We continue up the coast until we get to the top of the second finger and tie up in the Kalamata harbor. It is a large industrial city with not much charm but we did manage to find a very good Gyros restaurant. It is also the nearest port town to Mystra, one of the most important cities during the Byzantine period. We rented a car and drove about 45 minutes inland near the city of Sparta. The drive wound through steep verdant cliffs with spectacular scenery. Mistras was once the Byzantine province capital and it thrived during this time period. While a lot of the town is a pile of rocks where once great mansions rose up, it still has some beautifully preserved Byzantine churches some of which are still plastered and painted with religious icons in their interiors. There are also large public buildings and a large palace that is still standing. A lot of these structures are going through restoration, but the outsides attest to their once great grandeur.
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