Nafplio

On Friday morning we visited the National Archaeological Museum, focusing on items recovered from the grave circles we would see at Mycenae. (But not passing up the fine grave stelae, whose lifelike reliefs of the deceased and the bereaved had moved me on my first visit.)

Later, as darkness fell we caught a taxi through rush hour congestion to the bus station where, after a wait outdoors in the cold wind, we boarded a bus for Nafplio, which is on the easternmost peninsula of the Peloponnese, closest to Athens. Our assigned seats were in the last row of a packed bus. After the first hour the bus left the main highway and meandered through the dark countryside for the remaining hour and a half, pitching us gently now and then, and stopping at several small towns to pick up yet more passengers (who had to sit in the aisle). At our destination a taxi took us to our reserved lodging at the Hotel Agamemnon, right on the waterfront. In the morning we were surprised with a view right out our window into the water toward the little island fortress known as the Bourtzi, one of three fortresses in town built by the Venetians. The wind was very cold, and in the distance we could see snow-capped peaks in two directions.

The old part of Nafplio occupies the north side of a hilly promontory that projects westward into the Argolid gulf. For the two cold weekend days we strolled back and forth the entire distance of the old town, winding through its narrow streets. We also wandered up and down the paths and stairways among the residences that crowded the hillside below the mid-size fortress, the Iç Kale (a Turkish name), which now shares the top of the promontory with the Hotel Xenia (one of a Ic Kale fortress

Greek chain of A-class hotels). On the hillside we located, and approved of, the Hotel Dioscouri, which was a little less fancy and more our style, and which had an intriguing myth associated with its name.* So we decided to move there for the third, fourth and fifth nights in town. (Beginning to regret our decision the moment we began lugging our heavy suitcases up the first of four flights of stairs on the hillside.) On Saturday we visited Nafplio's modest archaeological museum, which has several vases from the geometric period and a prized suit of authentic bronze Mycenaean armor

Mycenean armor, topped by an imitation boar's tusk helmet. And on Sunday we studied the exhibits at the Popular Art museum, which has one floor devoted to looms and wool-processing equipment, with detailed explanations in English, and a second floor showing the elaborately woven, embroidered and layered costumes, some with heavy metal accessories, as worn in the various regions of Greece, particularly in the early part of the century.

*The Dioscouri were the twin sons of Leda—Castor and Polydeuces. The latter, according to some versions, was an immortal son of Zeus, who had visited Leda in the form of a swan. (In this version Polydeuces, as well as his sister Helen, were hatched from eggs that Leda laid.) When Castor, the mortal son of Leda and Tyndarus, was killed in battle, Polydeuces offered to share his immortality with his brother. Thereafter, they each spent half their time in the underworld and half with the gods on Mount Olympus.