Dion & Mt Olympos - Day 15

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We wanted to go to Meteora today, but when I looked it up in the guidebook to find information, I noticed that the biggest monastery was closed on Tuesdays. So much for that then I guess. So we decided to go with the back up plan and go to Dion and Mt Olympos instead. But first Magda had made plans for us all to have breakfast at her friend's house around the corner. We had sausage turnovers, cheese turnovers and ham and cheese tost. Breakfast seemed to drag on forever as I was anxious to get on the road so we would have plenty of time at Dion and Mt Olympos.

Steve mentioned casually would I mind if his mom dropped off some things at a friend’s house in Katerini since we would be passing right through the city on the way to and from Dion and Mt Olympos. Me, being unsuspecting, said of course not. It took a couple of hours to drive to Dion. We got off the highway and followed the signs for Dion and ended up parking right near the Museum of Dion and the Mediterranean Center for Mosaics. We went into the Center for Mosaics and discovered that it was an art school for people who wanted to learn how to make mosaics, one of the employees/teachers ended up showing us around and answering all of our questions.

We walked from the school to the Museum of Dion which was only a hundred meters or so away. We bought a pass that included the museum and the archaeological site of Dion also. The museum was incredible! For such a small museum it had spectacular artifacts; statues, reliefs, coins, keys, tools, glass, gold jewelry, bronze carvings and more. I think Steve took pictures of almost everything in the place! There was more stuff outside, mostly reliefs and stone carvings. Oh and I also encountered my first advanced hole in the ground toilet of the trip! This is a modern (some are brand new) toilet that you stand up to use (even females) and is made of ceramic and contoured where you put your feet with a hole in the center. Accurate aim is essential to successfully use this device (that means not splashing your feet and legs). This toilet also flushes! Water comes out and swirls over the hole and foot area to clean it. Coming from the States it seems like a really strange concept to me as it would be just as easy to put a conventional toilet in wouldn’t it?

Did I mention that today it’s really, really hot out? Greece is in the midst of an extreme heat wave and the temperature today is around 38 degrees Celsius (about 100 degrees Fahrenheit) and the sun is just blasting down. I guess when we were in the islands we didn’t notice it as much as we could swim in the sea or the pool and the constant breezes cooled us off. We drove over to the archaeological site of Dion after leaving the museum. We walked to the theatre area and about halfway Magda (who was dressed entirely in black and was wearing heels) decided to sit in the shade and wait for us. Steve climbed up on the smaller theatre so Alice and I followed. It had really cool arches in a radius around the outside of the theatre. On the other side of the theatre was a sign saying not to climb up on it, whoops! We decided to follow the shadier path back to Magda and walked by another ruin. We walked along the river for a ways and over to the Sanctuary of Demeter and then tried to walk over to the Sanctuary of Isis but the gate to cross the street was locked. We went around to the main avenue and then walked by the Odeon and through the public baths area. The mosaics in the public baths area were awesome! We went over to the private house area where they are still excavating and everything is messy. Right about now is when the batteries died in my camera and my backup AA batteries were back in the village. It figures. Anyway it was ridiculously hot to be walking around sweltering in the sun, so we decide to get going and head off to Mt Olympos.

We stopped to get some batteries and cold drinks in the village of Dion on the way out. But we saw some signs that said Mt Olympos, so we headed that way. I thought I remembered from the map that the way we should go to Mt Olympos wasn’t near Dion, but was about 20 kilometers away, but I was overruled. Unfortunately we didn’t consult the map and went up some unfinished, partially paved road. We passed by a cute little church on the roadside. Eventually we got to a point in the road where the car was physically unable to go any further because it couldn’t get any traction whatsoever. There were no guard rails and we were way, way up high on the mountain. The road was loose deep sand, but I did a multi point turn to very, very carefully turn around. Magda was freaking out a bit that we were sort of stuck. I have to note that there was a car ahead of us the whole time, and he actually only made it about 30 meters farther than we did before he got stuck and had to turn around also. In the Mt Olympos versus the Yaris war, the mountain definitely won! We made Steve get out and take some pictures with Alice ’s camera while I held my foot on the brake and put up the emergency brake also. I don’t know how steep the grade was, but I was definitely nervous. We stopped at the little church on the way back down and took some photos of the church and the waterfall behind it. I looked like people camped in the area around the church as there were picnic table and a wooden fountain thing with running water. This was definitely the wrong road, but too late now.

By now it was 5pm and Magda had told her friend we would be at her house in Katerini at 5pm so we figured we should get going. I believe this is about the point where I learned that not only were we dropping stuff off; we were actually going to have dinner there! Sometimes I felt like I had absolutely no idea what was going on (South Park Towlie reference). We ended up being only about 30 minutes late which wasn’t too bad considering that we missed the on ramp to the highway and got stuck behind a ginormous farm combine thing that took up both lanes on the road. Then when we took the turn that was allegedly the highway ramp it turned out to be a road that ran parallel to the highway, argh. Somehow through sheer luck after we took a bunch of turns and stopped at a bakery to ask directions and call Magda's friend, it turned out that we were literally around the corner from her house. That was crazy. The point of this visit was for Magda to drop off some gifts from her friend back in the states for the friend’s cousin and her daughter who was about 2 years old. We also met her husband, but he had to leave to go back to open their fur store at 6pm (he was just home for the afternoon break). She served us mackerel which was cooked with their heads on and had little plastic things for eyes, village salad, and green beans and potatoes with stewed tomatoes. Their home however, a townhouse, was really gorgeous, very sleek and contemporary. They said it cost about 400,000 Euros! I think we left about 7:30-8pm to head back to Mikrokastro.

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