Courage to say no
Is not oft found. A hero
Can be any man.
Today marks the anniversary of Greece saying "no" to Musolini and his forces, and it thereby also marks their entrance into the Second Great War. To celebrate, there are parades all over the country, children don't go to school, many people don't work, and it's a generally nice day to relax. :)
We woke up "early" to make it to the Kalamata parade, by which I mean the parade started at 11:30 and we woke up at 11:00. Both we and our host were slow in getting going in the morning, and after breakfast and coffee we rolled into town in time to see everyone breaking up after watching the festivities. It's a shame, but from what we're told parades are roughly the same sort of event everywhere.
After we resigned ourselves to having missed out, Nana led us for a quick tour of the Kalamata museum. It holds artifacts and stories about all the surrounding area, which includes several ancient sites dating back six millenia or so. Dang.
That done, we sauntered into a café for some freddo, a Greek specialty that consists basically of cappuccino on ice with loads of sugar. It was delicious, and it was well-suited to the day, which was fortunately clearing up after the rainstorm overnight. As we sat, many of Nana's students came up to ask if she had seen them in the parade and to see what the crazy cyclists from yesterday were up to. Two particularly adorable incidents I recall: a very young student came up, and Nana mouthed to me that I should ask her how old she is. I did, and she shied right up and ran away. The other was when a group of older girls came up and were talking to Nana for a while, and one of them asked us if we knew Justin Bieber. If you don't know who that is, look him up for a little laugh. :)
We paid for the freddos and grabbed lunch from a souvlaki stand that Nana likes (it was the best souvlaki pita we've had on the trip... yum!), then we bundled into the car for a trip to Ancient Messini.
Ancient Messini is about 30 kilometres from Kalamata and up a rather sizeable mountain. It's a good thing Nana drove us there; there's no way we'd've decided to bike it on our own. The view up in the mountains there is pretty spectacular... and the ancient people in that area built a pretty impressive wall around their city, whose ruins still remain. The main entrance gate stands, and it's enormous! We drove through it, in fact.
The archaeological area at Messini is free to get into, and it's large with a lot of well-preserved things. The amphitheatre is mostly excavated -- Nana even told us that there are concerts held there on occasion. The seats are still being reorganised and replaced. There's a temple to Artemis (the Greek goddess of the hunt) in which most of a statue was discovered. The artifacts found around the area are mostly housed in the museum not far from the site; unfortunately it was closed for the holiday.
Another feature of Ancient Messini was something common among nearly all ancient Greek settlements of any size: the stadium! We wandered down to it (after a few navigational snafus) and took a seat. Evan entertained me and Nana by running across it and back and doing some parkour rolls. He and I learned more about what it means to be Greek and not care so much: it's okay to pee outside at ancient sites. We asked Nana if we were heading back up to the office and if she thought there were toilets there, and she responded that we were more than welcome to let ourselves go anywhere in the area. We were a little astonished, but it seems like a reasonable response--the ancient people would certainly have done it.
From Ancient Messini we took a ride down the coast to Koroni, a place Nana and her family visited when she was a girl. The coastline there was beautiful, but again we were happy not to be biking as it was a rather narrow and twisty (and wet) road. She told us something of the politics of the area, about the upcoming elections, and general unhappinesses with various policies in the area. We passed some roadside vegetable vendors and bought a pumpkin and some chestnuts.
Koroni (which was once five separate towns that have recently been merged into one town with one mayor... one of the topics we discussed) was a lovely place, although it was obviously geared towards tourists. We poked around the town and shops for a bit. There was a celebration with clowns and sweets for the grand opening of a pen and paper shop, of all things.
Then we sat down for ice cream and cake. Greek people know what's up with pastry, let's just say that. We each got a piece of kaimeki cake with kaimeki ice cream; kaimeki being an herb that grows in the mountains near Kalamata and noplace else in the world. It tastes like mint and basil, sort of, and it makes a fantastic ice cream- or pastry base. :D
From there we headed home again for a quick bite and a coffee, as well as to deal with that pumpkin we'd bought earlier. Halloween is coming up, and Nana wanted to know all about it: the trick or treating, the jack-o-lantern carving, the costumes, what older kids do, what we do in school that day, ... all of it! We gave her as much of a lesson as we could think of and taught her how to carve a jack-o-lantern. We put the classic face on it, and she named it Sotiris, a Greek name which she said makes her think of a man living in the country with ten kids, a herd of goats, and few teeth. :)
The night was still young! We headed out for dinner at another restaurant that Nana liked, where we actually succeeded in finishing all the food she had the waiter spread out before us. Even though we sat at a 6-person table this time, it still wasn't enough space for everything all at once... the food had to come in waves.
We went out to a cool little bar downtown for some wine, and we met one of Nana's friends there. He wasn't impressed with our tans: he said he has the same from a summer wetsuit. He told us about his kiteboarding habit, and he wondered if that sounded pretty extreme to us. Haha, maybe. We chatted as well as we could about our trip and everything, but the music inside was loud, so we shortly had to adjourn to a table outside, and shortly after that we had to head home on account of the lateness and our need to wake up tomorrow and bike! Goodnight!