Interlude 2. Gavalou: September 6–9
We planned our 2024 trip through Greece with breaks throughout, during which we could stay in apartments and live semi-normal lives for a few days between multi-day hikes. Trekking Hellas hikes are extremely well-organized and the hotels are always comfortable and hospitable, but it is tiring to move from place to place every night, and keeping up with laundry can be a challenge.
So every week or two, we’d stop someplace, live in a house, and catch our breaths. We picked our break locations for geographic convenience, historical interest, and nostalgia. These interludes were just as much a part of the trip as the hikes.
This morning I was awakened from my jet-lagged sleep by a phone call from my friend Georgia, calling from Gavalou. I could hear a rooster in the background. Georgia and her husband George Coundoussias live in Greenville near us, but George still owns a house in his native Gavalou. We were planning to spend the weekend with them in the village. I assured her that we’d be along that afternoon.
We first had to collect our rental car. Thessaloniki’s airport is on the east side of the city, so it’s not a great place to collect a car if you want to drive west. Chris had reserved a mid-sized SUV (read: station wagon) at the Sixt car rental agency by the port, which would put us on the road out of town;
We were on the road by 10:30, with only minimal difficulty getting out of town and onto the highway. We started out on the A2 highway, which crosses northern Greece from northeast to southwest. This gave us a great overview of the Macedonian terrain–it’s mountainous! In Ioannina, we switched to the A5 to head south along the west coast.
Gavalou is a small village (population around 1300) in central Greece, about half an hour north of the Gulf of Corinth.
Friday night, the town held a folk dancing festival at the high school. The festivities went well into the not-so-wee hours; I highly recommend earplugs!
On Saturday, we had an outing to Nafpaktos, the site of a famous naval battle between Athens and Sparta in the Peloponnesian War. It is also where the “Children of Heracles” were supposed to have crossed over to invade the Peloponnese and found the Dorian race.
That evening, Gavalou held another festival, this one for folk singing.
We’d planned to get up early to go to the monastery on Sunday morning, but that didn’t happen. Instead, we drove up to Thermos, where Chris and I visited the archaeological site and museum while our hosts sat at a taverna and drank coffee.
This was George’s last night in Gavalou, so he hosted a big dinner for all his friends and family.
We ate a lot of french fries. Each platter of roast meat came on a bed of fries, and our friends orders many “side orders” (read, huge platters) of fries. They were excellent fries!
On Monday morning, George and Georgia headed to Athens for their flight home the next day. Chris and I bade them a fond farewell and headed back north to Meteora.