Due to a confusion in communications with Andrew Bridges, my best source of personalized travel advice for this trip, I ended up seeking proposals from two similarly named companies that provide private tours in Greece. Greece Private Tours, and Private Greece Tours. Both had excellent Trip Advisor reviews (to which I will add, eventually). By the time Andrew claified which of the two he hasd used, I was well along in the selection process. In the end, after taking offers from both into consideration, I split the difference, using for the former for our daytrip to Mycenae and Corinth, and using the latter our current trip. Both companies provided excellent drivers; I would recommend either without reservation.
Our driver introduced himself as Ellis, but on further inquiry, he said that he just used that name to make things easier for English-speaking customers too lazy to bother to pronounce “Vangelis,” his nickname derived from the common given name Evangelos. Our vehicle was significantly larger, a 12-seater van (three rows of three seats, one row of two seats beside the sliding door, where there was also a jump seat, plus a seat for a passenger beside the driver).
Vangelis invited me to sit beside him, pointing out that the leg room would be less there, but I took up the invitation – not only better views, but the chance to chat with the driver – good for me and hopefully it was good for him to have some company.
We had had an 8 AM departure schedules, but it took us quite a while to get the whole family and our bags down to the street and out to the van – JUST enough delay that we did not get going until about 8:50 – so that it was barely 9 AM when we passed Media Markt, and electronics store that carried a significant line of cameras, to replace the one that had been brazenly slipped out of my camera bag two days before. Ordinarily, I would have done a fair amount of consumer research before buying a new camera, but in the circumstances, I came in with only a hope to find a Nikon DSLR (because I have a second Nikon lens) somewhat similar to the one I had lost. Within a few minutes, with the guidance of a salesman, I settled in on a Nikon D5300; it took much more time to process the paperwork for the sale, and especially to get the paperwork to recover the VAT portion of the price – some 24% on the base price. It was worth waiting for, but we were not on the road until about 9:30.
Our first stop was the statue of a lion
that commemorated the 338 BC Battle of Chaeronea in which Philip II, the king of Macedonia, decisively defeated the Greek city-states near the city of Chaeronea in Boeotia, ending resistance to his control of the greater part of Greece. I remarked to Vangelis the irony in the fact that Greece was objecting to the use of “Macedonia” in the name of a country to the north considering that the ancient ruler of that country. His response was that, as he saw it, Philip was not a foreign conqueror; Macedonia, he asserted, was just one of the Greek city-states, but Philip had the vision to unite a collection of bickering city-states in the interest of a unified. A unique perspective on history, to be sure, but one that could justify the current Greek claim to the name Macedonia.
We drove on into the beginning of the mountains, stopping for lunch in the small town of Livadia (pronounced Levathee-AH); he had chosen Taverna Neromilos a restaurant in a very pretty location beside a series of small waterfalls and over a water wheel
The meal was pleasant, and this was our first visit to a restaurant where the wait staff’s English was very weak; this was the first time I had occasion to resort to my Greece phrasebook. There was a set of coin-op rides at the foot of the steps up to the restaurant; it was unattended, so nobody was bothered that the children were playing on them without paying for rides, and the children were blissfully ignorant of what extra pleasure a Euro could have bought them. Our lunch lingered olong enough that I was able to fully charge the batter for my new camera.
As we headed further into the mountains, wew caught views of Mount Parnassus, on whose slopes Delphi is located;
Vangelis explained that it is rare for snow to be left on the mountain this late into the season. There had been an exceptionally harsh winter, he said; good for the skiers, to be sure
We then stopped for our first major site along the way – the monastery of Hosios Loukas sitting in a lovely location on the slopes above a valley below.
The monastery, founded by a group of monks who gathered around a hermit named Lukas of Steiries (Hosios venerable, which Vangelis explained as a term connoting holiness but short of sainthood), included a belltower and
some of whose decorations, including mosaics, dating back over 1000 years,
and the barer (and older) Church of Panagia,
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plus several other buildings, as well as a residential building for the monks
In between the two churches was a display which, I was told, included the embalmed body of Hesios Loukas himself (part of his hand seemed to be sticking out from a sleeve – ghoulish!
Here is a model old-time cell for one of the monks
(tourists did not have access to the third floor of that building, where the current-day monks reside).
The exhibits in the monastery section placed Hosios Loukas in significant relation to the controversy over iconoclasm, the battle over whether icons were substituting for idols, which could not properly be worshiped and, indeed, ought to be destroyed, or whether they functioned as the tellers of biblical tales for the illiterate, hence bringing them closer to the holy figures who ought to be venerated.
We left the monastery for the final drive to Delphi (pronounced, contrary to the common English misconception, THEL-phee). We passed through the larger, picturesque village of Arachova
which has many more hotel rooms at a higher standard than Delphi, It serves as a lodging center during ski season
The second photo was taken from a viewpoint that featured a huge Arachova hashtag. The tourbus tourists were happy to pose in front of the hashtag; that photo was not for me
Finally, just before the village of Delphi, we came to the Delphi Museum, which we visited in the afternoon before dinner. The museum contained one outstanding sculpture, bas relief, or other treasure after another, removed for preservation from the archeological site
These included miniatures from the Mycenae Era, reminiscent of some of the figurines I enjoyed at the National Archeological Museum.
As a Reedie, I have to post these heads of griffins
the sphinx of the Naxians
these Kouroi from Argos of the late archaic period (how well I recall studying an image of a kouros in the art supplement for my Humanities 110 class)
these fragments of silver sheets that were placed over a wooden core to form a silver statue of a bull
Here is a fragment of a terracotta roof with a lion serving the guttering function of a medieval gargoyle
a column of dancers dedicated by the Athenians
Here are remnants of the pediments and friezes from the Treasury of the Siphnians
From the Hellenistic period came this statue of an old philosopher
After the Romans conquered Greece, they added their own contributions to the site, this statue of Antinoos, a “companion” of the Emperor Hadrian.
the “melancholy Roman”
And this bronze statue of a charioteer
Then we drove on to the town of Delphi, which for tourist purposes consists of a two one way roads that go up and down a hill, meeting at either end of town. It was a fairly sleepy little town, population barely over 2000. (There were a number of other streets for the residential parts of town) We checked into hotel that our touring company had arranged, the Nidimos.
I was surprised to find that, just like our little apartment building, the elevator in the hotel was big enough only for two people and not a lot of bags.
We rested in the spacious rooms and enjoyed the view of the Gulf of Corinth from our balcony
But we were hungry, so we headed to the restaurant that Vangelis had recommended, Taverna Vakhos. On the way, we peered into this garden, espying a pair of artichoke flowers
The restaurant had a gorgeous view of the valley below, and the menu was packed with excellent choices. The children were well entertained by the existence of a play area with many toys; we were able to relax enough to have desserts, a cheesecake with a cranberry preserves and a dreamy walnut cake steeped in honey.
We woke up fairly early the following morning and hit the breakfast room 1t 7:30, its openking time. We enjoyed a breakfast with extensive choices and reasonably good breakfast food in the Nidimos. My favorite part was the local yogurt made from sheep’s milk, which I ate with dried fruits and peach slices.
Then we made a beeline for the Delphi Archeological Site, intending an arrival shortly after 8:30 both to leave us enough time to see the site and make it to the Athens airport AM, as well as beating the crowds from the tourist buses coming up from Athens as well as the heat of the midday sun. We managed to get there shortly before 9, which was more than enough time to allow us to see the site thoroughly and hit the road before 11. Before letting us out of the van, however, Vangelis set the stage for our visit by recouting the historical origins of the site, its place in the ancient religion of the Greeks, and its development over the centuries from about 700 BC to 400 AD, when the site was shut down by imperial decree as a place of ideolatry inconsistent with the new Christian status of the Greek section of the Byzantine Empire. Much of the tale was familiar to me, although one piece that I had not recalled was that Apollo had appeared as a dolphin and carried Cretan priests to Delphi, which thus derived its name from the Greek word for “dolphin.” Double-checking, it appears that this is only one possible explanation for the name
We began our climb through the site. The sun was out, but it was quite breezy (unseasonably, Vangelis told us); so heat was not much of a factor, and indeed I had to tied down my hat for periods of time. We climbed a ramp and steps along the Sacred Way, just as the Greeks would have done while the site had religious significance
Just after the replica of the Omphalos, a stone monument reflecting the view of Delphi as the center or “navel”of the earth, corresponding to the central role of Delphi in the system of Greek religion
Above the Omphalos, on the right, is the Treasury of the Athenians, the best preserved of all the buildings at the site. Here is the view from the front
Then we passed the base of the Naxian Sphinx that we had seen in the museum
and the Stoa of the Athenians
which backed up against the Polygonal Wall, constructed of large stones that were fitted together without mortar – a construction technique that appoarently has allowed the wall to remain standing through many earthquakes. I noticed that the blocks were minutely inscribed when one of the tourists called over his mother to ask if she could read them
Finally we reached the focus point of the religious site, the Temple of Apollo itself, which was built around a crack from the earth’s interior whence fumes escaped, driving the Pythia (the oracle herself) to wild mutterings, which then had to be translated by the priests into ambiguous terms which the hearers had to interpret to guide their own conduct.
The Tripod of Plataea is here to the left of the Temple of Apollo
and here the great altar of Apollo is to the right (as best as I can recall; my notes are a little fuzzy)
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Above the Temple of Apollo was the theatre,
Seen here together with the Temple of Apollo from above
From there, we had to hike up another few hundred street in elevation to reach the very top of the site, the ancient Stadium built in the 5th century BC to host the quadrennial Phythian Games
Seen above at the far end of the stadium were four arches
which, in turn, supported a large three-arched entrance added with funds from the wealthy Athenian Herodus Atticus whose works we also saw at the Acropolis of Athens
From there, we descended to our van, and Vangelis drove us to the Athens Airport. On the way, we could see long lines of wind turbines and huge solar farms; Greece making the best of its hot and windy conditions.
We were leaving a tad late, but there was no significant traffic so we made it at the planned arrival time of 2 PM, which should have been just fine for a domestic flight at 4:20. Unfortunately, the tagging and loading of the luggage, including the car seats and strollers, took 90 minutes, so we didn’t have time to have a proper meal; the price for that was to be paid on arrival in Crete. But more of that in my next blog post
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