Our intentions of getting up bright and early were good - but the clock said 9:27 when we got up. We had docked in Nafplion, a resort and retirement town on the Agean Sea.
We bumped into Arlene and Paula, whom we met last night and decided we'd explore town together. Awesome decision! We took our first "tender" from the ship to the shore - they do use the lifeboats - they just call them something else when they're not saving people.
We hired a taxi (most of which are little mercedes) and headed up to the Fort at the top of Nafplion. There are two ways to get to the fort - taxi or steps - all 999 of them. We opted for the taxi (seriously did you expect!). So this was our first real view of Greece - what an amazing site. SO beautiful.
The higher you walked up the more steps you found to go even higher. We actually did go to the very top. Each view was more breathtaking than the next. It was a bit on the windy side (check out the hair in the photos people) I was a little worried my mother was going to blow away! There's just something about knowing that where you are standing was built long ago without any modern construction materials that is totally awe inspiring
You would think getting down would be the easy part - note to self, next time read the sign twice before making a decision! We went left instead of right, and came to stairs - ok no big surprise, there were lots of stairs even at the top, actually we couldnt really figure out why they called it the climb of 999 stairs until this part of our exploring. We started to descend - and kept going, and going - Somewhere about step 260+ we figured this was not the way back down to where our taxi driver was - we confirmed our error by asking people coming up - so around we turned and back up we went. No stairmaster is proper preparation for this - but getting back up to the top was a sense of accomplishment, not enough to go back and try it from the bottom mind you but accomplishment none the less.
So we had spent more time that our taxi driver anticipated - we figure he sold us to another taxi driver and we are forever grateful. our driver was...Adonis....seriously, I swear the guy's name is Adonis - I know there were requests that I bring them home a greek god - I tried, but he likes his home here in Nafplion.
Next stop, back down to town and lunch. Talk about fresh fish - a lot of places had fresh fish on ice at the door so you could actually choose what you were eating. The Tziziki was amazing, and how could I not order a Greek Salad. You would think it's the same as home - nope, totally more amazing.
Back to the ship... Tonights agenda - the captains cocktail party. Not to worry, we hadnt left port yet so it was ok for him to be there. I suppose its like saying hello to the airline captain when you get on a plane - just on a much bigger scale. The fun part was seeing a bunch of people we had met yesterday and talking about what we had done during the day and everyones experiences.
Off to dinner - ok the food is still amazing. They keep the portions small to encourage ordering lots of things to try...(like we need the encouragement). After dinner it was the 70's musical review - where we got to see Lauren and Heather (whom we had dinner with last night) perform. The show was great and only for the sake of amusement, I will admit to having every single song they did on my ipod (I'd be embarrassed but I know many of you have a secret seventies music fetish too - I'm just brave enough to admit it)
Mom's off to bed and I've come up to the computer cafe for a bit to update the blog and put up some photo (and be geek to a few people trying to get online here - no the geek part never goes on vacation).
For the record, no yarn shops as of yet.
Tomorrow Santorini!!