Oracle at Delphi

The prior day, I had tried to catch a bus to Delphi, but this adventure failed miserably...I took an "interesting" cab ride to the bus station. The cab driver, a 60's ish guy who spoke broken English at best, drove through the streets, beating his fingers on the steering wheel in rhythm to some folk sounding Greek song (I made a joke about Yanni that he didn't understand). Everything seemed peachy until we got into north Athens neighborhoods. He looked around, and upon noticing the presumably non-Greek people, started on a 232 second tirade in almost perfect English bashing the Turks and Arabs, and complaining about what they were doing to the city (I guess hating "immigrants" isn't isolated to just ignorant people in the US).  

We arrived at the bus station, and I learned that the bus for Delphi was standing-room only. D'oh! I wasn't about to take a 3hr bus ride standing the entire time. I bought a ticket for the next day, and went outside to grab a cab back to my neck of the woods.

The cab driver I hailed was a "suave" 50ish Greek guy wearing a suit and pimping sunglasses. Again, English was a challenge (I utilized the tried and true practice of pointing to a location on my map), and we drove off. To my utter surprise, as we entered into the same, predominately immigrant neighborhoods, this guy went off about the Turks and Arabs in perfect English, too!! WTF!! Do the cab drivers sit around and rehearse this stuff??

I returned to the hostel and discussed my plans with the ever so helpful Gary at the reception desk. We talked for a bit, and after doing some research (I debated staying overnight in Delphi), I decided the best option was to take a half-day tour there. It was pricey -- about $125, but as it turns out, worth every penny, and I'm exceedingly happy that I chose to do it.

The bus arrived at 7:45am and headed to a centralize meeting place. We boarded another bus, and I observed that other than a group of four (two guys and two girls), pretty much everyone was middle-aged. Sadly, this guy didn't show up.  I assumed that the lack of younger peeps was due to the expense -- unlike the tours in SE Asia, this cost more than what I'm assuming most backpackers would want to pay.

We headed off, and I slept the bulk of the trip (I've learned how to sleep on any moving vehicle at any time of day -- I'm a little concerned about how this will play out when I drive again ;p).  I was awake long enough to shoot these.

 
I'm soooo glad that I took the tour -- Delphi was bigger than I had imagined and I had a taken a bus by myself, I have no idea where the bus would've stopped. If it stopped in a certain location, it could've taken an hour walk to get to the ruins...

Before moving forward, it's worthwhile to take a quick look at this.

My tour bus dropped us off right at the base of the ruins, where a musuem stood. The museum held mostly artificats excavated from the nearby ruins.

Our guide was a crazy, long-winded Greek woman who would instruct us that we had an hour to get up and down the Delphi mountainside, but then would drone on another 10 minutes about some random nonsense. Knowing that I had limited time, I almost sprinted to the top of the mountain. I'm more a "mountain" person (easy on the beard jokes) than a "beach" person, so the views to me were more impressive than those in Sydney.  Without a doubt, these were the most amazing views on the entire trip.

As I made my way down the mountain side, one of the guys from the group of non middle-aged people asked me to take a pic of the group. I did, and we exchanged a few words -- this group was from Brazil.

I continued my way down and a military American from Amarillo talked with me for a bit as we alternated taking each other's photo (NOT in the nude, you sick bastards). Once I got to the bottom, it was time for lunch. We quickly drove to a quaint restaurant and played the "pick the table with the cool kids" game. I had a decision -- I was staring at two options: either sitting with the Amarillo guy or the Brazilians. Naturally, I chose the second option.

That decision was a total home-run. The five of us instantly hit it off -- well, as well as things can go when speaking in limited English. Three of the four Brazilians -- Raphael, Andres and Maria knew each other from Brazil and decided to take a tour of Istanbul and Athens together. The fourth member, Tatiana, was traveling alone on a similar tour, and met the three while traveling and decided to continue her travels with them. Things went so well with all of us that we decided to meet that night (the night before Easter).

On the drive back, I got some more pretty good pics -- can you tell I enthusiastically enjoyed this part of the trip?? 

We headed back to Athens (and actually drove through a nice part of Athens -- I swear, it existed!!), and I got ready to meet the Brazilians. Chris was gone for the evening, so I met them alone...

They showed on time and we headed off to a Greek restaurant that offered all of us a free shot. It was ouzo (disgusting -- for those of you not privileged with a Greek friend, Ouzo is a disgusting black licorice tasting liquor native to Greece).  On the bright side, the wine, company and food was delicious.

We then went to one of the larger churches in the area to see what goes down for Greek Orthodox Easter ceremonies (their idea, not mine, but I had a few drinks in me, so why not??).  This was a HUGE holiday for the Greeks, and the next day, the entire city shut down. 

The next morning, I headed to my trip's last leg -- Budapest.