What a lovely hotel we stayed. The tour is split into people who wanted first class accommodation and the rest of us. Five people have gone for 1st class. The place we stayed in could not be faulted so much so that we did not want to ask the others too much about theirs in case they thought they were losing out.

On the bus by 0815 we left for the ancient Olympic venue. It was raining heavily with lightening when we left which did not bode for our mainly outdoor activity. We lucked out however as the weather cleared about half an hour after we started walking around the Sanctuary of Olympiad. The Sanctuary began to take shape as a religious and athletics centre during the 10th - 9th century BC and reached its final form around the 4th century BC. The first recorded games were 776 BC and were then held every 4 afterwards until about 393 BC under Roman rule.

We spent 2 hours investigating the site with the help of our very knowledgeable tour guide. This part ended in the Olympic Stadium and of course Bruce had to run up the track and back (about 200m in total). No records were set - nor any records for the slowest athlete (?) but he did run. There were many interesting stories given to us but one that might be of interest was the way in which cheats at the Ancient Olympics were dealt with. As well as not being allowed to win they had to arrange for a statue of Zeus to be put on a pedestal along the path of Zane. The statue had to have the athletes name, their father's name, their village name, the fine and the nature of the offence inscribed under it. These statues had to be passed by all the athletes as they entered the stadium as a warning. The fact that there were only 16 plinths indicates the message got through!

From there it was over to the museum where we spent an hour and a quarter. Fantastic. Many of the pieces were copies with the originals in museums all over the world. The condition of the statues etc were incredible. There was also a section which compared Greek and Roman statues. We were told that in the Greco/Roman times the Greeks were considered :the head: and the Romans :the hands: of the culture. Greeks tried for perfection in the body form and clothing for their statues while the Romans did not, they were more about getting the job done. Romans even built their statues so the head could be lifted out of the statue and replaced with a different one.

Then off to lunch and the rest of the day was spent driving to Delphi. We had a stop for wine tasting and an overview of the production of Olive oil. This was very interesting and while the Sauvignon Blanc did not stand up to the NZ one in this instance the Shiraz was to die for so we purchased one. One more stop was at a coffee shop probably more to give the driver a break. Had some very good Greek coffee and hope we get more of this during our stay in Greece.

The travel was as pleasant as it can be in a bus and provided us with some great views from the very steep cliffs we were driving along. One of the views had in it an olive grove of over 5 million trees. The group has split up again into our hotels and ours again looks great.