American Mom in London: Greek Isles Cruise: Port of Katakolon

The final port of our Greek Isles cruise was Katakolon. The main attraction at this port is a visit to Ancient Olympia, the site of the original Olympic Games. Having found out that toddlers and ancient ruins do not mix well (we still had fresh memories of carrying Colin's stroller over the ruins of Pompeii), we decided this would be a good day to leave Colin on the ship in the nursery and do an excursion on our own. We booked an excursion with Royal Caribbean that first visited the Olympic ruins and then toured a nearby winery. A perfect, kid-free day.

Ancient Olympia is located a little under an hour from the cruise port of Katakolon. Upon arrival, we were given a guided tour of the ruins. We had to use our imaginations quite a bit to understand what the area used to look like. We saw the ruins of the gymnasium and Olympic stadium including the finish line from the original Olympic Games. The sanctuary was also an important place of worship as well as the site of the games. We saw the ruins of a number of the temples used for worship of the Gods. The Temple of Zeus was the former site of a giant statue of Zeus which was one of the seven wonders of the ancient world. After our guided tour, we had some time to explore the grounds on our own before taking off for the winery.

On our way to the winery, we received a page from the nursery on the pager that we were given to be used in emergencies. We received a number of other pages right after this. We asked the tour guides how to get in touch with the ship, and they told us there was no way to contact the ship and that we would have to wait two more hours until we were back to find out what the pages were for. Needless to say, our time at the winery wasn't the most relaxing as we were both very worried about Colin. After taking a tour of the winery, each table of five people was given two bottles of wine which took a bit of the edge off of our worry. We also got a large platter filled with feta cheese, olives, tomatoes, and bread. Yum, I could live on that kind of food.

When we got back to the ship, Colin was perfectly fine and the nursery team said they must have accidentally paged us. So, all that worrying was for nothing! It was formal night on the ship so we enjoyed a yummy dinner and then went to bed early (well, Colin and I did - David went off gambling). Another fun but busy day!