5 March
2025 – Free Lemons For Every Camper
Miles
driven today = 37
Total Miles
to date = 1,665
Back on the
road this morning but only for an hour or so as we made our way to Camping
Diana at Olympia, home of the original Olympic Games.
It’s the only campsite open locally at the
moment with pitches tiered into a steep hillside above the town.
While I was checking in at reception one of
the staff loaded Lisa up with an armful of free lemons.
We are
booked in here for two nights.
The main
archeological site and its associated museums are open from 8am until 3:30 pm
so we thought we would have a look around the museum which is specifically
dedicated to the History of the Olympic Games this afternoon and then hit all
the ancient Greek stuff hard in the morning.
So we wandered that way and had a look in some of the souvenir shops
en-route.
Donkey Milk Soap anybody?
When we got
to the museum we discovered that it’s a bit of an all or nothing
situation.
€6 buys you a ticket for the
archeological site, the archeological museum and the museum of the Games.
But you can’t just dip into one or two of
these on a daily basis, so we decided to entertain ourselves otherwise for
today.
We subsequently found out that
it’s free entry tomorrow in honour of a local politician so it looks like we
we’ve saved ourselves €12.
Woohoo, more
beer money!
The modern town
of Olympia is actually a really small settlement.
Most of the visitors tend to get bussed in on
day trips so we took ourselves off on a little nature walk around the edge of the
town.
Blue irises
amongst the grass and ivy.
Silver bark
contrasting magnificently against a clear blue sky.
From afar
we thought this was a field of poppies.
But they
actually turned out to be crimson coloured anemones.
A small tributary
to the Alfeios river which runs past the ancient site.
Wouldn’t it
be lovely to have such a proliferation of oranges right outside your back door
ready to be freshly squeezed each morning.
We went in
search of some cultural fulfilment at a local art gallery near the old railway
station but it was well and truly shut.
So we consoled ourselves with a couple of bottles of Alpha/Alfa beer.
Even their website flip flops between the two
spellings but it is apparently one of Greece’s oldest beer brands and is made
entirely using Greek barley.
We popped
into a shop on the way back to the van and picked up a couple more chilled bottles
to drink in the sunshine while a cacophony of birdsong tweeted, trilled and chirruped
around us.
It was 17
degrees this afternoon, but felt much warmer in the sunshine, and it’s due to
hit 20 tomorrow so we decided to do a bit of a changeover in our
wardrobes.
We have a second double bed
which drops down over the lounge area of the van but in the 3 years we have owned
her it’s only been slept in once, when my daughter Lucy and her partner Daniel
joined me for one night before the Glastonbury Festival in 2022.
When we are travelling we remove the mattress
and use the space for storage of stuff we don’t have immediate use for.
So winter woollies were swapped out for summer
clothes.
I hope we are not tempting fate.
It’s due to drop to 4 degrees again tonight and the thermal windscreen cover I had neatly stored in the garage yesterday is back out of its bag and keeping us warm.
Tonight we
decided to treat ourselves.
It’s been
more than a week since we’ve had a meal out, so on the recommendation of the
guy at reception here at the campsite we headed to Taverna Orestis, which is just
a couple of blocks away.
He told us they
serve food like his Grandma used to cook.
Or maybe his Grandma actually is the cook. Either way, I quite fancied the rabbit stew from the menu but they didn’t have that so we started
with a shared plate of grilled oyster mushrooms which was dressed in balsamic
vinegar and lemon juice and was absolutely amazing.
Then we both had stuffed squid which was
equally fantastic.
With a litre of house
plonk, bread and tapenade, mineral water and complimentary halva to finish and
some really top class service from our waiter who had excellent English, the
whole bill came to just €44.
We are
sorely tempted to go back tomorrow.
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