Athens to Delphi: Day Three

 

We never entertained the thought of a rental car on this trip and in hindsight, I am SO very glad we didn't. Athens was a zoo with parking sort of a free-for-all and very hard to come by. Traffic was pretty bad all day long as well. So our only option to visit sites away from Athens was by tour bus which as it turned out, was a very great option. This was our day to visit the site of Delphi, navel of the Greek world and home to Apollo. It was about a two and a half hour drive there from Athens through some corn and cotton fields and for the final part, mountains. 

Delphi was built up on a mountain side with spectacular views of the valley below. If you want to read up on some of the deeper history of it, see these posts written by my blogging friend Toirdhealbheach Beucail who wrote in depth about his trip there last year.

Delphi I

Delphi II

Delphi III

Delphi IV

By going on a tour bus, we didn't have to fight for the very limited parking and were dropped off right at the entrance to the site. All we had to do was walk up the mountain enjoying the sights and then return down the mountain to be picked up by the tour bus and whisked off again.

Most of the site was in high degrees of ruin but one building building was still in fairly decent shape considering the age. Various cities around Greece built treasury buildings to store the gifts they brought for Apollo and the one above was built by the Athenians. 

You can see the remains of the Athenian treasury in the lower right of this picture which contains the entire building site for the temple to Apollo. Time and looting hasn't been kind and only the six pillars on the far left of the building remain besides it's foundation. But I imagine there were some nice view out the windows when it was standing.

Up above the temple was another amphitheater built into the mountainside. There were trails that led higher but this was as far as we made it up the mountain in the time we were allotted and thus had to make our way down the mountain and up the road a few hundred yards to where the museum containing relics from the Dephi site was situated. 

Delphi itself was only excavated from numerous landslides about 125 years ago and so there were a lot of remarkably well preserved relics to be seen including the above Sphinx of Naxos.

Statues that guarded a treasury building at Dephi.

I am always amazed at the detail ancient stone carvers were able to achieve.

In this instance, it wasn't so much the detail that captured my attention but what the artist was trying to convey. Was somebody trying to surprise someone else by jumping out of a large pot or perhaps they occasionally boiled people who didn't bring enough of a goat to sacrifice at the temple?

After our tour was over, we drove back toward Athens but first stopped at the mountain village of Arachova for a late lunch. Like Delphi, it was built on the side of a mountain and very scenic. 

Unbeknownst to us, only seven people of the 32 on the bus had reserved lunch at Arachova at a large restaurant. The rest of us could join them if there was room or do our own thing. But we were given only about 50 minutes to eat before the bus left, which in Greece, isn't very much time. Greeks eat very leisurely and you are encouraged to sit around and enjoy your meal. In fact, they will never bring you a check until you request it, unlike their American counterparts who like to turn over tables as fast as possible. When the bus stopped, everyone else headed into the one large restaurant and we were the sole people who elected to do our own thing. We walked down the street away to a small non-descript café that turned out to be one of the better choices we made on this trip.

Above is some grilled Greek sausage and above that, smoked mackerel marinated in oil and freshly made and fried cheese served with an apricot sauce. It was outstandingly delicious. As we were the only patrons in the restaurant, we got to talking with the owner and found out that they handmake every dish they serve and raise the ingredients themselves. In fact, while we were eating, she was preparing picked white mushrooms that she planned to put in a jar and pickle and put on a massive shelf in the restaurant full of other preserved ingredients she uses in her dishes. 

After lunch, we walked the rest of the way through town on the main but very narrow road to a place on the edge of town where the road was wide enough for our bus to wait for us. Because it was by then around 3 pm, all the shops were closed per the norm in Greece where most owners close up between the hours of 2 and 5 pm to take a siesta at home. Arachova was known for their pasta and we did find one place that was open and bought a bag of their pasta which we enjoyed later on in our trip. After boarding the bus, we drove a ways out of town and around a curve before stopping one last time to take a picture of Arachova clinging to the side of the mountain. What a beautiful place. 

The bus whisked us back to town, narrowly beating rush hour and dropped us off a few blocks from our suite. We stopped at a small store to buy a few tomatoes, spices and fresh bread and made ourselves a fine pasta dinner for supper back at our suite. With all of the bus riding, I only walked 8600 steps this day, my lowest amount the entire trip.