Thessaloniki
Delphi is only 2.5 hours by bus from Athens. Many visitors do a day trip from there. But if you really want to enjoy Delphi it is better to stay in it overnight.
I woke up to a misty morning. The hotel room overlooked the valley and the Gulf of Corinth. The view was enchanting. After a leisurely cup of cappuccino, I went to have a look around.
Delphi is so small that it basically consists of 2 streets; both are too narrow for two-way traffic. Tourists were few during the pandemic and most of the cafes and restaurants were closed.
The ruins are within a walking distance from the city. The ticket is 6 euros and it includes the Archaeological museum. The road to the ruins gently goes up the slope of Mt. Parnassus, the home of the Muses.
The myth says that once Zeus decided to locate the center of the world. He launched 2 golden eagles in the opposite directions and dropped a stone where the eagles met. The stone fell in Delphi which the ancient Greeks called “the navel of the earth”.
Delphi was also the place where the Pythia, the most prestigious and authoritative oracle among the Greeks, made her prophecies. Sibyl, or Sibylla, was the first woman to chant the prophecies standing on a rock.
The Archaeological Museum at Delphi is rather small. It mostly shows how the monuments and statues looked before they were destroyed. Also, visitors were not allowed to stay in one room longer than 5 minutes. The museum staff rushed us to the next room even though there were only a few people there.
Delphi was a delightful place to visit. It felt magical and I can see why the ancients Greeks believed that the Muses lived there.
This was my last stop in Greece. In the afternoon, I took the bus to Athens and went straight to the airport. Greece was going into a total lockdown on the following day. Everything would be closed, no moving around and between cities would be allowed. I stayed in Kalives, a quiet oasis amidst the raging pandemic in Europe, for 3 weeks. It was safe there but autumn was coming. I traveled light, with no warm clothes. I either had to get myself ready for cold weather or to move to a region where I would not need a jacket. The place that I chose as my next destination was Barbados, an island in the Caribbean, where it is hot all year around and where I had not been before. All good reasons for going there!
What a magic place! One believes, that the Earth navel is really there:) Definitely a trip worth!
Who knows perhaps Deplhi is the center of our world. Cities in the ancient Greeks were independent states but they all recognized Delphi as a special place and stored there their treasures.