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.