argos, day 3

my uncle herakles and aunt matula
dina and bebe



on wednesday we went to naufplion, and saw loula’s work, which is more like a hospital office than i expected (she wore a labcoat, and there were even what looked like hospital beds). we then went to a beach behind the famous castle. again, heraklea was our guide. so we went swimming, relaxed, and worked on our tans. earlier, heraklea also took me to a bookshop, where i got a greek edition of nikos kazantzakis’ book ‘life and times of alexi zorba,’ known in america as ‘zorba the greek,’ which is a book that i love. i also wanted to get a copy of ‘axion esti’ by elytis, the poem for which he won the nobel prize, a collection of poems by seferis, who was the first greek to win the nobel prize for literature, and a poem book by cavafy, who is my favorite modern greek poet. she had none of the later three, so i had to settle for only ‘zorba the greek.’

later that night, after coming home to relax for a bit, we went back to nauflion to eat. loula lives there with her husband, nikos. he has a little cafe there called ‘rosso’ that is pretty popular, even in a little town that has a lot of cafes and places for people to eat dinner. basically, nafplio is probably the hippest and coolest town in argolida (which can be thought of as the state that argos is in within greece). nikos own ‘rosso’ with his brother, with whom he also works his day job as a contractor. we went to a place for dinner where we ate outside, under a canopy. it was very crowded, especially for a wednesday night. it was also cool because it seems that they knew everybody in the neighborhood, which is referred to as old nafplio (there are a lot of toursits as well as locals).