Time for a visit today. Ancient Elis is just 30 minutes away and we arrived at about 10:30 at a totally empty car park. Was it open? Yes it was and we spent over an hour, on our own looking around the well presented artefacts.
Elis was the town from where the ancient Olympic Games were organised and the site and museum received funding when the Olympics were held in Greece in 2004. The finds from the site and the area around it cover prehistoric times (3,000BC) to the Roman period. The site, which we also had entirely to ourselves, is quite extensive and although the theatre (Greek subsequently modified by the Romans) is the most obvious attraction, there is plenty to see in the rest of the site. Olympic competitors were required to spend a considerable time at Elis before the games and therefore there are many buildings designed to be used for the athletes such as gymnasia and a palaestra. We spent a happy couple of hours wandering around the site and I was fascinated by the amount of ancient pottery laying on the ground. I found a jug handle and a large shard of a pithoi that looked as though it had been made using the coil method and I could imagine the potter's fingers creating it. I left the pottery pieces on top of a large slab of stone in the hope that other visitors would also see them and wonder. Elis is a site that really deserves more visitors.
Back to the campsite and another excellent meal produced by Agelica, this time yemista (stuffed tomatoes and peppers) and beef stifado (stew with onions). This time I had to have some bread to soak up the lovely stifado sauce. This time we had a free dessert of orange 'glyko' or spoon sweet that was made from orange peel. Needless to say, we were also given an ouzo. We still hadn't paid for anything, it was always 'avrio' but it would really have to be tomorrow as we would be leaving.
Photos: Elis theatre; Ritual multi-spouted vase from 3,300 - 3,100BC found near Elis; Mosaic 3rd century AD; A 3rd - 4th century AD pottery kiln in excellent condition.
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