Do You Understand This?

We arrived in Athens and had booked a tour company to give us all a private tour of the city. Things did not quite work out as planned though and the company was nowhere to be seen when we got off the ship. We tried to get in touch with them, but they did not seem to have any record of us booking with them. Luckily, we had not yet paid them a fee, however, they did not have anyone else available to drive us around for the day. We did spot some tour vans off to the side, so Aunt Esther went over to negotiate a deal with them. It worked and we met Dimitris.

Dimitris was quite a character, explaining that he was often called upon to tour around the rich and famous when they visited Athens. He even showed us a decades old American newspaper with a story written by someone who had used his services. It was pretty hard to believe, but we played along with it. We started off by visiting the Zea Marina. As we drove there, Dimitris was telling us about a local philanthropist, Aristotle Onassis, who directed his estate to be used to build and operate the Onassis Cardiac Surgery Centre in honour of his son who was killed at a young age in a plane crash. Each time Dimitris explained something to us he asked “Do you understand this?” This would become a common phrase throughout the tour.

Next we went to the Temple of Olympian Zeus. We got there just ahead of many of the other tour buses and Dimitris parked illegally, so that we would have good access to the area and be able to move onto our next destination easily. Stephanie also found a cat roaming the grounds. It was really odd to see the juxtaposition of the ancient ruins right in the middle of the city. Often in photos it seems like they are off on their own in isolation, but they were really in the centre of it all!

Next we headed to the Acropolis, which we could actually see from the Temple of Olympian Zeus. Dimitris explained to us that “polis” meant “area of” in Greek and “acro” meant “height,” so Acropolis meant a high area in Athens. He also drove us right up to the entry gate, even though everyone else was getting let out at the bottom of the hill and having to walk up. He seemed to get away with everything! There was the Odeon of Herodes Atticus (an amphitheatre), the famous Parthenon and the old Temple of Athena.

From there we went to the Panathenaic Stadium, used for the Olympics, followed by the “Heel of Athens,” the highest lookout point in the city. We also got our pictures taken with the Presidential Guards and had to be serious when doing so.

After that, our tour was complete, but Dimitris offered to take us somewhere with bathrooms and drinks for a break before we headed back. We arrived at a store and they offered us pop and ouzo (I passed on that) and they also showed us around their souvenirs. We bought some jewellery and trinkets and could see that Dimitris and his friend had a good system going! While we started off not knowing how the day would go due to the missing tour bus, it turned out great, was very informative and was certainly a unique experience! 

Olympia (And Grade 11 English Class)

Next we docked at Katakolon, a seaside town in Greece. The main attraction here was Olympia, birthplace of the Olympic Games, and there was no shortage of tour companies offering to take us there. After walking past the Customs House and onto the main street of the village, we picked a large tour bus.

 

The drive was leisurely and the rolling hills were beautiful to take in. It was also neat to see the houses. Many are perpetually under construction, with columns and slabs exposed on the upper levels and rebar sticking out. This is intentional. As the generations living in the house age, they can simply finish the next floor up for the younger generations to move into with their growing families.

We finally arrived at Olympia and were met with a traffic nightmare. We smartly took a photo of the license plate of our bus because we were not sure how we would find it when it was time to leave otherwise. We started by touring the archeological site. After so many years of art history in high school and mechanics in university, it was neat to see the columns up close. It was hard to believe that there were still some left standing after thousands of years. The ones that had fallen over were also not what you would expect, as they were carved in pieces and stacked on top of one another. They are still excavating parts of the site today.

 

Next we walked through the museum. We came across a lizard friend near the entrance and he was a natural in front of our cameras. Inside, we saw many sculptures that were still remarkably well intact and had been found at the nearby ruins during excavations. We also came across a sculpture of Hermes, which took me back to a Grade 11 English class where I worked on a project about Hermes as part of a Greek mythology unit.

After the museum, it was time to leave, so we headed back to find our bus, which fortunately we were able to pretty easily! When we arrived back at the port, we had a bit of time left over, so we wandered around the village, got separated from each other briefly, but all managed to make it back on the ship.