8th June 2013, Monemvasia or Clinging to the Rockface

Think Mont St Michel or St Michael's Mount, add sunshine, Byzantine with a hint of Turkish city fortress of honey-coloured stone and terracotta roofs, houses and fortress walls, churches, cisterns, more houses, little squares, more churches all rising up and clinging to the rockface, topped by a ruined Citadel - and that is Monemvasia. Fabulous views from the top (another vertiginous climb!)

It is actually a little island, attached to the mainland by a causeway. Originally called Minoa, there may have been a Minoan settlement there some 2000 years BC. There is evidence of it being used as a trading and protective fort in the 1st C AD and but it really came to prominence in its first Byzantine settlement from the 6th to 13th Centuries. It subsequently went through various rulers including the Franks in the Crusades, had its glory period under its second Byzantine rule in the later 13th C, then the Catalonians and Venice, then the Turks, then revived under Venice again, went under with the Turks once more, and became Greek again in 1821 with Independence. And now it is still a working town, but with tourism as probably its primary source of employment and income.

The adjoining little fishing village on the other side of the causeway is nice, with fishmongers and butchers and greengrocers. There is a marina! (but not as we know them). It has a breakwater, with another pier, enclosed and safe from the elements but with no facilities (except water) or pontoons or anything. Like many Greek projects, the "marina" was started, but never finished and the wooden pontoons that once were there became too rickety and disappeared. What it did have were 3 or 4 large (about 1 metre in diameter) resident turtles that appeared quite happy swimming about the boats. There seemed to be a gathering of the clan - those boats that weathered the aforementioned storms having converged on the place.

Methinks the good bits are starting. Onwards and upwards.