Katakolon, Olympia, and a Day at Sea

Our final stop in Greece would be the port of Katakolon. This small port is a 30 minute drive from the city of Olympia, site of the first Olympics roughly 82,314 years ago, or somewhere in that range. Before leaving the boat, we met up with Dave and Brittany again and discussed plans. After our recent experience with the roads in Mikonos, we were hesitant to rent a car, even though this place looked much more civilized than anything we’d seen so far. There seemed to be quite a few buses headed to Olympia, so we chose one at random and climbed aboard a surprisingly modern bus. After waiting an extra 15 minutes, the bus took off.

We quickly noticed a difference in this part of Greece. There were nice houses on the side of the road, the road was in good shape, and it was wide enough. There were still reminders of this being a country in the midst of a major financial meltdown though. Like in Mykonos, there were quite a few buildings under construction, but without anyone doing any constructing, and a number of buildings/houses that seem to have been abandoned. There were also large piles of trash everywhere. We supposed there is a very real possibility the country’s waste management has been shut down or cut significantly.

Pile of Trash

After a nice drive, we found ourselves in Olympia with 2 hours to see what there was to be seen. The weather was just like what we experienced in Santorini; a still and wet heat that caused our clothes to stick to us uncomfortably. There are ruins in Olympia, just like the sort of thing everyone who thinks of Greece first pictures in their head but we had not experienced yet, despite being in Greece for 3 days to this point. We walked about a mile down a path with no shade, and payed 9 Euros each for the right to view these ruins.

Easily the most interesting ruin

Things about ruins:
- Ruins are structures that are often very old, and certainly not in any kind of working order - Unless you have a very good idea of what these ruins once were, what they were used for, or how they might have looked in their original form, they are often not much to look at
- If you climb on some ruins, as Dave did, you will be yelled at immediately and made to feel as though you are the worst person ever

We were hot and extremely uncomfortable. There was no shade, and we were not very sure what we were looking at a lot of the time. There were small plaques with extremely dull and often useless information posted every now and then, that I felt represented a missed opportunity.

A Building of Some Kind

Dave and I very excited about ruins

These ruins everyone was walking around seeming very unimpressed by could've been made so much more interesting if each was accompanied by maybe a guide explaining in detail what everything once was, how it was used, and with large scale pictures of how they must have looked 2000+ years ago. This place held large scale athletic competitions 2000 years or more before anyone in Europe even knew North and South America existed!!! This place is amazing, but it was apparently setup by the least creative people on the planet! We walked past a 10’ x 20’ hole in the ground accompanied by a plaque that stated simply “This hole was discovered to have dated back as far as 4000 BC” and nothing else. There’s probably a great story there about what it was once used for, and how it must have originally looked. You could even give everyone some context about how it’s older than anything any of us had likely ever seen ever! Like I said, just all sorts of missed opportunities at “interesting” here. I love history and generally appreciate the scale of time and all that, but this place bored me to tears.

When we could bear no more heat and piles of rocks with no context, we exited the Olympic area and went back to town for food and hopefully air conditioning. Kim and I found a nice looking restaurant that turned out to be run by Australians for some reason, and sat down in the shade and under misters for a great meal of calamari and pizza. We walked around the town a bit more and found hilariously pornographic dinnerware, coasters and glassware that seemed somehow historically significant. We debated posting pictures of these things on the blog, but decided it’d be funnier if everyone just searched for them on their own personal computers. If you don’t feel like searching, just picture very crudely drawn, 2D people graphically performing every sex act you can think of, then imagine that on a plate or a coaster, then imagine a ridiculous price tag on it. The bus picked us up on the curb next to the bizarrely normal looking store selling these things almost exclusively. On the drive back to the port, we saw the same piles of trash and abandoned construction sites mixed with very nice looking houses and beautiful countryside that reminded us of Santa Barbara.

Kind of Looks Like California Right?

We had a couple more hours to kill before our boat would set off again, so we took another dip in the ocean. The beach in this case wasn’t quite as large and not nearly as picturesque as we had experienced in Greece to this point, but the water wasn’t boiling, which was all we really cared about. The highlight of this beach for me was the fish that would nibble at your legs and feet if you dare stood still for more than 10 seconds.

The next day, and our last day on the cruise, would be very uneventful. Kim and I would lay out next to the pools for awhile, before heading to a lower deck to get out of the sun, relax, read, nap, and play shuffleboard. That’s pretty much all that happened.

Things that happened on at some point during the cruise that I forgot to mention:
- We went to a Teppan grill on the boat where we met a family from Malta, which is a very small island nation just south of Sicily
- Kim and I dressed up for no particular reason that night. I wore my suit and she wore a pretty dress

- I missed my opportunity to win the Karaoke world championships on our cruise because we forgot to change our clocks when we got to Greece
- Dave, Brittany, Kim and I played UNO at some point
- Dave and I were beaten badly at ping pong by a cocky American teenager
- There were art auctions every day on our boat where people paid crazy prices for paintings that didn’t look super amazing in our opinion
- One of the bartenders learned my name and started having our drinks ready before we even asked
- Kim is an amazing shuffleboard player and is looking into a professional career
- I changed into my bathing suit behind a wall because I couldn’t find a restroom
- We saw Greek tagging everywhere that made me think of fraternities and sororities
- We met a family of Australians in Mykonos who taught us about Australian rugby
- There was a TV channel on our cruise that played exclusively Premier League soccer and Australian Rugby 24 hours a day
- I did not get sea sick once!
- We had sushi 5 times
- The cruise casino only accepted American dollars
- Our room was made up every time we left it for more than an hour
- The general store on the cruise had a stupidly large selection of jewelry, about 2/3 of the available space
- The bars ran out of Pina Colada mix on cruise day two!!!

That’s all I can think of right now.