The Castle

FALL HAS FINALLY ARRIVED IN MOLYVOS!

Oh Fall, I've been waiting so impatiently for you! 

Everyone you meet in the street is saying, "It's winter! It's winter!" because it's so cold suddenly....you know, now that the temperature is in the low 20s.........

Of course I'm being sarcastic, as usual, but I'm not joking when I say people are calling this 'winter'. And I'm really not joking that the temperature is still around 22 - 24 degress celcius. A lot of people are wearing sweaters and jackets already and EVERYONE is talking about how cold it is. 

Everyone but ME 

I could.not.be.HAPPIER!

I can finally leave the house during the day without feeling like I'm going to faint in the street from sun stroke!

I can finally wear normal clothes, other then just underwear....and I've stopped feeling like even the underwear is too much!

I can finally sneeze without breaking a sweat!

I feel like THIS is perfect beach weather, but even I have to admit the sea is pretty cold now so swimming is not on my list of things to do at the moment 

But building sand castles, ABSOLUTELY! 

Speaking of castles, Eleni has been very curious lately about the castle here in Molyvos. Where ever we are in the village, she always has to see if the castle is visable from there and if it is she says, "Oh look! There's the castle again! Eleni made it, the castle!".......that last bit is a little confusing but I'm assuming she's talking about making sand castles. Or she's telling us about her past life as a castle builder. Either way, the girl tells a good story! 

Anyway, to celebrate the sudden change in temperature, and the slight drop in population due to the tourist season almost coming to a close, Eleni and I went on our first castle adventure today!

(and yes, this was the first time inside the castle for BOTH of us. Sad, I know)

Sitting at the entrance with a giant chocolate bar that a stranger handed her without asking me first.

It was a fight and a half getting her to hand over that chocolate bar, obviously

But luckily she forgot all about it by the time we got home

....and I ate it while she napped....

Yeah yeah, go ahead and judge but just remember she's only 2 and I'm pregnant with twins,
who do you think needs a giant chocolate bar more??
DUH!
And just so you stop thinking I'm the meanest mom ever,
she still had a cookie when she woke up from her nap.
And then she bounced off the walls for 4 hours straight....
SEE!
 I clearly made the right choice by eating the chocolate bar

Small room inside the castle that has lots of information and history about 

the castle, Molyvos and Lesvos

I didn't get to read anything because I was too busy watching Eleni run around like a maniac
but I do know that the the original 'castle' (although it probably wasn't much of a castle at the time) was built in the 5th century.
Over the centuries it was invaded and taken over many times by many different groups of people:
Persians, Turks, Venetians, to name a few.
Each group of course did 'renovations' while they had control of the castle, and as we all tend to have our own particular taste and style, this of course influenced the architecture and design each time, making it what we see today:
an ancient, eclectic, and very cool, pile of rocks!

There are a ton of articles about the history of the Molyvos castle, if you're interested.
A quick google search will bring up a bunch of them.
All of them far more intellectual than my own description here, but hey
I'm no genius when it comes to architecture, nor am I a history buff
....which is really unfortunate because if I was, this blog would probably be a heck of a lot more interesting!

Excited to explore and VERY excited to finally be inside the castle

This is the stage, seating area just ahead

There are a lot of events that happen inside the castle throughout the year;

concerts, theatre, cultural exhibitions

One of Antonis' favourite stories to tell is one about his first time getting drunk
It was here, in the castle, at a concert
He was 15 and drank an entire bottle of ouzo
(a 2-6 us Canadians would call it, however other normal people would know it as a 750ml bottle)
I can't remember the name of the singer that was playing that night, a famous Greek guy,
Antonis remember's who it was
not surprisingly, that's about all he can remember from that night.
This is one of his shorter stories....

Still inside the castle, even though there's trees growing in it.
I'm not sure what I expected, but I didn't expect to see trees.
I think I thought there'd just be a bunch of rocks, which there are a lot of rocks of course
but it's really kind of peaceful and park-like inside with trees and bushes and benches to sit on.
New benches.
Not 5th century benches.

Sitting in the audience, facing the stage

Since we were surrounded by totally un-fenced ledges that drop off way down into the village below

I was more then a little nervous about letting Eleni explore by herself,

and I definitely wasn't taking my eyes off her to read any of the information boards

So I decided to turn this into a lizard hunt!

Pretty view, but we stayed a safe distance away from the edge

Except for one little alcove with just a tiny hole in it that I was confident Eleni couldn't fit through

Sea view

After searching the ancient piles of rocks

Eleni finally had a face to face encounter with a lizard!

I know this is nearly impossible to see, and I couldn't get a close up of the lizard because he ran away soon after this,

but you can see the small wall of rocks, and over to the the left of the photo there is one orange rock stacked on top of that wall,

just behind that orange rock, poking his head out and checking out Eleni

is a small green and black Bearded Dragon lizard.

Eleni was thrilled!

And I think the lizard was too.....

until Eleni climbed onto the wall and started to chase him yelling

"ELA LITTLE DINOSAUR!!!"

("ela" is "come here" in Greek)

It was really nice but I'll have to go again sometime because I would actually like to learn a bit more about the history of the site. The information is all there but I was a bit too preoccupied to read about anything. The view is absolutely stunning, but again that's something I'll have to see another time because I was too nervous to take Eleni near the edge or even take my eyes off her for a second. We had a ton of fun looking for lizards, but I think we'll stick to building sand castles for now. I'll bring her back when I finally feel comfortable enough to have her near heights...so when she's about 45 or so, that should be fine......

Overall, it's a beautiful place. Peaceful, calm....a bit creepy in some areas, but I'm sure there's hundreds of years of ghosts all jammed in there haunting the place. But if you know me, you know I love that kind of thing and I'd go back at night if I could just to hunt ghosts! Hmmm, Halloween is just around the corner too!