Sun Aug 11, 2024
Hi Gang! The word of the day is OPA!! Gotta love the Greeks and their zest for living and dancing. More about that later.
Today we are docked in the port of Katakolon. It is a quaint little port with some shops and lots of artisans making hand crafted items. But its main draw is being the closest port to the town of Olympia, a shrine to the Ancient Greek gods and the birthplace of the Olympic Games (so cool given that the Olympics are in Paris right now!).
Our morning tour took us to the town of Olympia and to the archeological site where the original Olympics were held. There is soooo much history there. But you do have to have a good imagination to visualize all the sites when it is mostly ruins.
The name Olympia derives from the ancient Greek word Olympios,
which translates to Mountain of the Gods. In Greek mythology, Olympia was the sacred place where the ancient Olympic Games were held. It was a religious center for the god Zeus and his wife Hera.
Back then the games had both a religious meaning and a sports meaning. The religious center organized the Olympic games every 4 years as an offering to the god Zeus. The games first began in 776 BC and only people from Olympia could participate. Then in 400 AD, when Greece became Christian, the games were opened up to all of Greece.
Only Greek citizens could participate in the games (no slaves or women could participate) and women couldn’t even watch the games. If women tried to watch the games they would be put to death by being thrown off a nearby mountain. Dang that’s harsh!
But maybe it was because athletes were always naked during the games! That would increase the viewership stats! Lol. They also covered their bodies in olive oil to keep the dirt and dust off of them. Athletes came one month before to train and people would travel for one month to see the games.
All events were held at this location no matter what the sport. For the runners, they started in an upright position rather than crouched down like today. And they always ran straight from start to finish, not curved like today’s tracks. The winner would get a crown made from the leaves of a white olive tree, which is also the symbol of peace. They chose that tree since Hercules planted the first white olive tree here. (I got a picture of it!).
The first modern Olympic games were in 1896. But the first time they did the flame to start the Olympics was in 1936 for the games in Berlin. Our tour guide’s grandfather has one of the first Olympic torches since they let locals run with it before it was all athletes running with it and they let him keep the torch. It says Berlin 1936, how cool is that!
This is still the place where they light the torch to start all Olympic Games. They use the power of the sun reflected in a concave mirror to light the torch. Then the first athlete starts running with it and handing it off to each subsequent athlete until it reaches the stadium where the Olympics will be held and they light the flame there.
There were so many ruins of cool places at this site. We got to see the Temple of Zeus, the Temple of Hera, the palaestra where the athletes would train, the Olympic stadium and the Philippeion, which was the only structure dedicated to a human being, not a god. It was to honor Philip the II of Macedonia for his victory at the battle of Chaeronea which made him the de facto leader of Greece at the time.
After we visited the ruins we went to a Greek restaurant for lunch. They had four Greek dancers there doing traditional Greek dances. That was really fun and they must have yelled “OPA” a hundred times. I wish I could post a video since even The Wandering Italian was up on the dance floor wandering around! Kathy was up there too!
We then drove back to the port and Kathy did a little shopping and I went back to the ship to cool off in the pool. It was hot today!
I’ll post more later tonight. Happy Sunday to all!
The Wandering Italian 