We awoke in Athens on our second day in Greece, packed up our bags and schlepped them on our backs a few blocks to Budget, which turned out to have every imaginable car rental competitor within 1 block of it. Alas, the door was locked and no one was home. Five minutes later Nick arrived from around back to set us up with our car.
(I’d been joking with Farmer that every Greek is named Nicky, as exemplified in My Big Fat Greek Wedding. Turns out it’s not far off base.)
Before we arrived in Athens, we were a little concerned about navigating through insane traffic. But it was quite the contrary. Getting around couldn’t have been easier. It was a straight shot through the city to the north-south expressway running the length of the country. We’ve since gathered that the Olympics brought a ton of new infrastructure, including highways and a new airport, so this easy ride probably hasn’t been around for that long.
The drive to Delphi was slated for about two hours, about half of which was on the main expressway. Then we turned west to drive through the mountains (who knew?) to the famous site where the Oracle of Delphi would prophesy. I didn’t know what to expect, but I certainly hadn’t imagined it as being on a mountainside. Read more about Ancient Delphi HERE.
We stopped first at our hotel, which was in the cute mountain town of Delphi, walkable from the archeological site. It was about 1:00 when we arrived, so we grabbed a sandwich at a cute café, then wandered through the foggy mist over to the ruins.
There were two pieces to the site: a museum and the archeological site. Basically the museum houses the decorative pieces of architecture, and the site has a bits and pieces of things restored to give a sense of what it was like. The museum wasn’t nearly as interesting as the Acropolis Museum, but it was still an impressive and nicely designed display. I think we suffered from not having an audio tour – I really enjoy museums a lot more with voiceover. I tried to catch bits and pieces by eavesdropping on guided groups.
We can’t seem to stay in any museum longer than an hour before getting either tired or bored. This one was just 30 minutes.
The site itself was pretty impressive, mainly due to it being situated on such a steep slope. The most apparent feature was the Temple of Zeus, which was perfectly perched on the hill. Above that (a hike) was an ampitheater, with another hike up to a stadium. The views were impressive as we looked down the valley toward the Corinthian Sea, which wasn’t much more than 15 miles away.
All that huffing and puffing tired us out pretty fast, so we only lasted about an hour there. Then it was back to town for an afternoon at a café perusing the internet and reading over hot tea, a beer and potato chips. We weren’t feeling the food as it started arriving to few tables of people around us, so we opted for the gyro stand, where we split absolutely the most tasty gyro ever! Mmm, mmm, mmm!
A baby cried in the room next to us all night, which was amplified by the tile floor and cement walls. Sigh.
We had a big drive planned for the next day (3-4 hours), destination Ancient Olympia. Driving down from the mountain to the sea didn’t take long – maybe 30 minutes. From there we followed the coastline of the Corinthian Sea to the bridge that connected the mainland to the Peloponnese. The fishing towns were so cute I could eat them!
The toll on the bridge, on the other hand, was something I could’ve puked. $17! Crazy! We could see that the bridge was pretty new, but that’s a chunk of change for our wee little car to be allowed passage.
It was a beautiful sunny day, and we arrived in Ancient Olympia around 1:00. A quaint tourist town has grown on one side of the ruins, and there was hardly a person to be found. We drove the six or so blocks through town trying to find the archeological site. In fact, we drove through it and past it without exactly knowing we were there. Finally we figured out that we should park back where we started and walk.
First stop was the museum, which was a nice display – similar to that at Delphi. Across the road were the ancient ruins, which were mostly interesting from a symbolic standpoint. We saw where they light the torch for each Olympics still today, among other temples and training buildings.
We watched a family running in the original stadium (this one supposedly seated 40,000).
Did I mention it was New Year’s Eve? Obviously we didn’t opt for a party location. In fact there was only one other occupied room in our hotel, which was run by a sweet old Greek lady who seemed to always be on her way out the door to church. After checking in, we walked over to a café for a coffee and some wi-fi. And since there wasn’t squat happening in town, we went there again in the evening. It seemed we’d happened on to the most happening place in town, with a hip young crowd. Keep in mind that there had to be less than 100 people in the city limits total at that particular hour.
On New Year’s day we headed out late morning for Athens, intending to a meander a bit during our 4+ hour drive.
We stopped for an excellent lunch in a cute town, then attempted to find the Lousios Gorge near Dimitsana to take trek around a bit. We didn’t succeed in finding the hiking trail, but talk about a crowd! This tiny town was completely overrun by Greek tourists, to the point that we had to park about a mile outside of town.
We got to Athens about 6 p.m., thinking we had a reservation at the Sofitel at the airport. Turns out we were wrong, and we spent an aggravating evening on the phone with idiots from hotels.com trying to convince them that their website was at fault for charging our credit card when we were trying to use a free night. (To be fair, all the other times we called them they were helpful and nice, so I think we got the “holiday help” dunces that night.”) At least we got the best shower on our whole trip – for $270.
gallopingnelly
