Peloponesse coastal gems

Greece might well be delaying the debt repayments due last Friday and paying the whole month's dues at month-end (hmmm), but to the casual observer walking the streets of Nafplio, it's not obvious that there's anything amiss at all. This is an elegant place where the beautiful people gather, so our time there was strictly limited.

The town is gorgeously sited in the curve between the two peninsulars, the thumb and eastern finger of the Peloponnese and it truly is where the mountains meet the sea. What a gorgeous colour the sea is when the sun is shining.

We drank coffee whilst trying to assimilate this view across to the eastern finger, with the mountains of the thumb immediately behind us.

Legend has it that it was founded by Nauplios, a son of Poseidon, the sea God. It has an excellent harbour and thereby has been subjected to various struggles across the centuries, between Venetians, Byzantines, Ottomans and finally the Greeks gained control in 1822 and for a short time the town became the seat of government. I'm not sure that the young American student sitting behind us in the cafe appreciated all this. He was sounding quite fed up with life in Greek academia and was wanting to be back home.

For us it was time to move on from coffee to the main event, the first ice cream of the trip! It was worth the wait and if you have no other reason to detour to Nafplio, go for the ice cream.

We were having a lovely chat with the lady who served us; like many Greeks she was overjoyed to hear that we weren't German or Dutch but English! She clasped her hands together and pressed them to her heart. It's great to be loved. The moment was shattered however when a Greek schoolteacher approached, giving the proprietress a thirty second warning that she was about be besieged by a huge group of kids, all ready to tip out their purses for an ice cream.

So we left, clutching our single scoop cones ( well actually two flavours in half-scoops). The best ice cream €1.50 has over bought. On the left it's Fig and Vanilla and on the right it is Fig and Lemon "from the garden". #delicious

We then began a beautiful drive along the eastern side of the eastern finger, soaking up the views and then moving into the mountains for the night (see separate post), before descending to the coast near the southern tip of the finger at Monemvasia, a sort of Great Orme, joined to the mainland by an isthmus.

However, nothing prepares you for what happens when you drive the 1km from there, to the end of the road on the southern side of the rock. You park the vehicle and walk through a hole in the rock and into a truly car-free village, that is glued to the rockface, watched over by a huge castle. This is in the process of being renovated and is therefore out of bounds. However the views from the path underneath the castle are lovely.

The place is a maze of boutique hotels, cafès and tavernas; with plenty of restoration projects on-going and many more available. The heavy work was being done by mules, laden with gravel and sand, they were negotiating the cobbles alongside a few tourists. It's plain that we are here in a shoulder season and it's great.

We travelled no further along this first finger and instead, after Monemvasia, we turned inland to move around towards the middle finger, the Mani and our ultimate goal, the small resort of Stoupa on the west coast between Areopoli and Kalamata. This is a previous holiday destination and it was the holiday in 2003 that sowed the seed of a trip here in a Land Rover.