Nafplion was the first capital of Greece after the Greek War of Independence (1821-28). We chose this small port town in the Peloponnese as a relaxing final destination on our tour of Greece.
Driving to Nafplion
First sight of water...
We stayed at Pension Atheaton, a small hotel located on a side street in Nafplion. It was nice, although cats surrounded the entrance most of the time.
We ate our breakfast on this veranda outside of our room each morning- jelly or chocolate filled croissants and juice.
Most of the narrow streets in Nafplion are lined with shops and restaurants.
We ate at a restaurant called Ta Panapia on our first night, and no, we didn't realize that we had ordered a whole fish. It actually turned out to be pretty darn good...we just had to work a little bit harder than usual for our dinner that night.
We ate lunch at an excellent Italian restaurant located on this square two days in a row- it had great food and a hydra-fan that sprayed water and created a little pocket of cool air amidst the heat.
In the picture below, you can see the outline of Bourtzi Fortress, built by Venetians in the 15th century to guard the entrance to Nafplion's harbor. This was our view as we ate dessert by the water...not bad.
Because we had just spent the better part of a week hiking through ruins and touring archaeological sites, we opted to avoid anything resembling work for our stay in Nafplion. So this is the closest we got to seeing Nafplion's two massive fortifications (Acronafplia and Palamidi, not sure which one is pictured below).
This is Arvantitia Beach, surrounded by large cliffs and located beneath one of the fortresses. The beach was very narrow and rocky, so on our second day at the beach we opted to walk along the cove to find a spot on some much larger rocks.
Just imagine us walking along the cliff, around the beach...
The white substance pictured below is actually salt that accumulates on the rocks from the water.
This picture is looking back on the beach area that was pictured earlier.
We came across these boys jumping off the cliffs into the water...
Just to give you an idea of how crystal clear the water was...we could see the rocks at the bottom of the water as well as fish swimming around us as we swam. We wished that we had brought some snorkels!
This is one of the rocky areas where we swam. We had to climb down this rusty ladder (to Matt's left) and basically just push off into the water. The water was incredibly calm...like a lake early in the morning, except this was a sea!
This picture is from dinner on our last night in Nafplion. We befriended an older English couple that was sitting next to us, and they ended up inviting us to stay with them if we were ever near their home in Northern England. Not sure if that will ever happen, but we did have a nice time talking with them about their European travels.
And so all good things must come to an end. The next day, we left after lunch and drove back to Athens for a short night sleep and our early morning flight back to Germany.
Here are some of the road signs we saw along the way- the Greek word was almost always followed by the English word.
We had to pay tolls pretty often throughout our trip...I think we spent about 30 Euro in all.
For our last night in Athens, we booked a room in the first hotel from the beginning of our trip. But since we were only staying for one night, we think they gave us the worst room in the place. We were literally put in a room on the roof!
This would not have been so bad, except the room was probably 90+ degrees inside!
The only redeeming quality of our room assignment was that we had this lovely view of the Pantheon right outside our door.
This was an amazing trip and we were very happy with all of the cities we visited. Now we're ready to plan a Mediterranean cruise back through the Greek Islands...Maybe next year!
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