Shore Excursion to Monemvassía, Greece

It was a little painful getting up before 7:00 this morning, but I was able to snap lots of pictures of the ship cruising into the little bay at Monemvassía. There’s an old city, here, with a defensive wall. As we got closer the details of the wall, ruined fortifications above the city and a beautiful church became clearer. After breakfast, JR and I took the short boat ride from the ship to the shore, where we hopped on a bus and got a quick ride to just outside the wall of the old town. Picture taking started in earnest as we walked through the dark tunnel of the old city gateway and continued non-stop for a couple of hours.

The main street was only about 6 or 8 feet wide. These were full of shops, cafes and little bars. It looked like a neat place to look around, but we kept heading on trying to find where to go up the hill. This little town seemed to have more churches in it than houses. They were just little but beautiful in their simplicity. It just dawned on me that even though we were getting there about 9:00 or 9:30, I didn’t see mass going on at any of them. We wound up the stepped streets, even narrower than the main one, until we found a trail that led to the stairs at the bottom of the cliff. These had defensive walls on them so defenders could fight off bad guys as they came up the switchbacks. The stone steps were polished and slippery from centuries of people walking up and down them…kind of like the marble steps we saw yesterday at the Acropolis.

Once at the top we found another church…but this one was really old and there wasn’t much left but the arched roof and a wall at one end. Looking up the hillside there were old stone walls and buildings everywhere. We headed to the right and came out at the wonderful church I had seen from the boat as it sailed in. This building was wonderful and I really don’t know how old…I’ll have to get on Wikipedia and look up the details…but just amazing both for its obvious age and this odd sense of history there; it felt old. But at the same time, there were chairs and other church things inside (it wasn’t Baptist or even non-denominational-evangelical-Christian so I’m not sure exactly what was there), so I expect that it still sees some use. From here we could look out over the Mediterranean from about 500 feet up…it seemed just a little lower than the Space Needle which is a little more than 600 feet, I think.

We continued up from here and came to the old citadel, of which there is very little left but a gunpowder storage room that was very complete and a wall with an arch that was just perfect for getting a picture of our ship framed beneath the arch. We wound our way back down, back through town with just one little detour to see yet another little church, this one about 8×12 feet in a cave in the cliff above the town. It was a little treacherous to get to, but just amazing.

We walked back through town and down the road to the new city, where the boat had dropped us off and waded in the Mediterranean for a few minutes before we headed back to the ship. Once on board we got back to work after lunch.