Global marketing is a universal art. Digital communication key. Countries conjure clever constructions. Sow seeds. Must visit places get planted and paid for.
Camping Diana, a short two minute twist and uphill turn from Olympia’s high street, is our over-nighter. The town is geared for visitors. Merchandise spills out from the shop fronts like sumo wrestlers’ pot-bellies. International flags flutter. Send out sublimal semaphore signals. “Welcome”. Come eat. Come buy.
The Archeological Museum our first leg. A fabulous presentation of artifacts unfolds as we round the first bend.
With no audio guide available we feel the displays are lifeless. It’s like looking over someone’s huge private collection. All clearly indentified and labelled in four languages. We muse and wonder over the owners’ lifetimes, long past. Can only guess. Need an expert. Come confirm. They dropped the baton.
Following morning. 10.15am and we’re on the actual site. Like huge sleeping caterpillars, eleven empty coaches, lie aligned. A few with snoring exhausts foul the air with their early morning bad breath. Doors gaping. Wait for their returning hordes. Early birds long out. Already catching worms.
The original Olympic Village is a massive site. Dedicated to Zeus and his cronies. A place of worship to the gods of the time. The original springboard that provided the inspiration behind the Games resurrection at the end of the nineteenth century. The mainly French and German coach-comers spread out in bunches. More than enough room for us all. It’s still early in the season, if not day.
Finish our visit to Olympia with a look around the free to enter Archimedes Museum. Working models and videos demonstrate his sheer genius. No sphere of science and technology that he failed to get a handle on. The ability to fully focus on a problem until solved ultimately cost him his life. Obliviously pondering over a circle while a Roman soldier ran him through. What a way to go.
At times, the road through the forest-like olive groves entering Kalamata-land are more pitted than the hanging fruit. Beachside Camping Erodios, 10K short of Pylos. Home for the next few nights.
Earlier, a surprise detour around the Paris Boulevard Périphérique came as quite a shock.
