If there were nothing else in Greece, the trip would be worthwhile just to see Olympia because of the history surrounding it: The site of the original Olympic games; the original stadium, the ruins of the Temple to Zeus, the Temple to Hera, the Phillipian Temple built by Phillip of Macedonia. The games were run every four years from 776 BC until 393 AD. Then the games ended and eventually the site slipped into disuse and ruin. When the site was finally excavated, it was covered by ten feet of dirt.
-Phillipian Temple, Olympia-
There is a great new museum, new since I was there before, with a wonderful collection of statuary and other artifacts recovered from the Olympian temples.
After spending the morning at Olympia, we drove on to Delphi via the new bridge over the Corinthian Straight at Patra. We stopped at a Greek version of a truck stop in Patra—a BP gas station and a snack shop. Impressively, they served cappuccino in real cups and had a second floor area to relax and enjoy your cappuccino while looking at the straights and the new bridge. Plus, they had waiters to pick up your cups.
We got to Delphi in time to watch the sunset over the Ionian Sea from our perch in the mountains—another Amalia Hotel. We did some shopping in Delphi—Kathy bought some earrings, a bracelet, and some worry beads. She bought me a pig—a little pink porcelain porcine. Might be the only pig in Greece. She bought several decks of mythological playing cards and I got some woven bookmarks for gifts.
We had a buffet dinner at the hotel—all the standard Greek fare: Dolmadis, spankopita, calamari, mousaka, pestitsio, and all sorts of other good things. The hotel was nice, and the view, as I mentioned, was fantastic. The town was fun—there were two very steep main streets running more or less perpendicular to the slope and parallel to each other and there were stairs connecting these two streets. The slope was so steep between the two streets, that there was a mere building’s width separating them but what was the main floor on the upper street was the second floor on the lower street—and the main floor on the lower street was the basement for the upper street. The drop-off was so steep on the lower street that buildings built along the other side of that street were six stories high and you entered the sixth floor from that street level. There was a little terrace at the base of those buildings, but no street and then there was another even more precipitous drop-off.
-Phillipian Temple, Olympia-
There is a great new museum, new since I was there before, with a wonderful collection of statuary and other artifacts recovered from the Olympian temples.
After spending the morning at Olympia, we drove on to Delphi via the new bridge over the Corinthian Straight at Patra. We stopped at a Greek version of a truck stop in Patra—a BP gas station and a snack shop. Impressively, they served cappuccino in real cups and had a second floor area to relax and enjoy your cappuccino while looking at the straights and the new bridge. Plus, they had waiters to pick up your cups.
We got to Delphi in time to watch the sunset over the Ionian Sea from our perch in the mountains—another Amalia Hotel. We did some shopping in Delphi—Kathy bought some earrings, a bracelet, and some worry beads. She bought me a pig—a little pink porcelain porcine. Might be the only pig in Greece. She bought several decks of mythological playing cards and I got some woven bookmarks for gifts.
We had a buffet dinner at the hotel—all the standard Greek fare: Dolmadis, spankopita, calamari, mousaka, pestitsio, and all sorts of other good things. The hotel was nice, and the view, as I mentioned, was fantastic. The town was fun—there were two very steep main streets running more or less perpendicular to the slope and parallel to each other and there were stairs connecting these two streets. The slope was so steep between the two streets, that there was a mere building’s width separating them but what was the main floor on the upper street was the second floor on the lower street—and the main floor on the lower street was the basement for the upper street. The drop-off was so steep on the lower street that buildings built along the other side of that street were six stories high and you entered the sixth floor from that street level. There was a little terrace at the base of those buildings, but no street and then there was another even more precipitous drop-off.
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