Hey everybody, since I last talked to you I parted ways with Anna and made my way to Athens to get new music equipment, and am now in Peloponnesia.

Thursday morning, I gave Anna a ride down to the beach before heading to Athens. It was good to catch up with her after all these years, and I’m hoping to catch her again back in Germany before I head back home in the fall/winter!

After parting ways with her, I made my way back to Athens to look for my stuff in pawn shops that were in the area of the break in. This was completely fruitless and pretty frustrating. I pretty quickly decided to abandon that idea for just trying to find some cheap new stuff. Also pretty frustrating. I looked at a bunch of different music stores, but nobody I checked had anything affordable that would work for me. Finally, one shop suggested another shop, and I found what I was looking for. I was so tired of going around, and even just being in Athens, that I bought everything I needed at that shop and then got the heck out of town! He cut me some good deals and I got most everything I still needed for a little over 200 euros. On the way out of the city, I also stopped at an electronics store to get a new tablet for my lyrics and found a decent one for 150 euros.

Once all that stuff was taken care of, I headed to the city of Cornith, where I had an Airbnb reserved for the night. Cornith was a nice little town, and it sits on the isthmus that connects Peloponnesia with mainland Greece. After checking in, I was eager to take all my new equipment down to the pedestrian zone a few blocks away to do a test run. Everything worked pretty well, and I came out with 18 euros in tips. The town was a little dead on Thursday night, but it felt good to be back in action on the busking.

The next day, I set off to do some exploring in the area around Cornith. I started by going to see the Cornith canal, which was built in the early 1900’s to allow boats to cross from the Gulf of Cornith to the Saronic Gulf without having to circumnavigate the entire Peloponnesian Peninsula. At the time it was sufficient, but now is completely inadequate for shipping given the size of today’s cargo ships.

After seeing the canal, I went to have a look at some remains of the ruined hexamilion wall a couple of kilometers away.

After seeing the wall, I took off for the archaeological site of Epidaurus, about an hour to the South. The drive was pretty scenic:

Upon arrival, I paid the 12 euros to go into the site and proceeded to walk around for an hour and check everything out. The highlight was definitely the ancient theater:

As a random aside, here are some signs I’ve come across over the last few days that I found amusing:

After viewing Epidaurus, I headed to my destination for the night of Nafplion. Upon arrival at Nafplion, I went straight up to the 18th century castle that overlooks the city and got some great views:

Unfortunately, there was no hostel in Nafplion. I for hotels and Airbnb’s, but they were all at least 60 euros a night, so I just made a last minute decision to crash in the car. I found a parking spot right next to a bar where I could get WiFi from my car, and decided that was going to be home for the night. After getting the logistics straightened out, I went into the city to play some music, and I had the best night I’ve ever had in Europe. 64 euros in tips and sold 2 CDs! It felt great to get that type of reception here.

After getting everything put away, I headed to the beach bar and hung out there for a while until I was tired enough to pass out in the car. The place was packed and had a pretty cool vibe.

In the morning, I went back to the same beach bar because I wanted to have a swim and also because I noticed some showers there the night before. Everybody else just used them to rinse off the saltwater, but I took a straight up shower there haha. Gotta do what you gotta do!

I pretty much just got rested up during the day and played again on the street tonight. I was originally supposed to have a show set up at the bar I’m camping out in front of, but there is a street festival tonight and literally no one at the bar. So we mutually agreed that I’d be better off playing the street since they were only paying me 40 euro and I’d have been playing to an empty bar. So I went back down to near the same place where I busked last night and made 69 Euros in tips and sold a CD in 2 hrs. Beat last night’s total for best money of the whole trip! People were hanging around, shooting video, and coming up to me and complimenting my singing. It really wound up being a fun night to busk.

After I got everything put away, I decided to take a little walk further into the old town, since I’d mostly hung out around my little area the whole time I’ve been in Nafplion. It was kinda cool seeing it after dark, but the pics are not as great because of the lighting.

Nafplion has been great to me, but tomorrow it’s time to get on down the road. I’ll be driving to Sparta in the morning. I have a hotel room tomorrow night there (they are cheaper in that area), so I’ll get a much needed break from the car. However, I am happy about saving about 120 euros on a room here, where everything was so expensive.

Talk to you guys again soon!