We signed up for this trip as soon as it was announced.
This was an Embassy sponsored trip lead by
Ergini, who teaches Greek.
There were
about 40 of us all together and we would leave on Saturday and return late
Sunday since we had Monday as a holiday (President’s Day).
Ergini has a reputation as a cut-up and she
lived up to it as we had a barrel of laughs most of the time.
In spite of the, mostly, bad weather, we had
fun, saw a new part of Greece, ate and drank well, and learned a bit about
Greek mythology in the bargain.
We had to rise early Saturday morning as our bus left from
the Embassy at 8:00 am which is about 8:30 am on Greek time.
Ergini was born in
Greece, married an American, who is
on his four-year tour at the Embassy, and can laugh at herself as she makes
many jokes about the Greeks.
Greek time
is only one of the jokes.
We headed west
from
Athens along the motorway to
Corinth where our first stop was for coffee at a shop
alongside the
Corinth
Canal.
This canal was begun nearly two thousand
years ago when Nero was emperor of
Rome.
It wasn’t finished until 1893 but it is an
amazing engineering feat.
The canal is
about four miles long and connects the Saronic Gulf with the
Gulf
of Corinth.
Since it is
only 75 feet wide, many of the larger modern ships cannot pass through but it
is still used by many smaller ships today.
We continued along the road that hugs the Gulf of Corinth to
Patra, the third largest city in
Greece.
The road turns southwest through an area of
marshlands and lagoons with some excellent beaches filled with many water
birds.
Just before the town of
Pyrgos we headed east to
our destination, the ruins of Ancient Olympia.
Olympia is not to be confused with
Mount Olympos
where the Greeks believed Zeus and the other Greek gods lived.
Mount
Olympos is in northern
Greece between Larissa and
Thessaloniki.
Our destination is on the
Peloponnese
and is where the Olympic athletic games were held from 776 BC to 393 AD, over a
thousand years.
Ancient
Olympia is also where one of the seven
wonders of the ancient world was located – the statue of Zeus in the temple
dedicated to him.
Before we checked into our hotel we stopped at a restaurant
in the town of
Olympia
and had a quick lunch.
Rita and I shared
a Greek salad and the Greek dish of pastitsio which is sort of like lasagna but
with a béchamel sauce.
Then we headed to
the nice Amalia Hotel where we stayed.
We were about the only hotel guests as this is not the typical tourist
season in this area.
Our bus picked up
our local guide, named Panos, who took us up some scenic mountain roads past
the town of
Lalas to the Foloi forest at the
base of
Mount Foloi.
Sometimes this forest and mountain are spelled Pholoe.
This is one of the largest oak forests in
Greece and is
associated with one of the labors of Hercules, that of the capture of the
Erymanthian boar.
In this forest, the
Centaur, Pholos, lived in a cave and when Hercules visited him they got drunk
on good, choice wine, the aroma of which brought many other Centaurs to the
cave where a battle took place.
So we
were advised to be on the lookout for Centaurs that live in this forest – but
we didn’t see any.
The bus left us and we hiked a trail through the Foloi forest
that we estimated to be about four miles long.
It wasn’t especially attractive and the trail was muddy from recent
rains and snows.
In fact, half way
through out hike we heard thunder and could see the skies darkening.
We hiked the last half mile in steady drizzle
which increased as we made it to the taverna in the woods where we were to have
dinner.
It was an early dinner by Greek
standards but we ate well anyway.
We had
a set menu which started again with Greek salad followed by stifado, a Greek
meat stew (ours had beef) with onions, tomato sauce, more onions, bay leaves,
cinnamon, and more onions.
We were
served a rose wine that, while not great, was drinkable and replenished often.
Then we were given shots of tsipouro, a
strong drink distilled from the stems, seeds and skins of crushed grapes.
We think this was our downfall which gave us
our headaches the next morning although it tasted good at the time.
The bus dropped us back at the hotel where we had an hour to
unpack and rest before coming down to a performance of Greek dancers.
Rita fell asleep during this intermission and
didn’t want to go down to see the show so we stayed in our room.
I read while Rita went to sleep early.
The next morning we heard that there were
only four dancers anyway and we’ve seen Greek dancing before so we don’t feel
we missed out on a lot.
Sunday was a long day.
We woke about 7:00 am and met for our group breakfast at 7:30.
Our bus left at 9:30 and took us to our main
goal, the ruins of Ancient Olympia.
The
site is located where the Kladeos river meets the Alpheios river, the longest
river in the
Peloponnese.
The ancient Olympic games were held every
four years and they lasted five days during which time all wars ceased.
Of course we’re talking only of Greek city
states taking part in the games.
The
last game was held in 393 AD because in 394 AD the games were banned by
Byzantine Emperor Theodosius and in 426 AD Emperor Theodosius II issued an
edict forbidding worship of the ancient gods.
In 522 AD and 551 AD tremendous earthquakes destroyed the buildings and
the river flooded the area in silt to a height of about 45 feet which preserved
the ruins well.
In 1874 German
archeologists uncovered the site which has been preserved until today.
Many of the statues are in a local museum
adjacent to the ruins of the sanctuary.
The morning started out in sunshine but soon into our tour
of Ancient Olympia the skies clouded up and we heard thunder in the
distance.
We started at the gymnasium
and the Palaestra.
These buildings were
training areas mainly for wrestlers and boxers.
Next we toured the
Temple
of Zeus where one of the
seven wonders of the ancient world had been situated.
The statue, about 25 feet tall, was of Zeus
seated on a throne and was called a chryselephantine statue meaning it was of
wood base and covered with ivory (for the skin), gold, silver and precious
stones.
Nothing remains of the statue as
the Christians shipped it to
Constantinople
where it supposedly burned in a fire.
By now the rains began so we put up our hoods (others used
umbrellas) and continued onwards.
We
visited the site of the
Temple
of Hera, the oldest
temple here, and the Philippeion, a monument built by Philip II, father of
Alexander the Great, which honored the dynasty of the Macedonian kings.
We walked along the treasury buildings and
the place where the statues called Zanes were lined up at the entrance to the
stadium.
As it was raining and the field
was wet, we did not walk onto the stadium track but admired it from the grassy
sides – as ancient spectators did.
Now
the lightning was striking very close and we were walking under trees.
Some people were carrying umbrellas which
were portable lightning rods.
So we
headed to the modern museum which had great displays of treasures uncovered by
the Germans in 1874.
The rain stopped while we toured the museum and we stepped
out into some sunshine before re-boarding the bus.
Our bus left again and headed up the mountain
road through Lalas and, this time, bypassing the Foloi forest.
We climbed higher and higher and eventually
reached the snow line where melting had started but not completed.
The higher we climbed the more snow we
encountered and at the
village
of Lambia (also called
Divri) the bus stopped to let us walk up an icy road he could not make.
Some decided to stay on the bus but they
missed a good time.
First we walked to a 12
th century church with
original frescos on the walls.
It was
tiny and we couldn’t all squeeze in at the same time but had to take turns.
Then we walked to a shop that was billed to
us as a blacksmith.
But the translation
suffered since he had nothing to do with shoeing horses as he re-tinned pots
and pans, or as he proudly showed us, the baptismal font of the local
church.
Again his little shop was too
small for all of us to visit so some of us visited his 81-year-old mother who
sat us down in her tiny room which was kitchen, bedroom and living room
combined.
The fire was blazing in the
fireplace and she greeted us with smiles and plenty of energy.
She busied herself getting all the cups and
glasses she had together to pour us drinks of her homemade tsipouro, the strong
liquor I mentioned earlier.
Hers was
better than what we had at the restaurant the night before.
She gathered up all the chairs she had and
motioned for us to sit on her bed and chairs by the fire.
It was fun and she invited all of us to
return in the spring time when we can sit outside on her patio and drink
tsipouro.
As we left her house and started downhill to the bus,
thunder clashed again and soon we were walking in sleet and then snow.
We boarded the bus and headed back down the
mountains to
Olympia
but we had to take it slowly as we encountered heavy, blowing snow for quite a
long time.
Near
Olympia,
in the
village of
Linaria, where Panos was
from, we had dinner in the Taverna Kotopoula (means rooster or chicken) which
belonged to his friends.
It was our best
meal on the trip and began with moussaka, then a salad of shredded carrots and
cabbage followed by the main course of baked chicken with potatoes.
All tasted delicious with local white wine
and was followed by a dessert of yogurt with what they call spoon sweets.
We piled back on the bus for the long ride back to
Athens where we arrived
right at midnight.
I’m glad we didn’t
have to go to work the next day.
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