Delphi

We had a tight schedule to follow this morning. The hotel surprised us by informing us that hotel was served in our room! The earliest breakfast slot was at 0730. We had 15 minutes to eat as we had to meet George, our guide, at the archaeological site for our tour at 0800. We made it! 

George imparted a lot of information so we will just post photos of a few facts/items that stuck with us. We would highly recommend George (Mal found him online somewhere...). He was informative, pleasant, interesting with a hint of mischief, but professional. Plus he told other groups and their leaders off for being intrusive. 10 points for George!! 

We had to hurry back to the hotel to make our check out time which we did with a few minutes to spare. It had been getting progressively hotter by the day since our arrival in Greece, and this heat intolerant family was starting to feel it! We decided to drive straight to Piraeus (port near Athens) to return our rental car. 

Good morning Delphi!

Our amazing breakfast tray!!

complete with juice and Turkish coffee

A model of the religious sanctuary to give context to the ruins. We started on the path on the bottom right and zigzagged our way to the big building in the building which was the Temple of Apollo. All the smaller buildings were treasuries or porticoes. The theatre seating 5000 is at the back

A preserved wine cup depicting Apollo from the 6th century BC

Musical inscriptions of a hymn to Apollo. Above the verses, notes were inscribed for the melody

The famed Charioteer

A rare surviving bronze statue from the era, only 1 of 5 remaining

After the museum, we went onto the site which looked down into the Delphi valley with its gorgeous carpet of olive groves

The agora or shopping centre of Delphi!

Foundations were found with inscriptions which detailed things such as the offering that was given, the cost, the materials etc everything was transparent! Tell that to the pollies...

One of the treasuries with the marble still intact, thanks to being covered in dirt most likely from an earthquake. The pieces have been put together in modern times, but the blocks are mostly original, other than the obvious "subs"

If you look closely, you can the fine carvings depicting laurel wreaths

The polygonal wall, original 6th century BC stones that are still there...

Very fine details on the stones. My finger there for a sense of scale...

The Temple of Apollo, the Oracle would be towards the back where she breathed in hydrocarbons from the deep

The theatre

Let's talk about car rental. The car was hired via QEEQ who used Car Wiz who used Lets Drive Piraeus at a rate less than half of that offered by the major operators. What could go wrong? In the end, not a lot.. but it nearly went completely pear shaped. The car was to be returned to Lets Drive Piraeus which was naturally found in the Blue Star Ferry building. The shopfront of Blue Star was 25m from the vehicle entry to Gate 7 which is used for cars loading onto the ferries under the strict guidance of the port authorities. There was no driveway to Blue Star, only 8 or 9 unmarked, "reserved" roadside spaces for car returns. "Reserved" is not a particularly well observed word in Greece. Only one space remained but it was blocked by a double parked taxi and we were riding the slow wave of cars towards the ferry.  Now, it wasn't Car Wiz's fault that we had just taken a wrong turn, performed an illegal U turn and driven against traffic, up a one way street to make it to the "return centre", but it was their fault that their location, signage and expectations of their customers left a lot to be desired. A last minute gap in the traffic and a micromovement by the taxi provided an opportunity for us to dive for the corner even though we still had no idea where the try line was. Grateful that we were stationary and in a legal position we were able to wander around and thankfully discover that we were right outside Bluestar/Lets Drive/Car Wiz. Simple! 

Bring on Island Time.

Our port hotel

Nice big room and big bathroom for a change

Portaria and the Centaur's Walk

To we began our drive up north towards Litochoro. It was not the best of starts and there were many things to whinge about so let me get those out of the way! None deal breaking except for maybe one...

• The first taxi driver we hailed refused to take us to the car rental place. He wanted a fare to the airport. 
• Said car rental place opened 30 minutes late because an employer no showed and no one else had a key apparently
• Car rental attendant rather then being apologetic, was difficult! She took forever to get our rental going despite not being anyone else there. She then insisted that we had to have a credit card for a hold in the driver's name that is NOT Amex. Later this turned out not to be true, she just didn't want to have to pay the Amex fees
• Once on the motorway, we discovered that the AC was not working! All it did was blow hot air even when off. All our googling, manual reading and pressing/twisting all the buttons we could did not help. This WAS a deal breaker.

We pulled into McDonald's for much needed food (we were hangry which probably didn't help). Upon calling the car rental company, we were given instructions to try for the AC, which sounded like performing a chicken dance. We were told to turn on all the lights, then leave only one on (I don't even know what that meant Mal did it), turn the AC onto full heat for 5 seconds, and then switch it to cold. It worked! They have obviously had this issue before...Oh in case I hadn't mentioned the name of the car rental place - Carwiz. It was half the price the next closest competitor...so make your choices with great consideration! 

Our stop in McDonald's did soothed some tempers, and a good chicken burger for breakfast was enough to change our disposition. Our long drive north was fortunately mostly on motorways which made it easier to adjust to driving a car on the other side of the road full of crazy drivers. Jonah noted with amusement a passenger on the back of a motorbike travelling at 120km/hr on her phone. We must have also paid a gajillion euros worth of tolls. I'm sure we went through at least 10 toll boths! There were ample rest stops though, which were clean and had petrol, toilets and cafes/restaurants. The petrol stations here were still serviced with attendants which was nice. 

How is it possible for only 1 employee and manager to have a key...the other employees were locked out as well

Ah the golden arches, a known comfort

Even the ordering system is the same

We didn't realise that Margarita was a celebrity chef, not a cocktail based burger

Finally off with a working AC!

We stopped at the cliffside village of Portaria, with the Centaur's walk to mark the first of our "walks" in our next leg. Unfortunately it was all underwhelming. Parts of the walk was pretty but it was short and a big chunk was on road through a village which really was not that picturesque. We didn't feel that it was worth the 10km of winding road all the way up and then all the way down. However we didn't a stop somewhere to stretch the legs. 

From Portaria, it wasn't too long to Litochoro, a very pretty village at the at the base of Mount Olympus. We stayed at Xenios Dias Hotel for the night, which was fortunately close to the village's main carpark and right in the middle of the village. We bought ourselves some gyros for dinner and enjoyed it at the park accompanied by stray cats enjoying the views of the mountain. 

Nice cafe next to the start of the walk, but it was deserted like the rest of the village

The entrance to the Centaur's Path

The legend is that this was where Chiron walked

We were not sure if the water was drinkable

Occasional glimpses of nice views

Walking on the narrow winding roads

Tolls, tolls and more tolls!

Litochoro, our hotel is on ground floor of the shorter building. 

Mount Olympus

Our room. Compact but very clean

Again clean bathroom

The view from our balcony

Pork gyros

Pleasant end to the day

The Peloponnese

Private tours seems to be a theme of late...today's tour was one giving us a taster of The Peloponnese, the peninsula to the west of Athens on the Greek mainland. We had 10 hours to see as much as we could. Our enabler today was George, our driver guide. He was ready to go in the comfy Mercedes right on 0800 and we were off. 

First stop. Corinth Canal. Construction only began in the late 1880's and prior to this, people would carry their boats across the isthmus taking up to one month to do so. It was no Panama Canal but still pretty impressive. The nearby Ancient Corinth was a popular site for various reasons, one of them being where the Apostle Paul preached Christianity and was judged by the tribunal in the Agora. We got to the Temple of Apollo before the tour buses and was able to admire the Doric temple in peace. 

Corinth Canal linking the Corinthian Gulf to the Aegean Sea

The ruins of the Temple of Apollo at Ancient Corinth, with pillars made from a single slab of limestone

Examples of mosaics found at Ancient Corinth

Ancient Greek Bath House

Ancient Corinth with Acrocorinth in the background

Next up Mycenae from 2000BC. The mind boggles. This was where the stuff Homer wrote about happened. Achilles, Agamemnon, Helen of Troy...lucky we had our resident Ancient Greek expert in Jonah. By now it was getting hot and we weren't sure how people did this in summer! There were many struggling to make it up to see the site of Agamemnon's Palace, ourselves included.

Mycenae Cyclopean walls

The ancient Lion Gate of 1250BC

Walking around "Grave Circle A" and ancient royal cemetery

Entrance to a tholos tomb

Extremely spacious inside!

It was a relief to get to the port city of Nafplio, the capital of Greece until 1834. We were informed that the old city offered the unique architecture of Venetian, neoclassical and oriental elements. We saw a very pretty town which was pleasant to walk and wander. Our highlight was lunch at Buonos. George recommended a seafood restaurant and offered to order for us in Greek. He was however unable to get a parking spot nearby! Fortunately for us, this time the owner was very friendly and pleasant. We settled upon a whole seabass, prawn linguine (apparent the area known for its prawn) as well as razorclams cooked in garlic and white wine. The food was AMAZING! 

View from Acronafplia

So many restaurants! We would have been wandering around for a while if not for George

Our table and view for lunch

Razorclams with garlic and white wine

Looks ordinary but packs a punch!

Our whole sea bass

The streets of Nafplio

We had time to squeeze in a visit to the Theatre of Epidaurus dating from the 4th century BC. We were too afraid to test out the acoustics reportedly still excellent even to this day. By this stage, we were exhausted. George had to contend with our snores on the 2 hour drive back to Athens. George had some last minute driving tips to help us for our next leg. The first was to do with speed limits and his pearl of wisdom goes something along the lines of...If signed at 80km/hr, you can go at 100-120 comfortably but maybe not 130 because after all it is not the autobahn. And do be careful because the speeding fine is around 500-600 euros. But you should be fine because there are not many police outside of Athens. Um ok.

The second tip was to do with roundabouts. Once you are in the roundabout, you have to give way to traffic coming into the roundabout. UNLESS, there are stop signs going into the roundabout, in which case you use driving rules for roundabouts like in Australia. Eh?!?! Say what? Luckily for us, he says, there should not be too many roundabouts in Greece. And with that he dropped us back at our hotel!

Getting ready to enter stage left! or is it right?!

So many steps up...

They desperately needed a rest...

The impressive theatre of Epidaurus. Did you know that ancient Greek "hospitals" were always next to a theatre?

We had just enough time for a quick rest before we farewelled Athens at the Point A restaurant. We've saved fine dining for last and it didn't disappoint. It had been a whirlwind visit to Athens and 2.5 days was just about right for us. We were ready to explore the rest of Greece.

We were seated at a great table!

Beef tartare

Tomato balls. I know, sounds rather odd, but oh so tasty

Malcolm "I don't want dessert" ended eating half of mine and Jonah's!

The Acropolis lit up at night