant is the cave behind the current church, used as worship space for centuries before. The cave had had a spring, which served both practical purposes and metaphorical ones. We ate our Easter Day meal (early afternoon) of lamb within sight of the church and cave. Of course the meal was lamb, but none of us were wanting a whole roast at this point so we opted for chops.


I'll close today's posting with a short video from
Good Friday. It's poor quality because it's night. On Good Friday a decorated casket is processed through the streets of town. Everyone has lighted candles. Some follow behind the processional while others line the streets waiting for it to pass. The video shows the elderly priest who was officiating getting out of his car. He's too feeble to make the long march anymore, so he is driven in a Mercedes behind the casket. They make frequent stops along the way so he can lead prayers and singing. Martha was shocked by him a few years ago when his Easter sermon was full of anger and hate. The following year his sermon was drowned out by fireworks and cheering - Martha believes because everyone felt as she did and did not to hear a repeat performance.

I'll post more pictures and video from Nafplio tomorrow.

Continuing with more pix from Istanbul on Wed., April 15.

After paying the hotel bill we took the tram to the train station to leave our bags in the locker. We could've left them at the hotel free, but it would have been less convenient and the Istanbul lockers weren't very expensive anyway.

After looking around the New Mosque we visited the Spice Market. Despite the name it has much more than spices. It wasn't quite as large as the Grand Bazaar but much more diverse. It, too, had the tourist trinkets but also had live small animals for sale, plants, housewares, etc. Forget Alice's Restaurant - you can really get anything you want here.

Of course we stopped to rest in one of the places for an obligatory coffee/tea. Can't spend time walking around without having tea ;)

The main agenda for the day was to make sure we made it to the Asian side of Istanbul. Most of the major tourism is on the European side, but we wanted to be able to say we were in Asia. With Nicole heading to Thailand soon we wanted to be able to claim that we were in Asia first ;) Pretty petty, huh?

Kim asked at the tourist info booth at the train station (which had been closed when we arrived Sunday. Why would they have Sunday off in a Muslim country?) and we found it was incredibly easy (and cheap) to get across. There are "dolphin boats" at different docks, each bound for a different dock on the other side. A ticket is less than 1 US dollar. You just need to know which boat to get on, and they are all clearly labeled with the name of the other side's destination. Very efficient.

The Bosporus is much bigger that I ever realized. The boat was not small (I estimated about 150 seats total on the two levels) yet it rocked a little in the water as we crossed.

On the Asian side we never once heard English spoken unless someone was speaking to us. No one tried selling us anything. It was clearly the less visited by tourists.

There was a particular mosque Kim wanted to visit. I mentioned earlier the elderly gentlemen who spoke no English but had us follow to show us the way.

Unfortunately we have no pictures of the mosque to share. It was the only one we visited that said no pictures. Kim thought it was the best of all. Certainly not the biggest (although it was not small). We were escorted around by a security guard who was really thrilled to show us "his" mosque. There was only one worshipped in the place when we visited and I get the impression it is generally treated as just a neighborhood mosque. His English was limited but he walked us around, pointing out the different elements. I suspect Kim will put a picture she took of him outside the mosque on her Facebook page.

It's great to travel with Kim - she is daring and will do things I never would. She stopped at some welder's garage. She wanted to buy an ornamental piece from a local. The guy spoke no English. Kim pointed to a small piece, he said a price and she said OK. AS he was knocking off the soot a part broke and he quickly welded it back on. When we left, he went next door to another shop, undoubtedly to tell them, "hey, look what those stupid Americans paid me for a piece of junk."
Kim shot this video on the train because she wanted to illustrate how small the cabin was on the return trip. In addition to the smaller size, we also felt a lot more motion on this train than the first one. With this video I officially complete the Turkey trip.

These pictures begin the sequence from our trip to Nafplio, Greece, for Orthodox Easter, Apr. 17-21.

View outside our hotel.

Most people leave Athens for Easter: they head out to the countryside. This is evidenced by the ridiculous traffic on the highway: at one point, the back-up was over 4 miles. Fortunately, we didn't hit it. Mark and Martha picked us up at 6:30 a.m. on Friday (the 17th) so we would get out before the craziness. We made it to Nafplio in good time. Our hotel was actually in Nea Kios, just a few miles away. Nafplio itself would be packed for Easter. Mark and Martha have been staying at this hotel for decades and love it. It was very nice and they were right: we had the excitement of Nafplio when we wanted it, and the peace and quiet of Nea Kios.

You can see the fortress over the city. More pix tomorrow.

Nafplio was the first capital of modern Greece back in the 19th century when Athens was pretty much just a small town. The city has a lot of Venetian influence, as it was an outpost of Venice back in the 15th and 16th Centuries, until the

Ottomans took it over.

It's only 2-2.5 hours drive from Athens on the Peloponnese, so a lot of people use it as a getaway. This is especially true for Easter: all hotels were willed and parking in town was very difficult.

Bourtzi, in the harbor, served as a fortress, prison, executioner's residence and for a few years, as a luxury hotel.

More from Nafplio tomorrow.

The last of the Tuesday, April 14 pictures from Istanbul.



After Hagia Sophia, we had lunch nearby. We sat outside at a restaurant watching people go by, as two or three different people from the restaurant tried to invite people to come in or look at the menu. Again, they were able to use multiple languages to try to talk passers-by to stop.




After lunch we walked the short distance to the Blue Mosque. It is also rather large, but significantly newer than Hagia Sophia - it is from the 17th Century. It was interesting to note the variety of media used to achieve the effect: there were carpets, tiles, marble, paint, stained glass and I'm sure there were several others.





I was surprised there was no admission charges, but I guess I shouldn't have been. It is, after all, a house of worship (unlike Hagia Sophia, which is now a museum). In Italy admission wasn't charged for the churches but was charged at Holy Cross in Florence, which had also been converted to a museum (lots of major figures' tombs are there.


There are separate entrances for tourists and worshippers, and most of the mosques don't let the tourists into the portions of the mosque where the worshippers are in prayer. This particular mosque also had an entrance for Turks as opposed to people from other nations. All the mosques have separate prayer spaces for men and women. Usually the women are from far the "front."





At Suleiman the Magnificent's mosque, we just
left our shoes on shelves they had outside, but since the entrance and exit to the Blue Mosque were different, they had a box of plastic bags for people to use. Remove shoes, bag them, carry them with you, put them on at exit.




The sign outside the mosque had exactly the same instructions as outside the others regarding removing shoes, appropriate attire, etc - and headdress for women. But, many woman did not have their heads covered, and as Kim put her scarf on a carpet salesman told her she didn't need to.





















This picture was taken just outside the Blue Mosque, and that's Hagia Sophia in the background. Quite surprising that they're both so close to each other.














After the Blue Mosque we went to the Hippodrome. This obelisk was brought from Egypt in 390 AD, and is 3500 years old.













After that, our last stop of the day was the Basilica Cistern. Above ground there's just a little brick structure that serves as the ticket booth/entrance, and you really have no idea how huge the space below is. This underground space was the water source for Istanbul since the 6th Century. When you go down the stairs you immediately feel the cool air. I imagine this is a very popular attraction in July and August.




My pictures are awful because of the limited light
down there. I recommend you click the link
above and look at their pictures.




Look carefully at the pillar on the left and you'll see the head of Medusa (sideways) at the base. There are two Medusa pillars, in addition to the 100+ more "plain" ones.












This picture marks the start of Wednesday, April 15. Tax day and our last day in Istanbul. This is the "New Mosque" (Pasa), located right next door to the Spice Market. Don't let the name fool you - it's from the 16th Century.


We took our time getting up and out of the hotel. Hotel was good but a word to future travelers: pay in local currency. We lost out on the exchange by paying Euros.

More tomorrow.

Still posting photos from Istanbul, Tue, Apr. 14.

The SD card on Kim's camera filled (she took over 1,000 photos), so in Hagia Sophia she spent about half an hour sorting through pictures, deleting duplicates and out-of-focus shots so she'd have space. We bought a second 2 GB card later that day.

Istanbul, like many cities, had lots of contrasts.
Of course there was the modern mixed with the

ancient. We saw women who were covered in conservative Muslim clothing from head to foot, and there were belly dance shows and women provocatively dressed. There were very nice well-maintained areas and there were buildings literally crumbling and trash piled.

The video below shows Kim twirling her hand around the Stele of St. Gregory Thaumaturgus . We're still waiting for her to receive her miracle.



All the rest of the pix are also Hagia Sophia, so I'll just include them here. No commentary - links in yesterday's blog provide all the info. Just trying to finish posting all my Istanbul pictures.

This is taken out one of the 2nd floor windows. In the distance you can see dome and minarets of the Blue Mosque. In the foreground is all Hagia Sophia.

This is also out the Hagia Sophia windows looking up at one of the minarets.

After all the barrel-vaulted ceilings, I just thought this ceiling pattern was different so I took a picture.

That's all the pictures from Agia Sophia, but I still have more Istanbul pictures for tomorrow's post.