Taking advantage of the weekend to explore a little further afield — and yeah, this means an alarm was set. And honored this time! We were out the door by 8 and out of Lefkada by 8:30, tiropita in hand and coffees sourced.
This weekend’s target: Ancient Olympia, a UNESCO World Heritage site and the original location of the Olympic games! It also was the home of the 40-foot statue of Zeus that was considered one of the “ancient wonders of the world” (before they carted it off to Constantinople where it met it’s doom).
Olympia is down in the southwestern part of Greece so we crossed the bridge at Patras and then took a detour to go around the coast.
Part of getting out early was to make sure we avoided any road closures between the island and the highway — they’ve been working to expand the road out to the island, and on the weekends they’ve been closing up the road (since it’s small) for a few hours at a time. The detour is fine to drive but would have added a few hours onto the drive, so getting out before they close at 9:30 was critical if we wanted to go into the site today.
Patras is a bigger town than I thought it was. We got off the highway on the south side of the bridge and drove through the town’s coastal section which looked prepared for beachgoers despite the fact that it really has no beaches. And of course, similar to Athens, when the town ends, it ENDS, the road goes back down to one lane each way and you’re driving through undeveloped wetlands.
We made it to Olympia without any fuss and, since we couldn’t check into our hotel room until 4, decided to go ahead and take the afternoon and head into the site.
Most of the site is dedicated to the athletes who competed there — the first section is a long rectangular ground with columns that served as the preparation site for the athletes. There are ancient baths, a training school, a temple to Hera (where the Olympic torch is still lit at the beginning of its journey to this day), and even the stadium where races were run and the games were judged. The back part of the site is dedicated to the temple of Zeus where the statue set, as well as the workshop where the sculptor built the various gold-plated pieces that ultimately made up the statue.
(I took mostly video, I know I keep saying I will put them together, and I do need to do that, so watch for a later update.)
The site was almost completely empty. I imagine it was partially due to the time of year — winter isn’t really a tourist season for most of the country — but it also may have had to do with the time of day, as I suspect any tour groups on busses probably showed up first thing in the morning and might be long gone by now.
(Despite us spending a good three hours in the site, we still didn’t see it all, but there was no rush since we knew we could come back. We skipped the stadium since there was a good amount of people there every time we went by — we’ll check that out tomorrow, along with the workshop and whatever else we missed.)
We hung around the site until close to closing time at 3:30, then headed back into town and checked into the hotel. The hotel was an older model to be sure, but one of the very few hotels open during the winter. After getting the old skeleton key to the room (true story), we wandered into the main square and went looking for an early dinner. Found a coffee shop and cafe on the main street that was open, and got a well-deserved big beer and glass of wine, and at the urging of H, ordered pastitsio, to compare a “restaurant quality” version to the one I made this week. (The meat sauce had some different spices, maybe cinnamon, maybe clove?, but overall it was pretty similar.) (And tasty.)
Took it easy after that. With the town closed up, we relaxed back in the room until late into the evening, when a desire for more soda sent me out into town to find if anything at all was open late. Found a little souvlaki shop and took back a chicken stick and a pita for a late night snack.
Tomorrow: Into the museum and then back into the archaelogical site to see the parts we missed.