Day 76: Delphi

Things have been a bit of a rollercoaster lately, but I'll try to catch up the last two days. There has been a lot of time on the road both days, but the big highlight yesterday was definitely the archaeological site at Delphi as well as the related museum. Since we slept nearby we got to the site early in the morning before things were too hot. It has been very hot the last few days, but doing things in the morning and the breeze from the high elevation made it survivable.

There were two major sections to the site. The first, with the ring of pillars is the bit you see in the pictures the most - even though nobody really knows what it was for. One amusing bit is that the ancient Greeks tried three times to build a temple of Athena at this location, and each time it got destroyed by landslides and falling rocks from the cliffs above. After the third destruction, the Greeks decided that Athena must not like the location and gave up. Now, the giant boulder that destroyed it the third time is still there - with a feral cat and her kittens living beneath it.




Next we went up a bit higher to the much larger section. It included the Temple of Apollo, where the oracle spoke Apollo's predictions of the future, the site for the Pythian Games, an auditorium, and numerous treasury buildings and smaller temples. It also provides a very nice view down the mountain at the valley below. Oh - and the Omphalos! Very cool.





Next was the museum, which was small but had a lot of metal and stone work from the archaelogical site. The most famous things were the other Omphalos (the Roman one) and the bronze sculpture of the Charioteer.



After all this, we did an exchange of people as some of our group headed back to Athens and we picked up some new people. We then took off north for the town of Kalambaka. The one quick stop along the way was a quick visit to the famous battle site of Thermopylae (most recently known from the movie '300', although that one was a tad embellished).


We finally got to Kalambaka and I enjoyed a nice swim in the pool. Impressive sights were to come, but I'll cover that in the next post, assuming I don't get too frustrated with the mosquitos devouring me right now.