Mt. Olympus, as far as I know, was everyone's favorite site.  It came in second for me, behind Olympia, and pretty much tied with the Parthenon.  Mt. Olympus was just plain beautiful.  I have NO clue as to how high it is, but it's wide!  Just a wide snow capped mountain...with many peeks.  We had to drive in our bus, with Bobbis behind the wheel, for what seemed like 6 hours or so to get there.  I wasn't overly fond of the village, a Communist Village at that, but our Hotel was great.  Plus, we stayed for 3 whole days, a great break from our usual one night per city schedule we'd been following!
I had known about our optional hike, and had considered not doing it.  If Akrokorinth almost killed me, imagine Mt. Olympus...the largest mountain in Greece!  I had a friend who went on this same Greece trip the year before and loved telling me all about Mt. Olympus, so I took his advice and decided to hike!
There were to be 2 hikes, the wuss hike, and the MAN hike!  The wuss hike would stick to the trail for a while and return to the bus with in 4 hours.  The MAN hike would make it to the snow line, and have a snow ball fight, then return in 6 or 7 hours.  I had opted for the wuss hike, with hopes of making the Man hike.  Our bus dropped us off 7 miles from where it dropped everyone off last year.  Seems Mt. Olympus was under construction and the roads were bad.  So we knew, we'd never make it to the snow line.....but not all is bad!
Half our group decided to get so drunk the night before, so maybe only 13 out of 27 went.  We lost 3 right off the bat when we started the hike, I just looked back and they were gone!  Leaving me last.  We hiked through the woods, no trail at first.  It was steep, and like I said, I'm NO hiker.  My heart was pounding, my legs were burning and I couldn't breathe at all!  I thought I'd be the fourth to drop out of this venture.  Finally, after maybe 20 minutes, (yup, that's all, that's how much of a wuss I am!) we made it to road (trail) Thank God!  It wasn't as steep, and I could breathe.  Of course, NO ONE in our group would stop to see if I was ok, guess they thought I just always wheezed!  Anyway, we walked on the trail and got some great pictures and lovely views of Mt. Olympus.

It wasn't the clearest day, and it was HOT!  But still, this picture doesn't do Mt. Olympus justice....sorry Zeus.

Yes, Ok, I was quite proud of myself for being on Mt. Olympus!  I'm not supposed to be climbing mountains.  I'm very, very glad I took the chance and did it!  And lived to tell about it.
After we hiked a good 90 minutes or so, (with out stopping!) and Australian road worker told us that we should go to "The Church and the River"....it was a hike DOWN...maybe 2 or 3 miles away.  We all voted and decided to go for it, since the trail was getting boring.  A hike down meant a major hike back up after we're all tired, but it was a chance we took.
We walked and walked...and walked, and walked!  I remember thinking how steep it was on the way down, which meant the way up was going to be awful!  We hiked for maybe another 90 minutes or so...and found the Church.

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