DELPHI

Moving to the end of our tour.  I'm going to be so sad to leave here.  I feel I have learned so much, and have had a wonderful time.  

Today we went to Delphi, the site of the oracle.  

The oracle was always a woman of a certain age, apparently because they didn't live all that long because the oracle would chew laurel leaves all day, which are mildly hallucinogenic, and also inhaled incense.  The oracle stayed below the ground, and mumbled a lot.  The male priests would then interpret what she said.  So basically, she was just a poor mumbling prisoner.  

Whoever was giving the advice was pretty conservative and tended towards advice that suggested not being greedy or attacking.  The advice was usually pretty vague leaving two opposite interpretations available depending on how things turned out.  

When you arrived you were expected to bring a gift.  This picture is one of the places you could buy a gift if you didn't bring one.  This brickwork, however, is Roman, because the Romans used bricks and mortar.

The Greeks used interlocking stones with no mortar.  

Gifts that were brought to the oracle were stored in these buildings called treasuries, along with contributions sent by the various city states to stay in Apollo's good graces.  

Oh, yes, and by the way, this is the center of the world, and as such, has a belly button, called the ompholos.  Mine is called belly button.  Apparently the world has an outie.  

All of our group, even Zoe, managed to get to the temple site.  

Some of us went up higher, to the arena, and fewer went on to the stadium.  I went past the arena, but not to the stadium.  It was pretty hot.  

This is one of my favorite pictures from the trip.  I'm not much of a photographer, and taking pictures with an iPhone on a bright sunny day wearing polarized glasses is almost impossible.  

After the morning visit, we went to the onsite museum.  In the afternoon we went to the lower part of the site.  

After that we went back to the hotel.  I wanted to go for a swim, but the pool is closed every day for maintenance from 1:00-6:00!  After I hung around the front desk looking depressed for awhile, the desk clerk called "maintenance" who said I could use the pool at 4:15. It was an indoor pool but "refreshing" as a mountain stream.  By that I mean cold!  

Interesting rules.  

We went into the nearby town for gyros tonight.  Here's my favorite picture.  

METEORA TO ARAKOVA

PToday we left Meteora and we are spending most of the day on the bus traveling to Arakova. However, we had several stops along the way. The first place we stopped is a place that makes icons.

There seem to be about four artists and they are officially licensed icon painters.  

They have a nice shop and obviously they do sell small icons to tourists.

However they also have sold icons to the Vatican, and they even have a picture of presenting one to Pope John Paul. They were so beautiful I was seriously tempted to buy one, but then I thought about the fact that I already have two Russian ones that are sitting inside a drawer and that's where this one would have ended up as well.  After that we have a situation stop, which is what we call a pee break, roadside kind of place where regular buses, not tourist buses, stop as well.

Then we had a stop at Thermoplae, the site of an ancient battle which has a little memorial of sorts.

This is where 3000 Spsrtans and 7000 Thespians (soldiers from Thespa, not actors) died. This might have been 300 and 700 (since I'm always quite hazy on numbers). I think she told us that there were some recent findings that suggested this was the actual site of this battle. One final lunch stop on the Ionian Sea where we had some wonderful calamari and Greek salad with our New York friends Michelle and Sheila. 

I finally got a picture of one of these little roadside shrines they have all over here when we stopped to look at the largest olive grove in Greece. 

When we arrived at our hotel and had a cooking class where we learned how to make moussaka, tzoureki, and spanikopita. 

We had yet another ouzo tasting tonight. I've had so much I'm starting to like the stuff. 

Tomorrow we go see the oracle of Delphi and get our fortunes told. 

View from our balcony. 

METEORA AND KALAMBAKA

Today we went to the rocks at Meteora. This is one of the most fascinating and interesting stops on this tour.  

Long ago some hermits would come and move into the caves that existed in the mountains. I'm using the word mountains but they are really  giant freestanding rocks.  They are about 750 meters high. And they come straight up from sort of a valley floor.  Geologically, they are the result of a giant inland sea and later erosion.  

As time went by they built monasteries in these various places and up at the top of the rocks.

I think the monasteries are about 400 or 500 years old. The Nazis bombed them all during World War II so most of them have been partially or totally rebuilt since then, though parts of them have lasted. There is a road that winds through these hills with fabulous views. Some of the monasteries are very close to the road. The first one we went to was Saint Stephen's.

This was previously a monastery, but is now a nun's convent. It was seriously bombed in World War II and so the chapel has been rebuilt and the frescoes in it are just wonderful. They are very bright because they're still painting the church. It isn't even finished yet.  We weren't allowed to take pictures inside, but I found there two pictures online.  

We learned some things that I did not know about icons. I always thought the Byzantine icons looked the way they do because the artists have not mastered the art of painting with perspective. But the fact of the matter is they do not want the paintings to look realistic. They felt that realistic paintings were too much like statues, which the Orthodox Church rejects. Also that every church has a very standard iconography so Jesus will always be in the middle door, Virgin Mary will be on his left, and John the Baptist will always be on his right. There are other things that always the same so that if you go into any Greek church you will recognize the saints.  Also Jesus is the only one who always gets his name inside his halo. The colors that I thought always look grey on the faces are also on purpose so that they don't look like a living person.

Because this is a nunnery, they have to have a priest come to say the mass.

There is a piece of wood hanging outside where the priest knocks, and then there is a sort of a bell -- more like a wind chime, but very heavy -- that the priest gently rings to ask if it is all right to come in. 

The second monastery we visited was Varlaam. They are building something that might be a new belltower there, which means they are raising  these huge pieces of stone up some kind of a pulley up the outside of the mountain.  

In this monastery we saw older paintings, because this particular one was not destroyed by the Nazis. There were some newer ones in the public area.  

It was a hundred steps up to the top of this one. And did I mention that all of these have beautiful views?

Following this visit we went into the town of Kalambaka so that so Zoe could visit the doctor for her breathing problem and also to have her stitches examined. We also had another member of our tour who fell and it turns out cracked a rib last night. This is the same man who was stung by a bee one day and bitten by a cat another day. 

The rest of us were free to have lunch and wander about the town and buy souvenirs. I am at the point in a tour where the opportunity to skip a meal is so exciting I can hardly stand it. Needless to say I had ice cream for lunch.

We had three hours free in the afternoon to hike around the area or go to the pool. The pool was lovely.

Then last night we had our home hosted dinner which is somewhat of a trademark of Grand Circle. Usually I don't care that much for the home hosted dinner but this one was immensely fun.  

The house was actually built into the side of one of these big rocks. And was very charming. The owner had added on to the house so there were only two walls that were the rocks. He and his wife were very gregarious , friendly people. 

To top off the night we had a fantastic thunderstorm that looked like it was made in Hollywood. The darkness was lit up and the rocks appeared and then disappeared. Then there was hail. Then the rain hit directly on our window which was under a five foot roof. Loved it. 

ATHENS TO METEORA

Today we went from Pireaus to Kalimbaka,

Pireaus is actually a little suburb/port city of Athens. So as a special treat to you took us to the new 2009 Museum of the Acropolis. This is one of the most interesting museums, architecturally, that I have ever seen.  

Because this is Greece and you can't do anything without finding remnants of an ancient civilization. They chose to build this museum on pillars so that they could leave whatever archaeological findings were below it available for people to work on.

So the museum is built on piers and you can see what they have.  This museum was mostly the vision of the Greek actress Melina Mercouri Who was the Minister of culture in Greece in the 60s. She wanted more than anything to get the Elgin marbles that from the British Museum. They refused,saying Greece did not have a good place for them to be displayed that would preserve them. Of course it took forever to get this going but it's a beautiful museum and it's organized so that the museum itself is as if you were walking up to the Acropolis. And then all around in the same size as the Acropolis they have the pieces that were around it and then they have plastercastings of the ones that are in the British Museum. They also have a lot of other more recent discoveries. But you aren't allowed to take pictures of them because the museum has never printed a catalog.  

While we were on this little tour our guide's mother came to meet us at the museum. She has the same sparkling personality and brought us cookies, too.

From there we started our six hour bus ride up to meteor and arrive there about 5 PM.

SYROS

I'm a bit angry right now.  I spent half an hour on the bus writing today's blog and with an accidental flick of the finger just deleted the whole thing.  

Yesterday was the 4th of July, and our ship's crew decorated the public areas of the ship in red white and blue banners and flags and it was very charming. They don't know that for us independence  day is just a holiday to shoot off fireworks and barbecue. Our day was an easy day because we had time to pack our treasures as we disembark from the ship tomorrow. Zoe was feeling much better and was able to go on the walk through Syros. We had an interesting tour of Saint Nicholas Church which is the patron saint of sailors. I think. 

We also visited a home for the aged. Which is very unusual in Greece because people take care of their own families here

We had a small discussion about politics of the next picture is from kind of a union hall where people were organizing against the austerity laws which currently means that about 80 percent of a worker's salary goes to taxes.  Also people who retired with a pension of about 2000€ have seen it cut down to 800. 

We went shopping at our tour guide's favorite jewelry shop. But I didn't find anything I wanted and we both got some cute beach dresses. Or at least I think mine is a beach dress. This is just a sweet little town. Later in the day after we have our political talk. I went back to town to get some money from the ATM. And the place was absolutely deserted.

It was actually kind of sad once you know how bad things are for people in Greece.  

But everyone is unfailingly happy and generous and polite.  After the captains dinner we had some musicians and danced. Tonight we sail for nine hours. The seas are very rough.  Wednesday we will be in Pireaus and will get on a bus for a six hour trip to a place called meteora,. which I have looked at pictures of and which is quite fantastic.

NAXOS, DELOS, MYKONOS, AND SYRES

Naxos is one of the larger Greek islands in the Cyclades, and we spent the day here yesterday.  We started our day with a hike in more the middle of the island, where we walked up hills down dale through a landscape that was pretty similar to California foothills, except it must not get as cold, because they grow citrus, olives, loquats, and other things we grow in the Central Valley.  

The highlight of the morning hike was a kouros statue that had "fallen off the truck" a few thousand years ago and is resting on a farmer's land.  Apparently, this is one of the worst things that can happen to you in Greece, is to find some ancient relic on your land, because it allows the government to take the land.  According to the guide, they're supposed to pay the landowner for it, but in practice, it doesn't happen.  More recently if you discover something, the government doesn't take your land outright, but requires you to not damage what you find -- in other words,morgen whatever you had planned to build that caused you to dig up something, and you must make it accessible to the public.  

While there, Zoe was trying to navigate some steep steps and fell down, cutting her shin and hitting her head on a giant granite stone.  Last night the doctor came to see her (200 Euros), put some stitches in her leg, and gave her some antibiotics.  Today she is really sick, with food refusing to remain inside her body.  Our wonderful guide Katia called the doctor again, but he doesn't think this is sign of a concussion, and Drs. Ives and Vondracek have decided it's the antibiotic that is making her sick.  She's going to stop taking it today.  

But back to yesterday.  Many of us went to a wonderful beach on the city bus, and had a lovely time swimming and lying on the beach.

 It was a nice sandy beach with clear blue and turquoise water.  Our evening was spent in a home visit, one of the trademarks of Grand Circle.  We met with a lady named DeNye (I'm spelling that phonetically) who cooked us a wonderful dinner in her very artistic house overlooking the valley.  Her English was quite good, but not quite enough for us to grasp exactly the elements of her job, but she is a freelance journalist who blogs a lot about ecology.  

I thought it was more interesting than many home visits we've gone to.  

This morning we sailed to Delos,

which is an island with eight residents--4 archeologists and 4 guards -- and some amazing ruins.  

The little yellow building at the end is where the guards and archeologists live.  

There was once a colossus statue of Apollo here, but all that is left is the torso, an arm and the fist.  

We returned to the boat and sailed to the island of Mykonos, one of the rich folks' islands.  This was basically a shopping tour but everything was twice as much as in the town of Naxos. That was mostly an opportunity to get stuff at the pharmacy and ATM. Amazingly, I didn't take any pictures in Mykonos.  

We ended the day with our arrival at Syres which we will explore tomorrow.