An alarm piercing the night

An alarm piercing the night (for four thirty am remains steadfastly 'night time' by reason of it being dark and populated only by those out clubbing), that alarm is never welcome, and even less so when set by you yourself, and therefore one which you have no option but to rise for. The right is always reserved to swear at it in the most ungracious terms, but that early morning flight is not going to wait for want of another few hours of sleep.

The journey itself is smooth. the taxi driver mercifully uncommunicative at this early hour; the passage through security both liquid and beep free; flight broadly on time and tailwinded as we aim towards southern climes. There should not be a hint of surprise (though it will always persist) that modern technology can plan and execute without fault, but everything required of our online agent is delivered with apparent ease, and sense of foreboding dissipating as we receive our conveyance for the next 10 days (a chipped and unloved Toyota Yaris), grateful for the large 'AC' in the central can't-miss-it dial, because we've arrived in Athens, and the expected heat has certainly not disappointed.

The next few hours see us looping north, veering west, completely missing the unmissable Corinth Canal (which makes the list for the return trip unmissables), and striking south for Sparta-flanked Mystras. The smoothness continues despite a wrinkle created by the strangeness of sitting on the wrong side of the car (all my alignment points of reference being reset along the way), and the instructions for how to drive through Sparta being succinct with audax cycle style brevity.

Sparta itself (on our brief passage) reminds me of countless ramshackle towns or cities which have suffered forced or negligent descents from historic greatness. The roads are worse than anything experienced in Pristina or Tbilisi or Beirut, and Leonidas Street conveys none of the grandeur of its titular hero. You'd struggle to suggest it even managed to convey the grandeur of Gerard Butler.

Disappointment and worry carry us the remaining few kilometres to Mystras. The old, abandoned town is, so it is written, dramatic and beguiling, a Byzantine wreck that still commands the view over the site of 'New' Mystras. The worst is expected, if not eagerly anticipated.

Fears prive, with expected relief, unfounded and unnecessary, as we happen upon a small town, clinging in a more relaxed fashion than could be imagined to a not-insignificant slope, looking pretty in the sun, and wearing neat red-tile hats. The overall effect is of a small French town, with a square (in reality a triangle) arranged around an immense Plane tree (from the base of which springs, incongruously, a tap with a permanently flowing stream of water).

The illusion is complete when, darkness having fallen and the distant sky having played out a brief but entertaining show of lightning, the view from our evening dinner table on the Triangle is momentarily blotted out by a large tour bus disgorging its French tourist contents onto the pavement.

Très belle cette ville, underneath the foothills of the Taygetos, rising sharply to heights far exceeding the Munros at home; with the ubiquitous feral cats cruising the evening café tourists; the locals freewheeling downhill on scooters, stopping to share a kaϕe with friends; dogs barking all through the night; and elderly French tourists in the room next door seemingly intent on rearranging, and re-rearranging the furniture.