day three - delphi

lots of driving today. 8 hours lots. It was totally worth it though, as we were rewarded with a great hotel and an amazing stop at the oracle of delphi (the old sanctuary of apollo), and apparently the exact middle of the earth, if you believe the mythology.

some of the towns we passed on the way to the site were actually quite interesting, like this one on the slopes of mt. parnassus (I think). I forget what the town is called, so don't bother asking. it's important/neat because it was one of the few towns in greece that wasn't occupied by the ottoman turks during the long occupation of greece. if you can't tell from the picture, it's a little out of the way. these days it's mostly a ski resort for athenians who come to the mountain to ski in the winter (yes, there is actually snow in greece, who knew?).

upon arriving at delphi we went right to the museum, which was crowded but tolerable. as far as museums go, it was a good one - lots of interesting sculptures from the sanctuary of apollo. one of the bronzes was so well done that you could actually see veins on the guy's arms and hands, pretty impressive if you ask me. however, I didn't spend that much time in a bus to see statues indoors, no, I wanted to see the sanctuary.

the sanctuary itself is situated 3300 feet up the slopes of mt. parnassus, a 9 thousand odd foot mountain that is snow-capped until july/august every year. the valley below is one giant olive grove, and it's been like that for thousands of years apparently. like most of the greek ruins, there isn't all that much reconstructed - the athenian treasury, some of the columns of the temple of apollo, some other small things, but it was an impressive site nonetheless. probably my favourite so far. we were only given half an hour of free time (seems to be the trend so far that Marina talks too much and we don't get all that much time to ourselves) so my dad and I practically ran to the stadium, which is above the rest of the sanctuary; we really wanted to see what it was like as we only caught a glimpse of the stadium in athens from the top of the acropolis. the stadium used to seat 25 000 people, I think, and it's a good 200 metres long. my mom and sister walked the entire length of the stadium (which isn't that far, I know) but I didn't stick around; people were waiting for us at the bottom as our free time was nearly up. I took a few pictures for posterity and practically ran down the hill - I don't like to be late...

day two - meteora

woke up this morning at around 5:30 so that I had time to eat breakfast before the beginning of the four day classical coach tour. breakfast was actually really good, but the greeks don't know the proper way to cook bacon apparently. it's not crispy like it should be, but whatever, the fresh squeezed orange juice more than makes up for it.

we all packed on to the bus at 7am and we were told by our tour guide (Marina) that we had six hours of driving ahead of us, and that we would be stopping every two hours to "pay our respects at the temple of relief."

so it turns out that greece has tonnes of mountains. I mean, I knew it wasn't a flat country, but it's almost alpine. we drove out of athens, towards the city of lamia, which is about half way to kalampaka (which is where the rocks of meteora are located). but before we got to lamia, we made a quick stop at the famous battlefield of thermopylae, which is where 300 spartan warriors and their allies held off the persian king xerxes and his 100 000 (or 1 million depending on the source) men who were intent on invading greece. today the pass isn't all that impressive, but in 480BC there was only about 50 metres between the bottom of the hill and the aegean sea. if the spartans weren't betrayed by a greek traitor, it is quite possible that the small greek force would've been able to hold off the persians indefinitely. the smallest ridge in that picture, the one just to the left of the two passing trucks, is actually the burial mound of the spartan dead, and the original memorial was somewhere in that area, now it's on the other side of the highway.

we only spent a few minutes at thermopylae (it really isn't all that much to look at) before we got back into the bus and continued our long drive. we finally scaled the last of the mountains and descended into the plain of thessaly, which is the country's agricultural centre. after being surrounded by mountains for the better part of two days, it was actually kind of neat to see nothing but flatness over such a large area. We drove for a couple of hours and finally stopped at a taverna in kalampaka for our lunch. This being my first experience with a taverna and a large tour group, I was somewhat surprised that our meal was prepared so quickly. I just had a greek salad (hey, it’s Greece!), which turned out to be pretty good. After lunch we started our drive up to the monasteries perched on the rocks high above the town. there are something like 6 monastaries that are still inhabited today, but there used to be quite a bit more. the monks and nuns built them on the rocks so that they could live in peace in quiet, the whole hermit thing, and it's kind of odd that we actually got to go inside two of the monastaries, what with the vows of silence and all that. the gardens and the courtyards were amazing and it was something else to be standing on a rock that was a good 300m above the plain below. there are roads that lead to the monastaries now, but back in the day (early 20th century and before) the only way to get to these monastaries was by being hauled up in a net. apparently the only time the monks replaced the ropes was when they broke...in mid-air.

we spent a lot of time in the monastaries, probably too much if you ask me, but Marina had quite a bit to say about life in the buildings and the history of the monastaries themselves, none of which I can remember as I was pretty bored after 40 minutes standing in a very dark church while she talked about the paintings and what-not. sorry.

so that's it for day two, tomorrow we make our way towards delphi and the sanctuary of apollo, which is on the slopes of mt. parnassus. it should be pretty interesting.

day one

wow. just got into athens now after spending the last 10 or so hours on a small aluminum and titanium tube travelling across the ocean at 600+ mph. we got to the hotel at around 10am local time, 3am real time. got into bed almost right away for 4 quick hours of sleep as we only have this one day to see all that athens has to offer, which isn't all that much according to our travel agent. acropolis, agora, dinner, bed, bus tour.

so yeah, slept, met at the top of the hotel for an orientation meeting with Nolitours (the company that's arranging all our stuff) and snagged a quick shot of where we were going in a few short minutes. yeah, that's from the hotel. unfortunately, the view from my room is of the central courtyard (read: unfinished interior section of the hotel titania). doesn't matter, not actually spending much time in the room.

the walk to the acropolis actually took about 25 minutes from the hotel, as you can tell that it isn't that close from the picture. here's the central market place at the foot of the acropolis. the central marketplace is actually before that shot, and the coloured buildings infront of/behind (depending on your outlook) my dad are just selling more stuff that you don't actually need.

it actually took a little bit of walking because the path isn't that well marked, maybe you're supposed to find the acropolis from the agora, but we climbed the rock first, which has a number of signs that have been painted over by locals to confuse the tourists. it works.

as would be expected, it cost money to enter the site at the top of the rock, but it was well worth it. I took 50-70 pictures (I can't remember the actual number) of all the stuff at the top, and I even got a picture of a cat, before some local lady yelled at me for not taking a picture of the ruins. apparently the greeks are really sensitive about their broken buildings; they won't let you pose in front of them (the statues anyway) and they won't let you take funny/interesting/original shots of the ruins. they think that would degrade the achievements of the classical athenians apparently. here's the offending picture, just for the sake of posterity...that's her in the pink top, just about to yell at me in greek. I got another kitty later, and I actually thought about going back and showing this lady the picture, I figured she would appreciate my sense of humour...didn't though, folks were in a hurry (at least, that's my excuse).

after dutifully taking our pictures of the parthenon and erecthion (of which I have many) we went down to the agora, which is actually pretty interesting if you have a good enough imagination to fully reconstruct the buildings in your head, as about the only buildings left standing are the hepheistion and a building (stoa I think) that was constructed during the Roman conquest period (after 146BC). the hepheistion is that nearly complete temple you can see in the distance in the picture, all that space around it used to be buildings too, but none have been reconstructed.

Athens is actually a really dirty city, but all that haze in the pictures isn't smog, it's water vapour. it gets cold enough at night that there's tonnes of dew, but the sun is hot as hell during the day and it evaporates all that moisture, and that's what clouds up all the pictures. oh, and you wouldn't believe all the scooters in this city. well, you would once you saw the traffic and the narrow streets...but still, nearly everyone has one and none of the people wear helmets, or if they do, it's carried on the arm, not the head.