Tour of Greece, part 2

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I’m back in Athens now, so you will get 3 entries at once.

Now, when I last wrote we had arrived at the hotel at Delphi. Dinner was at a hotel down the road and once again consisted of meat and rice. Not exactly the best example of Greek cuisine.

The next morning we boarded the bus and headed to the nearby ruins. In ancient days this was a very holy site. The biggest draw for the site is the ancient oracle of Delphi. What I did not realise, however, was that they also held games here like the Olympics. They differed in a number of ways. Firstly, there was no sacred truce where the Greeks would stop fighting each other. It was also held they year before the Olympics. The biggest difference, however, was that besides the sporting events they also held competitions in music and oratory.

As a result, the site contains, besides the Temple of Zeus where the Oracle was, a theatre and a stadium. The location makes this surprising, particularly from the bottom, as it is basically on the side of a mountain. From the bottom you cannot see the theatre or stadium.

After an educational talk by our guide, we were left to walk around the site and take photos - our guide was not up to the climb. I headed up to the theatre and stadium quite quickly (I’m pretty sure I was the first in our group to the stadium) and found I still had 45 minutes after taking some photos. I decided to hurry down the hill (a little dangerous as the rocks can be quite slippery) and walk down the road a bit to get photos of the gymnasium (where the athletes trained) and the temple of Athena. They were slightly out of the Delphi site but our guide said we could check it out if we wanted to skip the museum tour. I decided to do it all!

I worked up quite a sweat after the hill climb and descent and then the rush down the road to take photos. Fortunately I was still ahead of schedule so had time to stop for a quick Coke. I still arrived at the museum before our guide was ready to start the tour. The museum contains many of the valuable items that had been found around the site, mostly statues but there were also various equipment and offerings for the gods.

Once we finished the tour we headed back to town for lunch. The tavern they took us to was only half-finished and I think was fairly new as they had no system for taking and delivering orders. The idea of table numbers doesn’t seem to have occurred to them, although, funnily enough, a few of the waiters had actually served us at dinner the night before. I had ordered the chicken fillet and it took forever for them to bring it out - I basically had to reorder. Then they brought something out that, to be honest, didn’t look a lot like chicken. After I had eaten a couple of the chips, the waiters came back to tell me that they’d given me the veal and promptly gave me a new meal of what looked like chicken. Then, they went and gave the meal (which I had touched) to someone else!! The chicken was burnt anyway. All in all, a terrible place for lunch.

The rest of the afternoon was spent driving all the way up to Meteora. Meteora is not that far south of Thessaloniki, to give you an idea of how far it was. When we arrived at the town, we were taken to an icon studio. Icons are Orthodox images of religious figures (Christ, Mary, Saints, etc) and I must admit I found the entire thing very boring. We were given tickets for a lottery, but as I didn’t buy anything I was not eligible to win. The prizes were religious icons anyway.

We were taken to our hotel and discovered that, once again, our meal was going to be Pork and Rice. The American ladies we dined with on the first night, who had been complaining about the accommodation and food for the entire trip, were going into town to find a restaurant. Another pair of middle aged American sisters were going too and when my Malaysian friend said she was going too, I decided to join them.

First stop, though, was the hotel that the American ladies were told we would be staying in. Turns out the owner of the tour company had bought the hotel we were staying at a couple of months ago, so it was no surprise that we were staying there.

Once we found a place to eat, we had a great meal. The ladies all drank wine and got a little tipsy and it turned out to be very pleasant conversation. The food, especially when compared to the fare of pork and rice. But really, this was the finest meal I have had in Greece so far. For the entrée, I had the absolute best Tzaziki (probably spelled wrong) I have ever had, and for a main I had meatballs in a tomato sauce. The meatballs are a favourite of mine from Greek restaurants in Australia (except one time when they were off, but that doesn’t count) but this serving was so much better than anything I’ve had before. Sorry that I cannot remember the Greek name for them.

We headed back to the hotel and had an early night as we were starting even earlier in the morning. Apparently our guide wanted to get an early start to beat other groups up there. As it turned out though, the other groups must have had the same idea. Well two of them, so it wasn’t that bad, except the monasteries are so small.

But I jump ahead.

In the morning I was woken up by somebody else’s 6:00 am wake up call as the walls were so thin. Mine eventually came at 6:30. Shower, breakfast, etc and we were on our way.

In Meteora there are monasteries built on top of these amazing rock mountains. Apparently many are abandoned now, but some are still in use. We visited the monastery of St. Barbara and St. Stephanos, both actually convents but apparently the Orthodox Church calls convents monasteries.

Back in the day, they were only accessible by rope ladders and pulley systems, but fortunately we were able to drive up in the bus. The journey was spectacular. I can’t say anything to do it justice, I’m sure even my photos will fall short.

While I enjoyed the views, the tour was, quite frankly, boring. Much of it was about Christianity and I couldn’t care less. I did bite my tongue though, and did not ask why the guide treated the tales of the Ancient Greek gods as mythology yet spoke of Christianity almost as fact (she did remember to say “we believe” a couple of times).

All that was left was the drive back to Athens. This was the part of the tour I was most looking forward to. Not because I wanted the tour to end, but because we were stopping at Thermopylae on the way back. Unfortunately, the stop only consisted of taking photos of the monument from the other side of the road (to be fair, it’s a major highway and apparently illegal to cross on foot). Still, it was a highlight for me and I could see the hill where the Spartans made their final stand. It was only 5 minutes, but it made my day.

And that was about it. My hotel was the second drop off so I said my farewell to all the people on the tour and headed off. While it took 4 days for me to meet and talk to everyone, I have to say by the end I liked everyone a lot more than I did in the beginning. There was one American couple though (they own a condo at some fancy ski resort, I overheard) I must admit to not thinking much of. He seemed okay, we even shared a laugh or two, but she looked down on everyone, but seemingly particularly me. May be it was my tattoo, but I definitely got the feeling she thought I was scum. Oh well. Everyone else seemed to like me.

Tomorrow I fly to Samos and then take a ferry ride to the Turkish port of Kusadasi to begin my Turkish tour. I can’t help but wonder what those people will be like.

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Photos

The Navel of the World
Well, a copy. The original was probably a meteorite

Stadium
Other direction

Some statues
Interesting story behind them, but I can't remember their name just now

Comments

[Costa]

outstanding bloggin dave
Really good stuff - feels like you're saving me the effort of going to alot of these places when we go over!! By the way - the meatballs were probably called "keftethes", though that may depend on where you were and what they call it there.

[deejayvee]

It was something like Soutsikakis at Meteora. It definitely started with S, but you're right, I think they were called kefthethes somewhere else that I had them