The defensive walls were amazing, something noted even in the ancient world, as the first reference to this city is from Homer, with his mention of 'mighty walled Tiryns'. It was said that the hill fort was built by giants, for surely only they could lift such huge blocks. This beautiful site narrowly escaped destruction when Heinrich Schliemann (curse his name!) decided most of the visible structures were medieval and thus useless, and began digging through them in the hopes of finding Mycenaean treasure. Luckily he soon lost interest and went off to plunder Mycenae instead.
Things never happen the same way twice, and the town was like I remembered but not at the same time. Last time I had been here was with my friend Shyla back in 2014, and we had found the town to be one of our favourites in all our travels. We had dined on Gyros and chilled red wine, and lengthened our stay here simply to enjoy ourselves longer.
Gyros or Gyro is a traditional Greek street food involving rotisserie pork or chicken wrapped in a flatbread with tzatziki and salad. It sounds simple but there was something utterly delicious about them and I had become quite addicted. Due to the ease in which we had found them everywhere last time, I was expecting to soon be dining on them for lunch, but to my disappointment I couldn't find a single place still serving them!
After finding the waterfront restaurants lacking, we ended up in an alleyway for lunch with the most lovely owners who refused to speak anything but French to us! The food was to absolutely die for, including plates of dips and delicious stuffed tomatoes. It was some of the best fare we had in all of Greece. Everything sounded delicious and we ended up getting far too much, not helped by the fact that the owner ordered half of it for us, deciding what we should eat. It left us with little chance of getting a word in, but was very amusing and meant we were getting to try the best they could offer!
Feeling very full and relaxed after wandering the town a bit more we were planning to head to the famous site of Mycenae which I had of course been to before, but it was so singular I wanted to see it again, and dad had never been. We had planned to only stay the afternoon and drive further on that day to give us less ground to cover, needing to be in Athens for the ferry the afternoon after and not wanting to do the whole drive in one go. However Nafplio was so lovely and there were so many ruins to see around we decided to bite the bullet and stay.
Thus as afternoon hit, we headed for the site of Mycenae ready to tackle more ruins.
Having discussed this site in a much earlier post, I will not do so again, only say that this time it was far less touristy and much quieter than the last time I had visited (a trend I noticed throughout Greece) and we enjoyed it without the crowds. Lions Gate was as impressive as ever, and dwarfed dad with its monumental architecture.
Feeling tired but pleased with our day, we headed back to Nafplio late in the evening, and were just in time to sit by the waterfront with a well-deserved beer and watch the sun go down.
The next day we headed for Athens, but made a brief stop in Corinth, mainly so I could see the famous canal which I had always wanted to visit. Cutting through the isthmus of Corinth to connect the Gulf of Corinth with the Saronic Gulf, it separates the Peloponnese from the mainland. A long thought out idea, it was begun in the 7th century BC, however was quickly aborted and although many attempts were made over the years, it did not properly begin construction until the late 1800s. Extremely narrow, it can now no longer fit modern ships and thus was quiet and clearly barely used these days, though dad said he could remember in his own travels when it had been a more main transport route, and seen more use. With very little time to spare, we soon headed off to catch our ferry to Crete, ready to meet up with Yannick and Necia and continue our grand adventure!
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