Monday, July 15, 2013

Modern Olympics

Today, we got the opportunity to visit the FIRST site of the modern Olympic stadium in Athens! (1895)
Also very exciting news: while visiting, my dad bought me an iPad to camera adaptor, so hopefully now my blogs will be filled with a lot of the pictures I'm taking! Hooray!

We walked up to the stadium and just stared for a few minutes. There were rows and rows of Greek and Olympics flags. After paying for our tickets and getting our audio tours we were off! One of the first things we saw were the seats of the king and queen for when they were watching the Olympics. We even got to sit in them. We walked around some more and we were able to go into the tunnel where the runners would walk through to come out to race. We also got to see a mini museum of every poster and torch from all the different Olympics! We walked up to the top of the stadium to see the view. Even though it was a steep walk it was well worth the climb to see the stadium from the top row! It reminded me of the Hawks game we went to where we had seats in the 300 levels, still worth it! The stadium is made completely of marble and took a lot of money and time to build, but also led to it being very well preserved. 

We walked around some more and then got to go on the track. We took pictures on the winner's podium and then the boys said "lets do a lap!"  Well it was 90+ degrees out but I reminded myself I'd probably never have this opportunity again so we took off! Definitely worth the run to experience that! We met up with my parents for lunch (another gyro! the first in a few, maybe only 2, days!) and started making plans for the afternoon.

We decided to get on the metro and ride it to the more modern Olympic stadium, Athens 2004. 12 stops later we were there and WOW. It was huge, the entire train stop was dedicated to the Olympics and the area was huge. Although we couldn't get into most of the buildings (all of the buildings) we were still able to walk around and get a good look at everything. We saw the training/practice pools that were outside and even got to stop and watch a swim practice going on! Definitely worth the trip! 


    outside the stadium

    sitting in the chairs!


    the boys walking through the tunnel

   London 2012 poster & torch 

   We finally made it to the top of the stadium


    Getting ready to run!  

ATHENS 2004

  I'm convinced Michael Phelps swam here. If you can't tell I was beyond excited. Mike also said its probably the same water but I Couldn't get in to touch it :)



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