World Cruise Day 89/152 - Katakolon, Greece - Nice to see you, sis, and...we're Olympians - OK, sort of (not really)

Cruise day: 89/152

Ports days: 36
Sea days: 53
Countries: 15
Continents: 4
Ports: 26

 

We docked in Katakolon, Greece today, right across from our sister ship, The Viking Sky.  Interestingly enough, this was the ship we sailed on for our Iceland cruise last July.  This makes the second port where we visited with another ship that we've been on before (see the first Cabo post for photos of the Carnival Miracle).

Here is our Star, closer on the right and the Sky a little farther away on the left

The Sky from our balcony

This was our trip for the last two days from Dubrovnik, Croatia.

You'd think that temperatures would be going up as we head south, but the opposite is true.  This morning, it was 46-degrees with a good breeze.  The mercury rose to near 60 by 2PM or so, but the breeze increased to offset that.  At least it was a nice, sunny day, so it was still pleasant.

As we exited the ship, as happens most days, our intrepid guest services officers were dutifully standing there to wish us a pleasant day, and perhaps smiling as they get to see us go away, at least for a while. :-)

Left to right
Financial Officer, Chris; Cruise Director, Damian; Executive Housekeeper, Anna; Guest Services Manager, Mara; Beverage Coordinator, Andrej; Cruise Consultant, Hamed
Not pictured:
General Manager, Johann (doing everyone else's work because they're standing outside)
Restaurant Manager, Casper (most likely doing leg day exercises)
Excursion Manager, Rob (running around in 46-degree weather wearing shorts)

Our tour today was to visit the small town of Olympia, and more specifically, the UNESCO heritage site that is the site of the original Olympic Games.

The Olympics got their beginning here in 776BC (that's 2798 years ago for the math-challenged) and were held here for over 1,000 years.

It is still an active archeological site and excavation work was going on.

This is the gymnasium area where practice took place for the games

Lovely wildflowers were in bloom everywhere.

This was a bathhouse where athletes would come to bathe.

The place where a 45-foot statue of Zeus was made

For reference, that's a 45-foot pillar on the left - it is a replica that was placed there to give scale to this - the temple of Zeus

Our guide is standing at Hera's Altar - the site where the Olympic torch was lit

On the upper level here, statues were erected of athletes including their name, hometown, father's name, and such - it was a monument to cheating called the walk of shame and it featured Olympians who were caught cheating by ingesting banned substances like mushrooms, bull blood, bull urine - all thought to contain performance-enhancing properties - all spectators entering the stadium had to pass by the walk of shame thus humiliating the cheaters

Right across from the walk of shame was the walk of fame where Olympic champions would have statues of themselves placed to record and honor their victories

This arch is the entry into the stadium that seated, get this, 45,000 people!

The Olympic stadium where races were held - 45,000 spectators lined the raised areas all around the 600-meter long field

We walked the field - does that make us Olympians?

We enjoyed the tour.  Our guide provided intricate detail - detail that is impossible to remember unless you were taking notes throughout the entire tour - and we weren't.  Unfortunately, here excessive detail took up the entire tour, meaning that the tickets we were also given to tour two adjacent museums were useless.  In addition, we would have liked to take a brief stroll through the town of Olympia as well, but with less than ten minutes of free time left for us, that was impossible as well.

Once back to the ship, we did stroll through Katakolon. It is a quaint little town with several shops along the street.  They all were open and the shopkeepers were all wonderfully welcoming and gracious.  They were all thrilled to see the first tourists on over two years today.  The attitude here toward tourists was refreshing, especially when compared to a few of our previous ports where they didn't seem to care that tourists were visiting.  Everyone we met was smiling, friendly, and welcoming.  It was wonderful.

This sculpture was in a playground a short walk through town from the port

Arlona added for size reference

I think this tree was bowing before the church

Us with the sisters

The snow-capped peaks in the background were beautiful

The Viking Sky departed about 3:30PM and we followed her out at 4PM.  She went north and we're heading south, so it was a brief family reunion for the Star & Sky.  Since we saw the Jupiter in the Chilean fjords, we only need to see the Sea, Orion, and Venus to make it a full reunion.  But the Sea is in St. Martin, the Orion is headed to Ft. Lauderdale, and the Venus is in Norway, so I'm not sure it will happen.

We enjoyed pre-dinner drinks in the Explorers' Bar and dinner with friends in the World Cafe.  Right between those two events, the sun put on another terrific show.

Tomorrow, we'll be in Nafplion, Greece, and taking a tour that will take us to Epidaurus and Palamidi.