Sounio, Athens, Corinth, Sparta, Kalamata

After breakfast this morning we left Sounio to drive to Kalamata. We drove around by Lavrio to head up the middle of the peninsula to avoid the center of Athens. Heading across the Isthmus we discovered that there was a canal which now separates the Pelopenese from the European continent. We ate at a nice lunch at the southern end before heading on to Sparta. Sparta is just a regular town in the middle of some beautiful mountains. Sadly we arrived to late in the day to see their Acropolis ruins, but we were able to visit an olive museum. Zara declared it to be boring and left with Maxwell to go to the playground, but Cara really enjoyed it. The drive across the mountains from Sparta to Kalamata was probably the highlight though. Mount Taygetus is nearly 8000 feet abve sea level and so we saw a completely different climate than the rest of Greece. Think maple and chestnut trees rather than grapevines and olive trees. It was still a lot of limestone and sandstone like Attica though, so we saw some cool cliffs and caves. Some of them are available for camping and there were copious climbing offshots. Also there were goats. Goats are cute, but they poop alot and aren't so good at moving out of the way when cars come by. Kalamata is as pretty as we'd hoped. The AirBnB we've got is on a cliff across the bay from downtown. Tomorrow the adventure continues...