Hot Day in Delphi

Well I have to say, that despite the previous day's pessimism regarding certain ruins, I have become a changed man. The ruins were quite impressive and in remarkably good shape.

But before Jan gets ahead of himself, I am going to steal the keyboard to tell you guys about the site itself. Delphi is an UNESCO site. It is home to the temple of Apollo and the sanctuary of Athena. There is also a theatre (ampitheatre), stadium, gymnasium, and numerous treasuries. Most of the foundations of the site date back to the Mycenean period, but the ruins that we saw were later constructions that were built on top of those. Most of the remaining site dates back to the 5th/4th centuries (before Christ). We walked up to the modern museum to buy our tickets, but after that we had a bit of a trek up the side of a valley to view the ruins. They were amazing...

Anyways back to my (Jan's) story, since we are getting all techinical here I might as well start at the begining. We woke up and Danielle was huming with excitiment. We then went for our free breakfast at the hotel. THere danielle ordered a coffee.... well that certianly helped her mood. By the time we were out of the hotel danielle was virtually skipping down the street. Now we power walked to the site and danielle with great excitment puilled out her camera to find it was blinking the empty battery sign... So I volunteered to run back to the hotel and get the batteries there and bring them back, which i did. Than we got on our way. The temple and other features were mostly on the same hilside that the modern town of Delphi was perched on. It overlooked this jaw droppingly beautiful valley and mountain. Since it was on a hill we had to hike up to the top. There were various ruins, from shrines, to former treasuries, to the stuning Temple of Apollo. Now this town/temple was arranged quite differently than most. The amphithetre which was almost perfectly preserved was above the main attraction, the temple of apallo where the oracle resided. Than above the thetre by a good five minute walk up hill was the staduim. I pity the poor labourers who had to drag the stones not only up the mountain side but past the most of the town. Another aspect was that miuch of the marble brought in was actually imported from various islands in the agean sea, so much of the building material not only had to be dragged up the hill but also importted to the port which we could see in the distance by the ocean. Through snipits we heard from the various tourgroups that passed us we found out that the temple had been excavated by french archelogists in the 19th century, which explained why all the signs were in french and why there were numerous french tour groups.

Below the temple were two other sites of ruins. The first was the gymnasuim, which i thought was rediculous and argued with danielle about. I mean who in their right mind would build a gym in the middle of the goddam mountains in a remote area in greece. LIke ya the mountain air is that much better for you... well ya after asking someone indeed that was their rational... i hate being wrong... oh well. Anyways the sactuary of thelos was gobsmakingly beautiful while the sactuary of athena may have been pretty in its day was unfortunatly just a pile of rubble. Than back up the hill to the musuem. Once in the museum, we tagged along with a tour and found out alot of cool facts while i recuperated form the heat in the semi airconditioned space. Danielle on the other hand absorbed the heat with great relish and with no affect It was great, at the end there was a full minature model of the site. It was really neat to see how everything would have looked as it did in its time. Not to worry, we took LOTS of photos. Danielle is almost as bad as my dad is with snapping photos of everything! We just have to figure out how to download them all at once.

Tomorrow we head back to Athens for a night before we head off to Nafpilo for three nights. Danielle is excited to see more of the sites she's learned about, she is a fountain of information and gushes about all the ruins. I am looking forward to seeing another small town in Greece - they are much better than the big city of Athens. We were suprised to find that once outside Athens the towns and villages cleaned up quite a bit. This was espeicailly true here in the tourist trendy town of delphi. I hope that the same pertains to the other towns that we will visit on our trip.

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