Alec and Vivi's Great Escape: Tolo

Saturday 10th April
Tolo - Mystras
Our hotel was called the Santa Maria and run by a lovely lady who may well have been called Maria, and she was verging on saintliness by the time we left! She served us with the most delicious breakfast, which kept on coming; from Greek yoghurt and honey to homemade pickled fruits, cakes she had baked, boiled eggs and many more lovely things. The Greeks don’t eat much breakfast as a rule so we were the only 2 partaking. She must have marveled at how much we packed away but it seemed very rude to leave anything. She also taught us the correct way to make Greek coffee and finally presented us with a bottle of ouzo to take away with us. Fortunately we had the car so could take it and Alec is now trying to finish it before we have to leave it behind somewhere – I am not a fan. We had the usual chat about the financial situation here, and like all the others we have spoken to, smarting from the impending taxation. She said that the only 2 things Greeks need to live on and can’t grow themselves are water and sugar so it should be very cheap to live but as always the Euro has hiked the price up so they pay the same as the countries further north who import more and have infinitely larger salaries.
Anyway having put the world to rights we went off to find Epidavros where there is the most complete ancient Greek amphitheatre in the world - amongst other things. This was not as straight forward as we had expected as there are 2 theatres, one small and one large, and at times you arrived at a signpost and it would point in 2 opposing directions stating, it was either 2 ks or 15 ks. Of course we went to the small one first which was closed as they are doing some archaeological work but it was rather pretty, and situated on the edge of the village of Old Epidavaros.

The 'little' theatre at Epidavros complete with barking mad singer!

A Greek urn just outside the theatre

After that and a couple of texts to Dick who told us where to go we headed inland and found a very much larger site near the town of Ligourio.
This is a site of considerable importance and was a centre of healing from the 3rd millennium BC. It was thought that if you came and partook of the water there and made a sacrifice to the god Esklepios you had a good chance of a cure. We explored the various ruined buildings which included a hospice/hotel, baths, temples, a stadium and gymnasium. They seemed to be fairly successful at curing all sorts of ailments and these are recorded on various stones found on the site. They also charged quite handsomely for the ‘gods’ intervention in your aliment and the gods were renown for dishing out some terrible retribution on those who having been cured failed to pay their dues.
The most impressive and complete area is the amphitheatre which is enormous and has superb acoustics. It seats up to 12,000 people and if you whisper in the centre of the stage you can be clearly heard at the very back.

The big Epidavros theatre with Vivi in the centre of the stage.

I tried this and was moderately successful as Alec heard me from the top quite well, but then an actor took over who was being filmed for a Greek T V documentary and he could be heard loud and clear.

A very famous Greek actor who really wanted to be the centre stage. Sadly the video I made doesn't want to transfer onto the blog.

We need some Greek classicists to translate what he was saying as it sounded most dramatic. The British teenagers we had seen in Tolo were all there too with some rather weary looking teachers, so we think they must be doing classics GCSE or similar. We could have spent many hours there but had a long drive to Mystras by nightfall.
Stopping in the same cafe we’d had a coffee in 4 hours earlier we ate out of a cone of newspaper the most delicious ‘gyros’ which consists of a wrap around pita filled with roasted pork, raw onion, tomato, tsatsiki and from what we could gather anything else to hand at the time. It was absolutely lovely. We had been looking out for these since Harriet and Jim had recommended them and this cafe was the first time we’d seen them. On reflection this is not surprising as over Easter there wouldn’t have been any as the Greeks are fasting and don’t eat meat. The cafe owner must have weighed 23 stones and was a frightfully jolly fellow, spoke perfect English and clearly appreciated us coming back. The simple food he provided was so much better than anything you could eat at one of the cafes along the road where the ‘do Peloponnese in a day’ coach tours tend to stop.
We then headed inland and away from the extreme Peloponnese east coast toward Sparta. This was about 60 miles and given the mountains we had to cross on the way was not going to be a short trip. Sparta is in the middle of a huge plain but does not get a high ‘tourist book’ rating but it’s little satellite neighbour of Mystras is raved about. So we drove through the first and went in search of somewhere to stay in the second, which is a tiny village high up on the side of a mountain and overlooking Sparta. I might add that we are now just below the snow line and pretty close to the tree line.

Snow the other side of the valley.

From Mystras old village looking across the plain to Sparta.

The first hotel we tried was so smart we sadly had to give it a miss, then an ancient crone encouraged us to view her rooms but for some extraordinary reason we decided without even asking that she wouldn’t do breakfast or have wifi so promised to come back in 5 minutes. The next was full and finally we found rooms with a view straight up the mountain looking at the ancient village, castle and monastery which was perfect.
We still feel rather bad about the crone, but heyho we can’t be the first and won’t be the last.