Safe Return Doubtful

My plan to visit the archaeological ruins site at Mystras was thwarted.

The ruin of the fortified town is situated on the foothill slopes of the Taygetos mountains just above the new town of Mystras and only four kilometres from the city of Sparta. It served as capital of this part of the Byzantine Empire (Morea) in the 14th and 15th centuries. In the 1830s it was abandoned and the new city of Sparta was built, the newer village of Mystras following later as tourist infrastructure, with hotels, restaurants and cafes. The archaeological site was inscribed on the UNESCO heritage site in 1989.

I had parked up there the night before having driven the hour or so south from Gortynia. It was a stormy night, with plenty of thunder, lightning and heavy rain, but I did find a break in the evening to walk in for a beer at the Mystras Inn.

This is a much-visited tourist site, and by 10 am there were three coach parties present already, and the storms had not yet abated, though the gaps between them were a little longer. It’s a 15 euro entrance fee, dogs are not allowed, and most likely as a result of favouring the left leg, I had tweaked my back. We walked for a half hour, but I decided it wasn’t a good idea to enter the site itself; it wouldn’t have been that difficult to get clear of the coach groups, but a few kilometres of walking an steep and wet old steps would have been required. It can wait until next time..

We drove on another hour to my destination for the next three weeks, the Mani. I’ll write more on the Mani tomorrow, but suffice for now to say, that it is the middle of the three peninsulas that run south from the Peloponnese, the one that the mountains actually continue down. I’ve read a lot about this relatively small area of land in the last year or so, and my expectations are high.

We are parked up for the night at the town of Gythio, on the pier from which ferries run to the island of Kushira. At this time of year, it is a great place to stop. I had expected it to have plenty of other vans, but actually there’s only one, an unoccupied Austrian van whose owners have most likely gone over to Kythira.

Along with Roja, I spent a couple of hours on foot wandering around the marina, and the lighthouse, situated on a spit of land just to the south. There are a few visitors around, especially with it being Saturday, with about one in five of the tourists business open. There’s a big effort been made with the Christmas lights here, probably with the expectation that on days like today there would be more visitors. Though the stormy weather cleared in late morning it returned with some vengeance as the daylight faded.

In the early evening Roja relishes a walk into the village for a beer. It’s one of his favourite things. The rain had eased, and I had my eye on a bar on the seafront called The Old School. There seems no set rule here on whether dogs can go inside the bar or tavern, just up to the landlord, as it is in England. In Spain for example, they are never allowed in, and in France, they are always allowed in. In the case of The Old school, the landlord was a dog lover, so Roja was welcomed as he has become accustomed to, with a labrador’s equivalent of a red carpet, a personal salutation and some tapas. It was a welcoming bar for the customer also, though still the choice of beer is remarkably limited, here just being Carlsberg on draught, or bottles of Alpha or Kaiser, two very common Greek beers.