Delphi and Greek Driving

Today we'd booked a rental car and the plan was to drive to Delphi, the site of ruins of the Temple of Apollo and surrounding ruins that once was host to the cult of Apollo and the priests who every centuries doled out prophecies for those that pilgrimaged there.

We picked up our white manual Citroen.  Driving in Athens was interesting.  Motorcycles drive quickly between cars and lanes.  Blinkers arent used, just drive around pedestrians who are crossing on reds, drive fast through all yellows.  Outside of Athens pass anytime forming a 3rd middle lane.  Drivers in the oncoming lane dont want to hit you so its ok, theyll move over.  Sometimes you can pass another car passing thus forming 4 lanes if that car isnt passing fast enough.  These are the lessons I learned.  It went fine.

At any rate, driving was a lot of fun once out if the city.  It was mountainous, flat, and hilly.  One very cute town in the mountains before Delphi.

We got there around noon, about a 2hr 35 minute drive.  Delphi is a beautiful place in the mountains.  The hill upward is pretty steep and a lot of the ruins you have to learn what it was from info and renderings and fill in the gaps with your imagination.  There was a treasury that is the most well preserved building there where city states in Greece would fill with nice things as offerings.  Seemed like it was a bit if a competition to have the coolest treasuries.  

During the walk theres a lot of cats that live there.  They look pretty well fed and we confirmed that when we stopped by the museum.  There's a coffee shop and a number of cats were lounging, one kitten trotting along with a piece of bread in his mouth.  Spent a decent amount of time petting cats.

One site we did miss was the ancient stadium.  You have to climb about double what we did to get there, and it was a bit toasty in the sun.  Its an arena where the Pythean games were held.  This was similar to the Olympics (held every 2 years after the Olympics) and were dedicated to Apollo.  But we saw everything else, very cool.

Museum was great had a lot if the architecture and artifacts that they were keeping out of the elements.  

The drive back was solid, I slammed through a red light, honked my horn at people, and passed several cars by making a 3rd lane.  Traffic was terrible and added an extra 45 minutes.  The light for tire pressur came on and I checked but no flat so hoofed it back to the car rental and it was fine.

After walkimg back from there we returned to the pita place down from our hotel for gyros and fried zuchinni.  We also stopped for lukmades (dough balls with honey and cinnamon) and Masika ice cream.  Whoever mentioned Mastika is the comments last time fyi :)  We were actually happy that the lukmades we just ok, we have a place in St Louis Park that makes fantastic ones, and the place we went today is like the well known touristy one here.  Happy we have the good stuff back home.  The mastika ice cream was ok.  Im much more looking forward to the drink now, but I think the ice cream has too much of a medicine quality to it.