NAFPLIO the Town That Made Us Fall In Love With Greece

NAFPLIO the Town That Made Us Fall In Love With Greece

We’ve never really been interested in going to Greece. It sounded hot, tiring, crowded, hard to get to, just not our thing. But we ended up going on a family vacation in Turkey. And we thought, well, here we are. We’re in the area. Why not? Why don’t we just go see Tur go see um Greece, get it over with, and then we can just move on and do something else. So, we ended up going uh to Athens for a couple days and then we wanted to pick a place that was on the water because if you’re going to Greece, you got to be on the water. You got to do what everybody else does. So, we picked Naflio. And the reason we picked that town is that it was only a little over an hour drive from Athens. And for somebody who gets violently seasick, that sounded like a pretty good option. We ended up booking a really really little cute travel apartment uh about five blocks from the waterfront and it was it was just so cute. It had been recently renovated. It looked like a little five-star spa apartment and it ran only a little over a hundred a night. Uh so we thought, “Wow, you can really get a lot for your money here in in Naflio.” And so then we walked down oh about maybe five blocks to the to the waterfront and it was beautiful of blue waters, not too crowded. The weather in April was fantastic. A little bit of cool breeze, just lovely. So we thought, well, okay, maybe this isn’t going to be so bad. And we had heard that there’s a really nice walk along the coast. So we thought, well, let’s just let’s just try that. Let’s just walk a little bit of it and see see what we think. And it was a a very broad um tiled pathway, just beautiful. And we started walking. We went through past little swimming leos and restaurants. But then we got to a a a gate across the path. And we’re like, “Oh no, this is one of the few things in this town that we really caught our eye.” But it turns out you just scooted around the little gate and kept walking. It was probably, I’d say, about a kilometer, maybe a kilometer and a half, right on the the rugged coast. You could hear the waves and you could hear the the uh the gulls. It was so beautiful. It was like quintessential Greece. And we ended up liking that walk so much that we took it every single day that we were there. So then we thought, well, let’s let’s explore the the old town. You know, maybe it’ll be okay. And it turned out to be absolutely phenomenal. There was lots of lots and lots of of buildings. It was unusual in that it wasn’t higglypiggly medieval town. It was more on a grid, so it was easy to navigate. It was flat, which is very unusual for a lot of lot of small towns in Europe, but especially in Greece. And it would be perfect for somebody with a with mobility issues. And so we ended up just loving to explore the all the little nooks and crannies of the town. Lots of cool shops, lots of um great restaurants. And what was also nice, there was some really neat museums to see, lots of history there. Um, it had been occupied by the Ottoman Turks. The Venetians had been there. So, there was just bits and pieces of all those different cultures. So, we visited two fortresses that are located on the mountains overlooking Noflio. The first was Palami Fortress, which was used by the Venetians between 1686 and 1715. Many people take the approximately a thousand stairs up the mountain to the fortress, but surprisingly we decided to drive up to the top. The history and the architecture was very interesting and the views were spectacular. We took the maze of roads and sidewalks up the mountain to see the other fortress which was the Acronaflia Castle which is actually made up of three different castles starting in the 4th century BC. It’s not as developed, but it was just lovely, very interesting architecture. And as in the other fortress, the views were just spectacular and it was free. We checked out the city museum of Naflio that is located right on the the main square. Um, it was very small, but the it was a very high quality artifacts that were all found in the Naflio region. And fortunately, all the uh captions and descriptions were in English, too. The Naflio War Museum was an attraction we really weren’t too sure about, but we took a risk, and we were glad we did. It was fascinating. Staffed by Greek soldiers who were willing to talk about Greece’s difficult past, but were very, very proud of their country and happy to talk about the future that they look forward to. On a lighter note, we visited the Folklore Museum in the downtown of Naflio. very relaxing, just very lovely. It was artifacts and costumes from the Pelpineese region which Naflio is located in. Uh just a great place to go and if it was hot, it’d be amazing. Well, the moral to the story of our travel time in Naflio is it’s really good to try new things. We were so glad that we took a risk and even though reluctantly we ended up going to Naflio. It was probably one of the most beautiful towns anywhere that we’ve been anywhere in Europe. It was just wonderful. The people were friendly, the food was amazing, the water gorgeous, and the attractions were just spectacular. It was everything and more than we could have ever have hoped for. We’re Jan and Marion with Retirement Budget Travel. Thank you so much for watching and we will see you on our next adventure.

Join us as we unexpectedly explore the wonders of Nafplio Greece! Despite initial hesitations, we found ourselves immersed in rich history & vibrant culture. Don’t miss our travel vlog as we discover top things to do in Nafplio! @retirementbudgettravel699 #travel #ocean #mediterranean #familyvacation #retirementtravel #wheelchairtravel