Trip to Peloponnese: Saturday

Saturday was our last day and was all about Olympia. Olympia is where the first and oldest Olympic games were held. It was supposed to be horrible rain all day but when we woke up it was sunny so our professor switched our schedule to do the site visit first to hopefully have good weather. The weather was really nice while we were walking around. The site had a ton of things for the athletes like a gymnasium, a place for the wrestlers, areas for the athletes' statues, housing for the athletes and the spectators, temples of course, an impressive stadium etc.

We then went to the modern olympic museum which was somewhat disappointing but they had a little section on each place that has had the Olympics which was cool. I found out that they had it in Melbourne and that they had it in Athens in 1896 and it was held in the stadium that is right by our classroom. They also had the torches from each olympics which was cool. We found out that the torch for the 2010 Olympics had just started the day before we got to Olympia in the morning. The torch always starts in Olympia as a symbolic gesture.

We then had a break for lunch and while we were eating at a cafe it started poring. Unfortunately for the other group they had to be on site the entire day so they were soaked. Then it cleared up enough for us to walk to the old Olympic museum and again started poring when we were inside. This museum has the famous Hermes and Dionysis sculpture. I don't really know why it is famous besides the fact that it is intact and characteristic of 5th century sculpture. It was impressive though.

After that we got back on the bus to drive back to Athens which was a 4 hour drive. On the way home we got pulled over by the police ! ! ! I had noticed that the police had passed us but then they were in front of us on their merry way. When we got to a toll booth a policeman at the toll booth made our bus pull over where the police car had stopped as well. Our driver had to get out and talk to them and he was clearly getting frustrated. Then a random lady (not a police officer) is talking to the police and our bus driver. So apparently what happened is that this lady thought that our bus driver was unsafe (which is a total lie he was great at getting us everywhere) and our bus passed her going 1 km over the speed limit ! ! ! ! how rediculous ! and so she called the cops. Our bus driver was given a ticket and had to pay a 20 euro fine! That aside the bus ride back was fine and the trip overall was great. The Greek countryside is so pretty with the water and the mountains and it was great to get out of Athens.

Trip to Peloponnese Saturday