10 March 2010 (Wednesday #1 ) – Delphi day

From Athens to Ancient Delphi

Conrad and I are so getting into the swing of this Greece travel thing! We have a morning routine.

We start each day by pigging out at our hotel restaurant's scrumptious breakfast buffet, and then we go to our hotel lobby. Ponytail Man saunters into the lobby, says “Geebson,” and we follow him to a bus. Once on the bus we sit on . . . yes! The right side! Once Ponytail Man has gathered all our tour companions for the day we set off for . . . yes again! The National Road!

This morning while driving through Athens, we passed people, buildings, and vehicles:

We passed McDonald’s:

We passed Greece’s Parliament, which was originally the royal palace, but became the seat of Parliament in 1935:

This photo is misleading. It looks as if those steps in the center lead right up to the building, but on the other side of the steps is a wide street between the steps and Parliament. The Presidential guards march and change shifts every hour on the pavement in front of Parliament, which is blocked from view here by the steps. The guards are the ones who wear kilts and shoes with fluffy pom-poms on the toes.

I just read the guard’s manly uniform is based on the attire worn by the mountain fighters in the War of Independence (1821-1829). Their opponents must have been laughing too hard to fight.

We passed what was the residence of the Mycenaean archeologist Heinrich Schliemann:

It’s now the Numismatic Museum of Athens.

We passed congested streets with fuchsia lampposts:

We passed palm trees sporting loudspeakers, with mountains in the background:

We passed little, bitsy vehicles:

True to the Athenian tradition, they were covered in dirt.

We passed stray, street dogs, easily identifiable by their size and by their collars and tags:

(This one looks like he’s waiting patiently to eat that woman.)

Then we got to Important Ancient Stuff in Athens, as evidenced by the fact that it was hidden by those dang trees:

If the ruin weren’t hidden by trees, it was hidden by walls, or by trees and walls, as shown here:

(That’s probably an ancient Doric column.)

When trees and walls weren’t handy, those clever Greeks positioned buses to hide our view:

Did you notice when there is finally Something Important to see from our seats on the right side of the bus, it is hidden?

Here our view was blocked by numerous buses:

Note we’ve been “driving” (okay, mostly “sitting”) in Athens for a long time. Ponytail Man beckoned us to our bus at 7:35 a.m., and the clock on the bus says it’s already 9:00 a.m., but we’re still in Athens. Look through the windshield of the bus to see the reason for our delay:

Protesters who will participate in tomorrow’s national strike/riot were gathered to discuss their plans, and they were meeting in the middle of the street! The sign that looks like it's left over from the Olympics seems to be the Official Strike/Riot Symbol.

These guys (also in the middle of the street) were passing around sign-up sheets for the riot:

They really were!

At last we were out of Athens and on the road to the ruins of Ancient Delphi:

Bus + Conrad = zzzzzzzzz:

Check out the highway we were following:

That’s it on the lower right of the photo, with more of its zigzags showing further up on the right side. We were on those zigzags, traveling at a high rate of speed, too.

The bus driver stopped for us to have a potty break. At this point we’d been sitting on the bus for nearly 4 hours. We were told not to bring food or drink back onto the bus to keep it tidy. Well, then they shouldn’t have stopped where 10 other tour buses stopped. Here’s our baklava on our laps in the bus:

It was THE stickiest baklava I’ve ever had in my life. We were not tidy in its consumption.

We also purchased drinks and brought them on the bus. Here’s the top of one of them:

The purpose of this photo is to illustrate a popular Greek custom—putting a foil seal on everything!!

Back on the road to Delphi:

Two concerns cropped up about this time on the drive:
1. The hours of sitting and that huge baklava were causing my rear to expand greatly. I could feel it happening.
2. We’d been driving for hours, but from the moment we left our hotel I had not seen any blue skies, the sun . . ..

Instead, the clouds darkened (we were up high enough to be in the clouds), and raindrops appeared on the bus windows:

And it got darker:

But wait! There’s a spot of light over those mountains in the background:

Oh. The light is revealing the snow. It got cold, too.

Here's a map of Greece (albeit a strange one) showing Delphi in relation to Athens:

The two locations are about 100 miles apart, so the drive can take 2-4 hours, depending on pre-riot conditions in Athens.