The Navel of the Earth

We forced ourselves to wake up early today as the archaeological site at Delphi closes at 3 pm. This is a very beautiful place and it promises to be 18 and sunny so looking forward to exploring the “navel of the earth”. Be prepared for lots of pictures!

Later the same day….after an early start, we followed our map by taking the road we are staying on out of town toward the archaeological site. The views were stunning and the local farmers seemed unfazed by our presence. We all had slightly different ideas of which way to go, but in any case, when we found the gate it was closed. We realized we had to go through the museum on the main road so back we went to the apartment, got the car and started over again. We still got there in plenty of time to explore the site, which is fairly large and also quite popular with tour buses, especially high school groups. Topher and I both took lots and lots of pictures (see opposite and on following pages), as the sunshine made everything that much more beautiful. The combination of the mountains, blue sky and the ancient ruins was pretty spectacular, so the pictures won’t do it justice.

The interpretation of the site was quite good - not too much detail but enough even for Topher. We learned that the oracle was basically getting high on the ethylene fumes coming out of a crack in the mountain (over which they built the main temple eventually) and would say incomprehensible things that the priests would then “interpret”. That was the basis for the large complex of buildings at the site, mostly treasuries built by Greek city-states as offerings to Apollo, but really to show off their wealth to their rival city-states. They also held games here every four years and other events, so there is a gymnasium, stadium and a very well-preserved theatre.

The boys enjoyed being in their t-shirts and generally clowned around a lot of the day and seemed mostly interested in the stray cats and dogs. It is irritating for Topher and I when they act like goofs, but they still surprise us from time to time with what they are absorbing. Hugh now knows what a bouleterion is from his time with Topher in Athens (basically the equivalent of a parliament building) and they both had a good grasp of what the site was about. Hopefully they are not reaching saturation point on archaeological sites already!

We met a family from Edmonton who are eight months into a year-long trip. They have so far been to Australia, south-east Asia and the Middle East, and are just starting on Europe. Sounds amazing! They have one son between the ages of our boys, who looked a lot like Hugh with his long hair. She said they

also had to stop for every stray cat and dog they saw.

We drove to Arachova for lunch, which is the next town over and even more touristy than Delphi (photos above). We had trouble finding a place to park in the tiny streets that weren’t built for even the tiniest of cars. Eventually Topher managed it and we explored the town a little until we found a restaurant that didn’t look insanely overpriced. Our persistence paid off and we found a cute little place with meat roasting on a spit in the window. As we were waiting for our food, Topher noticed that the fireplace was heating not just the room but the hot water as well! We ordered a lot of food and ate just about every last bit washed down with our usual half litre of house wine.

While walking around Arachova we saw three little kids who might not have even been four yet walking around with a bag of firecrackers. These are little pouches of gunpowder that make a bang when you throw them on the ground, and David and Hugh are now obsessed with getting their hands on some. I asked at one of the stores, and the owner at first didn’t know what I meant but after I explained a second time he understood. He didn’t sell them but said they are called skordakia, which basically means “little garlic”, since that’s what the little pouches look like.

After lunch we toured the archaeological museum and saw lots of sculptures and decorative friezes from the buildings at Delphi (pictured below), some of which I vaguely remember from my undergraduate Art History class! Quite a lot of the more valuable things (described by ancient historians) have been looted over the years, but an earthquake in the 4th century ironically preserved quite a bit. I don’t know if it was the fact that they were well fed or the presence of museum guards everywhere you looked, but the boys seemed to be more interested in the museum than they had been earlier.

Once we had our fill of the museum, we toured a bit more of the site that is outside the gates and then headed back to our apartment for the rest of the day and evening. I had a nap while the boys tried to find firecrackers in town, but they had no luck. We’re hoping to get an early start tomorrow as we just have one night at our next place (due to a slight miscalculation when we were doing the booking back in December) so had a quiet night catching up on journals and reading.