Nafplion

Nafplion is a small town on the coast of the Peloponnese. It is also somewhere where, we were told quite a lot, real Greeks go for their summer holidays.

This does leave the question of where artificial Greeks go for the summer and I suppose that must depend on what they're made of. If they're plastic they probably go to Scandinavia, because if they went to Nafplion they would melt.

We were also told it was a charming little town and I suppose it was, although I think taking people there when it's so hot, leaving them there for three days and booking them into a hotel without a swimming pool is not the best itinerary decision a holiday operator ever made.

Anyway see how charming you think it.

 

the view from our hotel room balcony - looking a bit dark there

 

The Main Square.  Yes it is raining. In fact it is chucking it down. This happened all three evenings we were in Nafplion. It was a total nuisance.

 

Nafplion once belonged to the Republic of Venice, as commemorated by this rather sweet little Lion of St Mark. I know, you have seen better carved lions in your time. Haven't we all?

 

One of the 'charming little streets'

 

Lunch. Yes seriously. This was lunch one day. I shall stress how virtuous I was by pointing out that mine was the Peach Melba so I was at least getting some vitamin C. And I couldn't finish it. The chocolate concoction on the left was the OH's. No vitamins. And he finished it too.

 

You may be getting the impression that I wasn't too taken with Nafplion and if so you are probably right. If there'd been a pool we could have used I expect I would have loved it, ditto if the hotel had had a restaurant we could have eaten in where an evening meal for two would have come in at less than the cost of flying back to the UK and eating there.

 

But there you go, don't let me put you off. It is a pretty little town and I expect that by the time we reached it I was just a bit fed up with the other people on the tour, and the heat, and it unfairly coloured my perspective. If you want to go somewhere Greek by the sea and you don't mind that the beaches are all stones, there are myriads of naff restaurants all touting for your business and a menacing looking beggar with a tin who wanders round for at least 18 hours out of 24 then Nafplion is probably just the place you're looking for.