Best of Greece and 7 Day Aegean Cruise
Day Five – 15 Sept 2009
Weather: Sunny and hot 27º
Once again a particularly famous person has died while I’m on vacation. First there was Michael Landon when I was in LA then John Candy when I was in Rome and Michael Jackson when I was in Prague. I woke this morning to hear that Patrick Swayze died.
I was up at seven with luggage out at 7:30 and proceeded down to breakfast. There was only one word to describe breakfast at the Olympia Palace – pathetic. The eggs were fried and laying in a lot of fat getting cold. There were no scrambled eggs. Just bacon, wieners and a bit of fruit and cake. Not even a croissant to be had. In the more than thirty tours I will do over the ten years following this tour, this was, without exception, the worst breakfast. Not exactly a palace.
Granted, in the dozens of other hotels I have stayed in since 2009, this was a very rare exception to the rule. The vast majority of breakfast buffets were more than adequate and some were exceptional. This one was just an example of hotel ownership that didn’t care. The last time I checked the Trafalgar website, the hotel had been changed.
At 8:30, after putting our extra stuff on the bus, we headed out to walk to the site of ancient Olympia where the original Olympic Games took place more than two thousand years ago. They continued for seven hundred years before wars interrupted them.
The site was flat and mercifully full of trees.
Cruise ships offered a day trip to the site, so there were thousands of people there.
It was easy to get separated (as one woman did) so if you visit, ensure that you stay close to your group. If you do get separated, listen to your Whisper system as I’ve been on tour where someone got detached and the TD was able to direct them to the right spot. In this case, the woman took off her Whisper but had the presence of mind to go back to the entrance when she realized she couldn’t find us.
The site was mostly ruins and columns though there was enough left to know where the athletes trained and stayed and where they competed.
The athletes came to Olympia ten months before the games to train, and of the hundred or so that trained, only about sixty competed in events such as shot-put, javelin and wrestling.
Best of all, they competed naked! Why doesn’t the IOC consider that? It would help ratings.
The games originally lasted a day but eventually expanded to five days. The running track was still intact and we were given our free time from that location. I walked to the far end taking pictures then walked back over the length of the track.
I returned to the entrance where Joanna led us to the museum and gave us a talk about some of the exhibits. I found it hard to understand her via the whisper at times and found I had to watch her lips to be sure I got the words right. I bought a book on the site to fill in the blanks.
The whole excursion took about three hours. We walked to the bus and were driven to the edge of town for lunch. I got pork gyros and we had time to wander before setting out for Delphi at 1:30. Much of the terrain on the way to Patras was flat agricultural land but it gave way to towering hills at Patras.
We crossed the bridge built for the 2004 Olympics and stopped for a bathroom break on the far side. We were given the opportunity to walk above the toll booths for some great shots of the bridge.
We continued along the magnificent coastline towards Delphi. I was sitting in the front seat and know why they call it the white knuckle seats. The turns were sharp and more than once we came across a car that was taking the curve a little too wide.
Shortly beforefive Joanna brought our attention to a small town on the side of a hill in the distance – way, way, way up the side of the hill.
Delphi!
The drive up the side of the mountain was hair-raising as the bus had no choice but to cross the lines to make the sharp turns on the switchback. All along the way Joanna was telling us about the hotel. She reminded us that it was full of wood instead of concrete and was more rustic than a typical big city hotel.
It was called the Delphi Palace.
Yup. Another palace.
But it was only one of two hotels in the scenic town and I liked the rustic feel of the place. We were given a welcome drink and waited for our luggage to be delivered. There was no elevator, so the poor porter had to carry bags up two long flights of stairs in some cases. The view from the room balconies was breath-taking – except my room…I was looking at a tree. No worries. The view from the restaurant was stunning.
The room was basic but clean and comfortable. It had a flat screen with some English channels which was nice. The bathroom had a bathtub and shampoo and stuff as well as a hair dryer. No robe, iron or kettle, as expected. They also had no access to the wireless internet because of the thunderstorm last night but the girl at the desk let me check my email on the hotel’s computer.
While I was there, one tourmate was getting really angry over having to walk down over a couple of steps to get to his room (fewer steps than on the bus). He never showed any signs of having issues before and I thought it was uncalled for. He demanded a room in the other hotel but they were fully booked.
Once I had my luggage I headed out to check out Delphi’s two streets. We walked the length of one street until we left the town and stood appreciating the view of the valley below. We walked back to the hotel via the lower street and found a few shops along the way. We returned to the hotel in time for dinner.
Dinner was a set menu of chicken soup, eggplant, beef and rice and a dessert. I didn’t like the soup but tried the eggplant and liked it. The beef was stewing beef and my portion was very fatty. The dessert looked like a two layer cheesecake, but it wasn’t. Whatever it was, it was good.
We decided to walk off the dessert and returned to the lower street after dark. The area was fairly lively with bars and tavernas open and a fair number of people out and about. We returned to the hotel by ten and we were all a bit spent. Those past few days had been non-stop. We were hoping for a swimming pool at Kalambaka because the hotel was supposed to be outside of the town. That meant nothing nearby to visit.
Go to Day Six
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