Δελφούς και Μετέωρα (Delphi and Meteora)

We got up early again on Wednesday morning – story of our lives!- and took a taxi into Athens because the metro line we usually take into the city was closed for some reason that morning.  Luckily, we had heard the announcement that the train wouldn’t be running on the way back to Marathon the night before, or we probably would have missed our tour!  We got to the hotel and got some coffee at Solo Café again.  I’m really growing attached to the people who work there.  They only speak enough English to take our orders, but they always look like they’re having a good time, even early in the morning. 

We got on the bus and had a two hour ride to Delphi, which is located north of Athens on Mount Parnassus.  The area was gorgeous.  The site of Delphi is located near the peak of one of the mountains, so you have very striking views from nearly every angle.  We also got a ton of exercise walking up the slope to see the stadium, which was a good ten minute walk away from the rest of Delphi, and then running back down the mountain because we were late for our bus!  Thankfully, we all made it!  We weren’t even the last ones.  Carla was very glad that she had the help of her walking stick.

 

Climbing up the mountain!

The Stadium

Here’s how Delphi worked back in the day.  Apollo, the god of music, truth, prophecy, and healing, is the patron god of Delphi.  He established a sanctuary where he was honored and where people could come to ask questions of an oracle, named Pythia who was given the ability to see the future by Apollo.  Pythia was a human priestess who would sit in a room called the Adyton while holding laurel leaves and gazing into a bowl of spring water.  There is some evidence that some vapors from the spring that flowed under the temple were helpful in putting the oracle into a trance-like state. When one Pythia died, a new priestess was named to replace her. Petitioners would sacrifice an animal and then draw lots to determine the order in which they got to approach the oracle.  The petitioner put his questions to the priests, who then went into the Adyton to consult the oracle.  The answers that people received back were often open to interpretation, and there are many stories in Greek mythology of people who misunderstood the oracular advice.  Their stories usually ended rather tragically.

This is where the oracle would have been

The Treasury of the Athenians

After spending an hour or so climbing around the mountain, we got back on the bus and went to the Hotel Amalia in Delphi for lunch.  We had a quick stop at the monument in remembrance of King Leonidas of the Spartans at the site of the Battle of Thermopyles.  The story is very cool, and probably familiar to many of you.  Emperor Xerxes of Persia was held at the gates of Thermopyles for three days by only 1,000 soldiers – 300 Spartans and 700 Thespians.  The Greeks lost the battle, but won the war later in the sea near Athens.  The monument itself was rather underwhelming, unfortunately.

Then it was back on the bus for three and a half more hours of driving to get to the city of Kalambaka for our overnight stay in the Hotel Amalia there.  These hotels are all gorgeous!  We had a half an hour before dinner, so I spent some time wandering around and taking pictures.  I went into a courtyard in the middle of the hotel to look! around. There was a little waterfall and a ton of flowers.  It was all very pretty, but someone shut the door behind me and locked me in the courtyard!  I was stuck for ten minutes or so before Mom came and found me and let me back in so I could eat dinner.  Her mama-senses must have been tingling or something, haha!

That night the news in Greece was all about the riots going on at Syntagma Square outside the Parliament building.  The Greek prime minister has been forced into accepting stringent austerity measures proposed by the European Union (EU) and the International Monetary Fund (IMF) in order to be eligible for loans so that they can stay in the EU and continue to use the Euro.  Unfortunately, he accepted these measures after the Greek people had voted against accepting any additional measures in a recent referendum.  The irony of a government going against the wishes of its people here, in the place where democracy was born, is not lost on me, nor is it lost on many of the people living here.  There have been many protests in Syntagma Square since we’ve been there, but they have all been peaceful.  That night, as the parliament voted to accept the austerity measures, something switched in the crowd and a protest became a riot.  There were several people throwing Molotov cocktails and the police were forced to use tear gas.  There was at least one news van in flames.  I can’t imagine how scary it must have been to have been staying in one of the hotels in the square that night.  Luckily, we were all very far away from the area.  When we walked through the square the next evening, you could hardly tell that anything had happened.

The next morning we got up and had breakfast in the hotel.  The food at these hotels is way better than the food they serve at Golden Coast, we were all very impressed.  Then we hopped on the bus and drove about 30 minutes toward some pretty insane rock formations with monasteries on top!  The formations in Meteora used to be mountains, but a combination of water erosion and earthquakes turned them into several free-standing rock pillars.  The result is awesome – literally.  We all kept looking out the window, completely awestruck.  You really feel very small when you look at them.

Apparently, a guy named Athanasios had a similar reaction to the rocks in the 14^th century, so he decided it would be a good idea to build a monastery at the top of one.  I honestly have no idea how they got all the stone they needed up there to start building, but eventually they rigged up a pulley system and used carts or nets to haul people up the side of the rocks.  It wasn’t until the early 1800s that someone had the bright idea to carve stairs into the side.  Even so, the monasteries are not easy to get to (which, I imagine, was sort of the idea – weed out the unworthy or insincere and whatnot).  This first monastery was named Meteoron, and is where the whole area gets its name. 

The stairs we had to climb to get up to the monastery

Once we finally got up to Meteoron, it turned out that the inside of the monastery was just as impressive as its surroundings.  We were not allowed to take pictures of the inside the church itself, but the walls and ceilings were all completely covered in frescos in both the Macedonian and Cretan styles.  This style tries to make the figures look unrealistic in order to take people away from the burdens of their everyday life.  Figures who are most important are the largest and the colors of the paintings are mostly primary colors with very striking gold accents.  Most of the frescos depicted the martyrs and saints of the Bible and how they died.  There were some extremely gorey paintings!  I saw one depiction of a male martyr losing his head, blood everywhere, and another of a female martyr getting her breasts cut off.  I was surprised at how violent some of the images were.  Closer to the altar there were more depictions of saints, angels, the founders of the monastery, the apostles, Mary, and Jesus.  These were less graphic, but significantly more stunning. The furniture in the room was all elaborately carved dark wood.  I could find animal figures woven through leaves and vines on most of the pieces. Below are examples of similar art from other places in the monastery.

As well as the art there were some human remains on display in the sanctuary as well.  There were three skulls in boxes with little circles cut out so the very top of the skull was visible to the eye as well as two human arm bones (looked like a humerus and an ulna to me) in a chest with the lid open.  These were all displayed in a glass case so that they could not be touched or damaged.  They are apparently the remains of some of the founders of the monastery and are rather holy.  There were also some museums in the monastery.  We could see what military uniforms looked like throughout Greek history as well as old religious artifacts.  There were BEAUTIFUL hand written gospels and religious texts dating from the 13^th century that it just killed me not to be able to take pictures of.

Wine/beer anyone?

Oh, and did I mention the views were amazing?  The rock we were on is called Platys Lithos and is over 2,000 feet high.

After Meteoron we visited St. Stephen’s monastery, which has been converted into a convent.  It was very similar to Meteoron, but not nearly as old.  They are also in the process of redecorating the sanctuary, so we were able to see the paintings more clearly.  Then we got back on the bus and started the five and a half hour drive back to Athens.  We arrived back at the hotel at about 8 PM and I proceeded to veg out for the rest of the night.

Today is our last day at the resort.  I will probably try to spend a little time by the pool and at the beach.  Dad and I are going to rent bicycles and go to a little town that is nearby this evening when it cools down a bit.  Tomorrow we go to the airport and head home.  This will probably be the last blog post of this trip unless something really exciting happens on the way back to the States.  Thank you all for reading!  I hope you enjoyed hearing about our travels.

LOVE!

Amelia