Olympia or Olympus?

This weekend we traveled to Olympia. That is the city where the original Olympic games were held. I knew that, of course! Everyone does. But did you know that Olympia is not even near Mt. Olympus where the Greek Gods were believed to live? Here is a map that shows where the two places are.

Olympia is an amazing place to visit. It is a beautiful small town, but the most amazing thing is the HUGE archaeological site where the Olympic Games took place. I don’t think I can describe what a huge area has been excavated by archaeologists and how many amazing buildings and statues they found. An important thing to the ancient people who took part in the games was worship of the gods. Two of the largest buildings on the site are temples; one for Hera and one for Zeus. Inside the temple to Zeus is a statue that is one of the seven wonders of the ancient world. The temple was made of some of the biggest columns I have seen and inside there was a statue of Zeus that was two stories high. The actual statue did not survive, but a man who traveled through in the second century CE and wrote about what he saw (Pausanias) described the statue. It was made of ivory and gold. Here is a model of what it may have looked like.

The Olympic games were a celebration and a festival. People came from long distances to participate and to watch. There is a stadium there for the running races which could hold 40-50 thousand people. That is close to what football stadiums hold today. The sports in the original Olympics were a little different than the sports today. You can find out more about the sports online at the Perseus Web Site. In the later games Nero (a notoriusly bad emperor) wanted to participate and so he added sports like writing poetry and oratory and of course he won whatever he participated in!

When I say that we traveled, I should tell you that we took the train. We got up early on Saturday morning and walked down to the center of town and took the bus into New Corinth. The bus from Old Corinth to New Corinth costs 1 Euro, which is about $1.20 in US dollars. Then we took the train for a four hour trip along the coast to Olympia. One round trip train ticket cost 24.50 Euros. The money here was Drachma until about 2002 when Greece and most of Europe started using the Euro. The Euro comes in bills for 500, 200, 100, fifty, twenty, ten and five Euro. They are all different sizes and different colors. There are coins for one and two Euro and for 1, 2, 5, 10, 20 and 50 cents. When Greece started using Euros everything got more expensive. In 2000 you could get 303.15 drachma for one dollar, but of course everything cost hundreds of drachma! Even though a candy bar might have cost 100 drachma before, now the same thing costs 1 Euro which is about 300 drachma. You can see more pictures and learn more information about the Euro at this web site. Find out here about how your money would exchange for Euros.

Tomorrow I am going to visit the elementary school in the village. Wednesday, Thursday and Friday I am going to some different festivals which have to do with the holidays that I was mentioning. I am hoping that I will get to tell some of the Greek kids about Halloween!

Next weekend is our last weekend in Greece. We are thinking of traveling somewhere to see something else, but we have not decided where. Where do you think we should travel for the weekend? Remember we only have two days and will have to take a bus or train. Let me know!