Northern Greece
We’ve been in Greece for 10 days now and we’re here for another 10 — somewhat longer than planned — to accommodate the soonest available yellow fever vaccine appointments at the public health clinic in Athens. (After calling several times daily for days with no answer, the woman who eventually took my call said: You called too late.)
We weren’t so keen on Greece from the beginning, mostly for the simple reason that Athens (big, crowded, noisy) isn’t our scene. But now that we’ve left the city to drive north into the mountains, we’re all breathing easier.
I guess it was windy at the Acropolis.
On Wednesday, we drove to Delphi, which sits on the southwest slope of Mount Parnassus. The region is astonishingly beautiful with rounded mountains and expansive valleys filled with olive groves. We read, in advance, that from Delphi you can look down on a million olive trees and initially we scoffed at this Herodotus-like estimate. (A crazy exaggeration! You might as well say there were a million Persians at the battle of Thermopylae!) After actually seeing all those trees, however, we had to admit: it checks out.
Upon arrival, we took time for a short hike to a local cave where the guys enjoyed spelunking. I don’t like caves (AT ALL) so I sat on a rock outside the mouth of the cave, listening to the tinkle of bells as a flock of sheep made their way down the hill.
Supposedly this was “awesome”
The ancient site at Delphi is flat out terrific. We were lucky to be here in the off season when it wasn’t terribly crowded.
After touring the site though I was left with another kind of feeling, admittedly colored by my own experience as a Christian in an increasingly post Christian world. It felt impossibly lonely to be there, surrounded by the crumbling detritus of a religion that is over and done. While admired from the remove of time (and often space), ancient Greek pantheism isn’t much missed. I also felt gratitude to the people who live in Delphi; I’m sure they don’t worship Apollo, but at least they keep the lights on at his most sacred temple, so the rest of us can come and see what was.
Friday, we drove southeast from Delphi to Thermopylae. I’ll admit, my expectations for the site of the ancient battle were somewhat tempered by our experience in the hamlet of Marathon last week where we found ourselves down a gravel road across from a neglected farm (tattered tarps flapping in the wind, trash along the ditch). In a marshy overgrown patch of ground, a “trophy” had been erected to the storied military triumph, essentially a single unfluted pillar. There was also a small museum in town but it was dedicated to the race rather than the battle. In short: Marathon was a bummer.
What you can’t see is the swarms of mosquitos
But we loved Thermopylae. The site itself is somewhat confusing because in the millennia since the heroic stand, the ocean has actually moved about a kilometer to the northeast; now when you walk through the battleground it’s less “pinch” and more flat expanse. But there’s a delightfully campy statue of Leonidas, a friendly interpretive center with an even more campy 3D video explaining the movements of each day of battle and a short walk to the top of Kolonos Hill where an appropriately terse inscription commemorates the Spartan leader and his 300.
And you know what else they have at Thermopylae? Hot springs! (Learn those etymologies, kids! You never know when your knowledge of a Greek root might come in handy.)
