Katakolon & Ancient Olympia, Greece

Katakolon is a small town on the Greece mainland, which we are told serves no purpose other than a gateway for cruise ships into Ancient Olympia. Mostly it is full of souvenir shops. Even though the ship parks right beside the town, with little walking required, we gave it a miss. We had booked an excursion to Ancient Olympia which didn't leave until midday so we had a lazy morning. No sleep in though, we were up at 6:30am to watch over the side as the ship docked and was roped up. Judging by all the yelling, the guy doing our ropes was named Costa, what are the chances?

Once on the bus, we were driven firstly to the Archaeological Museum. A bit like in Athens, all the artefacts found in Olympia are collected in one place. Of most interest, our guide showed us a model of what Olympia looked like in its heyday which was useful before visiting the site, as we could visualise the layout within the ruins.

Then we had a short walk across to Olympia itself. This is definitely ruins, for the most part nothing is left standing, apart from certain columns and structures and even then some are reconstructed to help visitors visualise. The highlights for us were seeing where the Olympic flame is lit, and then walking onto the original running track and standing on the start line. The track is surrounded by grass banks rather than stadium seating one might expected to see, this being a Roman creation later in time.

Olympia was destroyed by earthquake and it's scary to see how what were tall columns have collapsed and to this day, lay where they fell, like seeing a row of cucumber slices.

The tour was interesting and inspiring but having visited Ephesus only recently, it didn't quite wow us as much as it maybe should have, as it is quite a large area.

Most ruins are roped off to avoid people walking on them, however one area was not roped off. I took the opportunity to stand on the remains of a column for a photo. Usually I respect ruins and wouldn't do such a thing but this time I did. No sooner did I do this, when from afar we hear a mouth whistle blowing (like a referee would use) and someone yelling "DOWN!!!". Yes I was told off much to the amusement of Helen and the rest of our tour group.

Our excursion was late returning and the ship was waiting for us and one other bus. We sailed very shortly after our return. Tomorrow we have a sea day, it will take us two days to sail to Venice.