Delphi and a Closed Airport

A lot of my third day in Greece was spent in the car. From Olympia we drove to Patra then Nafpaktos via The Rio-Antirrio bridge…

It was €12.90 or $19.13 to cross! But it was the only way back to main land Greece and since we were driving to Delphi we needed to get back to main land.

So after Nafpaktos we were onto some beautiful coast driving.

Then mountain driving

Then Delphi driving.

We parked outside the first hotel we came to and went in, we were hoping to have a base price to compare other hotels to. Instead we ended up haggling for our room which we got for €55 with breakfast. We rock. So we went up to the room and wow was there a view. I knew we were in the mountains… but holy cow!

Our plan had been to take a short nap and walk around Delphi at night, maybe get a drink somewhere. Our little nap turned into sleeping through the night. So we woke up fairly early the next day. After all we were in no hurry we only had the ruins to see before heading back to Volos. So we ate breakfast, threw our packs in the car and we were off to the Temple of Apollo.

You’ve heard about the Oracle of Delphi right? Well I had been under the impressions that the Oracle referred to the building. When in fact the Oracle is the person that gives out prophesies, I know it’s pretty straight forward and I don’t know how I had ever been mistaken. So this Oracle person obviously needed a place to dish out these messages from god. The Oracle of Delphi lived in the Apollo temple!

The Southern slopes of Parnassos mountain house the temple and compound ruins. There was more to the sight then just the temple. A few of the tings off the guide book to see are the Corinthian Treasury, the Base of the Three Dancing Girls, the Theater, and the Temple of Apollo to name just a few of the 29 things to see.

Sadly my camera was beyond dead so the only pictures I have are ones my Czech housemate took and was nice enough to give to me. I was beyond sad I couldn’t take pictures but alas… it was pretty to look at as well.

Here’s a cool tidbit of information that I read from the guide pamphlet

“Worshippers and theopropoi (public messengers sent to inquire the oracle) flocked from all over the ancient world to seek the advise of the god and an oracle whenever they were about to take a serious decision or initiative. They purified themselves in the Kastalia spring, paid a set tribute, the pelanos, and sacrificed an aimal on the alter of Apollo.”

That is a heck of a lot of work. Especially after they hike up that mountain. It was a chore going up in a car. Climbing it by foot… my feet are angry at me for simply thinking about it!

^the view from the top^

Without anymore delay here are some pictures of the temple…

After we meandered about all the ruins at Delphi it was time for us to start the 4 hour drive back to Volos airport. Along the way we stopped in a small town to get lunch. Turns out every place wasn’t serving food, so we ended up going to a grocery store and got cheap sandwich stuff. I also found a voltage converter that I had been looking for for 2 days now. So we headed off to the airport. We said good bye to our wonderful Daisy and went to go wait for our flight.

The airport was closed. We were met by a nice security guard at the doors telling us that the airport was closed and that it would be opening in 45 minutes for the flights. This was the first time ever that I had seen an airport closed. It was really laughable. Lucky for us it was warm so we simply went and had a picnic in the parking lot till they opened the airport.

And then I was off to Rome……

Cheers,