Red Mythos, Mr Bean and Austerity

Casting aside the doom laden FCO travel advice, I travel to Athens to visit my inheritance aka my Big Fat Moneypit Greek Ancient Ruin (please feel free to rearrange that into some acronym or other).  By the way acronym comes from the Greek words acro, meaning high, and nym  meaning nym - thus proving that virtually all pretentious words used in English come from Greek.

Whilst browsing the Διαδίκτυο free of charge in Syntagma Square I discover the pleasure of Mythos Red, a sort of Newcastle Brown for the thinking man (on holiday in Greece).

A BMW R75/7 purrs past for the third time as we eat at the most traditional family restaurant that we can find, the rider wearing  the obligatory crash helmet in the customary way.

There now follows a little piece concerning the Corinth Canal whose construction was started in AD 64 by Nero and completed just in time for the 2004 Olympic games.  The logic for this is that Mrs Nikos arrived and wanted to visit her winter cottage that nestles high in the mountains of Arcadia and the journey involves passing over the Corinth canal - geddit??

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The charming hamlet of Isthmia sits at the entrance to the Saronic gulf where a specially constructed sinking bridge allows tourist buses to sample over priced fare either in the prefecture of Corinthia or in Attica (actually both sides may be in Corinthia but as nobody ever reads this stuff so what the hell).

 

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The bridge has just been raised to allow me to take a down the canal low level photograph - the canal is blocked.

And here we are  - a  view towards the Gulf of Corinth complete with a distant bungy jumper.

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The obligatory dog with a collar

We travel on the E65 through Argolis towards Arcadia - the sign posts have been renewed but due to austerity measures distances cannot be displayed.

 Chateau Mrs Nikos

 The way to the local (actually the way back from the local)

At the local we are treated to Mr Bean on a TV nestling in with the bottles of Metaxa -  funding for decent programmes on Greek TV has been terminated due to austerity measures (in fact they have never had decent programmes).  The locals don't quite know what to make of Mr Bean but they seem impressed when I tell them that I once studied at the same University as Rowan Atkinson - they can relate to Manchester United quite well as football is a national obsession.

 This is the view from the coast to the village where Chateau Mrs Nikos is located.

 On the way back to the airport we stumble across a Polish HOG fest.