Greece, 3rd - 7th July 2015
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| Archea Epidavros |
Before leaving the Peloponnese, we still had the northern
end of the Argolid to cover, which is home to a great deal of ancient sites to
visit; the closest of which was Epidavros (Epidaurus). Epidavros was once an important healing
sanctuary for hundreds of years, and is primarily known today for its ancient
theatre, which is still used today for performances.
We wanted to visit Epidavros early in the day before the
temperature started going up, so rather than heading straight there, we went
back to Archea Epidavros, with the intention of driving to Epidavros first
thing in the morning. After going for a
walk around the village we parked at our previous lunch spot at the end of the
headland (GPS: N37.63692 E23.16187), but several gypsy vehicles had set up camp
here and we didn’t feel like staying the night, so moved back to the main
port. Nearby some form of stage had been
set up, and later we could hear speeches coming from the stage; we weren’t sure
what was going on, but theorised it may have been some kind of local political
speech because of the impending referendum.
It wasn’t the quietest spot in the world (a combination of the stage and
general Saturday night), so we decided to drive inland to Epidavros itself, as
we had heard overnighting in the main car park was tolerated.
Epidavros
As we approached the car park, we saw two policemen standing
on a junction, and then another near the entrance. We wondered what was going on, but when we
pulled into the car park we quickly realised: the parking area was packed with
cars and buses as the theatre was holding a performance. During the summer months, the ancient theatre
holds performances of classic Greek dramas over the weekends. Had we understood a word of Greek, it might
have made an interesting visit! We found
a spot in the car park to one side out of the way and settled in for the night
(GPS: N37.59724 E23.07488) near two Polish vans, and other than the occasional
overheard spot of singing or applause, had a peaceful evening.
In the morning, we entered the site and first went to see
the theatre. Once lost beneath the
ground due to the way it matches the natural contour of the hill it is built on
so well, the theatre was rediscovered only in the nineteenth century. It is capable of seating 14000, and the
precision that went into its construction means that the theatre has fantastic
acoustics. A group of young American girls
decided to test the acoustics with a particularly grating rendition of ‘Party
in the USA’; I’m not quite sure how the ancient Greeks would have felt about
this modern use.
We left the theatre and went for a look inside the small
museum before exploring the main site of Epidavros. It wasn’t quite as extensive as Olympia or
Mystra, but Matt found a novel way of doubling the time it took us to look
around. He’d read in our guidebook about
there being a secret spring somewhere on the site. I’d also read the guidebook and recalled
nothing of the sort, but I’ve been wrong before so decided to take his word for
it as he lead us on a wild goose chase around the ruins and surrounding
grasslands as we tried to find it with no luck.
It wasn’t until later that day that he realised there was indeed no spring
here, and was actually thinking about the other two sites he’d been reading
about, Mycenae and Acrocorinth. Give me
strength!
Korfos
From Epidavros we travelled to Korfos, which is a small port
town en-route to Corinth. There are a
couple of potential overnight points around here including one by the beach,
where we spent a few hours relaxing before packing up around 8 and moving to a
point closer to town by the harbour (GPS: N37.76363 E23.13293). It had been almost 4 weeks since our last
meal out, so we wanted to treat ourselves a little as this seemed a nice
location for it. We chose Stavedo
Restaurant, where we inadvertently ended up ordering a very similar array of dishes
to our previous meal out (moussaka and souvlaki, after vine leaves—I can’t help
myself, I love vine leaves!), with the addition of big beans in tomato sauce which
were essentially like giant baked beans, which we had seen mentioned on several
boards whilst in Greece. We also
received complementary crème caramel desserts, but unfortunately neither of us
are crème caramel fans (but ate them anyway).
The restaurant was right next to docking points on the harbour, and it
appeared that a few of the boats had tables directly outside their boats, so
they could walk straight from their meal to their boat. Looking up the restaurant on Trip Advisor it
appears that a vast majority of the people who visit the restaurant are people
who dock up there. The food was nice and
the staff were attentive; the only downside was that the mosquitoes were also
very attentive that evening, to the point where we were relieved to get back to
our van before anything else could bite us.
The Corinth Canal
From Korfos we travelled to Corinth, which itself is an
unremarkable industrial town rebuilt after an earthquake in 1981, and one of
the hottest points of the region, but it is surrounded by many interesting
sights to visit. The first stop on our
agenda was the Corinth Canal. Building
on the canal commenced in 1881 and it was opened to traffic in October 1893, where
it provided a pass-through between the Aegean and Adriatic sea, reducing the
distance between the two by 131 nautical miles and as an added side effect
turning the Peloponnese from a peninsula of mainland Greece into its own
separate island, connected only by bridges.
The canal is not much use to many larger modern boats as it
is only 24.6m wide and so is more commonly used by tourist boats, but it is
certainly an interesting sight to see, with 80m high walls on either side. Many buses would slow to a crawl as they
crossed the bridge, so as to give their passengers a chance to see the canal
without taking the time to let them disembark.
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The area surrounding the bridge over the canal is littered with souvenir shops -
this lady very enthusiastically tried to advertise to us 'Greek Melodies' CDs, which
from what we could gather, was music themed around specific Greek dishes.
There were different CDs for Moussaka, Greek Salad etc. |
Ancient Corinth and Acrocorinth
It is clear to see why the Greeks chose to have a fortress
on such a sight when you visit it; the view from the remains at the top of the
temple has 360 panoramic views, so would have been able to see any threat well
in advance. There is a non-fictional
spring at Acrocorinth, and so we made a point of taking the walk to the
underground spring whilst visiting the site to make up for our failed attempts
at Epidavros.
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| The northern view from Acrocorinth |
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| The underground spring |
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This little fellow decided that I looked very appealing to
jump on. I wasn't best pleased. |
|
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| I just wasn't hardcore enough to handle the heat! |
|
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| The southern view from Acrocorinth |
We spent the rest of the day at Afrodites Water Camper stop
in Ancient Corinth (GPS: N37.91139 E22.87861, €10), which is set on the ground
of one of the houses in the town and appears to be run by a
grandparent/grandson team who live at the house. After we got settled in they invited us to
sit with them outside the house and presented us with a type of sweet made from
oranges by the grandma, whilst they explained a little about what was in the
surrounding area and asked a few questions about where we were from (with the
grandson translating between Greek and English). The temperature was in the high 30s for the
majority of the day, so we didn’t manage to get much done beyond sweltering in
the heat and handwashing a bit of underwear to tide us over for a while until
the next washing machine. It is quite a basic site with toilets and shower but
they looked like they hadn’t been cleaned for a while. Our electric tester
showed the mains sockets had no earth so we didn’t risk connecting to the
electricity that was included. It is still a worthwhile stopover to use for
this area though and good to support one of only two camper stops we know of in
the Peloponnese.
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| The submersible bridge at Corinth |
The next day we made a trip to the nearest Lidl (as our time
in the heat had left our supply of water and drinks running low), and parked up
overlooking the sea close to the submersible bridge at the Corinth canal for
lunch. The bridge is a wooden based
structure that sinks beneath the water when boats pass through the canal; as
you make the final approach to the bridge there is a 3T weight restriction, so
we had debates about whether to actually use the bridge with our 3.5T vehicle or
whether to make the detour back inland to get across. In the end we decided to just go for it, and
obviously nothing too terrible happened as we are here to tell the tale.
We parked up for the night at a place we had
found on the Our Tour blog called Limni Vouliagmenis (GPS: N38.03261 E22.87313), which is an area of
parking near the side of a large lake/lagoon area connected to the sea by a
small inlet. Sadly we forgot to take any
pictures of the spot. Our journey
through the Peloponnese had sadly come to an end, and we had a lot of decisions
to make about which direction to head to next.
-Jo
From Epidavros we travelled to Korfos, which is a small port
town en-route to Corinth. There are a
couple of potential overnight points around here including one by the beach,
where we spent a few hours relaxing before packing up around 8 and moving to a
point closer to town by the harbour (GPS: N37.76363 E23.13293). It had been almost 4 weeks since our last
meal out, so we wanted to treat ourselves a little as this seemed a nice
location for it. We chose Stavedo
Restaurant, where we inadvertently ended up ordering a very similar array of dishes
to our previous meal out (moussaka and souvlaki, after vine leaves—I can’t help
myself, I love vine leaves!), with the addition of big beans in tomato sauce which
were essentially like giant baked beans, which we had seen mentioned on several
boards whilst in Greece. We also
received complementary crème caramel desserts, but unfortunately neither of us
are crème caramel fans (but ate them anyway).
The restaurant was right next to docking points on the harbour, and it
appeared that a few of the boats had tables directly outside their boats, so
they could walk straight from their meal to their boat. Looking up the restaurant on Trip Advisor it
appears that a vast majority of the people who visit the restaurant are people
who dock up there. The food was nice and
the staff were attentive; the only downside was that the mosquitoes were also
very attentive that evening, to the point where we were relieved to get back to
our van before anything else could bite us.
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