The Blue Monkey Review

We noticed on our first full day here that you can see the weather shaping up. The rain stopped, and stayed away as we made our way to the Acropolis, and from there we could see the clouds breaking up in Aegean and sunshine headed our way. It never really reached us, but again and again during the subsequent week we could watch the weather in other parts of Greece. Driving along the northern coast of the Peloponnese we could look across the Gulf of Corinth at snow capped peaks in Attica (pretty darn close to our destination) and see the rain falling into valleys ahead of us. The drama of weather added to the spectacular scenery all around us.

Saying spectacular scenery can easily be overused in talking about Greece, and I may have already crossed the line. The country is beautiful, with its Mediterranean climate and terrain. From my meager knowledge of geology, it seems to me that Greek soil sits mainly atop granite and limestone. And it doesn't sit very far atop of them. The marble that covered the Parthenon came from quarries close to Athens, and both quarries and the sale of marble and granite are common sights in Greece, as are rocky mountain peaks. The terrain left me with the impression of being in mountains that popped up through the water, or that stood in the wrong place when the Mediterranean formed. From the cruise ship we took out to the islands, we looked around at mountain peaks. And along the coastal roads it is clear that much of Greece has almost no coastal plain, let alone a piedmont. In Nafplio, where we stayed two nights, we climbed the thousand steps up to the Turkish fortress and from there could see just how little beach surrounds the entire peninsula where the town sits. There are interior valleys, in both Attica and the Peloponnese, and these must have produced huge grain crops in ancient times. These valleys, and even the vast stretches of water, serve as interludes between mountains, and they provide stunning vistas.

Some of those vistas have changed dramatically since distant antiquity. From the mountainside ruins of Mycenae, you can look across the broad plain that was once the port that gave the city its control of such vast trade that it traded influence with Egypt. This change in the landscape that almost counts as geological time gives some purchase on the antiquity of civilization in Greece. Mycenae became a center of a network of trade and conquest so impressive that the legend of the Trojan war gave the leadership of the Greeks to the king of Mycenae. The Lion's Gate that guards the entrance to the city is the earliest monumental sculpture in Europe, and the royal tomb called the Treasury of Atreus was the largest domed structure in Europe until the construction of the Pantheon in Rome more than a thousand years later. Mycenae had declined into insignificance before Delphi became a center for the worship of Apollo and the oracle there became the source of wisdom for all great decisions. That tradition had grown old and probably past its peak when Midas consulted the oracle on the wisdom of going to war with the Persians (and I have to say that the oracle's answer could have been cooked up by anyone, myself included). And it was only after the decades of war with Persia that Athenians began construction of the Parthenon whose ruins we now see.

Except for a cruise to the islands, Carol and I made our own way around Greece via scooter and autombile. Or, put another way, we got lost all over Greece. Even though there are very few roads on the island of Aegina, signage there makes even Pittsburgh's "system" look scrupulous. We never had a problem there, though we did have to ask some passersby to give us reality checks. We had a far more consuming experience in the Peloponnese, taking a "shortcut" to the coast that sent us into terrain unexplored by any tourist since Herodotus. We drove over mountaintops through olive groves that seemed to be planted in the rocks the soil was so stony. We had to stop as a goatherd took his flock across our path. We went down one mountainside on switchback roads so narrow and sharp that I spent all my concentration on driving and could not enjoy the spectacle of hundreds of feet of cliff right next to us. Several times, though, Carol pointed out that there were no guard rails. We entered villages with only a couple of streets leading out, with no sign to give away the route we needed, and with neither road looking promising.

Anyone who knows the two of us will know that we have quite different personalities. And, that person might think that we would react differently to getting lost in a strange country. And that would be correct. On our Peloponnese adventure, I kept focusing more and more on the gathering disaster, as I saw it, while Carol tried to point out that we had the chance to see the real Greece. As I sat wondering if such a thing as a glass existed, Carol kept trying to convince me that it was at least half full. "It could be worse. At least the road is paved." Half an hour later, in an olive grove we had to pull off the road to let a truck pass in the opposite direction, and when we drove on we went immediately onto a dirt road. I could not help but remember that Carol had also said, "At least it's not raining." Not much further, though, we found the one sign that showed us how to find our way out. Of course, the sign had been knocked down so we had to reconstruct what directions it would have given if it had been fully functional.

What we didn't know when we planned the trip is how long it takes to get around in Greece. The roads are far better than in less developed countries, like, say, Montenegro, but they wind around all that geography that makes the trip such a treat for the eyes. But, it is also true that because we tended to arrive at places either very early or just before they closed (3 p.m. in many places in the off-season) we often had sites to ourselves. That was true in the Treasury of Atreus and at Delphi where Carol began to feel the presence of the divine. And we had 10 early morning minutes free of school children from France at the Theatre of Epidaurus, time for me to stand in the center of the circle and declaim the first stanza of "Gunga Din" and hear my voice magnified by the theatre's perfect acoustics. So, Carol was right. The cup was more than half full.

Since we showed such a talent for getting off the beaten path, we ended up turning to local citizens for help with directions. I should have learned after our Aegina adventure that I needed more than five words in Greek. But, resistant to change as always, I found myself trying to communicate with innocent bystanders in my usual mixture of dumb looks and sentence fragments. I think we have a record for the short time we were there for accosting people who had never before spoken to a tourist. "Pros Sofikia?" I would say with a confused look that let them know not to waste words in their answer. One elderly grandmother all in black, including the her scarf, didn't note that look and gave me quite explicit directions that fortunately included hand signs for straight, left, right, though there were distressingly many direction changes. And then she ended her talk with a sign designating a rightward motion as she said something like "fffwwwt." That seemed clear enough, but contained in it was the information that we would be boldly going where no tourist man and woman had ever gone before.