Day 31 - Monday 3 June - Olympia

Monday 3 June

I  could find no tours which left from Patras to Olympia, so I decided we should hire a car. So we picked it up soon after 9am, and headed south.  We had our googlemap, but I still missed the turn onto the highway, so we drove down the coast road for a while instead.  But we eventually got where we should have been, and proceeded on our way to Olympia.  There were quite a few buses in the carpark, but the site is quite big, so the people were spread around.  Some of the archaeology relates to the very early times, some to the early (BC) Greek religions and gods,  some to the Olympic Games and some to the Romans who came later.

A model of the site in antiquity.

What it looks like now.

Some fancy brickwork.

Phideas' workshop, where he made the big statue of Zeus for the temple.

This was an interesting dug-out shape, which when the Romans came they filled with water and made a big pool.

 The 2 places on the list to absolutely find were the stadium, and the temple where the vestal virgins light the flame, and we had to do some re-enactments.  

 Running  (I did 2 laps - across, not lengthways)

Javelin

 Discus

 Pole vault

 Long jump

 The Temple of Hera, where the priestess lights the Olympic torch using the sun.

But by then, we had been hit by the MSC Musica cruise ship, swarms of them with numbers stuck to their shirts, and following guides with numbered sticks.  We had just about finished by then, and so headed up into town for late lunch, which ended up being even later because of a mix-up with ordering.

Then we went back to the site to the 2 museums, the archaeological, and the Olympic,

and finally we followed an advertising banner and found the ‘free’ Archimedes museum, which is a private engineer’s work to research, make and display many early Greek inventions.

By then it was nearly 18:00, but we still decided to go on an alternate road through the mountains.  It was winding and narrow, and googlemaps had given up by then so I was often guessing – wrong – but we got back to the Budget office at 20:25.

We walked back home, via a supermarket, but chose to go to the laundromat first, so by the time that was done, and the washing hung, we sat down to eat at 22:45.  Bed was very welcome.