Day 11 – 1/22/2020 – Road to Olympia

Today was designated as a “road day.” That is, the major event for today was a transfer across the peninsula to the village of Olympia.

This was scheduled to be a really short day so we started with a walking tour of the old town Nafplion.

This is the church of St. George (of the dragon). It was built by the Venetians and has been a Catholic Church and a mosque before its current role as a Greek Orthodox church.

In this photo of the dome note the shaft of sunlight. To say the air was heavily laden with incense wouldn’t be an overstatement.

Old town Nafplion is a typical medieval layout with narrow curving lanes that lead to other narrow curving lanes.

And community wells (some with Arabic script on plaques).

We were escorted in our tour by a neighborhood dog. He walked with us, stopped and sat while Michaela was talking, and as soon as we started to move he rose and trotted along with us.

At one point we climbed up the hill to their acropolis.

For some interesting views of the old city

And the snow capped mountains in the distance

Descending to the lower level again we checked out the (former) Venetian administration building (now a museum) in Constitution Square

And the Bank of Greece branch. Note how the door and such mimicked the tombs we saw yesterday.

Tour complete we climbed aboard the bus for one of our longer bus rides. We read, we slept, we stopped for “technical breaks” and snacks, and along the way we stopped at a pottery workshop to observe them making things they were glad to sell to many of us.

We crossed several mountain ranges. I spent a lot of time looking out the window enjoying the scenery.

We eventually arrived in the tiny village of Olympia. It’s actually not that small, but since we’re here in the off-season most businesses are closed. The place has a definite air of abandonment. However we found a good place for dinner and (after an unsuccessful ice cream run) retired to the hotel lounge for a rousing game of Shut Up Orville. Cheryl won. Then it was time to read/blog/sleep and such.

Tomorrow we tour the site of the original Olympic Games.

One other item of note. In Greece they erect elaborate grave covers in their cemeteries. Apparently the corpses are buried at a normal depth, but the common practice is to erect these structures above the grave. Interesting.

That’s all for now.

More tomorrow,