Sunday, December 2, 2012

Greece: Map of the Katakolo / Pyrgos Area

The MAP tab at the top of the page will show you a Google map of Katakolo, where I live, and Pyrgos, a city of possibly as many as fifty thousand in the general area.  It's a fascinating place that has not at all been taken over by big box department stores but rather is oriented very much toward individuals.  It's a very compact city with tiny streets and sometimes a tremendous number of vehicles on them.  Driving it on a scooter can be hair-raising but everything on top is gone so there's no reason to worry.

Katakolo is really tiny and is very quiet, except when the cruise ships come to port when the streets fill with color and people.  The biggest attraction apart from the obvious in the beaches is that the Olympia archaeological site is not far from here and, once I'm fully mobile, you will start seeing reports and pictures from many or perhaps all of them.

You might guess that Pyrgos has a long history that disappears into antiquity but that doesn't appear to be true.  There are multiple locations near here that are valid for serious archaeology but I haven't, thus far, located any references to principle characters in Pyrgos prior to the early 19th Century.  Typically we humans build over the top of previous cities and the only way to find the history is to dig it out of the ground but Greece does not appear to do that.  Perhaps in time I will discover why Greece gives the past this kind of respect when it didn't typically happen anywhere else.

Maybe you're wondering where to find the drugs and the hookers but I haven't seen any evidence of either.  I haven't looked but I'm not likely to start any time soon so you'll need another reference source on those.  In a previous article, Greece Rocks Hard at the Melrose Rock Bar in Pyrgos, you'll see that I didn't see any evidence of stoners and there were loads of musicians there.  When musicians aren't getting high, it's a good chance very few others are doing it either.  As to hookers, well, you're on your own there.

There's much more to come as I'm not leaving any time soon.  I love it here.

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