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Published: February 26th 2008
On Saturday we left Delphi and drove to Olympia. In Olympia we went to the ancient ruins of where the first Olympics were. It was so cool! The ruins looked just like all the other ruins that we had seen, except we were actually allow to climb all over the rocks, so that was really neat because at all the other places they have ropes blocking the ruins off and people with whistles everywhere yelling at you if you get too close. But here, it didn’t matter; we could climb everywhere! It was really awesome! There were a lot of ruins too. And hardly anything was restored. In the main temple there, they restored one pillar just to show how it used to be, but left the rest of the temple alone. So I thought that we really neat that they aren’t interfering with hardly anything there. I think it also helped that Olympia is a ways outside of Athens so it doesn’t get as many tourists, so the people aren’t as strict there. At the ruins there was the original Olympic stadium. Back in the first Olympics there was only one event, the 192m dash. They aren’t quite sure why
Erik
The pillars from all the buildings are huge!it was 192 meters, but it was obvious that that’s how long it was because there were start and finish lines made out of marble in the ground. We were allowed to go into the stadium and run around, so we had a race there. That was fun. The stadium didn’t look like it was the full 192 meters, but once we ran it, it definitely felt like it was that long. Then, after we were done looking at the ruins, we went to our hotel and then explored the town. There really wasn’t much in the modern town. We did find a bakery though, and had some delicious treats. I had some cream filled thing that was soaked in honey (like almost all pastries), it was delicious. Then we went to the hotel and had dinner. The basic meat and potatoes that we have a lot of nights. Mom, here some details of what we have been having to eat… A lot of times it has been souvlaki (like shish kabobs, but just meat) and most of the time this is pork, but sometimes it is chicken. Then there are normally french fries with the souvlaki, so this meal
is my favorite so far. We have also had deep fried fish a few times, and that is ok. I’m not a big fan of fish, obviously, but this stuff is ok, as long as it isn’t too fishy tasting. We have also had a meal that was just beans, they were something similar to lima beans, but a lot bigger. They were ok, they would be ok if it was a side dish and there were only a few, but when it is the whole meal, it isn’t very good. Oh, and on almost everything there is this “mystery sauce.” It must be some traditional Greek sauce, and it is very universal. We have had it on beans (both those big lima type ones and green beans), all types of meat, potatoes, and rice, just to name a few. I think we have had it on something almost everyday. They have been giving us a lot of food for dinner. We always have bread (with nothing on it, not even butter or olive oil, so I thought that was kinda weird), a salad (that varies… sometimes the traditional one that is just tomatoes and cucumbers and sometimes a normal
American type one and sometimes the cabbage and carrot one), some appetizer (we all get our own even though like four people could split one plate), a main course, and then a dessert. The appetizers have tended to reflect a lot of the traditional Greek food. We have had spanikopita (spinach pie) and turopita (cheese pie) many times. Also, we have had falafels, spaghetti (also with the mystery sauce), rice with veggies or mixed sea food, and green beans. So we have had a pretty big variety with the appetizers. But like I said before, the main meal has mainly just some meat and a form of potatoes. Surprisingly, I haven’t had lamb yet, or at least I don’t think I have. If I have had it, it has been really good lamb because I haven’t been able to taste any lamby taste. Then the desserts have varied quite a bit too. We have had ice cream a few times, that is always a favorite. But we have had yogurt with honey some. Their yogurt here is so thick! It is about like sour cream or even thicker at some places. The honey here is really good, it kinda has
a floraly taste to it. I have the yogurt almost every morning with granola. And that is delicious. But back to the desserts, sometimes we have had a cake thing that is soaked in honey, that’s ok. It would be a lot better without the honey. And a lot of the time we just have fruit for dessert. They have some really good fruit here. The clementines are delicious! And so are the pears. And a new favorite snack is bananas with nutella. That is one thing that everyone has been getting a lot of is, nutella. And they have all of these off brands of it too, but it all tastes the same. They have these really good cookies that are like biscuits or graham crackers and those are so good with nutella. So there you have a little bit of a run down of what we have been eating here. So far I’m not really sick of the food yet, which is a good thing because we still have a while here. But anyways, on Sunday we left Olympia and went to Areopoli (both are in the Peloponnese part of Greece) . Along the way we stopped in
Cameron and Linka
This is in the workshop of Phidias... The guy who made a lot of the statues in Greece this little town called Itoli. There wasn’t much to the town, but a few of us took a little trail through the woods that led us to a gorgeous view of part of the Mediterranean. So that was a fun little adventure. This is one thing that I really like about this trip is all of the exploring that we get to do, and we did a lot of it yesterday… But I’ll get to that in a little bit… Before we got to Areopoli, we stopped at a little restaurant for lunch and that was really good, and it was really close to a beach, so we got to hang out there for a while and walk around in the rocks. And when we were doing this, we saw an octopus, it wasn’t very big, but it was really cool to watch it swim around. And it actually stayed close to the shore for a while so we really got a good opportunity to observe it. It was pretty cool. But yea, our hotel in Areopoli was really cool. It kinda looked like a medieval castle, and I think Ingrid, Emily, and I got the best room. It was
all stone, just like the outside of the building, and it was huge and there were a couple pillars in it. It was an awesome room. But yea, yesterday morning we went to a place pretty close to Areopoli and went on these flat boats into caves. The caves we so cool! I’ll put up pictures to get a better idea, but there were so many stalagmites and stalagmites, and we learned that it takes 100 years for one the size of a spaghetti noodle to form. And all of them in this cave were huge! They had to have been hundreds of thousands years old! It was amazing! And they have actually found bones from various animals, including hippopotamuses in the caves. I’m not sure how anything could live in there, but obviously things did. So we took a little boat tour with a guide for about half an hour and then we got to get out and walk along a path in there. Both were really cool! Then we went to a little beach and hung out there for a while. The weather has been great these last few days, so it has felt amazing to sit out
Emily, Brianna, and me
This is at a beach near a restaurant that we stopped at for lunch one day in the sun! After we went to the beach, we got back in the bus (we have been spending like 4-6 hours in the bus each day for the last week) and drove a little ways to a trail that was supposed to lead us to these ruins of an old castle. So we took the trail for a while, and it either ended, or we just got off of it, because all of a sudden we were in a kinda a field and had no clue where to go. And there were prickly plants everywhere, so that wasn’t fun trying to move around in there. So we spent like an hour or so wandering there before we decided to turn back and take a different trail. The next trail that we took was a trail for a while, and then it was pretty much just rocks and some grass, but we kept going because we wanted to get to the castle that was on a peninsula a ways away. It was a very tough hike out there, and then a challenge to climb up on the area where the ruins were. But it was totally worth it! The ruins
weren’t that great, but it was an amazing view! It was on a peninsula at least two miles off the mainland into the Mediterranean. It was so cool! So we hung out there for a while and ate lunch there. Probably the best lunch ever; sitting on old castle rocks overlooking the Mediterranean. It was obvious that not many people had been out there because there wasn’t really a real trail or anything, we just kinda climbed out there. It was so much fun! And the hike in total was about eight miles! And a lot of it was incredibly rough terrain, but it was so cool! Almost the whole hike back, I was walking with Linka (David’s daughter). She is a lot of fun. I have been hanging out with her a lot. And I have been helping her and her brother, Cameron, with their homework too. So that’s been fun a good experience for me. Especially helping Cameron with his math. But anyways, then after that long hike/adventure, we just headed back to the hotel because we were all exhausted. We just ate dinner there and then went to bed. Then this morning we had breakfast at the
hotel. This hotel had some really good bread that the other hotels haven’t. It was called fry bread and it was delicious with honey. And it also had some shortbread type thing that was super good with jam. Then, after breakfast we went to Mystras and went to a castle there. That was one had a lot more to see ruin wise than the one yesterday. The one in Mystras wasn’t in as cool of a location though, it was just built into a hill. We got a while to explore there, which was cool. There were a lot of different things to see. A few houses of the wealthy people from that era (the Byzantine) and many churches. So that was fun just exploring around there. Then we stopped in a little town to have lunch. I just went to a bakery and got an amazing donut and then to a grocery store to get fruit. And then we drove through Sparta, but weren’t able to stop because of the traffic. Sparta is an actual developed city now, which wasn’t what I was expecting. I thought it would just be ruins like all the other ancient cities, but it
was a modern day city now. But we didn’t really get to see any of it, we just drove through. Then we stopped in Nepflion and just kinda walked around for a while. It was a really cute little town. Then we drove to Tolo, which was pretty close. Our hotel here is amazing! It is right on the water and there is a beach, and hopefully it will be nice tomorrow so we can hang out there. The internet in the last few places and in the next few will not be very good. My connection now is really slow, so it might be a little while before I can get more entries up, and especially more pictures. But I will try as soon as possible! We will be in Heraklion on Friday and we are there for a while, so hopefully we will have good internet there because we are there for over a week. So I will try to do as much as I can!
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