Italy/Greece : Day 12 - Olympia -> Delphi (cont.)

I forgot to point out yesterday on the lack of crowds. Remember the mass of people in Italy? Greece is very quiet and crowd free. The only other group with us in Olympia was a group of Japanese tourists. It's funny how the Japanese tour groups keep trying to take Chris along with them.

Anyway, where were we? That's right! On the way to Delphi! We drove up a long winding road up the mountain to Delphi. A tour guide met us there an gave us a very long explaination of the Delphi oracle and the history of the site. BTW, Delphi was built on the side of a mountain so there were lots of steep slopes and stairs. Some of the ladies got scared of all the steps and decided not to enter the site. That's too bad, because not all of the tour was steep.

Did you notice that there is no one else here but our group. Here we are all standing in what little shade we can find. It was so HOT!

After the guide finished the tour, she let us climb up to the stadium and explore the rest of the site. Here's me in front of the Temple of Apollo:

Here is the belly button of the world. The story is that Zeus sent out two eagles to fly across the world to meet at its center, the "navel" of the world.

Here's a couple more photos of around the site.


From here we walked to the top of the site where the stadium is. It's all blocked off, so we couldn't run here...

Did you ever see "My Life in Ruins"? The stone with the whole in it was in the movie. Our guide hates that movie, because the oracle did not talk out of the hole.

We were told the the water here is good to drink. Does this look good to drink to you? lol! It actually was cold and refreshing!

Hey, look! Cheryl's on stage!


Cheryl saw a 3 column structure in the distance. She and Jim set out to go see it. Can you see it out there?

Chris and I headed to the museum. We saw most of our group sittingin the shade drinking slushies. Did I mention how hot it was? We decided skip the slushies and go straight to the museum. We were the only ones in there. A strange thing about the museums in Greece is that they allow photos (no flash) but they don't allow posing with the artifacts. I know that is weird. It became a game for us to try and get photos of ourselves with objects in the museum.


After Chris and I came out of the museum, we looked for our group and they were GONE! Uh, Oh! We hoped they were somewhere in the museum and hadn't left without us. They were! Whew!

In the meantime, here is where Jim and Cheryl ended up.

By the time Cheryl and Jim got back from their adventure. They also thought the group left without them. They were not looking forward to walking all the way back to town after all the walking they just did! But thankfully, the group was just finishing up in the museum. We all met up and took the bus back to the hotel.

In Italy, we had 4-5-6 course sit down dinners. In Greece, all of our dinners have been buffets. We had another GREAT buffet dinner tonight


After dinner we walked downtown... yep, even more walking! Cheryl picked up a Greek cookbook. She going to make us a Greek meal when we get home!

Oh, and today is our 26th Anniversary! Happy Anniversary to US!

Story of the Day: An Italian saying, "Mother of Stupids!" translated to English is "Oh my Gosh! How dumb can you be?" A Greek variation is, "Mother of Stupids was also pregnant in Greece!" LOL!

Italy/Greece : Day 12 - Olympia -> Delphi

I've been procrastinating on writing up this day... this is a HUGE DAY! My apologies to all those who have been waiting...

Wake-up at 6:20am. It is so HOT and STILL. We took a short bus ride to the ruins at Olympia. It was a HUGE site!


Our guide gave us a VERY thorough overview of the site and the first Olympic games (very thorough as in, "Is she ever going to stop talking so we can look around?!")



Doesn't this look like an important place? Like where they would light the Olympic torch?

Nope! That is a fountain. Right in front of the fountain is Hera's Alter where they light the torch every Olympics. It's certainly not much to look at.

Here's the Olympic stadium!

Cheryl and I raced through the Olympic stadium. I think she jumped the gun...

Chris took that picture of us starting, then he took off after us (wearing flip-flops) and passed me before we reached the other end of the stadium. He almost passed Cheryl too. Yeah, Cheryl beat me. But I beat her back! Long distance running has it's advantages!

We never said we were racing up AND back, but that just makes sense, right?... I declare myself the winner! hehehe...

The museum was very nice. We saw the famous statues of Nike and Hermes:

The museum was full of other statue pieces and nick-nacks.



Chris was fascinated with all the little toys:


Now, it's back on the bus to Delphi. And a long ride it is! We have to leave the peninsula and head to mainland Greece.


We stopped a couple of times on the way to Delphi. Our first stop was a fort where the battle of Lupanto was fought. This major battle kept the muslims from entering Europe.


It really is a beautiful spot!


Our next stop was for lunch in Itea. It's at the foot of the Delphi mountain.The food in Greece is wonderful. Cheryl and I shared a Greek salad and stuffed tomato.


We had some time after lunch to mess around. Here we are trying to remember how to play checkers. It's Jim and me against Cheryl and Chris. We were doing all right until Jim had to jump Cheryl, hahaha! Too bad you can't see the older couple from New Zealand sitting on a bench laughing at us, lol!

We even had time to get our feet wet before climbing back on the bus.

I'm going to stop the commentary here and continue with Delphi in another post. This is already a HUGE post and the day isn't over YET!

I cleaned!

I can actually see the top of my scrap table now! Just looking at that bare table makes me want to scrap something. Here is a sweet little card that I made with the Unity NOV 2009 KOM.

We interrupt this program....

Well, we interrupt the trip recap... to give you the newest member of the family garage... A 2010 Kia Forte!


This is for Cheryl to drive to Cal Poly when she starts at the end of next month... The mini-van is gone. Chris really liked driving the mini-van, even though it wouldn't start sometimes. Anyway, Chris will be driving Cheryl's old car to Saddleback.

BTW, Cheryl got "smart girl" glasses, lol! Does she look like a smart girl, now? She's such a pretty girl... The Italians said that she looked Italian and the Greeks said she looks Greek. All the nationalities are trying to claim her as their own, hahaha....

Italy/Greece : Day 11 - At Sea -> Patras, Greece

We are on our way to Patras, Greece. On a ginormous overnight Ferry. Yesterday was uneventful. We found our cabins, even though the number scheme tried really hard to confuse us! You know Greeks are the fathers of science and math... I think they used some complicated Greek number scheme for the cabins. Here's our cabin. This is top of the line! LOL!

There are different classes of travel on the ferry... There were the cabins which we had. There were airplane seats. It was just a big room with rows and rows of airplane seats. People just slept in the seats. Then there was steerage. Look at the photo below of the deck:

Can you see the people with mats and tents setup on deck? They have a ticket to ride, and they sleep where ever they can find room. I wanted to take a photo inside, but it seemed rude... people were lying all over the floors in the halls and in the stair wells.

The first evening on the ferry, we explored (stepping over sleeping bodies). There was karaoke, casino, video room, a pool and Internet (but the wifi didn't work with the iPad).

We had a nice sit down dinner in the dining room: soup, fish, salad, some kind of meat kabob, chips (french fries) and melon for dessert. Yes, in that order...

We spent the rest of the evening playing cards with the kids in the lounge.

The next morning we passed the ferry heading in the other direction. So you can see what the ferry looks like:

Cheryl is still getting over her cold, so as she was taking a nap, Chris hung out with us. He would like recorded that he beat me at Egyptian Rat Slap, rummy, crazy-8's, two games of rat-a-tat-cat, and speed. I did manage to win one game of slap and one game of speed.

The boat stopped at Corfu. I can't even tell you how many times Fabrizio told everyone, "Do not get off at the first port!" Well, no one got off at the first port, and it was a long wait to get to the second port at Patras.

At the port we met our Greek bus and headed off to Olympia!

The Greek countryside looks a lot like it does at home (just a little more unkempt). Dry low growing brush, and even the same types of trees. The sidewalks are cracked with weeds growing through, the houses we passed were rundown and there was trash all over the sides of the road. I was expecting the worst, but our hotel in Olympia was gorgeous... just what I pictured Greece would look like; white balconies, angular with bright splashes of color!

We got in late and had a buffet dinner in the hotel dining room. Look at the size of this buffet. All traditional Greek food!

I loved the little signs with the name of each dish (in English and Greek). Can you see the dish on the right? That's Cheryl and my favorite... stuffed tomatoes!

I couldn't bring myself to pick off the pig.

Oh, look there's ice cream!... not as good as Italian gelato.

After dinner we went into town where Jim got me a lapiz ring for our anniversary.

Since we got in too late to see the Olympia ruins today, we are doing a double header tomorrow... Olympia and Delphi! Get your walking shoes on!