I had booked the car rental for 8am, but when I woke up I knew there was no way we would make it. I wondered if I should call the rental place. I figured it wouldn’t be a big deal, but I decided to call anyways. When I told the man on the phone we’d be late, he sounded visibly upset. He said they didn’t have a lot of room in the city centre and the car had been ready for eight.
We headed to the rental place as fast as we could, but we’re not the fastest packers. We ended up getting there close to 10:30. As we were getting closer the taxi seemed to be taking the worst possible routes. He kept going through one lane roads that were clogged with cars, instead of sticking to main streets. Near the end of our journey we were in one such alley. It looked like there was no Hertz in site. Had I put in the wrong address? But sure enough at the corner of the alley and the main street there was a small Hertz storefront. No lot though. They parked their cars on the street in the one lane alleyway.
We walked into the Hertz and were greeted by a jovial, bearded Greek man.
“You’re lucky I didn’t rent your car,” He laughed, “Everyone says they’ll be here at 8. No one gets here at 8,” he laughed again.
“We wanted to be here, but I didn’t sleep well, and I’m a little sick,” said Lizy.
“Sure. Sure. That’s what they all say.”
He began finalizing the rental.
“What! You got those international drivers licenses. They’ve been no longer needed for 2 years. AAA is just stealing your money.”
Then he typed on the computer for a little bit.
“You got a small car. Don’t take it too fast on the highway. You could fly away. Maybe find a rock and put it in the trunk.” He laughed.
A younger clerk showed us to our Kia Picanto parked in the alleyway. While doing the pre rental inspection he made the same joke about putting a rock in the trunk. What a weird joke to make.
Driving in Athens was a little tricky. The drivers were aggressive and the roads were narrow. Once we got out of the city centre the cars thinned out and the highway seemed brand new. The scenery was somewhat reminiscent of California with cactuses and dirt. They had different looking rocks. The dramatic granite faces you might see the Sierras were replace by rolling hills. There were different types of trees too. Lots of olive trees and shrub-like trees.
There were more tolls then we were expecting. I guess that’s part of the reason there was so little traffic. At the booths it gave me a chance to practice the one Greek work I knew, Efkareeshto, or “Thanks” in English. However, between the tolls I’d forget how to pronounce the word, so Lizy would have to repeat it to me
“Ef-kha-reesh-to”
We crossed the bridge over the Corinth canal. We didn’t get out of the car or anything, but we stuck our heads out the car to try to get a good look. We said to ourselves we’d stop on the way back. The Corinth canal took 2000 years to build. A roman emperor removed the first piece of dirt with a spade. I think the Romans mostly gave up after a while though. I can’t imagine digging that canal out with shovels. I’m assuming most of the work was done once mechanical diggers were invented in modern times.
Now we were in the Peloponnese! And as if in celebration the tyre pressure light went on in our car. We both freaked out as neither of us had ever dealt with this issue before. We called up the rental agency thinking we might have to drive back into Athens, but he informed us we could get it checked out at a gas station. We pulled into the first gas station we could find. The clerk at the gas station did not speak any English, but Lizy was able to communicate our issue by miming. She was able to fix our tyres and once again we were off.
It started raining during the drive. If it had to rain, we were glad it rained when we were driving. The road snaked it’s way between huge mountains. We couldn’t see the peaks because of the rain clouds.
We grabbed lunch in Sparta. I dropped Lizy at the restaurant and I parked the car. When I walked back to the restaurant the proprietor greeted me like an old friend,
“Adam, my friend, it’s great to see you.” He must’ve heard my name when Lizy called me to ask where I was.
We sat in the backyard. The seating was covered by a tarp so we had no problem with the rain. They had many cats wandering around, which was commonplace everywhere we had been. Not so common, they had 8 turtles in the backyard.
The proprietor came to get our order.
“Adam, my friend, you have to try the lamb. Roasted in the oven with potatoes.”
I’m glad I listened to his advice. The lamb was terrific.
Lizy tried to tip him for the service after our meal, but he refused to take the money. “I have enough. I own this place.”
After we left, we took the short drive to Mystras. Mystras was founded in the late Byzantine empire. Initially founded as Frankish city in the 13th century it was captured by the Byzantines later that same century. It became the most important city in the Byzantine empire in the Peloponnese. In 1460 the Ottoman empire took over the city during it’s conquest of the Byzantine Empire. Over time the city gradually lost it’s importance and in 1831, after it became part of the newly independent Greek state, the modern city of Sparta, where we had lunch, was built and the remaining citizens moved there over the next few decades. Even after this exodus, a group of Orthodox nuns stayed behind to keep up their nunnery, which is still active to this day.
Mystras was built on a hill to make it easier to defend. The more important a person was the farther up they would live on the hill. As was common practice in Medieval times there were a series of more inner sections of the city enclosed by walls, so that during an invasion one could move farther into the city as the more outer layers had been sieged successfully. The most outer layer of citizenry was outside the city walls entirely. According to a sign at the site, there were even some Jews during the Ottoman period living in this outer layer. Just inside the first wall was the lower city where the peasants lived. In the upper city the nobles and clergy lived. Then the final gate was around the castle. We decided to drive to the top of the hill and work our way down, so we first visited the castle. Miraculously, as we drove up to Mystras it finally stopped raining.
The castle was mostly collapsed. From all the cracks in the fortifications leapt flowers of many varieties. It reminded me of ruins you might find in a game, like Assassins Creed. We looked through a few old windows overlooking the rest of the ruined city. At the top of the castles we took some photos. At the other side of the hill was a sheer cliff. Made it easier to defend the city if one side was a cliff.
It seemed like most of the tourist were French. I’m not sure why that was. Maybe because it was originally built by the Frankish people, who the French people descend from. Maybe the French people just like medieval fortresses more than other tourists. I’m not sure.
We walked down the hill from the castle to see the rest of the city. The main roads had been kept up, but the alleyways that in medieval times would’ve branched off the main road to the houses lay in ruin. The houses were destroyed down to the foundations, but from the outline of the plots you could see the houses were built on top of each other.
A lot of the churches were still intact. Inside the churches, once could see frescoes that although faded, still retained their beauty. We kept walking down the hill and eventually came to the working nunnery. The buildings were decorated with flowers and there were many stray cats. We saw one nun walking around the courtyard.
After walking through more of the ruins we made it to the second entrance at the bottom of the hill. Lizy waited at the bottom of hill and I trekked back up to the car and drove down to pick up Lizy. We tried to ask some of the people at the entrance how the road to Kalamata was. When I initially had planned out the driving route I had assumed the drive to Kalamata from Mystras was fairly short because the road was short, but the gps on my phone was now telling me to consider driving quite a farther distance to go around the road. It turned out that the short road I had seen on the map was a windy, mountainous road. We decided to take the mountain road anyways, as it was about the same amount of time as driving around and would be more scenic than taking highways.
The drive was more treacherous than we were expecting. Switch back after switchback on narrow roads. The sun was up though and the views were great. After driving for an hour we got to a fork in the road where the road we were supposed to take had a road closure sign at it’s entrance. Confusingly the road wasn’t fully roped off and there were a bunch of arrow signs pointing towards the gap in the road closure pylons. We pulled over to the side of the road to access are options. The other road from the fork, which was not marked as closed, looked to be in much worse condition and we were could not see if joined back up with the main road on google maps because we did not have service. We could double back and go around the road, but it would take another hour just to get off the road and evening was approaching.
We saw a truck driving by. Lizy got out of the car and waved them down. Their window rolled down revealing two young Greek men.
“Where you from,” the younger looking one in the passenger seat asked.
Lizy told them where we were from and asked about the road.
“It’s fine to go on the road, better than going the other way. I drove by here last week. It dips in a few spots, but is mostly fine. Just take it slow.”
Then he started to giving us recommendations for sights we should see. We ended up talking to them for so long that another car came through, so they pulled to the side of the road and got out of their car so they could finish giving us recommendations. They were disappointed we had already booked our hotels. They thought we should spend longer in the region and move between hotels in the Mani to see the whole peninsula.
“If only you were staying longer.”
After giving us their final restaurant recommendations. They said farewell and thanked us for visiting Greece. Then they drove off on the closed road. We followed behind them, but quickly lost their truck as they sped away. The road ended up being mostly fine. I don’t think I would’ve remembered it being worse than the first non closed part of the road, if it hadn’t been closed.
After we got to Kalamata, we turned south. Then we drove along the coast to Kardamyli, where we were staying for the night.
At the hotel, the night clerk showed us around the hotel and walked us to our room. Our hotel room overlooked the Mediterranean Sea and we could feel the cool breeze from the sea when we walked in. He recommended a restaurant a short walk away on the sea.
At the restaurant we sat on their back patio, which was steps away from the sea. Even though it was late the deck was crowded. The other groups were French and Dutch I believe. We ordered a mix of local Maniot dishes and fresh fish. The fish, they let us pick from the freshly caught fish they had in their cooler. We got a couple of smaller white fish deep fried and one medium sized white fish on the grill. It was a wonderful dinner, but we ordered way too much food.
There was a posse of cats roaming the restaurant. It appeared their leader was an orange, one eyed tabby. Lizy fed one of the cats some scraps. After that moment, the cats became organized. The one eyed cat started staring at Lizy with it’s single eye as she took every bite. She got a little nervous. I stood up to get a photo and a different cat came from behind me and hopped onto my chair. I was only just able to shoo the cat away from our food. I didn’t get up again till I had eaten. The food was wonderful.
All in all it was an exciting start to our time in the Mani.