My Trip to Pelion
by Matt Barrett |
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Sitting by the pool with my laptop on a slate table (like most of the roofs of Pelion), is not my idea of a travel adventure. But Amarandi insisted on a hotel with a pool, and while she clings to the edge and wipes the heavily chlorinated water from her burning eyes, I can reflect upon the chain of events which brought me to one of the most beautiful areas in Greece, instead of the Peloponessos, where I had planned on going. The fact that we ended up in the village of Chorefto at the bottom of the heavily wooded Mount Pelion is only because the Villa Horizonte in the village of Zagora twenty minutes straight up did not have a pool, yet. We had come from the spa town of Edipsos, where every hotel has a pool. Unfortunately they contained steaming hot mineral water and as refreshing as they appeared, they were of little use for cooling off, though they claim to cure just about every ailment known to man and even a few others. Plus you needed a note from a doctor that pronounced you physically sound enough so that a dip in the mineral pool would not kill you. Too much of a good thing I guess. Anyway with the way I have been feeling the last few days, and the abuse I have put my body through, I doubted I could pass a physical that even Andrea's 90 year old aunts were able to breeze through. To top it all off, kids were not allowed in the pool which was very frustrating for Amarandi. As we were given a tour of the mineral pool in the aunts hotel by Spiro, a handsome young physical therapist, Amarandi reached to touch the inviting water. "Ochi-NO!" shouted Spiros and pulled her hand out of the water in time to save her from a fatal dose of whatever it is in the pool that makes old people well and kills little children. It must have been terribly frustrating for Amarandi. I mean they looked like swimming pools. They were even painted that swimming pool blue. Yet it was something disguised as a pool that was dangerous and forbidden to her. From that moment she wanted a swimming pool. Even the clear blue seas of northern Evia where we caught the ferry to Glyfa on the mainland failed to sway her from her desire for a pool. The Villa Horizonte
After touring her beautiful hotel, that had everything but a pool, we said good-bye and followed the winding road down the mountain from Zagora to Chorefto on the sea. Sure enough the Aiolos Hotel has a pool and at sunset they play classical music that seems to make my fingers type faster. The hotel is a collection of separate bungalows surrounded by grass, trees, roses, stone walls and plenty of kids. So Amarandi has her pool and a pool of potential friends. Andrea has the sea a few feet away, and I have a phone connection that is detachable and will enable me to write and send e-mail, providing my computer recognizes the dial tone. Life is good. The Villa Horizonte is gone now but there are other nice places to stay at Hotels of Greece |
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The StoryHow we got to this part of Greece rather then a couple hundred miles south in the Peloponessos is another story. It had to do with Andrea's mother who arrived on Thursday and was planning to go to Edipsos, a town famous for its hot mineral springs. Perhaps I am understating what Edipsos is. I will put it another way because most people have never heard of Edipsos unless they live in Greece. Every person in Greece over the age of 60 knows Edipsos. They go to their doctor for whatever is wrong with them and he will prescribe a visit to Edipsos to take so-many baths. Andrea's aunts go every summer for three weeks or as they put it twenty-one baths. Andrea's mother always includes a visit to Edipsos on her infrequent visits to Greece because her life in the USA makes her a nervous wreck and her doctor has told her she has the most twisted degenerated spine he has ever seen and it is a miracle she can even walk, let alone shop. It's no secret that Elaine and I don't get along and so as a gesture of good will I volunteered to take her and her mangled spine to Edipsos, rather the having her sit in the bus for four hours. When she found out I had agreed to take her she almost kissed me in happiness, though after two hours of wandering around the refugee settlement-like suburbs of Athens searching for the national road she probably wished I hadn't been such a good son-in-law. The guy from Swift Car Rentals who delivered the car to the hotel made it sound so easy. Drive to Omonia and turn on to 21st of September street and then turn on to Archanon until we come to the National road. Swift offers to drive their customers to the main road and avoid the chaos of Athens but I felt this would not be necessary. After all I was a seasoned veteran of the Greek road system, having spent months on the island of Lesvos where the drivers were said to be the worst in the country. But from the start things went wrong. We could not make the left hand turn to go to Omonia because there was a median across the road and then there were no places to make a U-turn. We drove all the way to Thission when we decided to improvise our way to Archanon and the National road, and we were doing quite well until Andrea realized that Archanon was running parallel to the national road and if they laws of geometry were to hold up, would never connect with it. She told me to turn left and get onto Lliosa road which would lead us right into the National road, in a more perfect world. Instead it led us to Ano Lliossa, and endless barrios of 4 story apartment buildings, unpaved streets and inhabitants who might find it easier to direct us to downtown Sebastapol then the national road of Greece. Every once in awhile we would see a sign that pointed to it and we would follow it, only to find ourselves in the loading area of some factory, or a dead end road surrounded by garbage strewn lots and dilapidated apartment buildings. Every time we asked someone directions we got the same answer. "Go straight past 2 lights. Take your third right and then ask directions again." It was as if we were just getting directions to other people who would give us directions and nobody actually knew where the national road was, only where the next guy was who might know. Kind of like trying to get a resident permit or a drivers license in Athens, being sent from office to office in an attempt to just get rid of you and let some other useless bureaucrat deal with your problem . I was ready to give up and go to an island. We had barely started the trip and I felt like I had been driving for hours (actually I had). Everyone was trying to remain cheerful but the tension was building with every dead end and near accident. We would see a sign for the national road and feel like we were finally on our way, and then find ourselves hopelessly lost in some neighborhood or industrial park, or a combination of the two. True, it was a side of Greece that few tourists ever see, (and those that do were probably searching for the National Road as well), but it was hard to appreciate the hordes of Romanian refugees trudging back from the market, when you have a dump truck filled with slag and broken concrete, beeping madly behind you because you are driving slow enough to look for clues as to the whereabouts of the National Road. The most interesting aspect of our lost journey through the seamy underside of Athens was that we were veterans of Greece. What would someone who was visiting Greece for the first time feel when they suddenly found themselves in third world surroundings with no hope of escape? Finally we located it. But even that was an adventure. No warning. Just a sign that said 'Lamia' that you don't even see until you are past it. I nearly started a ten car pileup by slamming on the brakes in an attempt to make the turn, but the 180 degree skid I went into sent me off in the wrong direction and once I regained control of the car I had to make a few U-turns to get back to the spot I had missed. This time, even though I knew where it was I nearly missed it again. Driving in Greece is like one of those computer games like Doom, where you have to get killed by the demons half a dozen times before you know what the hell you are doing. The national road made me long for the labyrinth of Ano lliossa. It was a 4 lane highway with no median and no lanes either. There was something on the right that looked like a bicycle lane that the slow cars would pull into when a fast car came barreling down on them, which gave enough room to pass, unless someone coming in the other direction was passing as well. Then it became a game of reflexes and will, much like the game of chicken. It took some getting used to but once I found my pace and learned how to avoid head-on collisions I felt somewhat confidant that I could make it to the Halkida bridge in Evia where we could take the mountain road to Edipsos instead of Greece's twisted interpretation of a superhighway. Evia
We opted not to stop in the city of Halikida. It was a city whose charm increased with the more ouzo you drank, but to truly appreciate it might require a near fatal dose. The juxtaposition of the beautiful blue Greek sea that has been seen in so many pictures and postcards, with this unattractive, industrial city was fascinating in a way. I always associate this color of the sea with prime real-estate: a small white church, a fine sand beach with a little cafeneon, or a tiny scenic port like Naossa. The fact that a giant cement factory, a junkyard or a graveyard for telephone cable spools could share this same color sea seems like sacrilege. But Greece is not a fairy tale. It is a country that exists beyond tourism and the most industrialized in the Balkans. There are factories and there is garbage, and in some places they stand side by side with that beautiful sea.
As we drove north the road
shared the heavily wooded valley with a small
river. When we found a spot to pull over we
found ourselves in the middle of a big wedding
party at another roadside taverna, with men
dancing the zembekiko in a gazebo, lined with
giant speakers that boomed the music through
the valley and into the forest, where we waded
in the freezing cold water. There were dozens
of children running around with their mothers
following close behind, while their fathers
sat drinking in the taverna. Crossing the
river was a rope suspension bridge that would
sway when you crossed, especially when the
little boys on the far side began tugging on
the ropes trying to increase the momentum and
terrify those on the bridge. Edipsos
But if you want to know about Edipsos then you can visit my Edipsos page. This is a story about Pelion and if I tell all the cool things about my visit to Edipsos here then there will be no room for the wonders of Mount Pelion. Volos: Mezedes Capital of Greece
But despite my doubts and fears I knew I had to investigate. Maybe they weren't trying to divert me from something much more interesting happening in Mykonos or the Pink Palace of Corfu. Maybe it was true that the mezedes of Volos were better than those in Lesvos. Maybe the only reason I thought the mezedes in Lesvos were the best was because everyone in Lesvos said they were, the way everyone in Greece says Athens is better than New York or Nick Gallis is better than Michael Jordon. So to Volos we went from the small ferry port of Agiokambo in northern Evia, to the port of Glifa on the mainland south of Volos. After a few hair-raising moments on the dreaded National Road we found ourselves on the waterfront of a good sized city. According to my Lonely Planet buddies, the reason Volos has such a strong mezedes tradition is because when the Greeks were forcibly evicted from Asia Minor in 1922, many of the seamen came to Volos to live. They would gather in the harbor and eat mezedes and drink tsipuro. As time went on the demand for better and more exotic mezedes increased and became like a competition. The establishments with the best mezedes attracted the most customers and prospered in a sort of Darwinian display of restaurant survival.
So were the mezedes of
Volos better than those of Lesvos? It doesn't
matter. They are both so good that while you
are in the act of eating one or the other and
drinking ouzo or tsipuro, the thought that
there may be something better out there is the
furthest thing from your mind. And in fact
getting in the Honda and driving up the road
to the villages of Pelion, clearly visible
from Volos, was the second furthest thing from
my mind. But I still had to do it. Pelion
The town of Zagora was strung out along the main road and seemed to lack a center, which was the only reason we did not stay there. Well not the only reason. There were obviously not going to be any swimming pools in this town and as beautiful as it was we continued down the road to the sea where we had seen a sign for the Villa Horizonte which is where this story began. Chorefto
Tsangarada
Vyzitsa
Kalanera
Epilogue
If you are planning to rent a car and drive from Athens to Pelion check out Swift Rent-a-Car . They will pick you up at the airport or your hotel and drive you to the National road and let you by-pass the notorious Athens traffic. See their website at www.greektravel.com/swift |
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I had hoped that the Villa
Horizonte would have a pool. The Villa is more
than a hotel. It's a cultural center built by
a woman named Ingrid, on the green, heavily
wooded mountainside, overlooking a vast
expanse of blue sea. When we arrived the
famous musician Ross Daly, a transplanted
Irishman who single-handedly reintroduced
traditional Cretan music not only to Greece,
but to many of the Cretans themselves. He has
just given a workshop and concert at the Villa
and was heading back to Athens with his
students, to close up his school and move the
operation back to Crete. I had met him a
couple times before, the last time in the
Airport in Athens where he was flying to
Istanbul to pick up an aoud, and I was on my
way back to the states. I asked if I could
take his photo because I was a big fan. Then I
sent the photo by e-mail to Ingrid who gave it
to Ross who now remembered me as the guy who
took the picture in the airport. We sat and
talked about music and the internet and his
coming to terms with the reality that the best
way to promote traditional music is through
sound files like MP3 and make them available
to everybody. So the next time we meet he will
remember me as the guy who is going to do a
website for him.
But Ross Daly or not, a hotel in the mountains
without a pool had no appeal for Amarandi.
Ingrid remembered that she had seen a hotel
with a high wall that might have contained a
pool.
The bridge across the
channel of water which separates the island of
Evia from the mainland is impressive. It looks
like a large stringed instrument that's
impossible to play. Halkida itself looks like
an appendage of the giant cement factory
across the bay. Many of the apartments look
like they were built the same day, as if a
sudden influx of refugees made the Greek
government reach for the easiest solution,
which was to build giant concrete blocks of
apartments right next to a cement factory. It
was in Halkida that I had my first near
accident. When I found myself stuck behind a
stopped city bus and made my move to pass, a
car several cars behind decided the cars in
front were not moving fast enough to get
around the bus. Just as he was making his move
I made mine, only he had no bothered to even
stop and had foreword momentum going his way.
All I heard was the screech of brakes behind
me, but rather then wait for him to hit me, I
floored the little Honda and got my ass out of
trouble, leaving a group of swearing Greek
drivers behind me.
The road that goes north
through Evia is small and winding and passes
through pine forests and small towns. We
stopped at a small taverna on the roadside
that specialized in two different types of
cheese pastries, or tyganopsomo. One was a
baked cake filled with feta and onions and the
other was a deep fried filo dough filled with
feta. With a Greek salad and sadziki we were
quite full and then the main course of
paidiakia arrived, the only thing Amarandi
would eat. By the time we got back into the
car we were ready for a nap, not another two
hours of driving. Amarandi and I attempted to
explore the area around the small taverna but
it seemed everywhere we went, we discovered
Yaya sneaking a cigarette and after awhile it
became frustrating to know that before we
could discover anything, Yaya would have found
it first to use as a hiding place.
I did not really know what
to expect with Edipsos. I knew all the old
people went there so I was imagining decrepit
aging hotels with dirty stained stone pools
filled with tepid water and geriatric bodily
excretions. But I was wrong. Edipsos was a
beautiful little town, almost a small city
with a tree shaded waterfront lined with cafes
and restaurants. The hotels had lovely baths
that looked like swimming pools. There were
places in the sea where the hot spring water
poured in or shot up from the sea bed, and
people bathed in the warm currents. We had not
really made a decision of whether or not we
would stay or drive on to Volos and Pelion,
but once I saw the town, I wanted to stay. We
got a room at the Poseidon where Andrea's mom
was staying and I went for a walk to check out
the village. Many of the hotels had their own
small baths in the basement and the larger
hotels had the pools. There was an enormous
old hotel that had been renovated and rebuilt
into a giant European health spa with a giant
pool and every type of therapy you could list,
provided by professional healers and physical
therapists.
I was informed by my Greek
Travel Gurus, Paul Hellander and David Willett
of Lonely Planet, that the mezedes of Volos
were better than Lesvos. How can this be? It's
like someone saying to an American that
cricket is better than baseball. Nothing is
better than baseball. And for them to suggest
that the snacks served with ouzo in Volos were
better than those served in Lesvos filled me
with doubts about my mentors. Not only that
but in Volos they don't drink ouzo. They drink
tsipuro which is the drink of choice in
northern Greece, closer in taste to the raki
they drink in Crete. The whole thing was
beginning to sound like some kind of trick
being played on me by my pals at Lonely
Planet, no doubt so they could have a laugh at
my expense during one of the frequent Lonely
Planet cocktail parties where they routinely
diss on all the other travel writers.
("Remember the time we sent Matt Barrett to
Volos looking for tsipuro and mezedes?
Hahahahahah! He was never heard from
again!")
It was not hard to find a
place where we could test the mezedes of
Volos. Right on the waterfront there were a
couple restaurants, filled with people at 2pm,
each table loaded with small plates of various
snacks and the tiny bottles they serve the
tsipuro in. Paul and David were right. Every
kind of fish and sea creature was available
cooked in so many styles I realized that the
only way to really do my job would be to rent
a room upstairs and come down to eat and drink
every couple hours. The tsipuro was served ice
cold like the vodka in my cousins monastery in
NYC and went down easy. Easier than ouzo. I
was becoming converted. I thought about
skipping Lesvos completely and spending my
summer in this hot city, happily typing away
in my air-conditioned hotel room waiting for a
reasonable hour to sample some more mezedes
and tsipuro. What did we try that was good?
Well the fried pikilia of giant shrimp,
mussels and whatever else they could find was
great, but that is not a good measurement.
Anything tastes good deep fried in olive oil
and seasoned right. I could eat deep-fried
spam-balls and they would taste just as good
as scallops with a little lemon. I liked the
mussels cooked in red sauce with cheese,
otherwise known as media sagonaki and the
shrimp cooked the same way, called garithes
sagoniki. Octopus grilled or in wine sauce is
fantastic. Tiro kafteri is a spicy cheese
spread that goes on bread. That was delicious
too. Grilled sardines were not as good as the
Kaloni sardines of Lesvos. Well maybe they
were. Who can really tell? But I have a lot
more friends in Lesvos than I do in Volos and
I want to keep it that way.
So we drove through Volos
and found the road to Pelion. It was not hard
to find. It's a straight road that leads
directly to the giant mountain that fills the
entire world visible from the car's
windshield. Once you leave the plain the road
is no longer straight. It curves and winds and
getting anywhere means climbing up and down
and back and forth, slowing down for curves
and praying that any driver coming from the
other direction is doing the same in his own
lane. Driving in Pelion is stressful. Good
brakes are a necessity, not a luxury and a
quick horn may save your life. Luckily the
narrowness of the roads and the bends make it
unlikely that either car will be going fast
enough so the impact will kill you. But the
thousand foot drop off the edge may.
It would be hard to imagine
an area more densely wooded than the Pelion
Peninsula. It was like being in the
Adorondacks without billboards and
seven-elevens. Instead of strip malls and
lines of service stations and fast food
restaurants announcing your entrance into each
village, they seemed to appear around us like
magic, their roofs and walls made of stone and
wood, blending with the natural surroundings.
There were miles of apple trees and places
where waterfalls poured from the sky onto the
shoulder of the road on it's journey down to
the sea, which looked like it was miles below
us.
Chorefto is an incredible
beach and the town feels like you are sitting
on the edge of the world. There are a dozen
restaurants and hotels. Surprisingly this area
is very tourist oriented. Signs are all in
English and the restaurants had specials that
mixed local specialties with the stuff they
know the tourists will like...mousaka,
souvlakia and the rest. The restaurant we ate
at was good as I am sure they all are and if I
were a tourist I would have been quite
content. But what I wanted was something more
like what we had experienced in Volos, maybe
mixed with a little of the
Lesvos-old-man-cafeneon vibe. I didn't want
the waiter to speak to me in English. I didn't
want to know what everything on the menu was.
I wanted to experience new sensations to go
with the tsipuro which was served in those
little bottles here as well. So we ate. We
drank. We made friends with the local dogs who
gathered around our table and waited for
scraps and then we went home and went to
sleep.
The next morning it was up
to me to decide to stay or go. I didn't care
one way or the other but figured we could
leave and if we did not find anything better
we could always come back. Easier said than
done. The narrow roads with their hairpin
turns made me want to find one place and
settle there for a few days. It seemed like
every few minutes we were involved in a near
collision and I was sure that few of them were
my fault. I checked out the next batch of
beaches at Agia Ioannis which looked fine but
again a little touristy. Maybe not for me. I
mean I can be happy anywhere. Put me in
Mykonos and I will find the last little place
where the old men still gather to talk about
the old days and drink home made ouzo from a
barrel. But Andrea likes tradition. She thinks
that when you come to Greece you should see
only Greeks and hear only Greek and have to
read from a menu written only in Greek.
Clearly we would not find this here in Agia
Ioannis or in the next beach down the coast.
There was nothing to do but head upward, into
the mountains where it was cooler and maybe
less touristy.
The village of Tsangarada
was rumored to have the largest platanos tree
in Greece so we made that our goal. Surely
there would be cafeneons full of happy old men
drinking tsipuro, eating delicious mezedes and
talking about their marvelous platanos tree,
arguing about the size of others they had seen
in their travels. We would join them and tell
them about the tree in the village of Liotta
in Lesvos, or the tree in Xidera that is
hollow and used for storage, or the tree in
Karini near Agiassos where the great artist
Theophilos lived while he painted the
surrounding cafes. But when we got to
Tsangarada there was no cafeneon full of old
men that we could find and even if we had, we
would have lost the argument because the tree
in the platia was the biggest tree that I had
ever seen in my life. We did sit in the platia
under this giant tree and have a wonderful
meal and then we expored the area around the
platia and found an amazing fountain
underneath. But as usual we got antsy and
decided that being relaxed and happy was not
really that fulfilling and got back on the
road and began driving south along the coast,
several thousand feet below.
Somewhere along the way we
decided we wanted to visit the traditional
village of Vyzitsa where Andrea's sister had a
friend who had bought an old mansion and
converted it into a bed and breakfast. The
village was up on the side of the mountain but
on the west side of the Pelion Peninsula
facing the Pagasitic bay south of Volos.
Vyzitsa was spectacular with beautiful old
houses made of wood and stone, some of them
converted into hotels and B&B's. The sound
of water was everywhere as streams rushed
through the village and there was a gorgeous
platia that looked like it was ready for a
great party to begin. The place was heavenly
and the climate perfect and if we had been
smart we would have stayed there. But nobody
answered us when we knocked on the door of the
hotel and since it seemed like the party would
not be starting for awhile we decided to drive
on thinking we would return later.
But we didn't. We wanted to
go for a swim and drove down the mountain to
the seaside village of Kalanera which looked
like fun when we arrived. There was a long
beach road with one restaurant after another
and an amusement park with bumper cars.
It seemed like a pretty lively resort for
Bulgarians and Serbian tourists. We had a
little swim in the calm water, which was
nowhere near as nice as the sea on the Aegean
side of Pelion, and then looked for a decent
hotel which we found too easily. I met an old
man from Lamia who had been coming to Kalanera
all his life. His wife had died recently and
we befriended him and drank tsipuro and ate
mezedes at a couple places. He excused himself
after awhile and Andrea and I took Amarandi to
the amusement park which she loved until we
had to leave and then she cried so much we
wished we had not taken her there in the first
place. We ate dinner at our hotel's restaurant
which was lousy and then went to bed in our
room which was hot as hell and infested with
mosquitoes that kept us awake all night and
made us leave Pelion first thing in the
morning.
OK. So I didn't have much
fun in Pelion. A six year old demanding a
swimming pool, a wife who doesn't like
tourists and my desire to see as much as I
could in as short a time as possible are the
ingredients for a heart attack, not for a fun
holiday. But that does not mean you won't have
the time of your life. I just made a couple
bad moves and did not have a working plan. We
were reading Lonely Planet as we went along
but only when we reached a town would we begin
to research it and by the time we knew what
there was to see it was disappearing in our
rear-view mirror. And on those roads there was
no way I was going to risk turning around for
anything smaller than the worlds largest tree.
But if I was going to do it again I would stay
at
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