Thinking back to Napflio to write this post makes me smile. It was so relaxing and enjoyable. We loved it so much we cancelled our trip to Delphi to stay longer (and avoid travelling and crowds). Nafplio is a seaside village, 2.5 hours bus ride from Athens (we flew to Athens, didn’t stay but got right on the bus), with an old town and a new town. The new town looked pretty ugly and boring so we spent all our time in the old village bumming around and not really doing much at all. We stayed five nights, four of those we spent watching the World Cup at the bar, including the Aussie-Italy game which was a bit sad—not a nice way to lose.

We stayed in a cute little place that was cheaper than the one in Rome but 100 times better quality. We had a wonderful little balcony and a breakfast feast delivered to us daily. The hotel was on one of the small marble streets, almost vehicle free (a few bikes and extra small cars every now and then), surrounded by the stereotypical whitewashed buildings and random remnants of the old town including crumbling buildings and dried up water fountains.

We found excellent traditional Greek food at Zorbas (we tried a few other places but kept going back to Zorbas), we ate such yummy things as zatziki (every meal—Phil was, and still is obsessed), keftedes (meat balls - but not as good as Ntinas!), zuchinni balls, eggplant dip, greek salad, moussaka, saganaki (fried cheese) etc. etc. You get the idea. We like Greek food. I also discovered the “Frappe with ice cream”—best drink eva—double shot of espresso (they like it strong) over a scoop of ice cream. Mum you need to make a trip to Greece just for this!

It was also in Nafplio where we discovered our own personal swimming spot in the harbour. There is a walkway that runs around the the point, and every now and then some steps down to the rocky shoreline. We saw the locals making use of these and of course tried it out ourselves. Swimming alone in the crystal clear Mediterranean sea after the heat of Rome was soooooooooo good!

All the time we were staying in Nafplio we discussed getting up early enough (before it got too hot) to walk the (supposed) 999 steps up to the Palamidi Fortress that overlooks the town. The arrival of our last day forced the issue and we ventured up the hill. Built by the Venetions in 1711-1714, it was remarkably intact, amazingly vast, and regarded as a masterpiece of military architecture—I expect mostly because it’s on top of a rocky, completely untraversable hill. From the 216m high rocky outcrop we had excellent views of the surrounding sea and countryside, and the town below.