No Messing at Messini…28th November…

It’s a lovely day, though hazy, so it’s a good time to take a trip up to Ancient Messini.  We think of taking The Dog with us, but this turns out to be more complicated than we thought. First of all, by putting the lead on him he thinks we’re going for a walk. We encourage him into the van, but as soon as there’s half a chance and before I can shut the door, he’s jumped out. Because, of course, he’s ready for his walk. No amount of explaining to him that his walk today will be up in the mountains (in one of the places, no less, that the famous Dog, or was that God, Zeus was born) persuades him that he wants to get in the van. Eventually we coax him in, and we’re all set, with makeshift dog-guard of a camping chair blocking the aisle. We begin to drive off, but…who is this virtually sitting under the clutch pedal? Come here, I say, which, being a cheerful obedient thing, he does. Very “here”, I would say. Actually, extremely enthusiastically. Actually, on my knee. It’s no good, we agree, we will have to leave him behind and walk him later…

A drive across the mountains and we arrive at the beautiful village of Ancient Messini…

 Right, we say, first we’ll hop up to Zeus’ temple…

 …which is a little more challenging than we had imagined…

 …not purely on account of the prickly cactuses… It seems like  miles…and I think I might expire…

 

Eventually, however, we reach the top, and the church, all locked up and no-one to take our money, had we been proffering any…

 

It’s quite amazing to think of people building up here all those centuries ago…

 To return to the village, we decide to walk down “the road” – which is a brown earth track and again, rather further than we think. Are we glad to see our van with the sandwiches and water inside!

Gluttons for punishment, we head for the ruins of the old City which includes theatre, gymnasium, citadel, market place, etc, etc. This place is amazing… 

  

We are so tired we can hardly do the place justice, and certainly don’t see it all, but what a sense of history here…Then it’s a quick café frappé on the terrace of a fantastic little café, before heading back through the hills (Wendy almost gets the sack when we think our road is about to turn into a dust track through goats, chickens and olive groves). Oh, and we’ve still got to walk That Dog…

 

2 thoughts on “No Messing at Messini…28th November…”

  1. What dog?

    Here I am catching up with your blog and here are you in Greece. Had to scroll down a few “older posts” and trail you through 5 countries in a month. Exhausting (for me). Love the No messing in Messina etc.

Leave a Reply to Boon Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

*

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.