Olympia

Olympia is roughly 20 minutes by bus from the little port of Katakolon. For centuries, Katakolon's only real purpose in life has been to be the gateway to Olympia. Abby's preconceived notions put Olympia--the birthplace of the Olympic Games--at Mt. Olympus, the home of the gods. But no, Olympia and Olympus are no where near one another.
As a student of Latin (and as the Romans borrowed anything they liked from the Greeks) and having studied the classics, I was pretty familiar with the mythology. I was even more familiar than I knew with the geography. We opted to take the cruise tour to Olympia--since it was Christmas day and no sensible soul would be running a private bus, and there really is nothing but one little street of tourist shops in Katakolon.

Our tour happened to be bilingual this time, which meant our guide said everything twice. Once in English, once in German. It might have been a cultural thing, but I don't think she really appreciated the pageantry, history, legend and ridiculousness of Greek myth. It's such a convoluted mash of "could have happened" and "you totally made that up" that you really ought to tell it with a smile. She didn't, though. She was dry as beef jerky. Not even in a funny way.

I was still glad we went, because we got to drive through Greek countryside, and it was so beautifully normal. Rolling green hills, low forested mountains, red roofed houses, olive trees, orange trees...I liked Greece.

We arrived at Olympia and walked on a little road that cut above the archeological site (being Christmas, the site itself was closed). The Greeks established the games, and built the great temple of Zeus because it was at this spot that Zeus fought with his father, Chronos, and took over...um...being god. The temple of Zeus was one of the 7 Ancient Wonders, and now nothing at all remains.

There are stones scattered all around, it looked like a graveyard. There are only two columns remaining, and they weren't a part of the temple. There are ditches where houses used to be.

Here are the two remaining original columns.

Below is a reconstruction of one of the pillars of the temple of Zeus.
Our tour guide was very careful to blame the destruction of this place and of the Olympic Games on the Christians. The irony is that all the Christians did was stop worshiping Zeus. They did outlaw the Olympic Games, but at the time the games were not just feats of arms, they were out and out worship of Zeus. Back then, it was normal to outlaw things you didn't want done. After that people stopped coming to Olympia, and then earthquakes and floods did the rest (and the Christians can hardly take credit for those). The River Alpheus claimed the hippodrome, and earthquakes claimed Zeus. God had the last laugh.
In fact the only part of Olympia that sits the way it always has is the stadium itself. The simple reason for this endurance is that there is practically nothing to the stadium. It is a hallow in the ground with a marble starting line, and two marble finish lines (his and hers).

Off to the side, at the far end of the stadium, there was a monument to the man who brought back the Olympic Games.

There were little irises everywhere:

This is the road back toward the stadium (you can see it on the L) and beyond that, Olympia, and beyond that, a little stream, and beyond that, the tourist trap town.

We had a surprising amount of sucess in the tourist trap town--did a lot of our Christmas shopping there, fittingly enough.

As strange as it was to visit the temple of a false deity on Christmas Day, it was profound. Zeus is no more. His temple in ruins, just a graveyard. But Christ lives.

-The Lady