Now here is a little peninsula, and here is a viaduct leading over to the mainland
Boy, Rosh Hashanah is a long holiday! I haven’t been able to post in like twelve days. Oh, I kid, but I had other excuses. I was contemplating all my sins and how to be a better person. Yes…. that was it. It’s a long process, you see. What? WHAT? OK OK, I’ve been utterly drowning in my Greece plans. I don’t know what the hell I’m doing! This might be just dandy for other people but I am the sort who has my whole holiday planned down to the bus schedule between Penzance and St. Just. (That worked a lot better for Cornwall than Greece, thus I can’t reuse it). But I’m leaving in a week and I have no idea what I’m doing other than landing on a Delta jet in Athens. Lou my Greece expert has been very patient with me and all my indecisiveness but after weeks and weeks of conversation, it comes down to this advice: “Wow, Greece is fantastic! So many great places to go! So many things to see! Too bad you don’t have time to do any of them!”
But he’s right. I really don’t have time to do all that island hopping that everyone associates so with Greece. Instead I’ll be spending time in the charming (so they say – not Lou, though, he’s never been there) city of Nafplion on the Peloponnese peninsula. Or Nafplio. Or Nauplion. It’s like they have a different alphabet over there or something. It probably has three triangles in Greek. But I’m excited! I finally picked somewhere to go, a fun, non-touristy, visually stunning base for day trips. And there’s water, I like water (I know, so rare in Greece) . But then I realized that merely picking a city doesn’t actually find you a hotel or transportation. Yadda yadda yadda, I stayed at work till ten because I had fourteen FireFox tabs open and I knew I’d never find my way back to where I was.
I’m also staying one night in Athens and these two cities seem to have opposite problems. All the reviews of Athenian hotels were like “what a dump!” and “stay far away!” whereas all the hotels in Nafplion seem to be palaces. Sadly, I don’t have a royal budget. I gave up on finding something in Nafplion for this night but I did manage to pick a hotel in Athens. It was the one whose only bad reviews were that it was near a bunch of sex shops and that prostitutes were walking around. Coming from New York I call this “local charm.”
But back to Nafplion (that’s what my Frommer’s book calls it so I’m going with that). According to people on Flickr, it looks like this.
(pic NotiX @ Flickr)
And this.
(pic feuilllu @ Flickr)
And apparently it’s famous for its gelato. Mmmm, vacation.
(pic Kristie’s NaturesPortraits @ Flickr)
Not bad! I think I will finally be able to get away from it all there. And by getting away from it all, I mean all the planning it takes to get away from it all.
Title comes from The Marx Brothers’ Cocoanuts/Why A Duck scene.
