Delphi

The following morning we caught a bus to Delphi. We arrived at 2pm and it turned out that the historic sites closed at 3pm, so we had to wait until the next day to see them. Delphi to me felt similar to our Leavenworth, except it was a holiday so all of the shops were closed.

Let me side track for a minute. TJ and I are having amazingly bad luck with things being closed or unavailable. We’ll go to a restaurant that has “breakfast” on the menu and when we order it the response is, “not today.” I cannot tell you how many items we’ve tried to order that have been unavailable. We ordered crepes but the reply was “we have crepes after 7pm.” The entire town of Delphi was closed because of a holiday. We aren’t sure why the Temple of Olympian Zeus was closed early in the afternoon on a weekday. We aren’t sure why shops that have a sticker in the window saying “internet” don’t have internet. Baffling!

Anyway, In the 6th – 4th centuries BC, Dephi was home to oracles, which were believed to speak for Apollo. The Delphic oracles were the most powerful in Greece. When the oracle was consulted for divine advice, she inhaled fumes, entered a trance, and then mumbled something that was interpreted/translated by a priest. Maybe the oracles were innately intelligent divine beings, or perhaps they’d inhaled too much sulfur, which radiated from the cavern’s walls?

We didn’t see any oracles while we were in Delphi, but we did see Ancient Delphi. The ruins of this World Heritage site are nestled on the side of Mt Parnassos and overlook the Gulf of Corinth. We enjoyed hiking around and checking out Ancient Delphi. Our favorite sites were the Temple Apollo, the theater and the stadium.