Now that I am well into my second last week in Greece, I have become all the more aware of the passage of time. It pains me to have to seriously contemplate leaving this beautiful country, but I must accept the fact in order to fully appreciate and properly utilise what little precious time I have left. For me that includes hiking up Mt. Lycabettus, meeting up again with the always lovely Dora (hello dear, are you sick of me yet?) and of course, leaving Attica to go watch a modern rendition of Oedipus the King at the Ancient Theatre at Epidaurus this past weekend.
Since there was little chance of us making it back straight to Athens after Epidaurus, we decided to stay in Nafplio for the night at the recommendation of our Greek language teacher. Nafplio has to be the biggest surprise thus far in Greece; for us students, it had all the things we like about Chania, Crete, so much but more. Originally we made plans to also go visit Ancient Mycenae and even go bungee jumping at Corinth, but in the end we loved Nafplio so much that we decided to stay and bask in its beauty for a little while longer. The photos above were from our hike up and down all 999 steps of Palamidi––we didn't know that you could actually take a bus up there!
On our way down we met Nana, a student from Athens but is currently studying Theatre in Nafplio (in the middle of the trio here), who was kind enough to give us an impromptu mini tour and walked us to get gelato at the famous Antica Gelateria di Roma. So tasty.
Of course when night fell, we made our way to Epidaurus. Despite not understanding a single word (OK more like five and we could tell who was who), I absolutely enjoyed it. The acoustics were truly amazing and surpassed all of our expectations. Hilariously half way through the performance, someone screamed and stood up, leading to more people around him/her to stand up until everybody in the theatre stood up and the lights were turned back on. At first my friends and I were truly confused and thought this was part of play until we realised that it was probably just because of the giant bug flying around the theatre (looked quite harmless though frankly). I finally got a chance to wear the dark purple jumpsuit I bought years ago.
The next day we took the Nafplio city tour and had one of the best lunches I've had EVER. We then proceeded to the two big museums in town drunk because of all the free wine that we got at lunch. Thankfully we sobered up by late afternoon as we made our way to the beach, where we stayed for the remainder of the day before we hopped onto the bus back to Athens at night.
If you find yourself in Greece, please pay a visit to Nafplio. I swear you won't regret it.
No comments:
Post a Comment