Woke early, realised my riding top was now humming and quickly washed it. I wandered the town looking for breakfast, found a local café where old men were smoking and had some fruit and yogurt with horrible tea.
This sort of big sea side town is wasted on me so I didn’t feel I’d missed anything even though it had its own massive castle. I rolled out for the short trip to Epidavros and when I arrived 30 minutes later it was already filling up with hoards of school kids so I quickly changed and went into the site. It’s another town sized place in a pretty wooded setting with a museum, temples, a running track and the best ancient theatre I’ve seen, the acoustics were excellent and I really enjoyed hearing French kids in the centre pretending to be thespians.
After that I watched masons in an open air workshop; fitting new marble sections to ancient column fragments using old fashioned tools and air chisels.
It was great to see. Back to the bike and I decided to visit the big castle I’d ridden under the day before. It was called Larrisa and there was very little info for it on the web. I managed to find the entrance by circling the hill it was on and worked my way up the track to it.
Once I got to it was surprised to see the gates were open and you could help yourself, if I’d had the DR I could ridden right in! It was a bit like Chepstow but looked like it was halfway through being fixed up and then it had been abandoned some time ago. There were no staff or facilities and there were still bags of sand left by the builders. I climbed up the walls and battlements (which were a heath and safety nightmare) and got some good photos of the bay, all around you could see Castles, ancient settlements, monasteries and towns, amazing.
I stopped for a picnic of crisps and biscuits and them headed off for the next stop of Mycinae.
A little road work late and I arrived at one of the few places you can get a photo of the bike and the site.
This place was a bit different to the others. More like Egyptian of South American history with big, big stoneworks all on the side of one hill. The biggest thing was Agamemnon’s Palace at the top of the hill.
I walked all over and even climbed down the 100 deep, slippery, pitch black steps of the ‘secret’ cistern. Job done I stuck out for Corinth to find another seaside town for the night. The roads there were unremarkable and I was getting a bit tired of riding. By the time I arrived I wasn’t in the mood and the the seaside town I was aiming at turned to not to be the one in the lonely planet which was on another island but had the same name. I had a bit of a think and decided that I could push on to Athens and then spend the next day exploring the city and not riding anywhere. The next three hours were a mix of riding flat out (130KPH) on the toll road, freezing without a windscreen and eating a burger in the services. I arrived back in the cite and what a difference four days makes. I was cutting around the traffic just like a local and now I understood the driving style felt much better about it. That said I still didn’t know where I was going and rode right round the Acropolis before getting my bearings. I left the bike at Motorent, waved goodbye to that super little engine and booked back into the same hotel as before.
That night I explored some hipster beer bars and sat writing my journal like feeling like Jack Kerouac. My new found habit of just ordering what I can see other people eating led to me having a plate of roasted cheese with a side of fried cheese and I staggered home full of beer and very happy.
