Greece, Day 3 - Monemvassia, Wee Bit O'Mystras, Hiking Above Sparta

Sunrise from our balcony

Monemvassia opened at 8:30, and it was right around the corner, so we didn't have to get up too terribly early. Em & I both woke up before the alarm. Her ankle was still swollen. But, I discovered that we had a full ice tray in our little fridge. So, I put some ice in a baggie and put it on her ankle.

She laid in bed reading with the ice on while I played on the computer for a little bit. When the alarm went off, Max got up and we got ready for the day. We had coffee and a water boiler in our kitchenette, I had my packets of cocoa, and we had swiped some tea bags from the coffee station at the airport, so we had things to drink. I had brought a case of my trusty Otis Spunkmeyer muffins (I try to bring them on every vacation, because they make both wonderful car snacks and breakfasts, though they have a tendency to smash), so we had breakfast. We tried sitting on our beautiful balcony to eat, but the sun was shining right in our eyes, making us miserable. So, we finished our breakfast inside.

The hotel booklet said that, to visit Monemvassia, you should park in the parking lot at the harbor and walk over to the island (it's connected by a bridge). We figured that we had easily walked to the harbor for dinner last night, so we may as well leave our car parked where it was. So, we walked. We stopped at the beach for a couple of pictures.

A couple of weeks ago, my brother, Jason, gave me a gift. It was a blue canary nightlight. If you know They Might Be Giants, you'll know the song Birdhouse in My Soul. If you don't know it (or if you just love it so much you want to hear it again,) here's a link to the video on YouTube. The video is very, very odd. I would go so far as to say that I don't like it. But, I love the song.

Birdhouse in Your Soul

So, anyway, since the song mentions Jason & the Argonauts, and we were going by Argos, we thought we would take the blue canary with us. We named him Flansnell. So, Flansnell needed a picture at the beach in Monemvassia, where Jason & the Argonauts may well have sailed. Luckily, it has really rocky shores.

Disclaimer - I was just looking stuff up online and discovered that Jason  and the Argonauts may not have anything to do with Argos the city after all. I knew that they were Argonauts because they sailed on the ship named the Argo, but I thought they had also come from Argos. Not so, according to Wikipedia. Well, anyway, we still got Flansnell's picture on some rocky shores.

Then, we continued our walk to Monemvassia. It was really hot. Emma's ankle was bothering her a bit, and, once we got over to the island, it looked like the walk started uphill. We still had a long day ahead of us. Max very kindly offered to go get the car and bring it over. So, Em & I sat down on a bench in the shade and waited for him.

When he got back to us, we hopped in. There was a parking lot where we were, but I had seen a number of cars drive up the road further and not come back, so we decided to see if there was any parking up there (The island is pretty much a huge rock, so we couldn't see very far around it to see where the cars had gone). I'm soooo glad that Max had gone for the car! It was steadily uphill, and it was a long way with no shade. We would have been worn out by the time we got to the town.

The island is basically a big rock. One side is a sheer drop to the sea, the other is sheer about halfway down, and then goes into a more gradual descent. This is the side on which the town is built. It crawls up the side of the rock. Up on top is the fortified medieval old town and castle. The only thing that survives whole is Agia Sofia, a Byzantine church. However, it's quite beautiful, and I wanted to see it. First, though, we wanted to look through the lower town. Well, I did, at least, and Em & Max graciously went along with me.

The first things we saw was a gate, and out of the gate strolled a donkey laden with building materials

Once we got inside, I saw why. There is a lot of construction going on! A lot of the buildings have been turned into restaurants, shops, and hotels. They're making more, too.

The main church in the lower town is being repaired, as well, which made a full picture of the town square unattractive, but oh, well.

As we were walking along, we saw a restaurant that was apparently the local cat hangout. This isn't even all of them.

 I loved the little streets and pretty houses, but they sure made me glad we had stayed in one of the hotels on the mainland.

Cobblestone roads and lots of steps are not pleasant with enough luggage for three people for a week.

 We wandered around in the lower town for a little bit, and then decided to head up. We saw a sign that said turn left for the upper town, but we hit a dead end. We went through what was once a vault or something, onto what was now an overgrown patch. We had seen a bunch of large spiders in the vault, and didn't want to venture into the weedy bit. So, we tried to find a different way. The map showed that the main path up went behind the main church. But, the construction made that route look impassible. We wandered some more, doubled back a bit, hit more dead ends, ended up in a place that didn't look like it could possibly be a main path, and finally found where we wanted to be. We were out of the lower town, but still had a way to go to get to the upper town. It was a rather grueling walk up the rock. There was a rock-paved path, but it was like 1500 years old.

The town from above. You can see the path we ascended on the right

We finally got to the top, where there is part of what used to be a church. It had stone benches, and it was nice and cool and shady, so we sat in there for a while. Em was maybe going to die.

Our shady spot

We emerged out into the sun again, but in an area with a big tree and a nice view. I wanted to proceed to Agia Sofia, but I told Max & Em they could wait for me, if they wanted to. Max came with me, Em waited in the shade. Her ankle was bothersome to her, and we were all feeling dehydrated. Unfortunately, we didn't have any water with us.

Max & I headed up to the church, and I took lots of pictures. We walked a bit further, to try and see over the other side. We thought at first maybe we wanted to get to the top, but when we realized how far that was, we said no. The top of the rock is in two levels, basically. The top top had the castle, the bottom top had the church and other buildings. We went to the bottom top. It was still plenty high!

Agia Sophia

As we were walking back down to the church, Em came walking up. She said she had made it up the rock, she could make it the rest of the way to the church. I'm very proud of her. We walked around on the top for a bit, then started back down.

This isn't a shore by any means, but it's rocky, and it looks good

The back of Agia Sofia

Agia Sofia again. We walked all the way up there for this, so you get a lot of pictures

We stopped again in the cool bench place, and then we went the rest of the way.

Our path. This isn't all of it, but it wouldn't all fit in the frame

Pretty view through an arrow slit

 It was really hot. On the way back down, we saw that, had we just continued through that overgrown spot, we would have come out on the right path, and would have saved ourselves a lot of time. Lesson learned. Next time, send Max through spiders to see if it's the right way.

Everybody needs satellite!

We got back down to the lower town and started looking for water. We found a place with ice cream and thought that sounded mighty good right then, so we went in. We were the only people in the whole place. The waiter took us out to the terrace and took our order. We downed a huge bottle of water in no time.

Looking up the hill from the terrace. You can see the path up the hill in the middle

Max & Em had ice cream with fruit, and I had a milkshake. We're pretty sure they had to go to the mainland, milk the cows, and then churn the ice cream themselves, it took so long. We were baking out in the sun. It wasn't any cooler inside, either, since there isn't any A/C. But, it was yummy and made us happy. We purchased some large bottles of water and headed to the car.

More cats at the cat cafe

See in the middle, that little bump on the hill? That's Agia Sofia. That's how high we climbed

Next in the day was Mystras. I was really looking forward to it. All of the pictures I had seen looked really gorgeous. Em was concerned about her ankle, because it's built up the side of a mountain. The Greeks LOVE to build their towns on the sides of mountains. I had never before realized just how much of Greece is mountains.

That castle is part of Mystras. This view almost made Em weep

We had her sit so she could put her ankle up for the couple of hours in the car. Anyway, Mystras is very near Sparta. I was glad that we had done the Sparta stuff on our way through the first time, because it gave us more time to spend at Mystras.

Alpha Beta! Only the people who grew up in California with me will appreciate this

By the time we got up there, it was the right time for a late lunch. We stopped at the Xenia cafe on the way up the hill. It took pretty much forever to get our food, but it was good. I had my beloved souvlaki.

I love anything named Xenia. My Sim Cities are always named Xenia

We got to Mystras at 2:50. We parked and walked up to the gate. The hours were listed as closing at 3. WTH? All of the books I had said 6 for summer hours, which were supposed to have already started. Oh, I was so upset. Max & I argued for a couple of minutes, where I said I wasn't going to pay that much to see the site for 10 minutes. Max knew how much I wanted to see it, though, so he insisted. When he went to pay, the guy just shook his head and said, "No." But, he said it with this tone like, "Well, I could let you in if I really wanted to, but I don't like you, so... no." We turned and walked back toward the car, defeated. We passed another group heading in, and told them it was closed. They were MAD! Their book said 6, too, and it was in some Nordic language, so it wasn't just US books that were wrong. We got to the car and looked back toward the gate. Those guys had gone in! So, we went back, too, and just walked past the ticket guy. He yelled after us, asking if we were with them. We said yes. He said they closed in 5 minutes. Take one picture and get out. Well, we took a few pictures, but we left soon. That guy was an ass monkey, and I wanted to punch him in the naughty bits. I looked up how to say ass monkey in Greek. It's άσσ μονκευ.

I so wanted to see the monastery.

I was sad. Like, really sad. But, I had picked up a Laconia tourism magazine/book thing (Laconia is that area of Greece) in the hotel the night before, and I remembered reading that there was a pretty waterfall not too far away, in Parori. All it said was that it was just a little southwest of Mystras. Of course, Metis had no idea. But, she was able to tell us which way was southwest, so we just did that. At the base of the Mystras hill, there was one sign that said Parori that way, but then no more. We found that A LOT while there. One sign would start you off, but after that, you were on your own. We made a few wrong turns, but we figured it out. My regular book said that Parori had a nice restaurant next to a waterfall in the town square, and there was a hiking path to another waterfall right near it. We never did find the town square, but we found a hiking path!

This isn't a hiking path, but it is a pretty little shrine

We parked and started hiking. I looked at the map of all the hiking paths that was posted at the beginning, and saw that ours was called the Parori-Mystras path. We determined that if we got to the backside of Mystras, we were totally going to try and scale the wall. At the very start, there was a semi-waterfall. We weren't very close to it, so we couldn't tell for sure, but it really looked like water coming out of a pipe more than a waterfall.

We walked. And walked.

We looked up and saw caves. They were really high.

By now, we were walking on the side of a mountain, along a big gorge, of which we could not see the bottom. It was a bit scary in places. We came to a fork in the path and a sign. One said that some cave something was 100 meters to the right. It was a church in a cave.

The cave church

Inside the cave church. We weren't supposed to be in there, since we were wearing shorts, but there wasn't anybody there to be offended.

Pretty neato. We could hear a waterfall, but couldn't see it. There was a very steep little path to the right, which we took for a little while, to see if we could see that waterfall. We couldn't. So, it was back up to the sign.

The sign said that something with the word Metamorphosis was about 20 minutes that way.  We didn't know what it was, but we had a goal. It must be cool enough for a sign, right? As we went along, parts of the path had been made out of concrete - it looked like the parts that didn't have enough room along the mountain to have an actual path. So, whatever is was at the top warranted a concrete path. 20 minutes passed with nothing in sight. There hadn't been any alternate paths, though, so we were still on the right track. Plus, we were still seeing the orange triangles that designated the Parori-Mystras trail.
We did see a real waterfall, though!

The waterfall descending into nothingness

That city out there is Sparta. You can see our path there at the middle right

We were all ready to give up at various points in the trail, but the others kept us going each time. As Em kept saying, "I climbed up a freakin' mountain this morning. I can do anything!" Luckily, most of the way was pretty shady and cool. Almost the whole way, we had a pipe running alongside the path with us, which made me think that our original "waterfall" had indeed been water coming out of a pipe.

At one point in the middle, it had a little tiny pipe coming out of the big pipe, which made a little fountain for us. We were so thirsty, it was a welcome relief. Now, if you know me very well, you know I had to be pretty desperate to drink out of a pipe.

See the little stream of water coming out of that hole? It was cold and wonderful

Maybe they use metric minutes in Greece, because it took us about 40 to get there. It was a church. A very small church, quite an ugly little thing. But, it was the Church of the Metamorphosis. We had reached our goal.

Church of the Metamorphosis

The area around it was pretty, though

There were several other paths coming off the clearing where the church was. One of them went to Mystras. We had been at it for an hour and a half already, though, and we had no idea how much longer it would be to Mystras. I jokingly suggested to Em that we go on, and you would have thought that I had suggested we bring all of our cats and throw them into the gorge. So, we went back.

Parts of the path were in desperate need of repair. I felt like Indiana Jones, trying to make sure I spelled the name of God correctly

As we headed back, we realized we were above those really high caves we had seen in the beginning. Since we couldn't see the bottom of the gorge for most of the trip, it was hard to tell just how high we were, but it was pretty darn high. We had walked steadily uphill for over an hour (the little cave church had been downhill), and we could hear water far below. When we looked out back towards Parori, we could tell how high we were, though it didn't translate well to pictures.

Here's how far we walked.

We trekked back down the mountain and headed off to our hotel for the night, which was in Olympia. Olympia was supposed to be about 3 hours, according to Google maps. We left Parori at about 4:30, I think. We went through mountains. We passed through a million little towns perched on the sides of said mountains. Up and down mountains. Never around mountains, just up and down their sides, curving around and around, over and over again. Drivers in the middle of the road on blind curves.

People would either race around corners like these or stand still on the other side of them.

Through another little town with people in the middle of the road and cars parked where cars should not be parked.

This one is extra large, so you can see the tractor in the middle of the road, heading towards us

And another, and another. Thank goodness I didn't have a headache, or I would have been so sick. (I only feel carsick when I have a migraine). We kept seeing roads on the GPS screen that looked like they should be major roads, only to find we were mistaken. Here's Metis, trying to pronounce a Greek street name.

We were very sad when we saw a freeway and we weren't on it. It isn't yet completed on this side of Tripoli. 

We did finally find a main road. By then, we had gone up and down 7 or 8 mountains. I know I counted at least 7. I had to pee, but there was nowhere to stop on the mountains. Well, there were a couple of little possible places, but nothing that looked like someplace I wanted to drop my drawers. We finally got to a city called Megalopolis. Awesome name, no? Well, we stopped for a potty break at a gas station that looked relatively clean. There were three guys sitting around out front, which I didn't like, but it would have to do. Greece is a full-service gas station country, so there are always people waiting out front.

I went around to the side where the restroom was located while Max went in to get some drinks. It was a squat toilet. Ugh. I really didn't feel like using a squat toilet, but I had little choice. I didn't know where the next restroom would be (and we still had a long time until we got to our hotel). At this point, we had already been traveling for more than our expected 3 hours, and we were only part way there. Metric time again. Plus, if I came back out so quickly, they'd know I was afraid of the toilet, and I didn't want three Greek guys laughing at me. I didn't have my camera, but here's a picture of the same kind of toilet. I took this one in Paris in February.

This one is much cleaner than the one I had to use

Luckily, using one of these toilets isn't like peeing in the woods. Somehow, you can manage pretty easily without peeing all over yourself on these toilets. Anyway, after a successful pee, it was time to move on. We headed out towards Olympia. Along the way, we stopped at an ancient site. It had a fence, but it was busted down in one part, so we pulled over and walked down. There was what looked like a nuclear plant, but it turns out it was a lignite plant.

I liked the ancient ruins with the power plant in the background

Guess what? More mountains. And there was much rejoicing. Yay. It got a bit sprinkley, but the good thing about that was that we got to see a lovely rainbow

For those keeping track, it was supposed to be a 3 hour drive, yes? And we left Parori at 4:30, yes? So, we should have gotten there about 7:30. As it was, we were actually kind of afraid we might miss our hotel's 10:00pm check-in deadline.

Things like this didn't even warrant cones, or any sort of warning. There were also a number of places where the shoulder had fallen down the mountain

We didn't, thank goodness.

Olive groves up the mountain

Metis again didn't have any idea about our hotel. We had an address for this one, but she didn't have it in her database. She did have a neighborhood listed as what we had for the street, so we headed there. It turns out that Ancient Pissa is the name of the street that runs through Ancient Pissa. So, it was easy to find. There was a huge sign. We checked in, I took a shower, we went to bed.

A post script - While trying to find the name of the church in the gorge, I found out that the gorge where we hiked was most likely the place where Spartans went to throw their unwanted babies. Nice, huh? Oh, and the church is called Virgin of the Gorge.

Emma says - Thank awesomeness for my Hunger Games book, or I would have been so bored sitting there with the ice on my ankle. I walked up a mountain in the sun at Monemvassia. Never doing that again. I really deserved that ice cream. It was really pretty, though. Then, I walked up another mountain. This one was not in the sun, though, so I can't say I told myself never to do that again. I was glad when we finally got to the hotel, so we could get out of the car. Plus, I like sleeping. 

I climbed up two freakin' mountains today. I can do anything.