The good, the bad and the weird

We have 1.5 days left in Greece, and we have begun compiling our best/worst lists.  Not wanting to fixate so much on the worst, we have come up with a few other "est" categories for our amusement (at least).

Second best archeological site:  We all know the Acropolis is the best, but the second best was a split.  Randall voted for Sounio, and I thought Aphaia.  It may just be a tie because I don't think either of us disagree that both were phenomenal, but Randall voted for Sounio because he thought with the location there was never a chance not to have a good view and a good picture.  I went with Aphaia because of the level of detail on the structure.

Best Museum*:  Randall votes for the New Acropolis Museum; I thought it was the Ancient Olympic Games Museum.  But we are both leaving the possibility that the National Archeological Museum may trump both of these--after all, this is where everything that wasn't taken by Lord Elgin was whisked away, and the local museums would like their artifacts back!

Silliest Museum:  Thermpoylae.  Hands down, this is the silliest museum we have seen anywhere in the world!  The only things recovered at Thermopylae were a few spear and arrow heads, yet the museum was 3x the size needed to display such nominal artifacts!  In fact, one third of the museum was an entrance area/ticket/concessions and trivial gift shop, one third was administrative, and one third was the display which appeared to be a big room with nothing inside, which we suspect was for a video representation of the battle.  

Weirdest thing we saw: wild boar.

Best cat: Pythia, Delphi 

Runners up:  kittens on "cat alley", Nafplio

Best Hotel: Mirtali Art Hotel, Dodona

Runner-up: Grand Sarai, Nafplio 

Best town: Nafplio

Runner-up: Elefsina

Best Shopping:  Nafplio

Runner up:  none. Although there was one shop in Athens for decent jewelry, much of what we saw everywhere else was kitsch for tourists.

Weirdest delay:  bicycle race

Scariest road:  down from the Temple of Zeus in Messini

Best road:  A8 from Megara to Athens, even with the tolls

Best Beach:  Pylos.  It was in fact the only beach where I got my feet wet.

Best River of Hades:  Acheron.  Again, the only river where I got my feet wet.

Best story we really can't explain:  Where we thought Lethe was before we found it.

Best archeological site staff:  Temple of Zeus, Nemea.  They let us in without charge because the museum wasn't open, and we got to wander around past 3pm, because the site was listed to be open until 5pm normally.

Worst archeological site staff:  Kolonos, Aegina.  They claimed that because the museum was closed on Monday that the whole site was closed, even though there were clearly at least 6 individuals working there that day.

Best Restaurant: Mirtali Art Hotel, Dodona - hard to beat home cooking to order

Runner-up: Alalou, Nafplio

Honorable Mention: Taverna Platanos, Athens

Best Souvlaki: Lada Souvlaki, Elfesina

Best Breakfast: Mirtali Art Hotel, Dodona - the owner's mother just kept cooking and cooking

Runner-up: Grand Sarai - eggs made to order

Most unusual eating experience:  gyro place in Chalkadia that only had one item on the menu, and then only one type of gyros. Still don't know if it was lamb or pork...

Best Food Discovery:  saganaki.  How can you beat fried cheese?  Even better than mozzarella sticks.

Runner up:  house wine.  11% alcohol by volume means you can drink a half a kilo (yes, that's how it is measured) without really getting drunk.

Best Latte:  The New Acropolis Museum cafe

Runner up:  Mideia cafe, Livadia

Best day:  tie. Alifira and the day we got 4 our of 5 waters.

Third place: Livadia-- the day we got the 5th water

Best conversation with someone whose native language is English:  the archeologist completing her degree at IU who was conducting a tour of archeologists at Mykini about the site.

Best conversation with someone whose native language was not English:  the taxi driver on our second to last night who told us a real impact of the Greece austerity reforms and the taxation issues.

Best Greek word or phrase to know:  efcharisto.  Thank you (formal). 

Worst Greek word to learn:  chromatodromos (dirt road)

Best new lingo created:  straight-ish, which could describe any road which had less than a 45 degree turn from which in the turn you could see the next stretch of read for at least 50m.  Randall loved straight-ish roads.

Runner up.  Hairpin, grade 1.  These were less beloved.

Best TV stations available:  Fashion TV.  Great music, easy to pay attention to or ignore in the background while blogging.

Best TV show we watched:  Eurovision finals.  The voting was a veritable political analysis of which countries hate each other and which are still afraid of being invaded.

Most Awkward Moment:  Buying groceries in a market in Nafplio because there was a Roma in line in front of me with barely enough money for the soda that her children had attempted to steal (quite obviously to us and everyone else), and were now begging for money.  The store clerk obviously did not want to sell to them, and tried to wait on me even though I was waiting for the mother to finish her transaction.

Most useful item brought:  me:  Mythological Atlas of Greece.  Randall: MiFi.  I think I may have to agree with Randall's pick, but since we were in this together, without the two, we could not have accomplished this trip in any meaningful way.

Least useful item brought: me: sneakers.  I really should have known that I wasn't going to wear them.  Randall: shorts.  Traipsing through the Greek countryside really does require long pants.