Wednesday 19th Mt Olympus

We hadn’t done a lot of research about Mt Olympus & the information provided by the cruise company before the tour was fairly underwhelming.  So we had almost decided to have a day off & maybe go for a swim.  However at the last minute we caught a but up to Mt Olympus (43 Kms from the port of Katakolon).  And we’re very pleased we did.

We were in the 1^st bus to leave the ship, so arrived up there in the cool of the morning.  There was dew on the ground & a lovely smell of fresh trees in the air – smelt almost like home.  There was only one other small party on the site, so we had it almost all to ourselves.  However as we left the archaeological site the mass tour groups had started to arrive.  And the museum was almost empty – so really peaceful.  By the time we had finished and decided to go home I could count 17 tour buses plus stacks of cars.  Whew!

We bought a ticket to both the archaeological site and the museum which was nearby.  Wow – a wonderful morning of walking around ruins of temples from about the C5 BC through to C3 AD. 

It has the intact area where the 1^st Olympic games were held & a temple to Zeus which had originally held a 12 m high statue covered in gold.   Two earthquakes in the C5 AD destroyed many of the temples there & in one case you can see all the portions of several columns that have laid on their side piles up against each other, unmoved for 1500 years.

Having got an idea of what had been on the site we then went over to the museum which had artifacts, statues and other objects taken from the site, as well as other items from elsewhere in Greece.  It is the best museum of ancient Greek art and objects that I have seen. It is relatively small, but what they have is the best of the best. 

All up it took us about 3 hours to purposefully visit every ruin and walk through every gallery in the museum.  By this time it was getting warm, so we took the shuttle bus back to the port.  We then wandered the single street that makes up the town, looking at the usual souvenirs, before sitting in a café right on the waters edge & just soaking up the sun & views.  We managed to get in a free wifi zone so I sent off a few messages using the WhatsAp App to Lainie.

We had to sail by 2:30 as the ship had to get us from the West coast of Greece to our furthest eastern destination Santorini.

So, a day that started with no expectations ended up being a wonderful self-guided, low key delight.