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Published: December 28th 2022
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Merry Christmas from Tolo!! or, since it is St Stephens Day in Ireland (day after Christmas), we can celebrate that too! To me, that is an important one as it encourages to be thankful for what we have and those we love. Always a good thing to celebrate.
We have been here in Tolo Greece for over a week, which is actually hard to believe as it has gone quite quickly. While the rest of our friends and family were dealing with crazy cold weather, we have been suffering with 65ish and sunny. I do admit to bitching when the sun goes down as it does get chilly...and I know many of you are thinking "shut up!!!. Yeah, I get it.
For Christmas Eve, a tradition is for children to go door-to-door, with little triangles and energetically sing(mostly), for which they are rewarded with coins. We were sitting in our little cafe having our daily cappuccino and little kiddos were coming in and out, and we had to get more coins! Very cute, not musical but a nice tradition.
We spent the afternoon at the Ancient Theater of Epidaurus, approx 2500 years old and known as the best
preserved of the 132 similar theaters in Greece. It is massive, seats 15,000 and the acoustics are so good that from the top you can hear the person in the middle of the stage speaking at a normal tone. The rest of the ruins, are pretty much that...ruins. But does give some good context as to the complex that was known as a healing center and spa. Yes, they had those then!
For the evening we went into Nafplio, did a bit of shopping and enjoyed dinner at a small wine bar, amongst the throngs of locals out enjoying the beautiful weather, festive atmosphere and the old town lit up with lights and decorations.
Christmas morning arrived with lots of sun, a calm Med Sea and church bells ringing starting at what seemed to be 3am (it was more like 6a). We wandered down to the village and found our two little coffee shops open and bustling with the locals dressed in their finest for church. As it was so beautiful out, we decided to try to find the way to walk up and over the hills from Tolo to Nafplio. I had researched it and had a
suggested route, so what the heck. Up and over we went! Small roads, where we didn't see one car, surrounded by citrus trees, olive trees and the occasional pomegranate tree, with incredible views the entire way. It ended up being 6 miles, some serious up and downhill climbs until we arrived into Nafplio.
As we were walking down towards the old town, a big Mercedes pulls up and is honking the horn at us. It was an older woman who rolled down her window and was babbling away in Greek. I said "we just speak English", but she kept pointing at the back of her car and then popped the trunk...I was at that point ready to run, but Ken said the trunk was FULL of oranges, I mean to the brim. She wanted us to take some oranges and we said, Oh...that is so nice, but no we are ok. Then she pulled into her driveway right there and we thought what the heck...and she unloaded a huge back (I swear at least 10lbs) of fresh, off the tree oranges. We wished her Merry Christmas and Ken was thrilled to haul the big bag the rest of the
way. 😊
Merry Christmas to all!
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