2011 Med Cruise – Day 10 – Katakolon
We got to sleep in a little later, since the ship wasn’t docking till 9:00 and our excursion was scheduled for close to 9:30. All the excursions for this port started with a tour of ancient Olympia – the site of the original Olympic games of ancient Greece, which were held for 1200 years. The excursions differed by the second stop – visiting a village or watching Greek folk dancing. We opted for the Greek folk dancing.
I had long since given up on trying to figure out how to pronounce the names of the tour guides. Today’s guide was a big guy with a thick accent. At least this bus was a bit more comfortable (my feet touched the floor and the climb into the bus didn’t require mountain climbing gear), and I was able to grab the seats in the first row.
Unfortunately, today was the day that my knee decided to be a real pain. Literally. No idea why, except maybe it is protesting a week's worth of stair climbing. At least on this bus the steps were not as steep or high as yesterday's bus. Still, I knew the day was going to be a challenge.
We had a 40-minute drive from Katakolon to Olympia; not much to look at along the way, though the guide pointed out these tiny “churches” or shrines that people erect along the side of the road where they were involved in a car accident and survived. The shrines looked like teensy Greek Orthodox churches, some of them very colorful. I never was able to snap a photo of any that we saw. An alarming number of them, too.
It was very crowded at the Olympia site. Our tour guide tended to not hold his “lollipop” – the flag with the bus number on it – high enough for anybody to see it at a distance. Even though he was a big guy, it wasn’t always easy to see him.
He talked about the history of the Olympic games: they were held every 4 years for 1200 years until Emperor Constantine banned them in the 4th century CE as a part of the Christian Byzantine movement to eliminate anything resembling paganism. The original Olympics had only a few sports – javelin, discus, running, etc. – those that reflected skills needed in battle. All wars stopped during the Olympics. Only the first place winner was awarded an olive branch crown – there were no “silver” and “bronze” medals. The real rewards came from the athletes’ home cities, who showered their winners with gifts and perks.
As we walked through the site, the guide mentioned that Roman ruins from 400 CE were on the left, and Greek ruins from 400 BCE on the right. He never did explain why the ruins were lined up that way, or what they were for – not for lack of asking. We saw various temples to Zeus, Hera and other Greek gods. Athletes who were caught getting paid for taking a dive were required to pay for a statue to Zeus that would stand at the entrance to the games. There were remnants of 13 statues - 13 times that athletes were caught cheating in 1200 years of the games.
The space for the running events was a wide open field with seats only for the judges. The guide said the space could hold 24,000 people. His explanation went on for a good 10 to 15 minutes - all the while we were standing in the blazing sun. He'd been pretty good about keeping us in the shade up until now. And there was no place to hide within earshot. Eventually he noticed we were all puddles on the ground and moved us along.
Shortly after that we walked back to the parking area, where we were able to buy a drink - it was once again a hot day – and then got on the bus on the way to the restaurant where we would have a snack and watch the Greek folk dancing.
The restaurant was huge – really wondered what kind of business it did in the off-season. The some of the food was ok – goat cheese and a flaky pastry of some kind. But there was this one thing that we couldn’t figure out what it was - it was white and squishy; we thought it might have been some other kind of cheese - until we realized there were little suckers on each piece. Ah hah, then it was squid or octopus. No thank you!
The dancers were great fun. At first they did a few dances for us – very reminiscent of my folk dancing days in college. Then they started pulling people from the audience to join them; these dances were just circle dances like the hora. We felt like we were at a Jewish wedding with no food. But, everybody had a great time with it.
After that, it was just a half hour drive back to Katakolon, and that was the end of the excursion. We decided to have a real lunch at a fast food place, but the gyros were not very good. We’ve noticed that our concept of what a gyro is (basically a wrap sandwich in pita) was not the same as what we were seeing in Greece – an open face pita sandwich. At any rate, the food was not very good, and we didn’t have enough time to search around for any place else.
We wandered the main street of Katakolon and looked at the shops. Didn’t buy anything, though.
Tomorrow – last day at sea. Time to start figuring out how to get to our hotel in Venice.
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