The Oracle, The Highway, and the Mayonnaise Tavern

Ask thy question, mortal, and behold..... THE PROPHECY OF THE ORACLE!

*cue hissing vapors, lightning crashes, and strong breeze*

Today, Rickelle and I left Athens in our zippy Subaru in the early morning. Our destination was the city of Delphi, along the southern edge of the Greek mainland. We traveled along the Greek "autobohn", E-75 -- the only things of note being (1) it has one lane with a speed limit of 100 (km/h) and one lane that is 'anything goes', and (2) the Greek idea of 'rest stop' is a virtual small city with a cafe, gas station, RV park, and pet store! I gunned our little red car into the anything goes lane, but at about 140 km/hr (85 mph) it started to complain and shake a bit, so we settled into a slightly slower pace and watched the country go by us.

A quick note of thanks to Cris, Ricki's Mom, for teaching Ricki how to read maps, giving her a natural sense of direction, and an almost magical ability to know just where to go. The rental car company had no GPS available. The "map" they gave us was a very pretty outline of Greece with the kinds of squiggles our godchildren draw all over it. That's it. No street names, no highway numbers, nothing. Although I admit to being sliightly intimidated, Ricki took one look at that map and confidently said "I can get us there." She did too, everytime and without a single wrong turn.

Greece is breathtaking! Rickelle commented that it was easy to see why the early inhabitants of this land believed in the various deities of land, air, and sea -- everything is almost too rich, too vivid, too real! The land is broken up by mountains almost everywhere, and so the roadways are forced to wind, spiral, go over, and go through them all the time. Cities, towns, and villages are built on the slopes, with anywhere from ten to thousands of rooftops.

Our morning trip ended as we approached Mt. Parnassus from the east, on a steadily climbing, winding road. The temperature dropped down to 20 degrees Celsius, which had us wondering if we should have brought something warmer. One more turn and we were there! Delphi, as in the Oracle of Delphi! We immediately began encountering tourbusicus annoyingus along the roadway, but found a good parking spot in front of the museum and headed for the archaelogical site.

The ancient Delphi site consists of a major Temple of Apollo, a theater, several treasuries of the various Greek city-states (where offerings and valuables were stored), and a stadium. It is built on the slope of the mountain, which necessitates some pretty serious climbing to get to the various parts of the site. We could see people quite a bit higher than us up the slope, but hey, we came all this way, we're going to the top!

A half hour later, we've passed the Temple, the Theater, and the treasuries, and we've finally made it to the Stadium! Our spirits are high as we look around for the trail that surely leads to the Oracle. We've formulated our questions and are ready to interpret the Pythia's cryptic response. Except... there's no Oracle. Anywhere. No mention of it at all. At this point, we are wondering if we should have done the Museum first, so that we can see if we missed the obviously secret trail to the Oracle's cave or.. something. Finally, unable to stand it any longer, Rickelle put on her unabashed American tourist (tm) face and blankly asked one of the tourbus guides, "Where's the Oracle at?" The disappointing response was that she worked out of the Temple of Apollo, but that nowadays it's "nothing special". No signposts, no fanfare, no placards with artist's renditions of the Oracle seated in a metal tripod over the chasm from which the mesmeric fumes emerged... nothing! Disgruntled, we climbed back down the mountain, did a quick run through the museum, and got back in the car.

We soothed our disappointment for the next few hours with the fact that the site was actually very enjoyable to hike around in, and that the winding road we took west out of Delphi travels through perfect picture after perfect picture for a hundred kilometers. At the end of this part of our trip was the Charilaos Trikoupis bridge, which took us from the mainland to the Peloponnese with a huge dash of engineering "oo-la-la".

After crossing over the bridge, the next part of today will be titled Drive to Survive!. Picture a serene, two lane highway with a generous shoulder, a bright sunny day, and a full tank of gas. Now, add a thousand insane Greek drivers, two Bahamaian-acclimated tourist drivers, and recall all of your offensive driving experiences. We would have taken some pictures of what highway driving is like here, but neither one of us was able to unclench our white knuckles from the steering wheel and the dashboard. It was awe-inspiring at first, but I have to admit that by the end of the day, we were zipping, weaving, and acting as insane as the next car, and having a grand time.

Last but not least, I have to credit Rickelle's psychic powers for finding the best food and nicest little town on our trip thus far. For lack of being able to pronounce it correctly, we ate at the Mayonnaise Taverna in the nowhere town of Longos, Greece. Parakalo!! We could read the happiness in each other's eyes, and would have stayed and just soaked it all in, but a long drive back to Athens awaited, along with getting packed for.... CRETE!

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