Ancient Olympia

We woke up to some intermittent rain in Olympia in Greece on November 2 when staying at Hotel Europa.

Fortunately, most of the rain occurred as we were riding to the Olympia archaeological site.

The rain stopped altogether as we were entering the archaeological site.

It was perfect timing because the very recent rainy weather meant that our group had most of the entrance area of the archaeological site to ourselves.

There were two dogs that seemed intent on hanging around our group.

The Temple of Hera is "one of the oldest monumental temples in Greece".

This is the location where the Olympic flame is ignited before each Olympics.

The Philippeion is photogenic.

The entrance to the Ancient Stadium at Olympia is near the Temple of Hera.

It was interesting to think about this stadium being used so long ago for the earliest Olympic games.

We used this as the "starting line" for where our group ran its own foot race; we didn't present much challenge to the early Olympians.

The Olympia Museum is near the achaeological site and has a large number of interesting exhibits featured with modern presentation.

I'm only including a small subset here of the photographs we took of the interesting exhibits in this museum.

Zeus and Ganymede

Nike of Paionios

Our favorite area in the museum was probably the large room in the center that featured the sculptured ornaments from the Temple of Zeus.

There is much to see in the Olympia area beyond the archaeological site and museum.

These are some views of Olympia as one exits the museum.