Day 4 - Mount Olympus

Sunday, March 21st was day four of spring break and we were in Gritsa, Greece, heading to climb Mount Olympus. The hostel information said it included breakfast, well a Greek breakfast just includes coffee and a pastry of some sort. It was not enough for us to be sustained all morning while hiking and climbing Mount Olympus. Just another thing we learned the hard way. “Ed” gave us a ride into the city and then some easy-to-follow directions to it. Mount Olympus was not touristy at all. There was a small restaurant on the bottom of it then a sign saying where all the trails led to. We took one that led up the mouth. It was very peaceful and relaxing even though we were working very hard and sweating like crazy. We made it up to one of the high points after two hours of hiking, but we just didn’t have the energy to go all the way to the top point. So we enjoyed our lunch overlooking Mount Olympus. The way back down was just as hard as going up because you then had to maneuver down the rocks and trails, sometimes we had to sit and crawl down. We had an early dinner at the restaurant in town where the lady had helped us find our hostel. She said she had cooking like mama makes. By saying that she had set some pretty high standards, which she met. I had oven baked chicken with rice that was amazing! We also enjoyed a Greek salad and bread with some sort of Greek spread. After lunch we wandered around the city for a couple hours. It was a city of Army folks because a base is located there. This was the most clean city I had seen in Greece, however there were a lot of stray cats and dogs on the way to the mount. I actually loved the city. We went back to the hostel and played some more skip-bo. The dogs at the hostel stole my towels that I had hanging out to dry right before bed, but luckily Spencer saved them from the dogs so I could use them for the rest of the trip.