Previous Day (Arriving in Athens)
Destination: Greece
Duration: 9 Days 7 Nights (Oct 18~Oct 26, 2011)
Day 2: Athens -> Delphi -> Kalambaka
We had our breakfast in hotel before continuing our journey to Delphi. Did I mention that I LOVE European breakfast spread? European breakfast spread is the BEST in the world! Let’s split the Novotel breakfast into several categories:-
Carbohydrate Section: Countless types of bread, cakes, biscuit, cereal, pies
Protein & FAT Section: Scrambled egg, sausages, bacons, egg with ham and potatoes, various types of CHEESE (*hyperventilating*), hams & salami
Fiber Section: Lots of salad vegetables, olive (*heart*), tomatoes & capsicum
Hydration Section: Fresh orange juice, tomato juice, grapefruit juice, water, tons of coffees, hot chocolate (*yummy*) & tons of tea bags
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| Look at that!!! |
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| Hams, Salami & CHEESES!!! *faint* |
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| Fruits |
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| Scramble Egg, Sausages, Bacons, Hashbrown & Egg with Potato & Bacon |
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| Coffee, Tea, Hot Chocolates & lots of Condiments |
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| More Food!!! |
Did I mention they had amazing yoghurt as well? *swoon*
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| Yoghurts!!! |
After the heavy breakfast (someone please kill me!!!), we went to hotel rooftop to take a morning view of Acropolis from afar. Then we sat on the bus for around 2 ½ hours to Delphi. It was fun looking out from the window to be in awe of the beautiful landscape of the country. We crossed the Yliki Lake – one of the water supplies for Athens. The lake was so beautiful that it looked like a stunning mirror!
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| Saw the Strike Notice in the hotel lift... |
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| Pool at the Hotel Rooftop |
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| Far View of Acropolis from Hotel Rooftop |
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| Panoramic View from Hotel Rooftop |
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| Yliki Lake - Look at the Surface! |
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| Another View of Lake Yliki - Breathtaking eh? |
Our Greek tour guide told us myths on the area and one of the most memorable was of Oedipus. Oedipus was the son of the king & queen of Thebes with a prophecy by the Oracle of killing his own father and marrying his own mother. When he was born, his birth father sent him to a servant to be left to die. The sympathetic servant passed him to other servants instead and he ended up adopted by the king of Corinth. Later he was informed by a drunk that he was adopted but his adoptive parents denied every word. Oedipus then seeks the Oracle who did not tell him of his birth parents – but informed him about him killing his father and marrying his mother. In order to avoid this fate, Oedipus traveled further away from Corinth and Thebes – a place near Delphi.
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| Windmill on top of the Mountain... |
In his journey, he accidentally killed his birth father (King Laius of Thebes) in self-defense when crossing a road. Continuing his journey, he freed Thebes of a murderous Sphinx. The people of Thebes were appreciative and appointed him as king and gave him the recently widowed Queen Jocasta’s (his mother!!!) hand in marriage. They had 2 sons and 2 daughters.
Many years later, a plague of infertility struck Thebes and the Oracle told the people that the murderer of King Laius had to be found (killed or exiled) to stop the plague. It was during all this digging that Queen Jocasta found out her current husband Oedipus was in fact her son. She hanged herself in the palace. At the same time, Oedipus found out that he killed his birth father and married his birth mother. When he saw that Jocasta had hanged herself, he used the pin of the brooch from Jocasta’s gown and stabbed his eyes out. He exiled himself to stop the plague and perished.
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| Imagine the Myths happened near this area... |
The story did not end here, apparently his sons, daughters and the throne were cursed too! The sons killed each other over the throne and Jocasta’s brother became king. One of the sisters Antigone defied the new king’s order when she tried to bury his brother’s body and was ordered to be buried alive – she hanged herself instead. The new king’s son was heartbroken (he loves Antigone!) and killed himself! The new king’s wife was devastated and killed herself too! The new king ended up losing everything when he lost his crown to another king. Epic and Tragic huh? Totally my kind of story!!! *evil grin* Oops.. I digress..
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| Imagine This was somewhere Oedipus exiled himself.. |
Anyhow, back to our journey!!! We stopped at a place beside the main road to take a photo of Arachova – Wow! It really was amazing how the houses were built on the hill. We then arrived at Delphi, Greece’s most beautiful ancient site with evocative ruins surrounded by breathtaking mountain. The site included the Sanctuary of Apollo - the site of the ancient Oracle.
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| The White Matchboxes were Houses of Arachova |
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| Driving Pass Arachova - Very Narrow Road... |
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| Here we are!!! Delphi Site! |
There were a lot of walking on uneven terrain and I felt lucky to wear my sport shoes. A thicker shoe base was recommended as well as the ground was so uneven that it might hurt your feet with thin shoe base. Well, guess you could think of it as reflexology path!
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| A View Just Passed the Entrance |
Once you entered the site, you could see lots of treasuries along the way – according to our tour guide, those were built to bride the Oracle for giving them good prophecy or to thank the Oracle for her advice on their battle victories. Most were in ruins but they did have a reconstructed Treasury of Athens, built to commemorate their victory at the Battle of Marathon. All of these were built with marble by the way! You might noticed marble with different color on the photo – that was because it was reconstructed – white color marble were those parts that couldn’t be found and they had to put in new material, whilst the yellow color marble were of ancient original material of the original treasury that were found. Other identifiable treasuries are those of the Sikyonians, the Boetians and the Thebans.
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| A Treasury... |
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| The Treasury of the Boetians |
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| The Famous Treasury of Athens |
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| Among the Ruins Surrounded by Mountains... |
We reached the temple of Apollo and were totally in awe. Then we walked up to the ancient theatre that was built further up the hill from the Temple of Apollo. Oh my God! This theatre was amazing but the most interesting was the spot gave us a spectacular view of the entire sanctuary and the valley below. There was a stadium further up to the top (45minutes climb) and we did not go up due to time constraint.
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| Temple of Apollo |
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| The Theatre! |
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| A view of Temple of Apollo from the Top |
We also missed out Tholos (sanctuary of Athena) which were further below the hill of Apollo Sanctuary. What a bummer! We only managed to look from the top and zoomed in the camera to get a bad photo of it. Time was totally against us!
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| A Zoomed in of Tholos... See the Arc? |
We then went to the Delphi Archaeological Museum which was located at the foot of the sanctuary of Apollo. The museum housed an impressive collection associated with ancient Delphi, including the earliest known notation of a melody, the famous Charioteer, golden treasures discovered beneath the Sacred Way, and fragments of reliefs from the Siphnian Treasury. Okay, I copied the last sentence from the brochure. :p
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| Look at this! |
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| Ouch! Poor Dude getting Groped by Lion! |
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| The Earliest Sculptures |
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| Look at the Details!!! |
Hmm.. all in all – there were lots of HOT dudes among the sculptures! Dionysus was HOT! So was Antinoos- Emperor Hadrian’s favorite beloved who drowned in Nile River. And before you scratch your head, both of them were dudes. It was hedonism all around then! Oh, did I mention that underwear was not invented at that time period yet? So all the Gods or demigods sculptures were NAKED! Hahaa… *whistles*
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| Dancing Girls... |
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| Dionysus! |
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| Antinoos - One of the Hot Dudes |
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| The famed Charioteer! |
Our tour bus then brought us to the town of Delphi and stopped to let us visit a small shop selling local products such as olive lotion, olive oil or anything olive. The view opposite the shop was amazing though. We had our lunch around the same area in Taverna Vakchos – another traditional Greek restaurant. The view from the restaurant was astounding as well. We were served with bread, appetizer – an assortment of vegetable pie, different dips, Greek tomato Fritters ( I love this!), grilled capsicum and stuffed vine leaves. It was really appetizing. Greek salad was then served and as usual – it was very fresh. Our main course was roasted chicken – didn’t really look appetizing from the outlook and maybe quite tasteless to Malaysian. But this is Mediterranean cooking so no complaints here. The chicken was quite tender actually and the potatoes at the side were sour with herbs taste – quite delicious for me actually. Guess I love sour food. Our dessert was a traditional Greek dessert – I think it was called Baklava. It was basically pastry with crushed nuts inside then topped with syrup. It was very sweet from the outside but the crushed nuts inside was nice – tasted of cinnamon as well.
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| Wonderful View Opposite the Shop |
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| There was a Valley below! |
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| The Restaurant |
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| The Bread |
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| A View from the Restaurant |
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| The Interior of the Restaurant |
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| Appetizer |
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| The Salad |
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| The Main Course |
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| The Dessert |
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| Some of the Deco in the Restaurant |
We continued our journey to Kalambaka – basically in the middle of nowhere for 2 hours before the bus stopped at a rest stop. By that time I was so nauseas because of the ever turning road. The rest stop sold pastries and stuffs as well but I was just too sick and too full (from lunch) to eat anything. Then we came across ice cream! The sourly strawberry sorbet managed to make me felt better. It was EUR1.30 per scoop. =)
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| The Rest Stop |
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| They Sold Quite a lot of Pastries |
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| More Pastries |
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| Endless Pastries!!! |
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| Our Ice Creams! |
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| Available Choices |
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| More Choices |
We finally arrived in Kalambaka after another hour ride. Our hotel was Hotel Divani and it looked more rundown if compared with Novotel Athens. We had our dinner in the hotel in buffet style before going into the town to have a walk around. By the way, the town is right below Meteora it was actually built for Meteora tourism. It was quite cold at night as Greece has the typical Mediterranean weather – hot in the afternoon and cold at night.
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| The Hotel |
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| Town of Kalambaka |
The buffet dinner was of Mediterranean style and here are some of the choices:- Salads, feta cheese, grilled chicken, lamb & fish sautéed potato & capsicum, rice, spaghetti, grapes, ekmek kataif, peach pie and ice cream. The food was nothing extraordinary and the grilled chicken was so hard that it was difficult to swallow. The grilled fish was too fishy as well. The only thing I liked was the tomato soup and the chocolate ice cream.
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| Salads Again! |
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| Salads with Feta Cheese |
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| The Chicken was HARD! The Vege was okay. |
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| Potatoes & Lambs |
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| Spaghetti Sauce & Minced Meat with Parmesan Cheese |
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| Rice & Spaghetti |
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| The Fishy Fish & Vegetables |
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| Tomato Soup |
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| Grapes |
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| Ekmek Kataif |
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| Peach Pie |
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| Vanila & Chocolate Ice Cream |
This ended our day 2 trip and we were looking foward to visit Meteora tomorrow! =)
Next Day (Meteora)
Masterpost (Click to get to day to day link)
