Olympia, Greece

September 21, 2000
We got to sleep in today since would not get to port until 1 PM Greece time. It is a beautiful day, a little hazy but nice. The waters of the Mediterranean are so blue. Chris and Teresa have taken up guy watching. Chris is looking for Apollo, “the Greek God”. We got on our new bus. Well, new to us I guess. It is much older than her other coach and a driver his name Dimitri. He is Greek and spoke little English, but is nice and polite. Our next stop is Olympia.  Greece reminded me of the US Southwest, a lot of scrub trees and rocky terrain. There was also a lot of trash and such just lying on the side of the road, and even some abandoned cars like old VW bug, all rusted out and just abandoned. Laszlo said that while Greece a member of the European Union (EU), it was still a Third World country and it showed. Olympia is a small town with a few hotels in the excavations of the Olympic complex. We were taken to the archaeological site. The Greek Olympics were only for true Greek citizens and we’re just as political as they were competitive. Women were allowed to compete, but only one priestess was allowed to watch it.  Our hotel was just outside of Olympia, so we walked 20 minutes or so before we got to do any shopping. Afterwords were retired to our hard beds.