Heatwave in Nafplio

Nafplio fortress
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Upon our arrival at the ferry port in Patra, Greece, we were hit by extremely hot weather... as luck would have it, we had arrived during a heatwave covering most of southern/eastern Europe, and fires were raging throughout Greece. Sitting in the bus on the way to Nafplio, our first stop, the temperature displayed at the front of the bus was at 43 degrees Celsius at 5pm!

We had planned to use Nafplio as a base for 4 days, due to its close location to ancient sites such as Mycenae and Sparta. We had read that it was one of the prettiest towns in Greece too. Because of the weather, in the end it was too hot to visit either (let alone go outside!), which was disappointing. But we did get to see Larissa Castle, perched on the top of a mountain, as we passed through Mycenae on the bus, which was very impressive.

The temperature was 43 degrees Celsius at 5pm!

A Nafplio street
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Nafplio had an amazing fortress on the edge of a cliff overlooking the ocean too. The landscape in Greece is so dry and rocky, much more so than I expected. We could have walked the 999 steps to the top, but decided to settle on seeing it from the bottom given the weather!

Nafplio's Old Town is really pretty, with narrow cobbled streets and big squares. We ended up spending most of our time wandering around, sitting in cafes, and sampling Greek cuisine! Which, might I add, is very good, especially as I love feta cheese and olives... greek salad, spinach pies, moussaka (sort of like a vegetarian lasagne), souvlaki (stick kebabs with fish, chicken etc), stuffed vegetables etc.

Richard eating Greek meatballs
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On our last day we walked to Nafplio beach and watched the sun set... the sky and sun were reddish-pink because of the smoke in the air from the fires, which was quite spectacular.