A Slice of Heaven in Nea Koroni

The highlight of my recent trip to Greece was the week I spent in Nea Koroni, a tiny seaside village in Messenia on the southwesternmost finger of the Peloponnesos, with Panos and his mother, Kristina.  Κυρία Kristina cooked for us every day, everything fried or doused in oil pressed from their own olives.  I and Panos pruned the lemon trees and worked in the garden, fed the chickens, did some sight-seeing, but most of our time was spent digesting Kristinaki’s scrumpdeliicious cuisine.  Each plate was enough to feed a small Greek village.  On my final day there, she made me BOTH moussaka and pastitsio. It was a week in heaven.

We spent one day at the stunningly beautiful Voidokilia beach.  Above the beach is Nestor’s Cave and above this are the ruins of a 13th c. Frankish castle.  The beach, named after and in the crescent shape of a cow’s stomach, is where Homer’s Telemachus was welcomed by King Nestor when searching for his father, Odysseus.  According to myth, Nestor’s Cave is where Hermes hid the cattle stolen from Apollo.

A short drive away are two palaces: the Palace of Nestor, a well-preserved Mycenaean palace from about 1300 BC; and the Fairytale Castle of Agrilis.  The latter was recently built by a Greek American who returned to his ancestral land and built this folly on the beach, as well as a miniature Eiffel Tower nearby.

Panos and his mom yell at each other across the courtyard, affectionately.  And also across the street to the neighbors.  All day there’s the sound of this cheerful banter.  They call each other “my child” in Greek.  Κυρία Kristina is one of the most delightful, friendly and happy people I’ve ever met.  She laughs at and is amused by everything, even the mosquitos that get zapped by her tennis racquet-shaped electric bug zapper.  She fed me giant plates of lovingly prepared meals, always followed by abundant seconds, and at every meal copious amounts of tsipouro and chilled rosé, poured from plastic liter bottles. She read my future from the Greek coffee grounds in my cup, detailing a circuitous path to love, fortune and adventure.  Everyone should have a Greek mother–I’ve finally found mine!