between the rock and the cold, cold sea

This morning I breakfasted on loukoumades, which are a kind of Greek treat that has much the same heart-attack-onna-stick composition as pierogies. Only loukoumades are fried sweet dough, rather than savoury, and mine where covered in chocolate sauce. (The traditional ones are covered in honey and cinnamon.) Dear friends, they were delicious, but they sit in the morning stomach like little sweet balls of lead.

As a consequence, I thought I'd better put off swimming for a little while. Healthy diversion presented itself in the form of the fortress of the Palamidi, with its many many steps for me to climb once more and work off some loukoumades.

It is fantastic up there. I've been up three times now. Each time I'm taken aback by how much fortress there is up there: bastions and bastions and bastions of early modern (mostly 18th century, I believe, and constructed within a relatively short span of time) fortifications, commanding the top of the rock in inimitable Venetians was here style, overlooking the sea, and the town, and the bastions of the Akronafplio. You can se the fortress of Argos from up there, too, and the ruins of Tiryns, and along the upper bastions the way is overgrown with scrub and rosemary and yellow carob and bright red poppies.

The quality of the light here is so different that at home: the sun is fiercer - brighter, sharper - and the whole attitude towards the world is different when one has that much sun and warmth. It is possible to live outside.

I walked back down the steps again soon enough, though. Still wasn't enough exercise, really, but there's a path that leads northeasterly along between the hill and the sea from Nafplio's tiny rocky beach. The sea is... well, it's the Mediterranean under a summer sky: blue like aquamarine and clear as crystal glass in the shallows. Across the bay a slight mist obscured the other mountains, but the Palamidi loomed on my left on the stroll out, occasional prickly pears and grasses clinging to high rocks. The cliff became less stark eventually, sliding gradually into less daunting hills covered in rosemary and sage and heather, chamomile and grasses, prickly scrub and stunted myrtle trees, the occasional rhododendron and other plants I can't identify without a handbook.

Fabulous scents. Birds making noises that seemed vaguely tuneful. Sunlight reflecting off the sea.

It was fantastic, and I was probably lured by "let's see what's around one more corner" into walking a bit further than I ought to have, but the last corner revealed the fact that less than an hour's walk from Nauplio is another larger beach, which I did not walk to, opting to turn around and walk back to the beach at the town while I still had both water and energy. I have been enpinkenified a bit, despite my best hopes - but since I took no precautions, this is only to be expected.

Swimming - brief, but glorious. The sea is cool by comparison with the air, but in comparison to back home (where the temperature right now is a balmy 9 degrees Celsius, or 49 of your strange American Fahrenheit), it's warm as a bath. I feel all kinds of gloaty about my short-but-fabulous holiday, really.

(Ooops. I'm pink. This may not be the best development ever.)

Nauplio is beautiful. My internet access is twitchy and intermittent, which means I should probably get some offline work done. (Oh, how do I live without it?) More news will follow. Affectionately yours!

The last thing I did today, before coming home, was visit a church. It's the Church of the Panaghia and St. Athanasius, on the corner opposite the best icecream place in Greece (Real Italian Icecream, by Real Italians from Napoli: the cherry glace is to die for).

Churches are... something I do, sometimes. Just like sometimes I pour a libation to ancient Greek gods on empty balconies after dusk, sometimes I go to churches - Catholic, or Anglican, or Orthodox - and stand in the quiet darkness, and think about two thousand years of faith and prayers, incense and candlewax, prayers for the living and prayers for the dead, prayers for health and prayers for remembrance. Three, four thousand years of petitioning the heavens...

Sometimes, like tonight, I light candles, say the prayers I no longer believe in to a ceiling painted gilt and blue, icons gleaming of gold and polish in the dark. Pray for us, now and at the hour of our deaths. Be thou gracious, O lord. Trying to understand what it is in that dim silence that whispers to me still, despite my certainty of the inevitability of extinction, despite my certainty in the non-existence of benevolent omnipotence.

I've libated Hermes on my doorstep and crossed myself in front of holy icons. In the end I'm still an atheist, though the awe of holy places lacks no power to move me: I can't reconcile logic and theology, mysticism and science, and deep as the roots of my tendency towards religious awe might go, reason has to be how I, we, know the world. That which can be proven is common ground.

...All that aside, I had a very long day.

T. had suggested back in Athens that I join the study tour in the Argolid while we were in roughly the same place. So this morning I rose early and caught a taxi at ten to eight to the the archaeological site of Lerna, near Mili. Lerna was closer than I expected, so I arrived before the site even opened, an hour before the tour was due to arrive. I spent my time listening to the honking of geese away down in the groves of green oranges, slowly ripening, and sitting under an olive tree contemplating the foundations of a Neolithic house.

Lerna's an early site. There's Meso and Neolithic activity on the site, continuing in the Bronze Age, with Early, Middle and Late Helladic phases, including a corridor house (MH) and Mycenaean shaft graves (LH), after which Lerna goes out of use. There are Geometric (ie, c8th C BC) graves in the vicinity, and the Heraklean myth of the Lernaian Hydra, but there ain't a whole lot of standing remains - it's a small site, and (I'm not a prehistorian) I can't bring myself to get excited about small structures and soil discolouration.

The study tour is possessed of a pink bus, and after T. gave his prehistorian's spiel on Lerna, I caught a ride with them to Tiryns.

Tiryns has standing remains. "Wall-girt Tiryns," Homer calls it: Cyclopean masonry, a couple of megarons, galleries within the walls, a monumental approach - it stands in the middle of a fertile plain, altered in the Mycenaean period by a dam which changed the course of the river. It also used to be within 1km of the sea, before silting. From the top of the citadel, one can see olive and orange groves, with Nafplio and the Venetian citadel of the Palamidi rising to the north.

From Tiryns, onward to "strong-walled" Mycenae, approximately 15km away in a straight line. Mycenae is pretty bloody impressive, a hill overlooking a plain (more olive groves) flanked by higher peaks. Its walls are mighty impressive, and the Mycenaean remains speak of a strong, vital Bronze Age society, with cult activity associated with Grave Circle A (from which Schliemann uncovered all the pretty stuff that's now in the National Museum) and up the top, more megarons, and behind these a cistern. K. did not want to lead her half of the tour down into the narrow dark passage that leds down and down pitch black steps (which turn to the right, taking you out of sight of the sun), slippery with use, the massive smooth masonry walls weeping damp and balanced to a triangular cavity overhead, to the very bottom where a dry basin once received water piped in from the higher peaks. So I took the torch and played responsible adult for the students. It's dark down there, dark as pitch, and slippery, and steep. But thanks to a certain Bear and her roomie, I have higher standards for what constitutes a Terrifying Underground Place than I used to, and it was really quite a comfortable wee passage. Plenty of standing and elbow room.

Mycenae has some complications in terms of talking about its later occupation. The end of the Bronze Age saw a series of destructions across Greece, earthquakes and fires and whatnot, and there seems to have been a general population decrease. But Mycenae did form the core of an archaic settlement, which was destroyed by Argos in the mid-fifth century, and reoccupied in the Hellenistic period. It did not survive as a town of any size much beyond the early empire, though, and much of the evidence for later periods was cleared away by Schliemann, thanks to his Homeric obsession.

From the citadel at Mycenae (great views, and the Lion Gate is definitely worth the look), down (past the tholos tombs, the so-called tomb of Clytemnestra and the so-called tomb of Agamemnon), to the Treasury of Atreus, which is actually another Mycenaean tholos tomb. A Mycenaean tholos tomb consists of a monumental entrance, the dromos, which was usually filled in after the burial, and the tholos structure itself with a mound of earth raised over it. The tholos structure is circular, rising to a beehive-shaped roof: that of Atreus (so-called) is 13m high, and the acoustics inside are creepy and whispery: sound travels around the periphery of the structure, so that a spoken word on one side echoes oddly, and sounds almost right beside your ear on the other.

I don't remember for Mycenae, but I know some of the Mycenaean tholos tombs at Marathon and parts north show evidence for horse sacrifice and horse burial in the fill of the dromos. If I recall correctly, at least one shows possible evidence of human sacrifice - though most archaeologists do try to suggest other explanations.

T. bought me lunch in a coaching dinner place, and promised to make me sing for it at Epidavros (no, there was no singing. There was talking about Asklepios). I got to talk to the bus driver in Greek, a little, and T. told me I should apply to a)guide the tour next year, b)intern at the Institute when the internship comes up again, and c)apply for the fellowship for A.D. when it comes 'round. (I think he thinks I'm halfway competent. How did that happen?)

A stopoff at a pot factory, for the picking-up of souvenirs, and then on by bus to Epidavros. There we talked about cthonic aspects of the cult - there are indications that part of the altar may have been covered by a canopy of some kind, indicating that in that part of the alter sacrifices were made to the god in his aspect as a hero: a covering indicates that the odour of the sacrifices were directed down, into the earth, to heroes, rather than going freely up like offerings to the Olympians - and we also talked about the Thymele, which (some people say may have) held the cult's sacred snakes... but there is a very small twisty area at the bottom, and it's entirely likely that cthonic rituals took place here.

What I didn't mention yesterday, and should have, is that like many sanctuaries certain things were prohibited within the sanctuary as polluting: one could neither die or give birth within the temenos walls. There's an interesting discussion to be had about the metaphysical/metaphorical significance (and similarities) of dying and giving birth - both attach human beings to physical and bodily, rather than transcendental and godly, realities - but I'll spare you the digression.

I didn't stick with the tour to its ultimate conclusion, having to catch the 1800 bus back to Nafplio - it stopped for ten minutes to let the bus to and from Kranidi make a connection, and I got to talk to the driver in a little Greek - and I got back to Nafplio around 1910. Back to hotel, meet cats on stoop again, change of shirt, out to dinner at a restaurent called Kepos ("Garden") which had four cats, including two tiny black kittens. Then around the corner to the Best Icecream Ever (which T. told me about today, so I was seeking them out), and grandmother-gift-purchasing in the tacky souvenir shop opposite the church.

I bought a beer in the shop and libated Hermes and Asklepios on the balcony with half of it before drinking the other half. Which made me tipsy. And now I have to answer email and wash and sleep.

Long day. Tomorrow, I go to beach, and maybe War Museum of Nafplio. Nowhere very far.

Where Archaio Corinth had dogs, big dogs and little dogs, dogs by the dozen and dogs by the score, Nafplio has cats. They pad languidly under the eves of the old houses and wash themselves on the corners of the town's narrow streets, winding out from underneath flowering arbours to mew demandingly at passers-by. I came out of my hotel in search of dinner this evening to be accosted by two young sleek things, a slinky tortoiseshell tabby and a skinny black boy who could have been Basement Cat to the life, right down to the accusing yellow eyes. God, I miss my cat. I miss having my ear snuffled into while I sleep.

Yes, I'm in Nafplio, in a hotel twenty metres from the harbour and twenty metres from the town square. True to his word, Dr. S. gave me a lift to the Isthmus bus station at 1300 (I must remember to write him a note of thanks, when I get home), and in Greece, buses actually run on Sundays with reasonable regularity. I spent an hour in the bus station before the Nafplio bus appeared and took me up aboard, entertaining myself by considering all the horrible things which I'd been anticipating and which had so far failed to happen to me that morning.

The road from Corinth into the Argolid cuts through country where the soil is red as rust, and the hills rise sere and umber over olive-grown plains. We passed within sight of Mycenae, and even from three klicks away, the masonry blocks of its fortification walls stood out grey and forbidding atop its low hill. My fellow passengers smelled of coffee and sweat, and what I saw of Argos as we passed through it makes me rather glad to be staying here instead.

We came into Nafplio around 1500. The town is dominated by the fortress of Akronafplio, on the overlooking hill, and that of Bourtsi on a small island across from the harbour mouth. The town centre's smaller than I was expecting, a tangle of narrow streets hemmed in by 18th-century Ottoman houses, opening here into the starting wideness of Syndagma Square, there to the blue expanse of the Argolid Gulf, tavernas that spill out on to the pavements bowered by flowering creepers, shops here and there opening into a fascinating array of jewellery, woodcrafts, herbs and preserves, art.

Despite not really having much idea where I was going, I found my hotel within minutes, and after changing, set out in search of the swimming area the concierge (I want to say landlady: she has the proprietorial air) assured me in a combination of Greek and English could be discovered within minutes.

And discover it I did, in the lee of an Ottoman buttress of the harbour fortifications, black-painted cannons resting in the embrasures. Not a beach, but a dip off a couple of encircling piers in the lee of the Akronafplio, where the water shoaled rapidly from the shallows. There were few other people there: a small Greek family,and a woman who came along to fish while I was sunning myself dry and took a liking to me, in consequence of which I learned (through Greek) that she herself was from Athens originally but her dead husband (whether he was her husband of twenty years, or dead twenty years, my Greek wasn't good enough to tell, but he was definitely dead) was from Nafplio, that she spoke very little English and was impressed that I'd learned some Greek.

I beat me a retreat shortly hereafter, and went back to the hotel, finding out bus times for Epidavros en route. Epidavros tomorrow - and though the Institute's A.D. went to the trouble of getting me permits to make measurements, I rather doubt I'll be availing of the facility tomorrow. We'll see what the site's like - I can always go back on Wednesday, if needed (Tuesday I'm to meet the tour at Lerna) - tomorrow before I make up mind.

The evening grew shockingly cool - only 25C, how distressingly near to cold! - and I went in search of dinner. I ended up gorging myself on dinner and dessert: I've officially exceeded my Comfort Food Limit for bleeding times with that particular helping of profiteroles. If it gets this cool again tomorrow, I need to go for a run. No, I'm not going tonight. I'd make myself sick, if I did. That was too much food.

I'm still covered in insect bites. I didn't get bitten in Corinth, but the ones from Athens won't go away. This is possibly because I've scratched the ones on my arms until they bleed, and they still itch like the torment of the damned, rather than giving up and being just plain sore.

Nafplio is beautiful, but... tourist-full. Full of Athenians and Americans on holiday. I get the feeling this is the kind of town that mutters about "summer people" and gets a lot quieter in the winter. I like it, but it's almost too relaxed and laid-back right now: it doesn't quite feel real...

Shit, you know what it is? It's too clean. Where's the graffiti and the dust, the faint smell of catpiss and the odour of rubbish bins left too long between emptyings? The strata of cigarette butts and the odd stains on the pavements? This cannot be a real town!

It's all a trick, I tell you. A trap, to lure in the unwary, but I've caught them out. Oh yes, I'll be on my guard now...

Joking aside, I'm off early tomorrow. Wish me luck.