Honey and churches and apricots and steep hills and an ancient theater and a huge feast

What a day yesterday was!

We started with a crazy 14% grade uphill, yes, I do need all the gears on my bike! Getting back to the main road, we finally felt that we had begun to bicycle tour. Traffic was light, and the scenery spectacular, but we had to earn every bit of it as the hills never ended (though no more 14%ers).

Along the way I found a guy selling honey from his home. He had lived for qq years in Brisbane, Australia, and regrets returning to Greece. "Australia, best country in world" he says. Well, his honey is delicious anyway. After tasting the fir, thyme and orange blossom honey, the choice was easy for me, the fir honey is less sweet and delicious! He also threw in a little (but not that little) jar of thyme honey with honey-comb. Alix went crazy over all the honey products. We may need to increase our daily budget to include a kilo of honey for Alix.

Greece is dotted with little churches in honour of this saint or that saint I happen to have a map in my GPS that shows the location of ALL of these little tiny churches, and they make wonderfull little sancuaries where one can stop for a break. We had lunch at one such church with a view of the sea, and stayed overnight at another one. I lit a candle in each.

Near the end of the day we visited the ancient Epidaurus (epEEdavro in Greek) theater. Spectacular and huge. I'm sure it could fit many thousands of people. Strange thing though, it was a little confusing as there are many Epidauruses - Epidauri? There's New Epidaurus where I bought the honey, Old Epidaurus, Ancient Epidaurus, Upper Epidaurus AND the Ancient Epidaurus Theater. These are all in different places, not very far apart, but quite different places. Oh, and there's also a little Epidaurus theater in Old Epidaurus. Confusing.

So to end our day, after the theater, we went into Ligourio town and ordered some dinner. The man attending to us told me that they had tzatziki, salad, fries, feta cheese and pork chops. I repeated that back to him to make sure I hadn't missed anything, and then ordered a pair of pork chops for Alix and I. Well, my Greek must not be very good, or we looked very hungry, or it was just a simple miscommunication, but we got EVERYTHING! I couldn't believe it, but we ate it all.

A little down the road we found a church for Saint Nicholas and here we slept.