Olympic Champions

The last stop on our tour of the Peloponnese was Olympia!  We left early in the morning (again...), and started our drive.  We drove through some of the most beautiful mountainsides ever!  I was too busy staring out the window to be car sick even!  There was one part where the cliff hung over the road and our bus barely made it through.  I definitely would pick mountains over beaches. Any day.

When we got to Olympia, we went to the hotel, but no one was there.  Absolutely no one.  No guests, not staff, no one. Beginning to a horror movie?  I think so.  Eventually Robert our prof tracked down a lady and she let us in to drop off our bags, but we couldn't get into our rooms yet.  A.K.A they forgot we were coming.  Sweet.  So, we had a quick stop for lunch, but since it is the off season, most of the restaurants don't have their full menus, so you pretty much eat whatever they have.  After that we did, it was a bit of a rush to get to our meeting spot for our next adventure.  The archaeological site at Olympia closes at 3, so we just missed it, but we went to overlook it and see this BRAND NEW site where they've just recently found a temple to some goddess and the priestess at this temple was the only woman allowed to watch the Olympic games.

That night we had a make-up lecture in the hotel and Robert bought us all drinks and went off on tangents about how much he hates Spartans and how they're barbaric.  It was a very enjoyable class :)  After that was dinner...more meat and potatoes.  We played some card games after with most all of us and Elaine, Andrew and the kids.  It got really funny when I was about to get killed off, but little Finn came to my defense and said that we had been playing Starcraft Warrior all night and there was no way that I could have done it. :)

The next morning we had breakfast. Kayla's parents were along for the trip and they didn't know that Greek yogurt is a lot different from regular, American yogurt, so they were running around telling everyone that it was sour cream.

After breakfast, we went out to the site and did our lecture there.  we even go to go out on the first Olympic track!  We had a race, but I wasn't much in the mood for running, so I skipped and lept the whole 190 meters.  Steve won and there was no way that he would let anyone forget.  Molly interviewed him and accused him of cheating, but he denied it.  Right... ;)

We did a quick tour around the museum after, but not much there was exciting especially after a looonnnggg weekend.  Our bus ride back to Athens was a grueling 5+ hours, I fell asleep so that helped.  And then the bus driver remembered that he had a DVD player and a bunch of movies, so we watched "The Spy Next Door".  We stopped midway at a McDonald's and a bunch of us got 1euro milkshakes.  Then we got yelled at for bringing "things that could spill" on the bus....ugghhh.  So we had to stand outside the bus and chug them before getting back on.  BRAIN FREEZE!  The the bus driver said he was impatient to go, so we could get on with our contraband.  Great, I'd already drank all of mine.

We finally got back to our apartment and we were all filthy and tired.  My room seriously smelt like wet raingear for a week.  Yuck, but it was a really good weekend, especially over a holiday, because then we were more focused on doing fun, new stuff as opposed to being homesick.