Delphi

I took a day trip with a tour company. It's about 2 to 3 hours drive out of Athens. We were served lunch in a restaurant in a town on the way, perhaps even the modern town of Delphi. I remember sharing a table with a taciturn young British couple. It was a pretty decent and tasty lunch I recall, with meat, gravy, veges, and mash.

Delphi is on a spur of Mount Parnassus, and believed by the Greeks to be the centre of the earth. (A month or so later I would visit its namesake in Paris, Montparnasse.) This is what's left of the Athenian Treasury.

What's left of the Temple of Apollo.

In the Colossus of Maroussi, Henry Miller waxed eloquent about Delphi, and this was part of the reason I wanted to visit the site. Certainly the splendid location makes one feel like having visited a special place.

The three standing columns were restored, and this Tholos, Sanctuary of Athena Pronoia is a favourite with photographers.

A splash of colour.

The Delphi Archaeological Museum is nearby. A search shows that this would be the Sphinx of Naxos.

So many Greek names, e.g. Delphi, Apollo, Athena, Naxos, are recognisable because they have permeated European culture.

The return to Athens was uneventful and I packed my bags to leave the next day.

Athens

Note: The dates are approximate as I did not keep travel diaries in those days, so I had to guesstimate my progress and dredge my memory for incidents that stood out. There aren't that many pictures anyway. I used 14 rolls of 36 exposure film for over 500 shots. That seems few for a 3 month journey but In those days pictures meant slide or print film, not digital, so one had to be parsimonious.

My guide in those days was Europe on $20 a Day. That's how long ago it was.

So here I was, on European soil, even if it was a far corner of Europe. My first order of business was to get some drachma, this was years before the euro was born. I didn't want to break a traveller's cheque until I reached an American Express office with better rates so I asked at the exchange counter if they could change ringgit. Not surprisingly the answer was no. But they did exchange Australian dollars; I suppose many Australian visitors had Greek relatives.

My first memory stepping out into the spring morning was the smell of aromatic oils from Greek trees, mixed with petrol combustion products. I caught the airport shuttle into the city where I found lodging in a hotel. I remember dusty dark corridors and a damp bathroom. It was warm and stifling in the room. For lunch I found a neighbourhood eatery where I picked out some dishes I recognised from Greek dinners in Australia. Tired and jet-lagged I napped the afternoon away.

In the evening, I bestirred myself to take the funicular up Mount Lycabettus, which had a commanding view of the city. Boyhood practice with the Greek alphabet as a secret written language with a friend, and later a scientific education allowed me to transliterate Greek words on signs but of course offered little clue to the meaning.

I didn't find the aerial view of Athens attractive. It was a sea of undistinguished buildings as far as I could see.

The whitewashed buildings were dazzling in even in the slanting sunshine. This is the chapel of St. George at the summit of the hill. I remember lots of lit candles inside.

The next day I took myself to see the sights. This is the National Archaeological Museum. I was probably not allowed to take my camera in, so no pictures of the artefacts, and anyway there would have been postcards for sale.

The Greek Parliament in Syntagma Square.

And of course who could go to Athens and not see the Acropolis and the Parthenon. Parts of it were cordoned off due to renovation. It was a pattern repeated at many sites.

But first I have to get there, which involved walking up the hill.

It was my first encounter with an artefact that ancient. I remember thinking: these stones were already old when Christ walked the earth. As for walking, there were plenty of tourists milling around.

What remains of the Theatre of Dionysus.

The Odeon of Herodes Atticus was in present day use.

I seem to remember that some of that haze was air pollution. It can't have got any better since.

The Ancient Agora of Athens. At last a word I knew the meaning of. Agoraphobes should avoid this place. I didn't visit it. I don't mind going to a ruin now and then, but as another traveller I met later on said, they are just old stones on old stones. I suppose one has to be versed in history to appreciate them.

A bit of nature that I appreciated, wild poppies.

After that I walked down to the Plaka, an old neighbourhood of Athens. The ancients lived here, I thought. I wandered through the city. On one street, some dowdy women sitting midway up a staircase saw me walking past and called out Hello! But I was not the sailor they hoped I might be.

I found Athens hot, noisy and dusty. I felt that I had exhausted all its attractions so at a travel agency I booked a day trip for Delphi and a passage for Corfu.