Climbing Mt. Olympus

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A group of 13 American College of Thessaloniki summer study abroad students decided to spend the weekend climbing Mt. Olympus and I could not resist joining them.

We left Friday evening and drove about 90 km to get to the town of Litochoro where we had a late dinner and spent the night. The next day we met our guides and headed up to the beginning of our hike at about 10am. After a 20 minute drive up part of the mountain we were ready to hike.

We all stared out very strong and were enjoying the scenerey as we walked. The further we walked the steeper the path seemed to get and the further back I became in our group. I realized after this hike how out of shape I am.

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We reached the lodge half way up the mountain at about 3:30 pm and I had the joy of getting a huge blister on my right heel. We spent the evening relaxing and socializing before going to bed at 10pm when the lodge turned off its generators.

The next morning all of the group continued up another section of the mountain but I decided to stay back with another girl and we enjoyed watching the marathon runnners on their way down the mountian. It was the third annual Running with the Gods marathon in which runners begin at the town at the base of the mountain and run to the top of the mountain and back down again. The record for this feat was about 5 hours.

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When the rest of our group returned we made our slow descent down the mountain and enojyed the view along the way. Once we reached the bottom we visited a monestary and then headed to town to catch our bus back to Thessaloniki