Ancient Olympia

Ruins of the baths.
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We arrived in the port of Katakolon and I was quite excited, as we were going to see the site of the ancient Olympics! I am a fanatic for Greek history and mythology so this was quite up my ally. Katakolon is a sleepy port that was discovered by the cruise ships a couple years ago and now souley lives off the cruise boats. They open shop when the boat comes in, and close shop when the boat leaves port. Oh did I mention? The water here is amazing, crystal blue green that makes you want to jump right in. But I’m more interested in the ruins then the beach. Our guide was quite excellent. She explained alot of mythology, well the mythology behind the Olympics. She told us of the story of Kronos, how Zues fought and killed him and buried his tomb with the hill. The Olympics started by the people paying their respects to the tomb of Kronos, so the site is based at the foot of the hill. It was quite interesting to see the hill where apparently the god of Time lies. The site was fairly well preserved. I am still amazed at how these things can survive for 2000 some years, just sitting beneath the earth in fine form. We saw temples of Zues, (the one column they re-erected cost 5 million euro!) Hera, and Alexander the Great, baths, housing and the first Olympic stadium. I'm so mad that I didn't get a film of myself running the race. I think that would have been so funny. The finish line is still there and everything! We saw where they light the torch and it was very interesting the facts that the guide told us. I can’t really think of much else to say, the pictures will do all of the explaining. We then got time to snoop through the town of Olympia. (The drive to the archeological site was 30 minutes out of Katakolon) Again, we didn’t get as much time in the town as we would have liked. I wanted to get a book of Greek mythology because I'm obsessed, but my dad told me I could just get it out of the library :P hahah. But we were so lucky to get this tour in the morning, as I can’t imagine how hot it would have been if it was in the afternoon. The site was well shaded with lots of trees which was quite nice. We got back to the boat around 1 and we just stuck around there. I don’t really remember what I did, probably nothing too exciting. I did borrow out Wuthering Heights from the library. (I actually finished it today.) But other than that, we didn’t actually go into Katakolon. It didn’t seem to offer much anyways.