Blogs from Pelopennese, Greece, Europe - page 18

Sat 5 – On the evening of Friday 4th, when we ere staying at Manfredonia, we’d extended an invitation to our Italian friends for drinkies. They refused our wine from a 5 litre box! but accepted tiny measures of Bacardi & Coke. We spent a pleasant couple of hours with Antonio and Raffaela with photos, maps, drawings and sign language exchanging ideas, plans and history! After meeting up again in the morning to look at their photos and say Arrivederci with much cheek kissing, we set off for Bari. From that moment on, it never stopped raining. It was an extremely wet day. We spent a couple of hours en-route in a supermarket/shopping centre, finally parking up alongside the ferry terminal at about 5.30pm. A wet night in. Sun 6 – Drove on to the Superfast/superduper ... read more

So we've found a little piece of paradise. The pebble beaches and wonderful apartments are great, the mountain coastline is amazing; but the culture, the friendly people we've come across, are really the icing on the cake here. The ouzo doesn't hurt either!!  ;) There are a lot of really genuine people here. For example, we arrived at our apartment (late), Angela met us outside before we even look for where we were supposed to go. She asked us how our trip was, how we liked Greece so far and showed us to/around our apartment. Meanwhile, her dad is parking our car because "it's dark, we've had a long trip, and it can be tricky...no problem!". And what's sitting on the kitchen table but homemade cookies and cake from Angela's mom. Ya, that's right, baking.   ... read more

Szukajac przyjemnego miejsca w miare blisko Aten, gdzie moznaby zaznac plazy i morza, pojechalismy w koncu do Nafplion. Wstyd sie przyznac, ale jakos nigdy wczesniej w czasie wedrowek po Grecji nie zakonotowalam tego miejsca, a to byla stolica kraju, do roku 1834, kiedy to zaszczyt ten przypadl Atenom. W czasie greckiej wojny o niepodleglosc, Nafplion byl jedna z glownych twierdz ottomanskich, przez rok oblegana przez Kolokotronisa, lokalnego Kosciuszke. Gdy w koncu miasto upadlo, wziete glodem, wlasnie ze wzgledu na swoje umocnienia zostalo siedziba rzadu tymczasowego, a ksiaze Ianis Kapodistrias - pierwszy lider nowego panstwa - uczynil je stolica w roku 1929, a 2 lata pozniej zostal tam zamordowany. Nafplion Wlosi nazywaja "Napoli di Romania" - jako ze znajdowalo sie na terenach Wschodniego Imperium Rzymskiego, a Kapodistrias to naprawde Capo d'Istria, czyli dzis Koper w Slow... read more

ATHENS Day 61 Oh the trains, the trains, the trains. Greece really has the worst trains. Now, I understand that they have a decent bus network but I have purchased a train pass for all of Europe and so I have no intention of spending more money for transportation especially when one day trip from Athens to somewhere near by is 15euro each way! So I was stubborn and went with the train to Nafpilion, being one of the few places accessible by train. Unfortunately, the train runs there only every 4 hours and takes 3 hours to get there so when I finally made it I had 40 minutes to jump off the train and see a little bit before I had to get back on or risk waiting the 4 hours for the ... read more

We ended our short visit to Greece in a beautiful small town named Nafplio, where we met up with Ilan’s brother Ami and his family. The kids had so much fun playing with their cousins -family IS the best!!! Shakked: “Don’t ask me to compare Athens and Nafplio. I can’t. Athens was by far more interesting but Nafplio was more fun. I’ll tell you why. If our trip to Israel was a book, then this could be the prologue, introducing some of the characters. Here in Nafplio we met an aunt, an uncle, and three cousins. Uncle Ami, Aunt Moria, Boaz (age one and a half) David (age five and a half) and Naomi (age seven and a half). It was fun playing with them! The only interesting part was the forts. Nafplio is a port ... read more