Delphi

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Geo: 38.4814, 22.5066

The hotel at Delphi is in a wonderful location, but could do with some soundproofing (we could hear the neighbours far too clearly!) with dogs barking outside through the night, and the beds were very very firm! So we didn't get moving until almost 9am, and didn't finish breakfast until 10am.

Luckily, we are one kilometer to the archaeological site. We enjoyed the wonderful museum (again, a lot of European money has been spent developing this museum!) with its wonderful Kouri, carvings etc. We saw the silver bull - 2.5m long, made of silver and the gift of Croesus (hence the saying "rich as Croesus"😉. It was the first large-scale statue made all from forged metal - the bull is made of sheets of silver.

We also saw the wonderful charioteer - his 4 horses (or most of them) have been lost, although there is a theory that the 4 horses of St Mark in Venice (looted by Constantine to Istanbul, and subsequently taken to Venice by the Doges (looted by Napoleon but subsequently restored!) might be the same ones.

When we went outside, we walked and walked through the amazing site - we saw the rock which was dropped when Zeus released 2 eagles to find the "navel of the world" (!), the Temple of Apollo and the Treasury of the Athenians. A beautiful day in gorgeous (fresh) air and blue sky, walking past the theatre to the stadium.

After lunch (feeding our stale cake from yesterday to the sweet dog who clearly had puppies nearby), we went to the temples across the road, including the lovely Tholos. The Bowles walked there whilst we drove the car - they think that it was a temple to the badger, as they found a dead badger by the road!

A late afternoon walk around Delphi (nothing to see here - very run down town - the kids were mused to see a shop selling camera film which has clearly been in the shop window for 25 years!) and a glass of wine on our verandah before we went out for dinner. We found a very authentic "workers cafe" where they did a great gyros and chips whilst we watched Greek "Deal or No Deal" - in Greece, the players dance to Zorba the Greek when they guess the money in the box!!!

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