COMING SOON
Pylos is a beautiful place. The area just looks quintessentially Greek. The bay itself has a beautiful beach, the surrounding area is filled with history, and the main roads are little more than paved dirt paths. Nestor's Palace is located on one of the hills just over the umbrellas on the left.
Sphacteria
The area around Nestor's Palace is filled with very Greek trees.
You can see for miles from the palace. The bay of Navarino with the modern city of Pylos is right there by the two hills that are actually the island of Sphacteria. That was our next stop.
Nestor's Palace
37° 1'38.61"N, 21°41'41.51"E
Sphacteria
This beach on the bay of Navarino is the most beautiful swimming hole I've ever seen. It's also the most beautiful site for a battle ever. It's quite hard to imagine it today but this entire section would have been occupied by the Spartan army as they besieged the Athenians on the promontory behind.
The hill to the left is actually an island. The island that is so poetically names Sphacteria. I feel like I'm going to get sick just by looking at it. This beautiful place is the site of one of the most important battles of the Peloponnesian War. This battle was between the Athenians and the Spartans. The Athenians were camped out with their fleet on the hills of Pylos to the right. Don't be confused by the name. There are at least three sites known as Pylos including Nestor's Palace, this place, and the modern city over to the left of this picture. Anyway, this Pylos was where the Athenians camped while the Spartans beseiged them. Thinking that the Athenians might occupy the island and use it as a base for their fleet the Spartans sent a small group of soldiers onto the island to prevent such an occurrence. When the Athenians saw such a small group on the island when they controlled the shortest route to it they decided to send their own men across. After many days of severe fighting in which the Athenians used archers and slingers to avoid coming into contact with the Spartan phalanx the Spartan army was forced to do the unthinkable: they surrendered. This was unprecedented. Think back to 300 and the fight to the last men mentality that was about the only thing that movie got right. These guys had never surrendered before in their history and now they were so broken by mere archers. The Spartan government was so shocked that it offered to concede the war provided only that their men were returned.
And that's the island where it all happened. It doesn't look like much today. The edge of it is only a couple hundred feet from the shore so I was really tempted to swim it, but there were a lot of motor boats going around and I decided not to risk it. It is possible to get a boat across apparently but I don't know how you'd arrange it. Nobody lives there except for a monastery.
This is modern Pylos. We never went there but I can bet that it was as filthy as other Greek cities. It must have a hell of a view though.
An entirely typical example of Greek driving. In addition to this we saw a man carrying a giant trash bag from his motorcycle, a car passing while cars were coming the other way, and a man passing a car passing another car. It comes as no surprise to learn that the Greeks have the highest car insurance rates in Europe. There are a lot of new cars there, which really stands out in such a bad economy. I can only assume that they keep replacing their cars through necessity, not choice.
No comments:
Post a Comment