Here are some of our favorite photos from the motorcycle tour portion of our trip:
1) The first part of our first riding day was spent slogging through Athens traffic. However, just a few kilometers off the expressway, just east of the city, we climbed up this deserted pass near the town of Fili. It was a shock to go from crowded, straight four-lane to this twisty two-lane so quickly.
2) Our first day, we stopped at a roadside, waterside cafe in the town of Aliki for lunch. It seems every pier in Greece has someone fishing on it and this one was no exception. This guy was eating lunch while trying to catch dinner.
3) Another art shot. Jonna took this picture on the dock in Aliki. Nearly every dock has a pile of nets like this all of them careful stacked so they are't tangled.
4) One day you see an octopus swimming in the water. Two days later there is one swimming in olive oil on the table. As we mentioned on the first page, food was always a highlight. Greece salads are so perfect that we happily ate them for lunch and dinner for fourteen straight days (along with lots of other great food).
5) Even rain and wind couldn't ruin a road like this. We climbed up into the mountains from the coastal village of Aliki to the mountain town of Thisvi on some wonderful curvey roads. As we climbed in altitude we got up into some storm clouds which proceeded to rain on us for the next few hours.
6) We took a break in the afternoon of our first riding day by stopping at Hosios Loukas, a secluded Byzantine monestary. This monastery was built in the 10th century and is richly decorated with gold mosaics, paintings and sculpture. Wandering around a 1,000 year old site that is one of the best examples of Byzantine church architecture in the world isn't a bad way to stretch your legs for half an hour.
7) We were on a motorcycle tour so the roads are an important part of this story. Let us present exhibit #1 for why motorcyclists will enjoy a trip to Greece. Check out this stretch of road just west of Delphi. A few kilometers of twists and curves with a pig tail loop in the middle. Nice!
8) The ancient site of Delphi was incredible. One of the most amazing historical sites I've ever visited. Delphi is located high up on a mountain side overlooking a wide, scenic valley. Five of us went in as soon as the gates opened and had the site to ourselves for an hour. The view of the sun breaking over the head of the valley and rays of sunlight shooting down onto the ruins of the temple of Apollo was awe inspiring.
Delphi reach to sky.
Pointing to heaven a trend.
In all time and place.
9) Allan, Katherine, Jonna and Corinna pose in front of the reconstructed Treasury of Athens at Delphi.
10) This is the view down into the valley from about halfway up the hillside. The site of Delphi is actually quite large. There are ruins well down the mountain side, outside the fence of the officially protected archeological site, and it is rumored there are unexcavated ruins in the floor of the valley itself.
11) This is an attempt to catch the magic of the moment of sunrise at Delphi via a panoramic photo from the Temple of Apollo.
12) This is Jonna preparing for her bow after performing a little dance number in the ancient Greek theater in Delphi. It was continually overwhelming to realize that the ruins we visited all around Greece were 2,500 years old. We wonder what of our current civilization will be around and will be meaningful 2,500 years from now?
13) Corinna demonstrating the use of the stadium at Delphi. The stadium is at the highest point of the site. The walls and grounds date back to ancient Greek times while the seats on the right side of the photo were a later Roman addition.
14) In addition to the site of Delphi being amazing, the museum was equally spectacular. Easily the best archeological displays I've ever seen. Almost all of the pieces are displayed "as is" with no reconstruction or reproduction work. This makes for striking displays like this hand and forearm, decorated with gold jewelry, shown by themselves in a glass case.
15) The valley below Delphi, around the port city of Itea, supposedly has the largest single olive grove in Greece. This photo was taken on a quiet little road winding through the olive groves. The harvest was just a couple of weeks away so many of the branches were heavy with ripe olives.
16) Another nice view. This one off the patio of our hotel room at the luxurious Hotel Amalia in Delphi. The olive grove pictured above is in the center of this photo at the bottom of the valley.
17) Athenian motorcyclists apparently spend their Sundays cruising the excellent coast road between Athens and Nafpaktos. We stopped on the central plaka in Nafpaktos for lunch and found ourselves surrounded by bikes. We'd primarily seen scooters and small motorcycles during the past week but Sunday afternoon brought out all the large bikes. Big sport bikes, supermotard bikes and even cruisers were rolling through Nafpaktos on this beautiful afternoon.
18) Nafpaktos was a great place to have a relaxing lunch break. The outdoor seating areas for three different restaurants were located under the branches of the large tree shown in the center of this photo. A massive Venetian fortress, built in 1477, towered over the city while pretty fishing boats bobbed in the harbor behind an impressive defensive sea wall. No matter how much we like riding it was hard to remount our motorcycles and leave this idyllic spot.
19) After crossing the dramatic Rio-Antirio bridge, we crossed onto the Peloponnese peninsula. Alan's previous image of Greece as only having low, barren hills was utterly smashed when we rode into the interior. This photo, taken near Ano Vlasia, looks like a scene straight out of the Alps or the Rockies. The riding in this area was incredible. The roads were challenging, yet fun, and were also deserted. We doubt we saw 20 cars, outside of towns, in nearly three hours of riding.
20) Navigation was initially a concern but turned out to be easy. Alan was eventually able to phonetically deduce the names of Greek towns but even before Alan grasped the alphabet he was able to do basic pattern matching between roads signs like this and the town names on our map in order to navigate. (It probably helped that Alan had been exposed to most of the Greek alphabet between studying engineering and philosophy in college.)
21) The remote interior of the Peloponnese is very rural as evidenced by this roadside vegetable stand. The little store consisted of this store front, a small storage building and hillsides of gardens. All the veggies looked great and the steady flow of customers made it obvious that the locals thought so too.
22) Another interesting rest stop was a coffee break in the town of Kalavrita. Markus, Michael and Alan went out to explore while Jonna, Corinna, Allan and Kathrine rested at a little cafe. Up the hillside above Kalavrita was this memorial to a tragic series of massacres that occured during WWII when Greek freedom fighters killed 81 German prisioners and then the German army responded by killing nearly 700 men and boys in Kalavrita and finally the town killing many women and children.
23) This nineteenth century French steam engine is parked next to the old railway station in the center of Kalavrita. The guy on the motorcycle posing next to the old train is Markus, one of our two Edelweiss guides.
24) We mentioned above that the roads in the center of the Peloponnese were great. Here is exhibit #2 on why motorcyclists should visit Greece. There is a stretch of road between Kalavrita and Tripotama that is as good a sport bike road as we've ever ridden and it was completely empty. The scenery was every bit as enjoyable as the riding...
25) Roadside shrines are common throughout Greece. Each one memorializes someone who died on that spot. Inside the shrine are oil lamps, photos of saints and sometimes little momentos. Here you can see soda bottles filled with lamp oil, matches wrapped in tin foil, some religious icons and the oil lamp.
26) This is the outside of the shrine pictured above. This is one of the more elaborate ones. Many are small metal boxes that look like a bird house decorated with a metal cross. The more challenging the road the more of these shrines you'll find.
27) This photo shows a few different things. First, how incredible the scenery is in the mountains of the Peloponnese. Second, it is another example of some great roads. The section shown here was just a small section of the decent from a pass down into the bottom of the valley, all of which consisted of twisty roads with good pavement. Finally, it shows one of the hazards of riding in Greece: a flock of goats standing in the middle of the road at the exit to one of the switchbacks.
Goat poo on the road.
Like gravel under the tires.
With hooved obstacles.
28) The view from our hotel room at the Best Western Europa in Olympia. You can't really tell from this photo but the trees on the distant ridges are all burned from the devestating forest fires which ravaged this part of Greece just before our trip.
29) This is the ancient site of Olympia. As you can see from this photo the forest fires burned right up to the edge of the ancient site. This little island of green, amidst kilometers of charred earth, showed just how hard the fire fighters had fought to protect this site.
30) The most famous site at Olympia: the original Olympic stadium. Here the women: Katherine, Corinna and Jonna line-up for a sprint race while the men: Allan and Alan stand around and take photos.
31) Tourism accounts for 15% of Greece's GDP, meaning that this year's extensive fire damage could have severe economic impact. The only area we saw that was badly damaged by the fires was this area around Olympia. However, many other parts of the Peloponnese were also badly burned so what we saw was just the tip of the iceberg. Here, workers are starting to cut down some of the burned trees around the site of ancient Olympia.
32) Jonna is sitting on one of the column fragments from the Temple of Zeus in Olympia. The site itself was destroyed during Roman times so it doesn't have the stunning buildings like the Acropolis. Nor does it have the stunning location high up on a hillside like Delphi. Instead it has the historical link to the modern Olympic games and a rich collection of archeological findings since it was such a sacred place in ancient times. Still, there were some interesting things at the site like being able to climb on the foundations of this temple and see, up close, just how large the stones are that were used to build it.
33) Like our previous experience at Delphi, we were very impressed by the presentation method used in the museum at Olympia. Again, the pieces were displayed in their current state with no reconditioning. Here, the fragments of the east pediment from the Temple of Zeus are displayed in the same orientation in which they would have been mounted on the temple. The headless statue of Zeus is in the middle with Pelops and King Oenomaus on either side. We found all of these displays beautiful in their incompleteness.
34) Competitions, in the world of ancient Greece, were performed as sacred rites. The site of Olympia was as much a sacred temple site as it was a stadium complex for the Olympic games. All of these animal figurines, on display at the museum in Olympia, were found during the archeological work at the Temple of Zeus at Olympia. They were probably offerings to the Gods.
35) South of Olympia is the bay of Navarino near Pylos. We rode out to see the "Golden Beaches" pictured here. Unfortunately, Jonna's bike died so we ended up changing our day's riding plans while we dealt with the bike problems.
I don't know which sea.
It is salty, warm and blue.
It cools my hot mind.
36) Since we needed to kill some time waiting for Markus to come pick up the dead F650GS, we stopped to have lunch in a nearby waterside cafe with this beautiful view. Jonna, Paul and Alan had a long, pleasant lunch watching the para-sailers and sail boats zoom across the bay. It was hard to imagine that two fierce naval battles had occurred in this bay during it's long history (the Battle of Pylos in 425 during ancient Greek times and the Battle of Navarino during the Greek War of Independence in 1827). Perhaps we should have pitted the sail boats against the para-sails for a re-enactment?
37) Part of the reason we had such an enjoyable time was the food we were served. Fresh fish and organic vegetables. Yum!
38) Once Markus arrived, we decided to load up the stricken bike in the Edelweis van and carry on for the day with Jonna riding passenger with Alan on the R1200GS. Here Jonna ponders her future of riding an uncomfortable F650CS while Markus tries to figure out how he can sneak in a couple of hours on the beach before driving the van back to Kalamata. (Jonna did end up on the CS the next day, the GS was found to have a blown head gasket, and Markus swore he didn't relax at the beach that afternoon).
GS is no more.
Till now it tried to serve me.
The gasket is blown.
39) Having a bike break down isn't the best way to start your riding day but ending it with your feet propped up on a lounge chair watching the sun set over the Messenian Gulf is pretty nice. This was the view from the beach at the Hotel Filoxenia in Kalamata.
40) This is one of the endless, scenic photo stops. Alan does his best Zeus impression with an Aerostich suit and digital camera instead of a tunic and lightening bolt.
41) How about exhibit #3 for why motorcyclists will enjoy Greece? This stretch of road is typical of the roads along the Peloponnese coast. The terrain is so mountainous that twisty roads run right up to the beach. This is looking down on the town of Stoupa.
42) Just outside the town of Plasta we stopped at a cooperative market that sells olive oil pressed from the olives grown by the area's farmers. One of the advantages of travelling with a tour company is that they have a van to not only deal with broken bikes but also to haul 5 gallon cans of olive oil.
43) For another riding break, we all jumped into boats for a tour of the Dirous Caves. The interior of the caves have been badly damaged by people but it is still a fascinating and eerily beautiful place.
44) Jonna and Corinna found time every day to jump in the water even if it meant tip-toeing over rough stone beaches like this one at the Dirous Caves.
45) The southern most coast of Peloponnese, in the Mani region, in stark and haunting. Here Alan poses with the R1200GS on an overlook outside the town of Vathia.
46) Ancient Greek legend held that the entrance to Hades was on the southern most tip of Peloponnese. The closest you can get by road is the remote little village of Porto Kagio. Judging by the placid water and striking scenery, it doesn't seem like living at the door to Hades would be such a bad thing. The road in, on the other hand, was a series of tight switchbacks covered in knarly disintegrating asphalt that seemed like a perfect path to the underworld.
Handy dirt bike class.
Gravel, potholes and switchbacks.
Down into Hades.
47) This is the medieval town of Vathia. The region of Mani is famous for it's stone towers. These were built as defensive structures by both individual families and by towns like Vathia. They cap every hill and ridge. Additionally, many the hillsides are covered by terraced fields surrounded by low stone walls. All of this gives the place a sense of having been frozen in time.
Another planet.
Castles, cliffs and crashing waves.
Finger of Mani.
48) As we rode through the north edge of the Mani region we stopped in the little fishing village of Kotronas for a break. Here Jonna stands with the bikes and enjoys the view of waves crashing against the pier.
49) This is part of the port of Githio which was, in ancient times, the port of mighty Sparta. A man-made causeway crosses over to the little island of Cranae in the background where there was a small church, as well as a lighthouse and a Mani fortified tower that is now a museum.
50) This is the lighthouse at Githio, situated at the northern end of the Laconian Gulf. After a day of riding, we tried to get out and stretch our legs every evening by walking around the town we were staying.
51) This is Jonna relaxing on the "moon rock" beach on the island of Cranae.
52) This is view from our hotel room at the Hotel Aktaion in Githio looking down onto the harbor.
53) Our morning ritual of Jonna braiding Alan's hair so it doesn't end up as a bird's nest of knots at the end of the day.
54) Just east of Githio, we came upon this view of the beach at Leimonas. The beach is nice but the sight of the waves crashing against the hull of the old beached freighter, with dark clouds overhead, was particularly powerful.
55) We took a long detour, between Githio and Nafplio, to visit the medieval city of Monemvasia. This town was built on a small, tall mountain of rock jutting up out of the Myrtoon Sea. The city of Monemvasia was one of the most impressive defensive structures in all of Greek and was an important city for nearly 1,500 years throughout the Roman, Byzantine, Turkish and Venetian empires. The city streets are narrow, often just wide enough for a single person to walk through, and the city has been undergoing a restoration that has added cafes, hotels and shops. The massive fortress looming overhead is impressive but the rocky path leading up was too rough to attempt given our time constraints and motorcycle gear. Here Corinna and Jonna walk under one of the flowered gateways found on the "main street".
56) Jonna the Cyclops moving a stone at Tiryns, the oldest site we visited. The Mycenaean city fortress of Tiryns was built sometime around 1,500 BCE. The walls of this city are called "cyclopean" because the ancient Greeks who saw the Mycenaean sites thought the stones were so large they could only have been moved by the mythical Cyclops.
Boulders up a hill.
I believe in the Cyclops.
Beyond human strength.
57) Jonna provides a human comparison to one of the rocks to show just how large they are. This wasn't close to being the largest rock in the walls of Tiryns but it does give some idea as to their size. Moving thousands of these rocks and stacking them 30 feet tall must have been an immensely difficult task given the technology of the early Bronze Age.
58) Jonna stands at the famous Lion Gate at Mycenae. We arrived at this site when it first opened to avoid the tour bus hoards - it turned out this was again a good strategy as we were alone in this incredible site for nearly an hour. Mycenae has been partially reconstructed so it is a more impressive site than Tiryns, even though Tiryns is probably the older of the two. The iconic Lion Gate was built around 1,350 BC and is the oldest monumental sculpture in Europe.
59) New life on very old stones at Mycenae.
The Mycenaeans.
Did they have purple flowers.
Growning in the rocks?
60) The entrance of the so called "Treasury of Atreaus". This name was another Schleimann mis-naming. He proclaimed this large room the treasury building for the mythical King Atreaus but more thorough archeological work has since determined it was just a particularly large example of a common type of tomb built during the Mycenaean era. Nonetheless, the size of these stones, particularly the lintel over the doorway, is very impressive.
61) Another hotel, another great view. This was the view from our hotel room at the Hotel Amalia in Nafplio. Sunshine and olive groves abound and the ancient site of Tiryns was just a couple of kilometers away.
62) If this photo looks more like northern Italy than southern Greece, there is a reason for that. Nafplio was one of the major cities in Greece when it was part of the Venetian empire. The quaint, narrow streets with canitlevered balconies and iron railings are typical of Venetian architecture.
63) The Venetians turned the city of Nafplio into a mighty fortress. The city was heavily walled, a fortress was built on an island in the middle of the harbor and a series of five forts were built in the early 1700s on a mountain overlooking the city. This interconnected complex of fortresses makes up the spectacular Palamidi defensive complex. While Jonna went swimming at a nearby beach, Alan went up to see the bastions of the Palamidi.
64) The Palamidi sits 216m above Nafplio and is reached either by a paved road spiraling around the mountain or by the old route...857 steps that lead from the city walls of Nafplio to the lower bastion of the Palamidi (despite the myth that there are 999 steps). Alan took the stairs. This is just one section of the stairway. There were many, many more. Doing this at 2pm on a 90 degree day made for a challenging climb!
65) This is the lower bastion of the Palamidi. It is difficult to understand how the Turks ever captured this fortress once you see the extent of the defensive works and the steepness of the cliffs below it. However, the Turks did capture the Palamidi by force in 1715 and they immediately added even more walls. They also added the little domed "beehives" on the ends of the walls which definitely give the place a Turkish look.
66) Our final riding day, brought us to the ancient Greek site of Epidauros. The main ruins of Epidauros are much like Olympia in that aren't as awe inspiring as Delphi or the Acropolis. However, Epidauros does have this well preserved Greek theater which is the largest surviving example seating approximately 15,000 spectators. Here Jonna tries out the acoustics but her performance was trumped by Allan, a Kiwi ex-opera singer, who surprised us with a beautiful Maori love song. True to the claim, his voice was heard crystal clear in the seats at the very top of the theater.
67) As you can see from this photo the theater is quite large. Both it's size and its acoustics really showcase the magnificent engineering skills of the ancient Greeks.
68) Just as Olympia was the center of competition in the ancient world, Epidauros was the center of medicine. The site contained medicinal springs, baths and temples of healing. One unique thing about Epidauros is the amount of reconstruction being done. In the background you can see columns being rebuilt using fragments found at the site and new pieces of marble carved into the same patterns as the fragments. On one hand, this will make a somewhat drab site much more interesting as well as making it easier to visualize what the original structures may have looked like. However, it is also very controversial since any reconstruction on this scale is just an architect's rendering of what they think existed rather than the real thing.
69) An equally impressive, though more modern, feat of engineering is the Corinth Canel. This 6 kilometer long canel was finished in 1891 and cuts across the Isthmus of Corinth, turning the Peloponnese peninsula into an island. This photo was taken from one of the main bridges over the canal. We actually crossed the canel via a submersible wooden bridge where the old highway runs along the coast. The bridge was raised for us to cross and brought an octopus up with it. Talk about unique road hazards!
Finally, we want to thank the folks who helped make this trip so great...The two Edelweiss tour guides Markus and Andy. Our German friend Corinna. Allan and Katherine from here in Colorado. Dr. Paul from New Jersey. Gene and Tami from Minnesota, and finally Michael the Austrian motorcycle magazine editor!
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