Katakolon - Olympia

 We arrived in Katakolon yesterday morning.  It’s a beautiful seaside town on the Peloponnese of Greece.  From here, it’s about a 45 minute drive to Olympia, which is the base of the ancient Olympics and also the modern Olympics in the sense that the Olympic torch originates here.

For each Olympic Games, the torch is lit here and it is run all the way to Athens, to the Olympic stadium we visited while there.  From there, it is carried to the host city.

Lots of ruins here.

This is the Temple of Zeus (remnants).


And this is the Olympic stadium grounds.  If you look closely on the left-hand side, you can see a stone thingy.  That is exactly where the Olympic torch is lit.  Unfortunately, we didn’t find that out until after we had left the site.


And here’s Darlene, running a race.


After visiting the ruins of Olympia, we went into the museum where tons of artifacts that were uncovered from the site are held.  This guy (Augustus) and other “people” - some were Gods are found in the museum.



When we left Olympia, we went to an olive oil “factory”.  It’s a very small spot where they wash the olives, then mash them and press the mash in order to produce the oil.  We learned something about the grade of olive oil that we can now take back home.  We’ll see if the bottles we get at home have that grading on them.  We all purchased some olive oil here after tasting several different kinds.  Sorry, no photos for some reason!

We then went to a seaside restaurant where they have beach access with umbrellas and the works.  Beautiful spot where we took some photos.



We were returned to our ship and all in all, had another good day!

I should add that we enjoy the many restaurants and bars on the ship.  Today is a sea day, so I’ll try to post some photos of the inside of the ship itself.



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