 The view from the top |
The fortress was, in fact, closed. My mom, Aurora, Vernon (both sleeping) and I drove up to the Palamidi from the other side and got our own wonderful views of town and the bay, but since Michael had the camera, I don't have any photos. (We are getting another camera before our next trip!) So, we drove back down to the bottom of the steps where we'd dropped of Michael and Julian earlier. They'd actually gotten back a while before and had coffee and ice cream while waiting for us.
By the time we met back up, a small number of restaurants had opened town. We walked around for a while before settling on a place. Unfortunately, by the time we'd decided, everything was pretty crowded and we ended up going next door because the wait for a table at our first choice would have been up to an hour. |
| Being Easter, nobody seemed to be serving their full menu, so our choices were somewhat limited. I have to say that of all the meals we had in Greece, this was both the least satisfying and the most overpriced. The service was also extremely slow. Now, by this time, I'd gotten used to the Greek pace of life, which is a heck of lot more leisurely than here in the States, but I think the whole meal, from sitting down to paying our check, took almost three hours. Michael even took them to Syntagma Square to "run them" a couple of times after we finished eating and our bill still hadn't arrived the second time they came back.Even for Greece, that's slow! Of course, I suspect that part of the problem was too few people working (nobody wanting to work the holiday if they can avoid it) and too many customers to serve (because there were so few places open), but it was still rough to wait that long with three kids!
After dinner, we wandered through town and back towards our car. Eventually, we arrived at the main playground in town. It must have been between 9 and 10 pm and the place was literally crawling with kids. This struck us as a bit amusing because when we'd played on one of the playgrounds earlier in the day (before hitting the Palamidi), the place was practically deserted. I think one or two other children came during the time we were there. (By the way, they have some fantastically fun but extraordinarily dangerous-looking playground equipment in Greece. There was a spiral slide on one of the playgrounds that was so fast, it was more like a carnival ride than something I associate with a playground. Add to that the fact that beneath most of the playground equipment, there's nothing but gravel, and the overall effect was pretty stunning. You'd never get away with a public playground equipped like that in the US: it'd be a lawsuit waiting to happen!) Now, perhaps kids don't normally play on the playground at 10pm and it was only because of the Easter holidays that they were out so late, but I did find the apparent disregard for being consistent both delightful and affirming, since I tend to be rather lax about it myself unless it's a school night (and even then, I'm not exactly a stickler!)
I think the kids played for about an hour before we finally dragged them away for our last night in our villa. I have to say that I think the photo below, of all three of them on teeter-totter at 10:00 at night on Easter, has to be one of my favorites from the whole trip!
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