After an early breakfast, a representative from Key Tours arrived at the hotel at around 7:30am to pick us up. We were the first to be picked up and by the time everyone had been collected it was around 9:30am before we hit the highway out of town.
Our tour guide Mariana had a wealth of knowledge and discussed everything along the way (it was interesting, but the bus ride to get to our first stop was 2-hours and she hardly took a breath, so was a bit tiring – can only take in so much info). Plus we were very tired from the early start so we kept dozing.
Our first stop was for a toilet break and some coffee. Can I say that the Greeks seem to have an aversion to toilet seats! What’s up with that! It’s bad enough as a woman that we have to sit down but when there is no toilet seat it’s not very comfortable! Luckily I have my trusty paper toilet seat covers.
We then headed to Delphi which is up in the mountains. Do you know there is a ski resort here? Who knew that you could go snow skiing in Greece? Not me! It was really cold but the view of the snow capped hills was lovely.
We arrived at ancient Delphi and entered the site. There were some stray dogs around who started barking at everyone. Peter befriended one of the dogs who thought he had food and proceeded to tug on his pants & jacket for a while. Eventually he got bored and moved on.
It always amazes me going to an ancient site just how old everything you are looking at is. I mean this stuff is from the BC’s! It was great having our own personal guide to explain what everything was as there wasn’t very many descriptive signs. Unfortunately not long after we arrived in Delphi it started raining. The clouds rolled in & our view of the surrounding mountains was obscured.
For those of you who don’t know anything about Delphi, in ancient times this is where the Oracle of Delphi lived. Leaders came here to ask important questions of the Oracle. The Oracle was always a woman who drank of the spring waters and chewed on laurel leaves. Her delirious answers were then interpreted by the attending priests. She also had to be touching the ‘Navel of the world’, which originally was a gold egg shaped statue but has never been found and was replace with a marble one (see below):
Here is a map which helps explain the layout of this amazing site:
We started our journey walking down the ‘Sacred Way’:
We came across the remains of some of the treasuries constructed by the Athenians to house dedications made by their city and citizens to the sanctuary of Apollo dating back to around 500 B.C. …
We passed by the ‘Stoa of the Athenians’, an ancient portico (type of porch), dedicated by the Athenians after the Persian Wars …
and finally approached the great temple with it’s mystical past …
We continued further up the mountain to admire the theatre …
We then went to the Museum attached to the Delphi site where most of the statues and other found relics have been moved so that they can be better preserved. Again it was great having a guide to explain things more fully.
And this is what Delphi would have looked like around 500 B.C. …
This is a statue of a bull made from silver and gold …
We had lunch included in our ticket and what a fantastic lunch it was! The food kept coming! We started with a tasty soup, followed by some sort of egg based dish, then grilled chicken with rice, then dessert, all with bread. Let me just say that neither of us wanted dinner that night.
Once we had consumed lunch we headed back down the mountain to a little ski resort town to look around & buy some souvenirs. After this we headed back to Athens but of course hit peak hour traffic! It’s the same all over the world! We finally arrived back at our hotel around 7pm
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