After the unpredictable open-and-close schedule we experienced during Christmas weekend, we decided to throw caution to the wind and get off the island and explore a little. The plan was to head up the coast to Parga as the town looks like a Greek version of one of the Cinque Terre islands, take a bunch of pictures from the coast back at the pretty painted buildings, and rely less on things needing to be open necessarily.
On the road up, though, we got distracted by one of those dang brown signs that indicate historical sites, and in particular, this one for an ancient town built by Augustus after defeating Marc Antony of all things.
(Not exactly the type of brown signs we got back home.)
The “town” has a few sites that you can visit, the primary of which is an ancient theater (which was sadly closed on this visit), but also a giant wall (from the Byzantine era occupation), a site with an old Roman road, villa, and church with amazing tiled floors, and even some old aqueducts.
We were the only people in the whole area. Could have been because of the holiday weekend? Could have been that this type of thing just isn’t on the list of locals to check out. Might not be on the list for tourists in the summer either — but it should be. Crazy to think about the skill (and time) that it took to lay out those tile floors and frescoes out of tiny individual colored stones.
With the sun dropping and daylight fading, we threw in the towel on Parga and drove into Preveza instead. Preveza is, I guess, the local “big town” — about a half hour from the island, home to an international airport that hosts a bunch of low-cost European airlines like Ryanair — but still is only about 20 thousand people. It has a nice harbor and an “old street” pedestrian mall, and we found a little cafe in the center of town, right under a clock tower built during the Venetian occupation of the area.
mezédhes | μεζέδηεσ | small appetizer snacks
In this part of Europe / Asia / Africa, it’s customary to get a little plate of snacks with your drinks in a cafe. We grabbed a seat and ordered a beer and cider and were rewarded with a little plate full of boiled pork and potatoes, cheese, tomatoes and cucumbers, and some nice bread. A nice treat and surprisingly necessary, since we were both pretty hungry. Helped hold us over to get back to the island and grab souvlaki for dinner.
Cat count: ∞ (Preveza has more cats than people I am convinced)