Lots of ancient sites today!

Tuesday, January 26, 2016

Hello!

We actually made it through the night last night with no lingering signs of hypothermia and awoke to what proved to be a very nice morning – sunshine and some white puffy clouds. 

Gymnasium

Gymnasium

Temple of Hera

The shower in our guest house is truly terrible, but we both managed to make things work, and were clean and ready for breakfast at 8 a.m.  As we were the only guests last night (and probably tonight, too, I’d guess!) there were far too many choices for us consider.  We basically had cheese and bread and a bit of cake with strawberry jelly and orange juice, and were out about 8:30 am and heading to the Olympia site.  (I will say that when we walked out into the hallway from our just-warming-up-kind-of room, it was truly once again like being in a meat locker!  Why do these concrete buildings take so long to heat up?!

Philippieion

Nymphaeum

Loved the tiny iris!

As we were planning on an out-of-town site after the Olympia ruins, we thought we’d take the car, and parked it again down by the entrance to the museum.  (Oh … and we’re on a one-way-street, with our car definitely facing the wrong way.  It makes R a bit nervous, as the police station is across the street, but I just backed up and swung wide and voila, I was heading in the right direction!)

Again, we had the entire Olympia site to ourselves.  In fact, it wasn’t until we had been inside for 10 or 15 minutes that the guards even showed up for work!  We entered through their new entry way by the gymnasium, where restorations have just been completed, giving on to a very nice place to start.  From there, we saw the Philippieion (circular temple started by Philip II of Macedon to celebrate his victory over the Greeks.  However, Philip was assassinated and the temple was ultimately completed by Alexander the Great in honor of his father) the Temple of Hera and the Nymphaeum.  It was neat putting the pieces together of things in the museum and where they were on the grounds.  Then we got to the Olympic Stadium – which we had all to ourselves, and photographed each other on the starting line in the stadium.  Really an amazing place, when you think about all the events held there over hundreds of years.  Truly fun to walk out of the Monumental Archway tunnel on to the track.  It is said that the stadium could accommodate 45,000 spectators – all men, of course, as women weren’t allowed to attend…

Monumental archway leading into Olympic stadium

More of the entranceway

Me at starting line!

R ready to go!

The site has been in existence since prehistoric times, so there were outlines of prehistoric houses, as well as the later Roman buildings of hostels for athletes and visitors and the ubiquitous Roman bath.  One building, identified as the Workshop of Phidias, a very famous sculptor (ca 450 BC) who first worked at the Acropolis in Athens before coming to Olympia, had been turned into an early Christian Basilica! 

It was really wonderful to be able to wander through the ruins.  There were huge long corridors of bases with capitals on top of the bases – it would have been wonderful to see the columns all lined up as well.  When you think that the Olympic games came only once every four years, and lasted for five days, it’s amazing how much planning and building went on!  There were so many statue bases scattered around everywhere.  Some were built by winners or their supporters, and another entire area was paid for by the fines of man caught cheating in competition!  (I guess nothing changes, does it?)

Part of the Temple of Zeus

Me next to a huge column base

From the Leonidaion

Remains of a Roman bath complex

After several hours of wandering – and discovering that one elementary school group had joined us! – we decided to head to Bassae to see the Temple of Epicurious Apollo, which we missed on our drive yesterday.  It has been alleged to be a beautiful temple with most of its columns still upright.

Wow!  What a drive!  Again, we were back up at the snow line, and for portions of the so-called “road” – they were doing so much rebuilding, it scarcely resembled a cart track! 

Remains of another Roman building

Phidaes workshop turned into a church!

Even though the distance wasn’t that far – about 60 km, it took us probably an hour and a half over the crazy roads.  We finally pulled up, only to find that the entire temple had been covered over by a huge tent-like shelter built in 1987.  (The pictures one generally sees with the temple in the open obviously predate the shelter.)  So, paid our admission and walked inside the huge white tent.  Oh, my.  It turns out that the site has been declared a UNESCO World Heritage Site, but is in real trouble.  

The site itself sits on the top of a hill (elevation 3700 ft), and is susceptible to rain, snow and lots of very strong wind. The limestone of the supporting blocks is set along an earthquake fault, and the floor of the temple itself has started to cave in and buckle because of weathering and seismic activity.  It is really sad to see!  We took some pictures, but the ones that are the most telling are the ones of the individual columns that they are working very hard to keep upright.  Also, the stone of the columns are very badly weathered.  I’ve never seen damage of the sort that appears on these columns.  They look very, very old and tired (like we sometimes feel, but I hope the lines aren’t as bad…) and if an earthquake should hit the area, I have no doubt that many if not most of the columns will collapse entirely.  Whew.

Decided to head back to Olympia after that, and made the return journey in a little shorter time – going downhill is always easier, as is knowing what you’re getting into! Got back to the guest house about 3:30 pm, stopping first at the little local market for more water and Kleenex.  Now we’re resting, and I’m blogging, before we go out for dinner tonight, around 6 pm.

So!  More later!

m

xxx

Out for dinner about 6 pm with a stop down the street to a very nice shop, where we picked up some wonderful things made out of olive wood. 

Loved the old stone bridge on our cross country drive

Closer to the bridge

Temple of Epicurious Apollo under tent

Very uneven columns

Tent from the outside; at least it's being protected!

You can see how the stone is breaking

Beautiful countryside on the way back!

Lovely mountain range in the distance!

Really liked that old stone bridge!

Seriously in bad shape!

It’s truly the first shopping we’ve done on this entire trip!  From the shop, we decided to return to our place from yesterday, where we had such good food.  I do have to admit that it’s a bit strange to see some rather large hotels and restaurants shut up tightly for the season!  

Robert ordered the fried shrimp plate, and I ordered the gyros chicken plate.  R’s shrimp, believe it or not, came with ALL the parts (head, tail, etc.) still attached, and he had quite a bit of work to do in order to even get something to eat!  My chicken was really almost like a stir-fry, with small pieces grilled.  It was great, and I had more than enough to share with Robert, as there wasn’t all that much left for him to eat after the shrimp had been thoroughly dissected!  

Back to the guest house about 8:45 pm and now getting ready for bed … once I get this posted!

Lots of love,

m

xxx