After a few days in Athens, we drove to Naflipo, in the Peloponnese region of Greece. After driving through some reasonably nice landscapes, though ones devoid of ooh’s and ahhh’s, we start to see the Greece that travellers coo about. One minute it’s olive groves as far as the eye can see, then a hill starts to resemble a mountain and views become more like a greatest hits package. Everyone in the car starts staring out the windows left and right so as not to miss anything. Familiar names crop up like Corinth (ancient history town), Kineta (the first film by Yorgos Lanthimos), Olympia (all the sports) Argos (famed for its catalogues) and in heading to Nafplio I find out that it was the capital of the First Hellenic Republic and Kingdom of Greece until 1834. It has a population of just 34,000 today but still has an air of elegance and status about it.
We stayed at Pension Marianna, which is outstanding. As soon as we arrived, we felt welcome and were given some orange juice and are told our rooms were ready. A bugbear I have is arriving at hotels and finding that some unforeseen disaster has befallen my room such as moth attack, exploding lamp or an unforeseen and aggressive haunting, so it’s such a delight when all is smooth. The room was cosy and as we were perched at the top of the town, we had windows that opened out onto a magnificent view below, stretching out into the bay. The Marianna somehow under-promises and overdelivers from its excellent location to the quality of the breakfast.
Just above the hotel, you can walk to the Akronauplía castle ruins, where some parts of the wall date back 5000 years. History feels like a part of the fabric of Greece but until I found out that the walls were this old, I just looked at them and thought “these are nice walls” as I gazed out into the sea. From the viewpoint, I was able to see the curve of the bay and the Argolic Gulf, a view so peaceful I went there every morning to watch the few people in the sea as well as some fishermen and I urged myself to visit the sea more in England, something I have magnificently failed at doing.
When I first ventured into the town, it was a treat of marble pavements, wall-to-wall bougainvillea (the only plant I seem to be able to identify) and cats lounging stylishly. Entirely delightful streets full of things I didn’t need to buy stretched out everywhere but I spotted Mediterraneo wine and deli that had everything I wanted; a place to sit, read my book and have a glass of wine. A holiday read in a relaxing spot is the best kind of read, one where you don’t have to quickly feel you need to do anything but turn pages once in a while. Michel Faber’s Under the Skin might not appear to be a great holiday read but it’s worth a shot. It’s not too long, it’s deeply immersive and has a pace that makes you want to read more. Plus, the book features British weather and I had escaped all that.
Later, when my friends came down from the hotel, we took a long walk along the seafront, stopping every now to sniff the sewage and then to take photos and marvel at the quality of the light that may well have been organised by a cinematographer. It all felt a little unreal. Over the water, a castle perched on a rock and beyond that, hills caught the last gasp of the sun, with an army of wind turbines doing their thing. We headed back to Mediterraneo for a bottle of wine before dinner and after this, pleasantly fuzzy in the head, we walk to a couple of restaurants, who all politely laugh at our entreaties to be fed.
Hunger growing, we walk around the town some more and have a drink at the Aiolos Tavern’s Wine Bar before we are seated. What follows is an absolutely enormous meal of anything and everything at Aiolos Tavern. We were hungry, but the sheer quantity of food was ludicrous. That said, it was excellent and when you find a restaurant with a great atmosphere, it feels totally fine to just eat endlessly and laugh a bit too loudly. The orange cake was good enough that we visited the following day to get some more. Even typing orange cake gets me thinking about how much I want more of this. Somehow, after all the food expanded our stomachs and ripped our clothes like we’d become the Hulk, everyone wanted ice cream, so just like children, the ice cream part of the stomach was activated.
As we were in Greece, an island day was required so we drove from Nafplio to Ermioni, via a route that in some will produce terror and in others awe. A turning on a gentle corner quickly became a scene from a Bond film where he’s chasing someone and they end up in a ravine, on fire. Luckily, we arrive in Ermioni without anyone catching us. From there, we take a floating lawnmower disguised as a boat to Spetses, an island that can’t help but charm with its houses built very recently for Instagram. On some of the new estates, you could see influencers knocking chunks of the new homes with a sledgehammer, all for the vintage vibe. The vistas were engineered for hashtags. It is like arriving on an island designed for lifestyles lived online, with yet more glorious sunlight adding even more to the beauty.
As easy as it is to forget it’s a real place, people do live here and their bright white houses are perfectly set against the deep, luscious blue of the sea. We stop for an iced coffee at Balkoni, with views out to the water where I write a few smug “hahaha, you’re not here and I am” postcards to friends back home. Inevitably, I never found a stamp and these postcards ended up being sent when I was back in the UK. I may be one of the last people sending postcards, and even I’m doing it badly.
Caffeinated, we head from the centre towards a church on a peninsula and we walk past small beaches, clear water and fishing boats that lie dormant. On the island you can sense the season is drawing to a close; bars are closed or open for brief parts of the day. The warmth is very deceptive; it’s nearly 30c so you expect that sitting on a terrace for a beer will be a remarkably easy feat but it’s not. It’s nearly November and instead of enjoying the weather, we should be panicking a little. To put the weather into context, if this were the UK, shops would be filled with Christmas trinkets yet here I was applying sunscreen.
We only had three hours on Spetses so could just about scratch the surface of the island. There are woods that beckon in the hills, coves to explore but we simply don’t have time so we loop back towards the centre of town via a parliament of cats, getting down to the serious business of hanging around on benches. Just before we board the ferry for the next island, we pass a fairly grand old building in some state of disrepair with a notice board out front advertising their events. One was a 30th anniversary workshop for Aston University. In three years of university, I never had a lecture or meeting off campus, let alone on a beautiful Greek island.
One thing I’ll always remember about Spetses that is both fascinating and terrifying is the endless streams of grannies whizzing by on scooters. They were always at a pace and nothing had a chance to get in their way. In the moment, I felt very much that I wanted to be a pensioner on a scooter later in life. They looked so mind-bendingly happy.
Hydra was our second island and it’s perhaps more beautiful than Spetses, but the differences are slight. For one, it’s less wooded but the upside of this is that there are more unobstructed views to be had. The island is entirely free of cars, which gives it a different pace and we didn’t have to duck and cover every few minutes. Donkeys, with BMW and Peugeot badges are the only form of transport on the island other than your own legs. We have five hours in Hydra but even so, we don’t get far from the main town but we do pass Leonard Cohen’s house which he bought when he was 26. Impressively, none of us realise at the time but Google timeline reliably informs me that I took a photo outside it. Naturally, I was taking photos of yet more cats.
We need feeding, and it’s late afternoon on a Greek island in October. Google maps tells us that a few places are open, when they clearly are not. We go to a restaurant that has glowing reviews, knock on the door just in case and a startled topless man comes to tell us they’re definitely closed. After a while we do the activity that exists only when on holiday and lacking choices; we get picky. Anywhere will do, but not the place with the tables that look horrible, and certainly not the place with the ugly door. Eventually, miraculously, we find a place that only has one flaw. Flies. Herds of flies that are everywhere. We peer at the food, which looks delicious, and we try to look beyond the flies nesting on every piece of it. When lunch is bought over, new flies divebomb us and our arms flail enough to create a cooling draught for the customers next to us.
Post-lunch and fly larvae, we stroll along the cliffs and take in the views, accompanied by big contented sighs. Some of the trees on the path were bent at angles that suggest fierce storms and above us we spotted a few stone windmills. Some of these are barely recognisable as windmills while others are now used as accommodation and look gorgeous. As we amble towards a bar, we pass Leonard Cohen’s bench which this time is noticed by us. It’s not so much a bench as a three sided stone wall with a plaque, but with a view that would lighten the mood of any Cohen fan.
We spend the rest of our time in Hydra near the harbour, where I try and paddle in the water but find myself unable to trust the slippery look of the stones leading to the ladder. So instead I continue to look out on the water before we have a drink at Spilia café and bar and here, my mind wanders. Why is the sea so calm so often? How come water flows quite evenly and doesn’t jut out of the sea at random angles or arrange itself in a vertical tower of water? How come gravity doesn’t stop? Why didn’t I do well in my GCSE Science? This goes on for what seems an eternity and is a sign that I’m relaxed enough for my mind to start rearranging the world. We face the sea, looking at the sun slowly dipping down for another night and I’m glad water wasn’t doing anything untoward because, for one, it’d ruin the view.