My Greek Odyssey...
Maybe not quite.. but I have been frantically running around Greece in order to coincide my journey with my friend and maximise what I see at the same time.
So after just two nights and one day in Athens I went to Meteora, and spent a gorgeous morning there exploring the hilltop monasteries and then caught 2 taxis plus 3 buses to my next destionation, Delphi, where my friend awaits after his long boat trip from Italy.
Meteora was amazing. Its name literally means "rocks in the air". Its rocky mountain landscape were once segments of an inland sea and caves were formed by natural erosion. Walking around the Meteora cliffs and exploring the monasteries were literally breathtaking... ie. lots of climbing up and down stone staircases and walking kilometers of paved road from one to another.
I met a New York guy on the bus the night before and we explored the area together. He insisted on taking taxi from one monastery to another, but I won in the end and we walked. At midday we caught the first taxi to a nearby town, where he planned to go up North to catch a ferry to Italy and I go south to meet my friend.
Just as my bus arrived into town I realised I left my bankcard in the ATM machine and had to go back to the bank to find it, missing my bus altogether. The lady at the restaurant we ate during lunch kindly drove me about and helped me get my card back. I gave her a little rabbit toy as a thank you. It was a rabit I got from a Manga festival in Barcelona which I planned to feature in my travel photos, but I guess it was not to be!
So I caught a taxi to catch up with the bus in the next town, was on the bus for one hour and then waited another two hours for a connecting bus, which took another hour and half and dropped me at a nearby seaside town to Delphi (called Itea). Another half hour ride later I was finally in town. This is quite normal for bus travel in Greece, lots of changing buses are required, though if you are lucky they may connect and not requiring too much waiting.
Delphi is another beautiful place, this time on the top of a mountain. It is fairly close to the Ancient Delphi, which was famous for the Delphi Oracle - a women who represents the god of Apollo and provide vague answers to pilgrims' questions (so that the gods are never wrong..) Delphi was considered the centre of the world and the importance of a city was measured by its proximity to Delphi. Nowadays it's famous for beautiful ruins on the mountainside, especially the circular dome of "tholos" which appear in many postcards of Greece.
My friend rushed off to the site early in the morning in order to catch an early bus to Athens. His early start beat the tourist crowd and he came away with beautiful photos in the early morning light, without tourists.. I chose the other option and arrived the site close to midday, leisurely visited the musuem which contained many fragments of the ruins and then strolled to the site afterwards. By the time I arrived at the last point, the tholos, all the tourists have also gone.
From Delphi I went to Athens and met up with my friend again. This time I visited the Ancient Agora and Temple of Olympian Zeus as well as the Benaki musuem.. The musuem has a huge collection of art and figurines from as far back as 5000 BC, spread across 4 floors. Attempting to understand the collection after a long day of walking around meant my head was about to explode by the time I reach the third floor.
It has been hard to make sense of all the ruins and the history of Greece in the short one week that I have been here.. the modern Greece is so different to their Ancient counterpart and sometimes hard to believe that they are related at all. In my spare time on the bus I am trying to read up on the Greek history from Lonely Planet and I am amazed that so many of the places on the map have played important part in the Greek's long history. It's strange and a shame that so many of the historical sites are now ruins, as in many of the places in the world, destroyed during one war or another.
posted by Susan @ 2:54 AM
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