Tuesday, January 19, 2016
Hello!
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| Me next to the heater! |
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| R's fava beans with carmelized onion |
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| My celeriac soup |
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| My ravioli with sundried tomato sauce and feta |
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| R's Greek pasta with tomato sauce and spicy sausage |
Up this morning about 6 and
reassembled and packed up and down to breakfast about 8 am.
I really will miss the
Athens Gate Hotel.
We have
truly the very best view in the world, with fabulous anything-you-could-want
breakfasts, and an excellent chef to prepare dinner!
How much better can it get?
However, first I need to cover dinner from
last (Monday) night.
We walked up to the restaurant at
7, and seriously, the place was as cold as an ice box! (Which, when you think about it, is the
literal truth.) The top story of the
hotel is basically all glass panels that can be opened to the outside when it’s
balmy and warm in the summertime. In the
wintertime, especially when the wind blows, it comes in through all sorts of
cracks and crannies every couple of feet.
Brrrrr! So, rather than sit looking at the Pantheon and Acropolis, or even the Temple
of Olympian Zeus, we took the table closest to the heater at the far end of
the dining room, and still had a view of Zeus’
temple.
For main courses, I started with
the celeriac soup, which was really welcome on this cold evening.
Robert ordered the fava beans (as a paste,
sort of like
hummus) with marinated
tomatoes and sweet onion relish on the side.
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| View from our balcony -- note the snow! |
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| Out of town into beautiful countryside! |
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| And even into a bit of snow! |
We were both happy.
Then, for
mains, I ordered their spinach and ricotta stuffed ravioli, that came with a
sun dried tomato sauce sprinkled with feta cheese.
Robert ordered the traditional Greek “pasta”
(sort of like penne) with a spicy sausage in a tomato sauce.
For dessert, I got chocolate and vanilla ice
cream (I know, I’m crazy!) and R preferred to drink his, and ordered
Courvoisier.
We had a very nice red wine from
Meteora, which we enjoyed very much.
Back downstairs about 8:30 pm and
it wasn’t too long before I was asleep.
We somehow got two phone calls in the middle of the night on my cell
phone (which, unfortunately, was right next to the bed!), neither of which left
a message.
We were ready to check out of our
wonderful hotel about 9 am and actually managed to get all of the luggage, AND
ourselves into the elevator all at one time!
(These are not Parisian small elevators, but they’re still not
spacious!) The nice porter escorted us
downstairs and into the bowels of the hotel to our car. Having had to get to the parking space by
myself a few days ago, I was determined that R would be available to guide me
through the maze, up the steep ramp and out into the light of day, which he
did. We loaded up everything at the
front of the hotel, and then we were on our way out of town, and heading toward
Corinth (Korinthos), our destination
for tonight. (Loutraki actually, as Corinth apparently not the greatest place to
stay.)
As I mentioned yesterday, I think,
the hotel we had originally booked for two nights in this area cancelled us for
some reason, so we were now looking for a hotel not pre-loaded into Emmy, which
R took care of before we left.
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| Almost at Loutraki |
But
first, out of Athens and up into the mountains.
I have to say, that after driving
in Rome, London and Paris, driving in Athens was truly wonderful! While the road signs are still unreadable to
me, Robert seems to be managing just fine, and the drivers were really, really
good.
I wanted to take a scenic route to
Corinth, so we crossed the mountain range to the northwest of Athens (which, by
the way, has a blanket of snow on its peaks!) before heading down to the coast
again. I haven’t seen all our photos for
today yet, but am hoping that some of them will be expressive of how truly
beautiful this part of Greece is. The
water is so crystal clear, and the various shades of blue and green are
wonderful.
Decided that I wanted to stop at
one particular place, Akrotirio Irea,
on the outskirts of Perahora. Found the place fairly easily, and we were
pleased to note that there was a goodly amount of signage, in both Greek and
English, so we were able to find what we were looking for, or conversely, know
what we were looking at. We parked at
the top of the hill, and headed down to the site of the Heraion (a sanctuary dedicated to Hera), past the ancient cistern and around the beach where the
remains of temples to Hera Limenia (6th
Century BC) and Hera Akraia (8th
Century BC). The view down into the
clear water was amazing – and we could even see schools of fish!
From there, it was only about half
an hour to
Loutraki, where we found a
bank to get some cash from the ATM (have I mentioned that there is a definite
scarcity of banks in Greece, and basically the Alpha Bank and National Bank of
Greece are about it?) and then down along the coast, our new hotel,
Diolkos Studios.Looked very nice when we pulled in, (parking
around the back) and we are on the second floor, room 205.
It’s a nice sized room (full size bed and a
single bed) and has a small kitchenette as well, with cooktop and
refrigerator.
I think it may be one of
those places that book by the week or month in the summertime.
At any rate, we have a lovely view of the
Aegean Sea from our balcony, which is great.
Got everything in and organized, and then headed out to see the Corinth
Canal.
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| Lovely ancient ruins at Akrotirio |
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| Looking at beach of shrine; fire started by caretaker |
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| Cistern |
Well…we saw it!
We went over the
Loutraki end (heading west) and then wove around and came back
through the Athens-side, and it is just amazing.
(Emperor Nero started to build a canal here
during his brief reign, but it never happened until the late 1800’s.)
I was able to find a pull-out, and we walked
out on a tourist viewpoint –
UGH! Talk about heights!
At the
Loutraki
end, the bridge is really almost level with the water level and – amazingly –
lowers to the bottom of the canal to let the boats pass.
At the other end, you are looking WAY DOWN
this channel, with these massive stone walls (300 feet high) carved out of the
landscape.
Really scary!
We did get to the museum, about 3:01 pm – but
interestingly enough, the museum closes at 3 pm so we were out of luck.
As it turns out, it seems that most of the
things in this area close at 3 pm so we’re definitely going to have to start
our sightseeing earlier tomorrow!
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| Water so clear you can see fish! |
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| View of the Gulf from our hotel balcony |
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| Bridge over Corinth canal -- it goes DOWN! |
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| Looking down canal to other bridges |
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| REALLY scary looking down! |
We did stop at a nice market on the
way back to the hotel, as we hadn’t had lunch.
We bought some wonderful Greek cheeses and crackers, and a nice Greek
bottle of wine. It’ll be just like at
home!
More later!
m
xxx
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