Ancient Olympia

 Oct 2

After another Gartagani Guesthouse breakfast, we headed down from the mountains towards Olympia. The drive was twisty but not terrible, though Google misled us in one village and there were a few hair-raising moments when it looked like we were meant to drive down a rocky embankment, but we did get back on track with not too much actual danger to life and limb. 

The car barely squeezed between these two walls. Google misdirection.

The road became wide enough, except when a farmer was moving his equipment.

Arriving in Olympia, we were happy to find much warmer temperatures than in the hills. In fact, it was hot in the sun, and we sought shade. We stopped in a little mom-and-pop place for lunch. I think we're learning how to eat in Greece, sharing dishes rather than ordering something for each of us. Portions are large, and plates are often a la carte, so if you order, say, fish, you get just fish. Today we had filo-wrapped cheese pies, a green salad, beets, and tzatziki. It felt like a reasonable and healthy lunch, better than we’d been doing before now, and everything was fresh, which it wasn’t up in the hills. 

We visited what we’d come here for, the ancient site of Olympia. It was much as I’d expected, mostly a bunch of rubble with very little reconstruction. Still, it’s fascinating to imagine the grandeur that was once here, and to see the remains of structures that mark the beginnings of the Olympic games. We spent some time just sitting in the stadium, where the Olympic flame is lit for every Olympic games before it starts its journey to whatever city is hosting in any given year. One can’t help but be awed in these places.

Pillars outlining what was once an arcade around a space for combat sports such as wrestling

Searching for something, anything

Inside Phidias's workshop, where he made the statue of Zeus that later became designated as one of the seven wonders of the ancient world

Pillar bases are all that's left of this temple

The one pillar still standing in the Temple os Zeus.

Lots of rubble as the Temple collapsed in an earthquake

Similar to the iconic Tholos of Delphi, this is a partial reconstruction of the Philippaeon

This arch was the end of a long tunnel through which the athletes would enter the stadium

 

The original Olympic Stadium. If you look closely, you might see two people midway down.

There is evidence of building in Olympia from the 8th century BCE, and recent excavation have revealed prehistoric occupation of the site. Olympia flourished until the 4th century CE, when earthquakes toppled temples and invaders plundered monuments. The Olympic festival was eventually banned by the Christian emperor Theodosius. Flooding led the site to be abandoned finally in the early 7th Century.

But what’s fascinating to me is that this huge, important site was buried under up to 8 metres of silt and wasn’t re-discovered until the late 18th century -- it had disappeared and no one seemed to remember it. The first excavations began in 1829, and some major structures were only revealed as late as 1972. Excavation continues still.

As always, the artifacts from the site are now housed in a nearby museum. There we saw the remains of the pediment sculptures from the Temple of Zeus, the largest religious structure of the site, second in size only to the Parthenon. Seeing the size of the sculptures helps us realize just how immense the temple was. We saw helmets and statues and lots of pottery.

Nike, the victory goddess. Same goddess as "Winged Victory" in the Louvre

I like this helmet because it's similar to the one on the cover of "Song of Achilles" by Madeline Miller, a book I recommend if you're interested in the Trojan War

Pediment statuary and spectators. The temple was massive.

We walked the short walk back to town. The current municipality of Archaia Olympia, the official name of the town, was nonexistent before the excavations of the ancient site began to draw public interest. So this is a town developed purely for tourism (aside from the need for housing for the excavation workers), and it shows. It’s a pretty setting, but it’s Disneyland. Tacky shop after tacky shop, taverna after taverna. We sat in one of them for a while, enjoying cool Radlers, until it was time to think about dinner, which we had in one of the cavernous tavernas designed for the tourbus crowd. Hundreds of tables, but fortunately for us, few of them were filled tonight. The wine was terrible.

 

Barely drinkable wine from a half-litre copper carafe. Cheers!

 

 

 

Lousios Gorge

 Oct 1

Today was a day we’d planned for months: a hike in the Lousios Gorge. After a simple breakfast at the guesthouse, we drove our way down into the canyon. I should say, Carol drove, because driving the windy roads with a stick-shift car has irritated my injured shoulder. Anyhow, the road was narrow, rough, and in places collapsing, a series of hairpins down an almost-cliff. We were grateful not to meet anyone coming up as we wound our way down.

Breakfast room

The hike was fantastic, along a wooded rushing river, then up to the cliff-hanging Monastery of Saint John the Forerunner that was our destination. Once there, we donned skirts provided for us (no pants for women, no shorts for men) and wandered through. In an upper room, the monks had laid out espresso and home-made cookies for visitors. 

The red tags mark the trail

Looking back the way we'd come

"Fulling Tub" beside the river

Clothes set out for visitors to meet dress code

Our chosen skirts

The monastery was established in the 12th Century as a hermitage and later became a centre for spiritual learning and reflection. We were free to explore the curving interiors, walls covered in frescoes and icons and pictures of former monks. There were maybe a dozen visitors there when we were, but the atmosphere was hushed; people were moved to silence. Photos were prohibited inside the monastery.  . 

Outside, it was a working farm, with mules and chickens and gardens planted with beans and eggplants. We saw monks heading down the hill with ropes and a pick axe. We saw laundry hanging, and wheelbarrows waiting to be used.

  

Coffee and cookies in a room on that top floor

Monks' laundry line

I can't imagine how this place was built, centuries ago

Lunch stop on the way down

We retraced our steps and the drive back to Stemnitsa for a drink in the one café, then repeated last night, eating at the only open restaurant in town. With few items on the menu, we’re looking forward to more variety in our next stop. 

Stemnitsa

 

The only restaurant open at this time of year

 

 

Kalavryta to Stemnitsa

Sept 30

 
We woke to a grey day with the threat of rain. It was to be mostly a travel day, so it didn't matter. We filled up at the hotel breakfast buffet of eggs, yoghurt, cheeses, fruit, before heading off for a relatively short drive with lots of stops along the way. 

First stop was at the top of town, where there was a memorial to the Kalavritan Holocaust of December 13, 1943. I’d read about this monument, and had mistakenly, and understandably, thought that it was about Jews being massacred, and I couldn’t figure out how there would have been so many here in the mountains of the Peloponnese. Once at the site, I realized that the term holocaust was meant to refer to the near extermination of the entire male population of the town by the Nazis. Greece was occupied by the Nazis from 1941 to 1944, and Kalvryta was a centre for Greek Resistance guerrilla fighters. The German army attempted to surround the town, and the guerrilla response to this aggression was to execute the German soldiers they had captured some months early. In turn, the commander of the German division ordered the massacre of every male in the town over the age of 12 -- 438 were shot -- and the town set afire. German leaders have since expressed shame and sorrow for the tragedy.

Memorial to the slain boys and men of Kalavryta

Twenty-five minutes down the road, we made a stop at the Kastria Caves, otherwise known as Cave of the Lakes. We paid our €4.50 seniors rate and had a Greek-only tour through magnificent stalactite-stalagmite caverns. We didn't need any narration.

One of a series of lakes in the caves. Note the high water mark on the wall.

The second lake

Curtains of calcite

From the caves, we drove another ten minutes for a planned lunch at a trout farm near Planitero. This is a stop for many tour buses, it seems, with a massive outdoor dining area. But we were the only ones there, joined by a few others only when we’d finished eating. The grilled trout was fantastic. It came with more Greek salad than we could eat, along with soggy fries we didn’t much bother with.

G

Greek salads are always served like this here, with big slabs of local feta. What you don't see here is that the dish is massive, more than we could eat.

Trout caught in the pools right beside the eating area, probably today.

After lunch it was an hour and a half to our destination, Stemnitsa. The road was winding but not too winding, narrow but not too narrow, and there was very little traffic. Close to Stemnitsa, we passed through Dimitsana, which we had considered staying at instead of Stemnitsa. I thought about stopping there, but it’s a town that clings to the sides of a steep valley, and the roads down into it looked so challenging to negotiate, we decided to pass right through. I can certainly see its charm, but driving those streets…nope.

Stemnitsa is not much easier, but it’s much smaller. We wound our way to the Gartagani Guest House, high above the village, and were shown to a fairly big, simple room that reminds me somewhat of a monastery. This will be home for two nights while we explore the region’s trails. 

Our guesthouse

And the view from our guesthouse

We are now deep into what feels like the real Greece, not the island Greece or the Santorini white-washed Greece, but the work-a-day Greece in which most Greeks live. These villages are pleasant and have accommodations and restaurants for visitors, but their raison-d’etre is not tourism. It’s refreshing, because our neighbourhood in Athens, and then the whole town Delphi, exist solely for tourists, and one might as well be in Disneyland. We have met some other travellers these past couple of days, but mostly the people we see are Greek. 

We walked down to the town centre for dinner, that being much more practical than driving. We ate at the one open taverna in town, a cozy place bustling with other travellers. We were happy for the heater on this chilly evening. Our chicken dinner was nicely grilled, though heavily salted. We managed to get  home before dark, climbing the half kilometre up the stairs to our cozy room.

 

 

Into the Mountains

 Sept 29

I woke up excited to shower in the spiffy bathroom, but the best that rain shower head would give me was off-cool. Harumph. Breakfast was a tomato omelet in the same port-side restaurant where we sat for hours last night. Then I had to figure out how to get us out of town, when the one route west was blocked. It meant backtracking some 5 km, but it worked.

Woman fishing, Nafpaktos

To get from mainland Greece to the Peloponnese at the western end, there are two routes. One is the Rio-Antirrio Bridge, a 2-km suspension bridge that costs a toll of €15 to cross, or one of two ferries that depart directly below the bridge and shuttle back and forth all day, a 20-minute crossing that costs €8. We took the ferry, naturally. After using Google to arrive at a port that appears to be defunct, we quickly found the right port, and drove right onto the ship. 

Sister ferry to the one we rode, beside the Rio-Antirrio Bridge

Because there’s no real tide in the Mediterranean, docking ferries is quite a different matter than back home. Here, these ferries pull up to the paved shore, drop a ramp, and away we go. So fast! 

Our route took us first on a major toll highway, and then up into the mountains on a lot of hairpin turns. The road in the hills was wider than I’d expected for these parts, and though the going was slow, it wasn't too nerve-jangling.

Mega Spileo Monastery, named for the cliffs above it

Early in the planning stages for this trip, I’d found a cog train that winds through the spectacular Vouraikos Gorge, and I thought we’d take this little train through the gorge to a village called Kato Zachlorou, have lunch, then catch the train back down. A couple of months ago, I realized the train had been shut down due to safety concerns (falling rock, again), so I looked into hiking into the canyon instead, from Zachlorou. Well, it seems the season is over in these parts, because none of the several tavernas in Zachlorou were open, and we hadn’t eaten since breakfast. The trail head wasn’t obvious, and there was no one to ask. We ended up just walking the track for a bit, then turning back when it appeared that there wouldn’t be much in the way of scenery. 

Currently unused train station in the village of Kato Kachlorou

Creek beside the station

We drove on to Kalavryta to our hotel for the night, had lunch and a walk around this little ski resort. Here we find a lot less English spoken, but we get by with gestures and pointing. These interactions are a highlight for me of any trip. Kalavryta a pleasant town, with a lot of pharmacies and grocery stores and hardly any trinket shops. 

Great name for a pizza joint, an in-joke for anti conspiracy theorists

Kalavryta kitty

 

 

 

 

To Delphi and Beyond

 Sept 27

To Delphi

We had arranged to have a rental car brought to us. The driver was texting as he came, saying he couldn’t get here, because the one road into the area happened to be the road where the explosion happened the other day, and it was crowded with police and the press. He finally found a way around, which involved a bit of walking. He was a lovely young guy who learned to speak English by playing games and watching movies. He drove us to the edge of town so we didn’t have to negotiate Athens traffic. Brilliant! The company is Swift, if anyone’s interested.

Carol and I made an agreement that she would drive on the first day, getting us out of Athens, and I would drive on the last, taking us to the airport. Either one is a bit scary, but Carol was masterful driving standard, which neither of us has done for several decades. 

After long, green flatlands in wind and some rain, we wound up into the mountains and the sun came out. At the end of the 180 km drive, we came upon a long line of parked cars and buses, all parked for visiting the ancient site. We carried on into town and had fun parking. Lots of fun.

We were too early to check in to the Hotel Leto, so we grabbed lunch — dishes are made for sharing here, and our Greek Salad would have been enough for three or four people — and wandered the town, which consisted of two streets of hotels, restaurants, and trinket shops. Yes, the Trinket Cartel is here.

Steps lead between the lower road and the upper road in Delphi

 

We checked in to our room with a view out to the distant turquoise Gulf of Corinth and down to a lively street below. We took our mandatory afternoon rest, deciding that we’d do better to see the Delphi Archeological site and museum in the morning to beat the majority of the crowds, which come up here by the busload on day trips from Athens.  

We bought mini-bottles of white wine in the lobby of our hotel, and drank them at sunset on the rooftop garden, then finally had an actually good dinner tonight just across the street, a pastitsio that was as creamy and subtly spiced as I remembered. We have gotten into the habit of eating late, like the locals, and so we stumbled off to bed right after dinner.

Wine from the bottle -- more attractive than the glasses they offered

Good night kitties -- at the hotel doors

Sept 28

Delphi

The Greeks pronounce it Delph-eye, that is, with a long i. It’s hard to get used to saying it that way. Anyhow, we had breakfast with a view, then checked out of the hotel, loading our stuff in the car which was parked a hilltop away, opting to walk the kilometre to the ancient site rather than risk not finding parking any closer, or anywhere. It was a beautiful morning, and the views down the valley were stunning.

Between the town and the ruins

We didn’t quite beat the tour groups, but we managed to weave our way through them to get ahead for a relatively peaceful climb through the site. It consists of a couple of small reconstructed buildings and a lot of partial pillars outlining once magnificent structures. These places require some imagination on the part of the visitor. 

 

The Treasury, the only standing (reconstructed) building at Ancient Delphi

Delphi is known for its oracle, to which the ancients made pilgrimages in hopes of obtaining her blessings or advice. The oracle/priestess was an old woman, or likely a succession of old women, who sat atop a tripod over a fissure in the earth within the inner sanctum of the Temple of Apollo. Pilgrims would pose their questions (after sacrificing an animal or two), and she would answer in gibberish, which the priests would translate into some kind of cryptic message. I suppose one would interpret however one wanted. I believe mistakes were made of a magnitude that changed the course of history.

Bronze pillar in foreground, Temple of Apollo behind. You can see the ramp leading into the temple, once climbed by some rather famous pilgrims seeking advice.

The Temple of Apollo. The sanctuary would have been where the broken stone platform appears.

Folklore has attributed the priestess’s trance to vapours emitting from the fissure beneath her perch. This idea was considered myth until some twenty years ago, when geologists re-examined the site and found that the Temple of Apollo sits directly over the intersection of two geological fault lines. Testing local spring water, traces of ethylene were found. Ethylene’s sweet aroma matches the descriptions of the vapours in the folklore, and ethylene, when inhaled in small doses, induces euphoria, altered speech patterns, and uninhibited free association. Kinda like what was reported about the high priestess of Delphi.

Above the Temple site is a beautiful amphitheatre and a stadium that hosted the Pythian Games, lesser games to the Olympics. These were impressive, but I would say that the most impressive thing about Delphi, aside from its historical importance, is its setting on the slopes of Mount Parnassus. Magnificent.

Amphitheatre above the Temple of Apollo

Stadium, the site of the Pythian Games, one of the Panhellenic Games, some 2500 years ago

We made our way down to the road, to the museum, which holds sculptures, friezes, and other artifacts once found in the site. I’ve come to realize that nothing other than large buildings is left in situ anymore; rightfully, all the impressive pieces are held in museums for their protection.

 A sphinx who once sat upon a very tall pillar. I don't generally associate the sphinx with Greece, but I have seen several examples in museums here

The remains of sculptures from the pediment of the Temple of Apollo. Tour guide included for scale.

The most recognizable structure in Delphi, the circular temple with three standing (reconstructed) pillars, is in the Sanctuary of Athena Pronaia, across the highway from the main site. This area is closed to the public at the moment, due to some concern about rockfall. This is disappointing. I have a memory of wandering about that area, but if some of my other “memories” of that time are an indication, that may well not have happened. 

The Sanctuary of Athena Pronaia, viewed with a telephoto lens from a great distance away

We walked back up through the town to get the car. It was my turn to drive, and while the stick shift felt like second nature to me, I managed to drive us in a full circle on tiny one-way roads before getting out of town. We hairpinned down to the sea, then followed the coastline to Nafpaktos, next stop on our trek. The highway was good. The speed limit was 60 most of the time, but I drove a comfortable 70, because 60 seemed too slow for the road, and the Greeks drove about 100. The double lines in the middle of the road are just a suggestion, apparently.

The fun really began when we got to Nafpaktos and discovered that the road we needed to use to get to our apartment was closed, the pavement having been torn up just today. We circled several times, trying to find some route that would get us close, and finally settled for what looked like the only acceptable parking spot in town, on a street that I hope we can find again. We walked and climbed our gear the three blocks or so to the apartment, where we were welcomed by a view that made the hassle worth it.

Welcome sight

And a gorgeous bathroom, but the shower never did get warm

 

By this time, we were sweaty and exhausted and when we let ourselves into our spacious apartment, we collapsed for a good hour. Hunger for lunch had long-since passed, so we decided to get a double scoop of gelato instead. We explored the Venetian port, far tinier than we expected, wondered at the mega-yacht anchored just outside the harbour walls, gazed at the Peloponnese across the gulf. Carol dipped her toes in the sea and reported that it’s the temperature of a warm lake. 

Gelato eases all distress

Archway through the walls of the Venetian Port. Note my super-yacht in the background.

We had a beer at one of the many harbourside establishments, and stayed on for a sunset dinner, sitting among mostly locals who weren’t anywhere near ready for dinner yet. As it got dark, we made our way home, plugged in our devices, and settled for a well-deserved sleep.

Refreshments!

 

I can't resist posting a bunch of sunset shots in the Venetian Harbour of Nafpaktos, where all the tourists are Greek.