World Greece Achaea Olympia

Christine & Rick - Adventures in “Pretirement”

Olympia Oct 20, 2008

Following our stay in lovely Nafplio we travelled to Sparta and found a campground. Once again we were the only ones there with a tent; 2 camper vans and us. The total guest count was 6. We had an olive grove to ourselves and spent a fun evening at an internet cafe/pool hall/video game establishment. The campground owner had an American niece and she and Rick talked American politics.

The next day we visited the ruins of Mistra which included a gorgeous 14th century church and a grazing donkey with a tinkling bell on his collar. Then in town we found a cool museum dedicated to the olive. We learned all about olive cultivation and olive oil/soap production - it was impressive! Then we took a loooooonnnngggg winding road to Kalamata and then on to the coastal town of Tholo Beach where we spent the night in another deserted campground.

We carried on the next day to ancient Olympia where the games began. It was fascinating! I am not sure if I will be able to get the pictures posted (this computer is a little different). We saw the sites where the athletes trained for boxing, wrestling, javelin and other events and Rick took his spot at the start line in the stadium as if to run a race. I considered myself privileged to see the site because as a married woman, I would not have been allowed to view the games back in those days.

The museum associated with Olympia was wonderful - full of things found at the site, some in wonderful condition. We have discovered that most of the ruins we have visited were at some point devastated by earthquakes and this was very evident at Olympia where many columns had collapsed and broken into pieces.

After Olympia we drove to the port city of Patra and by chance learned that the ferry to Italy was about to depart. We had noticed that the harbour area was full of groups of young men - really scruffy looking characters who were squatting around the parking lot and surveying the ships. Every so often one of them would break away from the group and try to jump the fence into the harbour area only to be turned back by the police. When we bought our ferry ticket we asked the ticket agent about this and she said that they were from Kurdistan and were trying to get on the boats to take drugs into Italy. She said it was a real problem. No kidding.

We were much better prepared for this ferry trip and had brought blankets, etc. to bed down comfortably. We almost had the whole lounge to ourselves and had not a bad night. The ferry arrived about 9:30 a.m. and we had a fairly easy drive out of Brindisi and headed south. It was a really long drive along the "sole" of the "boot" of Italy but we eventually arrived in Reggio di Calabria and after two hours of driving around (two hours of driving around in a city looking for accommodation is standard for us) we found a decent hotel with breakfast and free internet! So now we are sort of killing time until we catch a ferry to Sicily where we may spend up to a week.

Hope everyone is doing well at home. Rick misses Turkey terribly but it is a little comforting to be in a country where we can sort of figure out the language!