More of the same

Since I last wrote we have mainly hung around our little cottage with a couple of excursions.  On Thursday we drove down to Methoni to see if we could find any remnants of the wreck of the Sebastiano Veniero, also known as the Jansen or Jason, on which Gillian's father was on when it was torpedoed and run aground in 1941.  We have seen a photo taken of the ship close inshore beside the Venetian castle at Methoni and had been told there were some rusted metal bits still visible, but we fialed to see them.  However we now have an image of the site and can imagine what the scene was like back then trying to get the survivors to shore in atrocious weather conditions.

The castle itself is immense and still has very impressive defensive walls standing facing the town and along the top of the cliff where the ship was wrecked.  In the middle of the old town area is a church which appears very old and we wondered if this was the "hall" where the prisoners were held after the wreck, but as we recall they were held in a "hall in the town" which wouldn't fit.  Unfortunately the guys in the ticket office didn't seem to know what we were talking about which is the norm in Greece - nobody cares about WWII, except in Crete, as all the stories are about the Civil War which raged immediately after.

We returned to the cottage around the south coast of the peninsular, seing a couple of OK beaches, another Ventian castle at Koroni and as usual a lot of olive trees.

Friday we spent a good part of the day on the beach below the cottage.  Most of the time we were the sole inhabitants, but there were people in the house above the beach who seemed to continuously talking just the other side of the fence.  The beach is a good size, about 100m long, with coase golden sand and a lot of rocks just offshore.  However when we went in for a swim we found the sand sloped quite quickly to over waist deep befor the rocks began, so it was pleasant even if the water was cooler than some other beaches we hve been to - still much warmer than Onemana ever gets.

Saturday we slept in late and while we were sitting on the front porch were hailed from the road by a couple who wanted information about renting the cottage.  They are archeologists who come over every year to work on the site know as the Palace of Nestor - a Mycenaean palce destroyed by fire around 1200 BC.  They told us about a find last year of a shaft grave from around 1500BC which included an amazing array of grave goods.  See www.griffinburial.org.  They also told us that since we were last here the whole site has been given a new roof and suspended walkways. So in the afternoon We headed up to see the changes.  The last time we were here you walked around the passages and rooms, but now you look down on them which does give a better picture of the scale and layout of the palace.  The couple also recommended a local taverna that serves spit roast suckling pig on Saturday nights, so guess where we're going for dinner.