Day 14 – Olympia - Athens

The day started early with an early morning walk to the archaeological Olympic site.  We walked around the site seeing ruins of the area where athletes trained and had what would be qualifying/heats for the main event.  We also saw ruins to a temple to Zeus and we visited the spot where the Olympic flame is lit for every Olympics before ending our tour on the Athletics field.  We were then told to make our own way back to the hotel but to make sure we were back at the hotel before 10:30am which was when we were to depart for Athens.

Most of us made our way from the Archaelogical site to the Museum across the road that had on display lots of statues and lots of pottery discovered from prehistoric times. 

We made it back to the hotel by around 10:10am which gave us enough time to get back to our rooms and gather our hand luggage and be down to the bus in time for our 10:30am departure for Athens.

First thing I noticed as we were driving through the outskirts of Athens was the amount of derelict buildings and the amount of graffiti.  Leo said a lot of the graffiti was actually about the 3 soccer teams in Athens, but that was not my impression.  Even John the Greek on our tour when asked said it was political.  As we entered the city proper there was so much graffiti and posters for the upcoming election.  I really thought I would fall in love with Athens, but it wasn’t doing it for me.

We arrived at our hotel and it was definitely the best hotel this tour.  Heaps of room, another balcony (although the door that turned into a window had many of us thinking our door was broken when it started coming of it’s top hinge!) and the buffet breakfast had a great selection.

On our first night we had an optional excursion “Taste of Athens”.  First up we drove around some ruins (ancient, that is) before stopping at the base of the Acropolis.  Here I had the first look at the steps up as Leo had warned us that it was a strenuous walk and not everyone would be able to do it.  Leo asked me what I thought.  I said they looked OK.  I asked if they were all light that and he said “you’ll be ok”.   I hope so, the Partheon was reason #2 I chose this tour. 

After getting off our bus we hopped on the “Happy Train” that took us all around the Plaka.  Leo had us all yelling out “Yassou”.  First few people just stared at us.  We were starting to think he had us saying something rude and we were about to get embroiled in some international incident.  But some people started waving and yelling Yassou as we went past.  Our journey ended near the base of a hill that we had to walk up to go to our restaurant for our dinner.

Again it was another case of too much food!  We had bread to nibble on, then a small tapas-style plate with fried haloumi, stuffed vine leaves and some other Greek tidbits that I had no idea what I was eating.  We then had a greek salad followed by souvlaki.  I passed on dessert because a) I was full and b) I don’t do Baklava!