Touring the Acropolis and seeing the Parthenon is magnificent no matter how you do it. When you have an exceptional tour guide it’s even better. Our Odysseys Unlimited tour guide, Lina, was a marvel. Greek tour guides have to be schooled for 3 years in order to be licensed. Lina was able to lead a tour anywhere in the country, but I was sure when our itinerary changed due to weather and mechanical issues she’d have to cram the night before our new destinations. Nope. We were a curious group, with 4 librarians in our troupe of 18, and she nailed every question. Dates, facts, you name it. Of course, she could have made half of the stuff up and most of us wouldn’t have known any better, but it was obvious she didn’t have to, and we never stumped her.

Along with her knowledge we all appreciated her honesty and humor. She, as I mentioned in an earlier post, was unapologetically critical of the government and the financial situation. She held nothing back regarding British Lord Elgin’s looting of the statuary and friezes at the Parthenon, which he accomplished in 1821 before the Greek civil war and during the Turkish occupation. Those artifacts are STILL in the British Museum, and obviously absent from the new Acropolis Museum; they’ve left blanks or made copies and called out where the originals reside. Elgin was eventually ruined as he was forced to sell the artifacts to the British Museum for less than it cost him to acquire, ship, and when one of the ships sank salvage these items. Karma’s a bitch. And the British Museum is not cooperating in returning these items, as, technically, Elgin had permission from the Turks to take them, so they were not procured illegally. Perhaps Brexit is a form of Karma as well.

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I’d seen the Acropolis and the museum before, but I got so much more out of it with Lina, and I was looking forward to Delphi, a sight I hadn’t visited. We were going the next day.

The route to Delphi took us past Marathon, where in 490 BC the outnumbered Athenians beat the Persians. Their messenger Pheidippides ran back to Athens in full combat armor, proclaimed, “We were victorious!” and dropped dead of exhaustion. I wonder if my dear friend Mark knew this before he decided to run a bunch of Marathons. I’m guessing he felt a bit like Pheidippides at the halfway mark.

Our route continued through Arachova, the ski village near Mount Parnassos, and home to one of the largest olive groves in Greece, running down the hillside toward the sea. The mountains were cool and green, resplendent with Cyprus and olive trees, and the hillside where the ruins of Delphi are located are quiet and peaceful. Well, except for the tourists, but even they were pretty peaceful.

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Delphi was considered the center of the world, and there was a navel there just to make that point, it was the egg shaped sculpture in the slide show above. In mythology it is said that Zeus wanted to find the center of Gaia – Mother Earth – so he sent two eagles flying from the eastern and western extremities, and the path of the eagles crossed over Delphi where navel of Gaia was found. It became the home of the Oracle of Apollo, a series of priestesses who could answer questions or consult on big decisions. How does one become an Oracle? Well, it doesn’t seem any training or many traits were involved. Virginity was one, but after a young virgin was kidnapped and violated they picked old virgins who dressed as young girls. The prophecies spewed from them while they were in a frenzied state, and were translated by a priest. How did they become frenzied? They sat on a tripod seat over a chasm in the earth, and inhaled the fumes of what now is thought to be ethylene gas, possibly created by water on travertine at crisscrossing geological faults. Hydrocarbon gas, in this case ethylene, is an anesthetic, which can induce lively conversation, albeit incoherent conversation. So the oracle was, well, high. As my cousin Victoria commented, “She was a huffer.”

There is so much of interest in Dephi that it fills volumes, and I won’t do that to my dear readers. But I particularly liked the story of the archeological dig at Delphi. Time and Mother Nature had covered the ruins and a village had sprung up. In the 1890’s the village was relocated, all but for one house. The woman refused to move. One night she had a dream of a young man pleading with her for help. Her dream was so alarming she went to the authorities the next day and begged them to relocate her. Perhaps her house has a little ethylene problem, too. But on the spot under her house the centerpiece of the Delphi museum was located – the bronze statue of a Charioteer. So little bronze was left as it was stolen or melted for weapons or other uses, so this stunning piece was an amazing find.

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And obviously he very much wanted to be found.

Deborah