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.

Day 30 - Sunday 2 June - Corinth

Sunday 2 June

Nikos, the taxi driver we meet at the station yesterday evening,  turned up at 9:30 as promised.  He whisked us off to Isthmia, to the bridges over the canal, and waited while we walked across and back and took photos of boats processing underneath.

 

 He had made phone calls, and had booked us onto a small cruise boat that was leaving at about 10:30.  So he zoomed off, and we waited, then we went too.

 
It takes about 25 mins to motor through the canal, and you have to line up and go when the canal master tells you to.  At either end there is a low level bridge that sinks to allow boats to sail over it - quite a different approach to most bridges that lift up. 

 

 So we watched the group of Asian girls taking selfies all the way, while we took pictures of caves, rock strata, bridges, a bungy man, gum trees, other boats, and goats.

 

 

Nikos was waiting, and off we went to Acrocorinth, a great lump of rock 575m high that towers above the site of ancient Corinth.  There has been fortifications there since ancient history, but those there now are from around C12.

There are 3 levels of gates to get through (which took 10 mins to walk) and inside is just wild scrub with pathways, and very little in the way of maps and no direction arrows.  We wanted to get to a high point to look over the isthmus, but there was no way we could do that in only 1 hour, that part being furthest away. So we looked over ancient Corinth and the Gulf, then David decided to have a go to the next crest, so I walked back past some old buildings, and we got back to Nikos by our appointed time.

 At the second gate

 To the peak

 Lots of pretty flowers

Inside St Demitrios' Church, with some very old faded paintings.

At the bottom of the hill we joined the tourists in Ancient Corinth, which is pretty much the same as any of these ruined cities - lots of marble pieces laid out, some discernible buildings and explanation boards written in several languages, but most using archaeological and historical terms that most wouldn't understand.

 

 The last stop in our St Paul trifecta

We ate our sandwiches as we walked, and were back to Nikos in 45mins to ask about the theatre, which appeared on the maps to be a bit further away.  He said it was not there, and started out from his parking spot, so we had little choice but to jump in.

The Peirene Spring, with water still flowing from the site on Acrocorinth where Pegasus pawed the ground and the water poured forth.

So we went back to the modern world, picked up our bags and were at the station with over an hour  to spare (which could have been used on the fortress).  We retraced our train and bus route from yesterday,

 

 The Odontotos track through Diakofto village

and kept going to Patras, where we found our tiny apartment.  We went for a walk to check on our hire car for tomorrow, and stopped in at a nearby luscious cake shop.

Day 29 - Saturday 1 June - Kalavryta

We headed off to the station by taxi, and got a train to Kiato, which is currently the end of the line.  Europe have funded a new rail extension to Patras, and this appears almost finished except for electrification, but there are political problems at the far end, and it might be 2020 before it's done.  So at Kiato we got a bus to Diakofto.

Here in 1889 they started to build a cog railway along the river gorge and up into the high hinterland.  It has been running ever since, first with a steam loco, and now a diesel.  The trip is 22 km, the tracks rise 750m, and it takes 1 hour.  Lots of twists and turns, tunnels and bridges, the river on one side then the other, the gorge steep or land-slidey, tiny stations and farm and little shrines.

 

 At Kalavryta we walked through to town plaza which has a train track embedded into the pavers.  Lots of cafes and souvenir shops.  We had lunch at one, then went to the Holocaust museum. 

 

 In 1943, the Germans determined to punish the area for the resistance that they had provided, and the deaths of some German soldiers.  Many villages were looted and torched.  In December they came to Kalavryta, and after a few days of tension, rounded up the population into the school building, separating them as they came through.  The men were taken out and shot, the women, children and elderly locked in and the building set on fire.  Almost 1200 died that day, and about 2000 in all.  The museum is in that reconstructed school, and there is a memorial on the site of the men's massacre.

This memorial at the museum depicts a woman using a blanket to drag her husband's body away from the massacre site.

We retraced our way back to Corinth,

 Just after the passing loop, the other train heading up.

 Some choose to walk, rather than ride.

 The big rock overhang, and what it looks like from above, by Google.

Going back on the bus
 

Strange bare hills along the way.
and squatters camps, with houses made of corrugated iron, or chipboard covered with sheet plastic.

 

and got a taxi again.  We had decided that a hire car might be the way to go tomorrow, but the group of drivers at the station discussed our situation, made a phone call, and then decided that we would get nothing because of the election tomorrow.  So one enterprising guy offered to be our driver for the day.  We will see how things go.