Patras & Around.....

Patras is the third largest city in Greece with a quarter of a million inhabitants, located northwest from Kalavryta (1.5hrs), 215km west of Athens.

The city is built at the foothills of Mount Panachaikon (and home of panachaiki, Grigoria dad’s football team) and looks out towards the gulf of Patras. The city is known as the ‘Gate to the West’, as it is the main port connecting Greece with Italy and the rest of western Europe,
Patras is also home to the University of Patras where Grigoria’s aunt Tina is a Geology professor.

Throughout Greece, Patras is best known for its carnival, which takes place every year in the early spring and has crews and floats from all over the Peloponnese and Greece.

Today we decided to head into the city centre and by chance we managed to time the finish of the Patras marathon before heading out to Achaia Claus winery (http://www.greekwinemakers.com/czone/winemakers/Ahaia.shtml) which dates back to 1860.

The place was fantastic, certainly the oldest and probably one of the best winery’s I’ve been too. Its historic old stone / timber building village had an amazing atmosphere and overlooked the city and sea.

As our tour guide showed us around the complex Grigoria acted as an interpreter (by accident) for others & myself in the group! I appreciated it and others did too! Especially the owner who by the end gave Grigoria a complimentary bottle of wine for her services, which was added to the couple we bought before heading back into Patras city centre.

For lunch we went at the sailing club fish restaurant for another amazing meal of fresh fish and in true Greek style we then rested for a couple of hours.

Afterwards we headed out to one of the famous ‘summer’ cinemas, which seemed like a good idea at the time but only 5mins in to the film it started raining! Luckily it stopped quickly enough for us to continue watching the film – Pirates of Caribbean 2.

To end our big day Grigoria’s Aunt Tina put on a big cheese platter, wow the food in Greece!