Early on Thursday morning I woke up to meet the 6 girls that I had met the night before in order to go to go to the bus station and get on the bus that would take us to Delphi. It was a three hour bus ride to get there, which is a lot of hours on a bus but I had heard that it was worth it and I really wanted to see it. The bus left at 7:30 am and we had to walk to the bus station. Unfortunately, we didn't really think and got to the station at 7:25 only to find that all of the seats had been filled. The guy at the bus station told us that we could still go; it would just be standing-room only. We stood there for a second and debated but in the end all of us but one of the girls decided to go. We figured that we could just sit down in the aisle. It was kind of an awkward, squished ride and after three hours of fidgeting and changing positions and standing up and sitting down, we finally got there. On the bus we met a nice philosophy teacher from England who was there with a group of students and he told us that we should buy our tickets back right when we got there so that we could have seats on the way back and he kept telling us all this information about Delphi.
Anyway, when we got off the bus, it was obvious that it was well worth the long bus ride. It was beautiful. Apparently the Ancient Greeks believed Delphi to be the center of the Earth, or the navel of the Earth as I've heard it called. We walked through and saw the ruins of the treasuries where the offerings to the god Apollo were placed and we saw the temple of Apollo where the Oracle at Delphi stood. We also saw the gymnasium and the Tholos as well as the Delphi archaeological museum. Delphi was indescribably beautiful so I will be letting my pictures do most of the talking:
Our first view of the valley below from the modern city of Delphi when we got off the bus. In the far back, you can see the Mediterranean Sea.
The other direction looking out over groves of olive trees
Posing in front of the beautiful scenery
Pausing behind the group of girls I was with to take a picture. We had to walk down a hill to get to the ancient city of Delphi from the modern city.
The view from a little lower down in the ruins
Sitting on a stone semicircle, I can't remember what it was...
The Athenian treasury which was the only one still standing out of all of them. It is where the offerings to the god Apollo were kept. The light parts are where it has been partially restored.
More of the view. I was completely in love with it so I kept taking pictures.
The remains of the temple of Apollo itself. The philosophy teacher told us that the oracle, usually an old peasant woman, would stand at the back of it inhaling fumes from a chasm in the Earth and speaking gibberish while a priest "translated" what she was saying. In ancient times, they believed that Apollo spoke through the oracle.
Closer to the temple, the big temples in front of the amazing view.
Standing in front of the Temple of Apollo to give perspective to its size.
I was so busy taking pictures of the valley that I realized I hadn't taken many pictures of where we were. This is looking up towards the ruins in the last couple photos as we walked down to see the Tholos and gymnasium.
This is a picture of me trying my first ever olive. It was a Greek olive that Bre (the girl from UW Madison) had bought the day before at an Athenian market and let me try. It turns out that I still don't like olives...
This is the Tholos. I'm not sure exactly what it was used for but I've heard that it is the most popularly photographed site at Delphi. It amuses me that the restored columns have cow spots. It reminded me of Wisconsin.
This is the very last photo that I took as it was starting to get a bit later and we were waiting for the bus. I think it's very beautiful. In Greece, most of the time I was there, it was sunny but the air often seemed very clouded, almost foggy. At first I attributed this to the smog of the city, but even out here away from the big city it was foggy. One of the people at the hostel told me that when they asked a Greek person, they said they were sand clouds from the Saharan Desert.
Although there aren't any pictures of it, we also saw the archaeological museum there. It was pretty cool. There were a lot of statues and bronze items that were found in the Delphi ruins. It just makes you wonder what ordinary things of ours will be sitting in a museum 2000 years from now. We got seats on the bus ride back and mostly slept because we were all totally exhausted. Overall, I was very happy that I got to see Delphi :) .
End of Part II, tune in next time for Part III.
No comments:
Post a Comment