People on the internet, who don't always reach calm consensuses on things, all agree that Athens' Kifissos bus terminal is awful. It's almost disappointing to find that it's not scary or filthy, just sooty, confusing, crowded, noisy, smoky, full of importunate old women in black shrouds selling beads, and weirdly located. Kifissos was sited by using math and lasers to find the spot within Metro Athens that's as far away as possible from every other transportation hub.
With a few minutes to go, the driver of the Ναύπλιο bus stubs out his cigarette, gets out, and starts checking tickets. Because I'd bought mine online and printed it out, he waved me into a little office to get (he mimed) a stamp. There was a man arguing some point with the stamp operator, who sat behind a little wooden grill, and the argument seemed to be gaining traction. Awkward: the bus was going to leave, and I'd been hoping not to get involved in too many time-pressured three-way arguments in languages I don't understand. After a bit, though, the stamp lady made a decisive point, the man drifted away, and, after a close study, my ticket got two red stamps.
The bus was brand new, cramped, and had three swaying baggies of scented crystals tied to the air conditioning vents. The route out of Athens is lined with what seems like miles of auto body shops, and the first stretch was like the jaywalking Olympics: a busy, divided, six-lane road that pedestrians were casually dodging across. The last man -- admittedly, with the advantage of knowing what he had to beat -- walked in front of the bus, sprinted across the other lanes, vaulted the barrier, smoothed down his tie, and then began strolling thoughtfully along the median with his hands clasped behind his back.
On the drive, we roll over the canal through the isthmus of Corinth, which was attempted by a couple of Roman emperors -- but not, tellingly, the smarter ones -- and then not actually finished until the 1890s. It's fantastically deep, and strikingly narrow. Too narrow, as it turned out, to actually be of much use to anyone.
The old parts of Nafplio, where the tourists stay, is a Venetian pedestrian zone of polished stone streets, vines, paper lanterns, high-end souvenir shops, "traditional pensions", seaside restaurants, and gelaterias. My traditional pension has off-kilter stairs and hallways full of antique sewing machines and chess sets; the room has a disused fireplace, a couch, wooden floors, an iron bed, a spidery iron chandelier, and six prints of British warships on the walls. It feels like a 19th century boarding house. It makes you want to slick your hair and wear striped blazers.
The room's over the street, and the street is full of restaurants. At night, there's loud background murmuring, chair scraping, and music, with the screams of a toddler cutting through now and then like a soloist -- not screams of distress, or of happiness, just the screams of a toddler who has discovered screaming and wants to explore it fully. In the morning, you can look down the street from the window and see hairy men in undershirts standing out on little semicircular balconies, appraising the day.
It's still low season, and the restaurateurs, at least the ones not immediately on the water, are glumly standing in front of empty patios, pining for the cruise ships: that look you see in nature documentaries when starving wolves are waiting for the caribou to return. And then on Sunday, April 1 -- which marks the beginning of high season, the day prices double at all archaeological sites and museums -- things suddenly got noticeably more crowded, as though there's some stigma attached to low-season holidays. (It wasn't Greek Easter, which is April 8 this year.)
The cool thing for local teenagers to do on Friday evenings is to gather in little crowds and surge randomly through the streets with a portable stereo, then go to the harbour and race two- and four-person canopied bicycles in dizzying circles.
For tourists, the obvious things are Palamidi fortress, the Bourtzi fortress, the town fortifications, and a few museums. It's also close to Mycenae, Tiryns (another Mycenean site), and Epidaurus. Palamidi is on a towering outcropping, and can be reached by climbing 800-odd stairs, which I did, or by bus, which is what sensible people do. It's a mostly-intact 18th century ruin with tufts of purple flowers growing out of its walls, dark tunnels to creep down, and a couple of distant bastions that most tourists don't bother with that are covered in flowery, buzzing meadows: places you're not completely sure you're supposed to be, which are always the most interesting.
I'd planned to go to Mycenae, but didn't. The bus seemed not to be running on the Sunday (I might have misunderstood this), and I wasn't that keen on another long bus ride, anyway. Walking to Tiryns seemed like a good alternative -- it's a bit over 4km away, and many people on the internet believe, though they haven't done it themselves, that you can make the trip along the disused rail tracks near the old town. But I came down with a cold, and eventually decided it was something better left to people who could breathe through their noses and were sure they wouldn't just fall over at some point. Plus, the archaeological museums, here and in Athens, had all the stuff recovered from the sites, as well as nice scale models that were a lot easier to walk around.
(The railway tracks are also where tour buses pull up. Two small, smudge-faced boys try to sell flowers to arrivals, rendezvousing afterwards with their parents in the parking lot. Most of the town's amiable stray dogs also assemble here for their afternoon siesta.)
If you're not feeling ambitious and you've done the obvious things, you end up weighing the pitches of other attractions. There's a small amusement park nearby with a "7D Cinema Attraction" that it's hard not to feel curious about. Was there some marketing war between 3D theatres? You imagine a montage with rival posters being glued up -- 3D! 4D! 5D! 6D! 7D! Closed! Or the D might stand for something else completely, like a troupe of seven jugglers named Dave. You want to know, almost but not quite enough to actually look into it.
There are also the small museums. The Museum of Greek Folklore offers a "journey through time and space", which seems almost evasive, since everything is a journey through time and space. There's a worry bead museum, which feels like something put together to get the town more coverage in in-flight magazines and Atlas Obscura. So, the military museum, which is in an impressive building and has two pleasant young soldiers in camo manning the front desk. Threadbare red carpet on the stairs, dusty prints, a TV showing a WWII documentary, uniformed mannequins under glass, and countless rifles, mortars, sabres, and machine guns.
Nafplio also has a couple of derelict hotels, a very pretty walk around the point, dramatic cliffs, and a rocky beach, though the sea bed here looks to be covered in urchins.
Anyway, I go to Sofia today. If I'd only known when I had time to kill, I would have used it trying to get a boarding pass for a Wizz Air flight, which is an interesting way to kill a few hours. It's strange, you'd think they'd be doing everything in their power to help you avoid that €35 fee for printing one at the airport.
With a few minutes to go, the driver of the Ναύπλιο bus stubs out his cigarette, gets out, and starts checking tickets. Because I'd bought mine online and printed it out, he waved me into a little office to get (he mimed) a stamp. There was a man arguing some point with the stamp operator, who sat behind a little wooden grill, and the argument seemed to be gaining traction. Awkward: the bus was going to leave, and I'd been hoping not to get involved in too many time-pressured three-way arguments in languages I don't understand. After a bit, though, the stamp lady made a decisive point, the man drifted away, and, after a close study, my ticket got two red stamps.
The bus was brand new, cramped, and had three swaying baggies of scented crystals tied to the air conditioning vents. The route out of Athens is lined with what seems like miles of auto body shops, and the first stretch was like the jaywalking Olympics: a busy, divided, six-lane road that pedestrians were casually dodging across. The last man -- admittedly, with the advantage of knowing what he had to beat -- walked in front of the bus, sprinted across the other lanes, vaulted the barrier, smoothed down his tie, and then began strolling thoughtfully along the median with his hands clasped behind his back.
On the drive, we roll over the canal through the isthmus of Corinth, which was attempted by a couple of Roman emperors -- but not, tellingly, the smarter ones -- and then not actually finished until the 1890s. It's fantastically deep, and strikingly narrow. Too narrow, as it turned out, to actually be of much use to anyone.
The old parts of Nafplio, where the tourists stay, is a Venetian pedestrian zone of polished stone streets, vines, paper lanterns, high-end souvenir shops, "traditional pensions", seaside restaurants, and gelaterias. My traditional pension has off-kilter stairs and hallways full of antique sewing machines and chess sets; the room has a disused fireplace, a couch, wooden floors, an iron bed, a spidery iron chandelier, and six prints of British warships on the walls. It feels like a 19th century boarding house. It makes you want to slick your hair and wear striped blazers.
The room's over the street, and the street is full of restaurants. At night, there's loud background murmuring, chair scraping, and music, with the screams of a toddler cutting through now and then like a soloist -- not screams of distress, or of happiness, just the screams of a toddler who has discovered screaming and wants to explore it fully. In the morning, you can look down the street from the window and see hairy men in undershirts standing out on little semicircular balconies, appraising the day.
It's still low season, and the restaurateurs, at least the ones not immediately on the water, are glumly standing in front of empty patios, pining for the cruise ships: that look you see in nature documentaries when starving wolves are waiting for the caribou to return. And then on Sunday, April 1 -- which marks the beginning of high season, the day prices double at all archaeological sites and museums -- things suddenly got noticeably more crowded, as though there's some stigma attached to low-season holidays. (It wasn't Greek Easter, which is April 8 this year.)
The cool thing for local teenagers to do on Friday evenings is to gather in little crowds and surge randomly through the streets with a portable stereo, then go to the harbour and race two- and four-person canopied bicycles in dizzying circles.
For tourists, the obvious things are Palamidi fortress, the Bourtzi fortress, the town fortifications, and a few museums. It's also close to Mycenae, Tiryns (another Mycenean site), and Epidaurus. Palamidi is on a towering outcropping, and can be reached by climbing 800-odd stairs, which I did, or by bus, which is what sensible people do. It's a mostly-intact 18th century ruin with tufts of purple flowers growing out of its walls, dark tunnels to creep down, and a couple of distant bastions that most tourists don't bother with that are covered in flowery, buzzing meadows: places you're not completely sure you're supposed to be, which are always the most interesting.
I'd planned to go to Mycenae, but didn't. The bus seemed not to be running on the Sunday (I might have misunderstood this), and I wasn't that keen on another long bus ride, anyway. Walking to Tiryns seemed like a good alternative -- it's a bit over 4km away, and many people on the internet believe, though they haven't done it themselves, that you can make the trip along the disused rail tracks near the old town. But I came down with a cold, and eventually decided it was something better left to people who could breathe through their noses and were sure they wouldn't just fall over at some point. Plus, the archaeological museums, here and in Athens, had all the stuff recovered from the sites, as well as nice scale models that were a lot easier to walk around.
(The railway tracks are also where tour buses pull up. Two small, smudge-faced boys try to sell flowers to arrivals, rendezvousing afterwards with their parents in the parking lot. Most of the town's amiable stray dogs also assemble here for their afternoon siesta.)
If you're not feeling ambitious and you've done the obvious things, you end up weighing the pitches of other attractions. There's a small amusement park nearby with a "7D Cinema Attraction" that it's hard not to feel curious about. Was there some marketing war between 3D theatres? You imagine a montage with rival posters being glued up -- 3D! 4D! 5D! 6D! 7D! Closed! Or the D might stand for something else completely, like a troupe of seven jugglers named Dave. You want to know, almost but not quite enough to actually look into it.
There are also the small museums. The Museum of Greek Folklore offers a "journey through time and space", which seems almost evasive, since everything is a journey through time and space. There's a worry bead museum, which feels like something put together to get the town more coverage in in-flight magazines and Atlas Obscura. So, the military museum, which is in an impressive building and has two pleasant young soldiers in camo manning the front desk. Threadbare red carpet on the stairs, dusty prints, a TV showing a WWII documentary, uniformed mannequins under glass, and countless rifles, mortars, sabres, and machine guns.
Nafplio also has a couple of derelict hotels, a very pretty walk around the point, dramatic cliffs, and a rocky beach, though the sea bed here looks to be covered in urchins.
Anyway, I go to Sofia today. If I'd only known when I had time to kill, I would have used it trying to get a boarding pass for a Wizz Air flight, which is an interesting way to kill a few hours. It's strange, you'd think they'd be doing everything in their power to help you avoid that €35 fee for printing one at the airport.
