Katakolon, Greece (ka TACK a lon) 4/23/09

Our stop today was a short one. We arrived in port at 7:00 am and left port at 2:00 pm. Katakalon is the gateway city to Olympia, Greece—the home of the original Olympic games.

We could fill up pages of ancient history from this area. You look one way and you see something from thousands of years before. You look another way and you see the modern city. Greece is truly beautiful and after spending 2 short days in port I already know I want to come back for a visit. The people are kind too. They are very welcoming and warm to us.

Books, books and more books have been written about all Greek mythology and the history and such. Of course I slept through most of that in high school. Still I remember some of the stories and it made for an interesting tour. Yesterday we saw the petrified boat of Ulysses. (Or so they say--you know the one who the sirens lured from the sea in Homer’s Odyssey). I don’t even know if I got that story right but you get the picture. This is a cultural university for those interested. I think a course in Greek mythology 101 would have been in order before we came!

Today most of the excursions went to Olympia. We were told that we needed to use a great deal of imagination at Olympia to see the ruins and imagine the first athletes there. Pictures of Olympia showed us boulders and fragments of columns. It has been completely ravaged throughout the years. So we decided to forego the expensive tour excursion and just stay in tiny Katakolon. We are seeing Athens and the Acropolis in great detail so we will see our ruins there.

We are very glad we did since it started raining and we were unprepared for it. To get out of the rain we sat at a café and ordered an original “Greek Salad” which was tomatoes, olives, cucumbers, red onions, oregano and a huge block of feta cheese. It was delicious though I think Kimber would have gagged at the sight of the Feta cheese. Jim ordered a gyro that had grilled, seasoned chicken, tomatoes, tzikiki, French fries on a warm grilled pita. For dessert we enjoyed a baklava. It was a wonderful lunch and we were so happy just to sit and look at the port and the people coming and going.

We left the café and hurried to the ship but had such fond feelings for this little port city. I would come back here in a heartbeat and I think Jim would too.

Tomorrow we are in Santorni, the Greek village where the houses are whitewashed with blue roofs. It is also the city in the “Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants” and used as a setting in so many other movies (maybe Mama Mia??). They also believe that Santorni might be the Lost City of Atlantis.

Since the village sits high on the top of a mountain or volcano (whichever it is) we have to take a donkey ride or cable car to go up and down. If it’s raining, I will probably go with the cable car. I am not feeling a donkey ride in the rain right now. Jim has already said he would be taking the cable car! We also get to go to a black sand beach for swimming. I think this is going to be my kind of excursion.

Watch for photos tomorrow! Print this post