At motel breakfast I ate some leftover fava bean spread on pita, some of my oatmeal I brought from home, and some of Lee’s honey he bought in tiny jars to try different kinds. Apparently, thyme honey is popular here and it is pretty good. Today was a car day, and we drove 20 some km to the archaeological site of Mycenae and the museum there This place was a walled city with temples and cemeteries. We saw three cool domed burial chambers that you could walk into and hear your footsteps echoing.
Flowers of all colors were blooming; lots of yellow, little purple ones, white ones and red that looked like poppies. This place was high up on a hill that made you feel like you were on top of the world. Lee said Claudia earned her Billy Goat Girl Scout Patch today! The olive trees were loaded, and even though Lee warned me, I picked one and bit into it. While not at all like what you buy in a jar, I could taste the peppery bite and it was very juicy. To get into the city there is a lion gate (you can see two lions on the triangle lintel on top of the open door, and that is the oldest one in Europe - 1250 BC! Still in pretty good shape. Almond trees were blooming too. Just down the hill from here was another tomb - Agamemnon’s, also called the treasury.
From there we headed through the town of Mykonos looking for anyplace that looked good for lunch. A man was standing outside the Electra, and waved us in, so we went there! I think he and his wife owned it, and she was cooking. We were the only ones in the place, and her food was delicious.Greeks evidently like to give you things complementary, and she gave us Kataifi (said it was ok for me to have). That things was amazing. It’s a Greek spun pastry that tasted like Heaven.
We then drove about 25 miles to Epidavrus, seeing massive amounts of loaded orange trees, windmills, and cute little houses that looked like mailboxes on the way. While also getting lost, we found a small ruin of a theater. Someone there pointed us in the right direction to find the big theatre - the best preserved theatre in Greece that is actually still used, called the Theatre at Epidavrus, or the Theatre of Asklepios. Now that was seriously big and cool and we got to crawl all over it. Greta stood in the center of the stage and emoted Helena’s monologue about Demetrius, and Lee could hear her fair all the way to the top. When I tried to sing Amazing Grace, the docents said no singing allowed. Very strange. Lots of people at this site. We hung around for a long time after looking at all the other ruins there as well. We have certainly seen a lot of ruined stuff. Yes, Julie - it certainly was a fixer-upper!
We stopped by an orange stand on the way back, and bought a bag of around 36 oranges from a guy for 4 euros! So good and sweet. He talked up a storm to us in Greek! We talked back in English! The only words he knew were mandarin, Chicago, America, Putin and Trump. It was funny,
Back to the motel, and then Lee, G and I ventured out to see if the donut shop was open. It was! And they were frying loukoumades right there and we got a dozen fresh ones with walnuts and honey - so good! Then on the way back to pick up Claudia for supper, Lee heard music and found some high school kids singing in a mosque so we stopped for that. Some of the singers had just come in from Choate Prep School in Connecticut, and they did a marvelous job singing Acapella in that domed ceiling space.
Picked up Claudia and went back to the same place we ate the first night here in Nafpoli - this time trying Calimari, stuffed cabbage, and more fava bean spread.
Cat count so far - 250.
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