Olympic Stadium

The day began with a 6:30 a.m. wakeup call because we needed to be on the bus at 8:00 a.m. We were well rewarded for our early morning efforts. Breakfast in this hotel is served on a rooftop terrace with fabulous views of the city. That is now officially the nicest breakfast view I've ever had. It knocks the view of the Alps and Lake Geneva that Doug and I had in Montreux, Switzerland into second place.

Much of the following information was drawn from the booklet prepared for this trip by Fr. Rico and Chris Turner.

After refuelling and soaking in the views with Linda, it was off to the Olympic Stadium with our local guide, Christiana leading the way. The stadium is known as the Panathenaic Stadium or Kallimarmaro ("beautiful marble". Its roots go back to the 4th century BC when it was constructed for the Panathenaic Games, a festival in honour of Athena. The current version is a reconstruction from the 2nd century AD using entirely Pentelic marble, the same material as the Parthenon. This stadium is the only stadium in the world built entirely of marble. After being refurbished in the 1870s, it hosted the opening and closing ceremonies of the first modern Olympics in 1896 and was the venue for 4 of the 9 contested sports. It again hosted the Olympics in 2004. It is also the last venue in Greece from where the Olympic flame handover ceremony to the host nation takes place. All the benches are made of marble. There are fancy marble seats for dignitaries.

We walked the long tunnel used by the athletes to enter the stadium. At the start of the tunnel is a little museum where a sample Olympic flame torch from each set of Olympic Games is displayed. We Canadians were proud to see those from Montreal, Calgary and Vancouver.

From there, we went back to the cathedral where we were yesterday and had another beautiful mass. Such great singing!!!

After that, we were dropped off in a busy shopping and dining sector and given a few hours to ourselves. Five of us (Lori, Linda, Donna, Cathy and I) formed a posse and set about exploring. We decided that Athens is a great place to shop for shoes and jewellery. Only one pair of shoes was bought - well done, Cathy! We found a little restaurant and had lunch. Linda rejoiced in finding fabulous coffee. Then it was back to the bus while window shopping to get ready for our next adventure for the day - see next footprint.Read more