Monemvasia

Monemvasia, a late antiquity Laconian settlement, has no ancient sites to speak of and today is known chiefly for its Byzantine churches. Although the old buildings had charm and the streets were nice to stroll through before it became too warm, I will remember it for a very memorable lunch on the pier--Greek salad, grilled shrimps, and a half-bottle of local white wine. The olive oil was incredibly good; it put the lighter oil on the dinner salad in the cruise ship's first-class restaurant to shame. Indeed the dinner fell far short of aspirations. After dinner we attended a showing of Captain Corelli's Mandolin, an innocuous feel-good movie. I'm convinced that the food, entertainment, lectures, and even excursions are designed to be non-threatening to the clientele, whose average age, I've heard, is 67. I should say something about the Greek elections, which took place on Sunday. Opposition parties predictably won a strong victory. Two of our guides, probably in violation of tour protocol, expressed vociferous disapproval of Angela Merkell, whose policies they blamed for everything. Myrto, one guide, predicted that the elections would result in a fractured Parliament unable to agree on a prime minister. She was certainly right in foreseeing that the coalition government would lose its majority--the two mainstream parties together won only 32% of the vote. On the following day, the other guide was horrified that the neo-Nazi party had won twenty seats, or 7%. She pointed out that there were factors the foreign press, blaming Greece for its wastefulness, does not take into consideration--for example, that Greece has no heavy industry and that the average Greek worker makes one-third the wage of the average German. For what it's worth, the international news has been dominated by the French election and the ouster of Sarkozy in favor of a Socialist who has promised to renegotiate the agreements forcing indebted governments to adopt austerity measures.