Napflio to Delphi and Galaxidi

Friday, August 21, 2026

It's a relaxed morning with time for yoga, although it requires some contortions with our limited open floor space! But Jan is finished with her stretching, as am I, and we go downstairs at 8:00 to meet the beachgoers. I guess there was a change to 8:15, so that's when everyone else appears. This is Kathy's bucket list item, so she is our pathfinder. She and Patty found a shortcut that is only a third of a mile! The neglected to mention that is had a healthy uphill component!

But then there's a downhill and lots of stairs down to the beach. Think water-rounded rocks, not sand, and startlingly blue water! The water bugs are Ginger, Kathy, Jan, Patty, Dave, and me; but I'm mostly along for the photo ops and to dip one foot in the water.

This was a bucket list item for Kathy!

When everyone has satisfied their need for baptism, we head back and, surprise, surprise, Kathy treats more kitties! We get home and everyone gets ready for breakfast and departure. We pre-ordered breakfast and nearly everyone reprises yesterday's menu with an orange, peach, and apple juice cocktail. rolls, spanakopita, Greek yogurt with many fruits, and eggs, either scrambled or fried, with cherry tomatoes, cheese, and meat. Gosh it's a ton of food but we don't eat until about 10:30 and lunch is an unknown quantity.

Jan and I finish packing and bring our bags downstairs, then go for a last-minute walk in case we really need something! We don't! Slowly we all reassemble, pay our environmental fees, and take our bags out to the bus. Helena helps and in no time we are on our air-conditioned chariot. Our driver says it will be over 40 degrees centigrade today at Delphi!

The ride is three or four hours (we're on vacation, so who's counting?) with a break at a Goody's with a Value Mart inside it. The scenery is stunning as we are in the mountains and also pass through agricultural land with orange and olive groves and large patches of cultivated land. There are many solar farms and wind turbines dot the ridges.

We get to Delphi pretty much on time for our five o'clock tour and our guide, Giorgos (George), is an archeologist with a gift for bringing the past alive with imagery and humor. And a first grasp on pacing! We begin in the museum which is small but perhaps the best museum experience I've ever had! I had no idea that the Oracle made accurate predictions for fifteen hundred years!! Or that the Sanctuary was so large. Much like the acropolis in Athens, there is the main sanctuary in with the main priestess made her pronouncements, but there were many other smaller buildings or monuments which were tributes to Apollo, in thanks for his guidance via the priestess. There was also a stadium for sports competitions and a theatre for the arts. Many of the monuments were called treasuries and there were forty of those!

Everything within the walls of the Sanctuary was sacred land; but there were no fortifications because no one would attack the Sanctuary. It was like the United Nations! People would walk ten or twelve miles to get to it.

She stood on a pillar that was forty feet tall.

The holes are places where jewels were before they were stolen.

One of the treasuries. Lady above is one of these.

These friezes are so beautifully preserved because they were buried, unlike

those at the Parthenon.

They are fighting over the three-legged chair which symbolized

the God Apollo and the Oracle. Even more ancient relics have been found

that incorporate this same symbol.

These are kouroi, free-standing male marble statues. Note their similarity

to the Egyptian pharaohs.

There was much gold used in decorations. It was pounded very thin.

Once when George was giving a tour, the granddaughter of the

archeologist who discovered the first gold was there!

There were also silver offerings.

So many lions!

This is a wine goblet; but you don't hold it by the handles.

Instead you hold it like a martini glass, with the stem between your fingers.

The wine was often cut with water in a 3:1 ratio. One could become socially

comfortable but never drunk. "Everything in moderation,"

This is the world's first example of sheet music with lyrics.

The Hymn to Apollo has actually been performed!

Such an elaborate gutter!

This exquisite piece is tiny, perhaps an inch and a half tall.

This is the Bronze Age after all!

Such attention to detail!!

The Omphalos of Delphi or the navel of the Earth. The single most sacred object. The spirit of Apollo (aka hydrocarbon fumes) were said to issue from here.

Antinoos, beloved of the Emperor Hadrian. He drowned at the age of 17 (perhaps due to foul play) and was thereafter worshipped as a demigod at Hadrian's order.

The statue was extremely well preserved because oils were rubbed on the skin of cult statues at Delphi.

The charioteer. He had just won a very important race and is preparing to take his victory lap. The man who owned the four horses had this bronze statue created as a tribute to Apollo for the victory.

You can just see a hole under his arm revealing the fact that the statue is hollow. The Greeks developed the method of lost wax casting.

It allows the sculptor to carve tiny details like these into the wax.

Miss Julia rolled over on her back for me!

The story goes that thousands of years ago there were shepherds who occasionally noticed that a sheep or two would return from a wander acting crazy. When one went to investigate, he returned in the same state as the sheep! Centuries later, when the Delphi site was being uncovered, the archeologists discovered that there was a volcanic vent emits hydrocarbons in gaseous form and that these fumes were what the ancients called the spirit of Apollo and were what allowed the priestesses to be inhabited by the god and to deliver his thoughts.

Our guide tells us that Delphi was the crossroads of the ancient world and the priests and priestess know everything that as going on. They acted like Switzerland and the UN of the times and were instrumental in keeping the peace. The fact that this lasted 1,500 years speaks to the accuracy of the predictions.

The monuments were as elaborate as the donor could afford and were often funded by political entities as well as the wealthy nobles. However, even common people were welcome to come to seek the god's guidance. Their tributes might be something as simple as a shield.

The main priestess served as long as she could, then her successor assumed the role.

The structure was similar to that of the Parthenon with exterior and interior columns and friezes depicting the gods. When we go outside to the actual site, we are shown the level of land surface when excavation began. There was an awful lot of dirt to be removed!!

The Tholos of Delphi. People encountered this before entering the Sancuary.

These large local olives are in competition with the kalamata olives.

The huge green sea extended all the way to the sea. It was the world's largest olive grove!

Always there must be a market place!

One of the forty treasuries

Those stones were all cut to fit.

In all its glory!

The tour through the site is much more meaningful after having toured the museum. It all seems to come alive. Unlike other sites, the Oracle is now preserved in its current state, apart from minor cleanup of vegetation and such. Even so, it is easy to feel as though you have been transported back in time.

Our guide leaves us to take another half hour on our own to explore and go up to the almost completely intact amphitheater. It's not as far as it appears, since the path goes even further up, and it is well worth the climb, especially since Giorgos has taken his time leading us through the site with lots of stops along the way and we're (okay I) am not exhausted.

We make our way down to where our bus is waiting and we drive on to our evening's destination, the Galaxa Mansion in Galaxidi, a small village on the Gulf of Corinth, an inlet of the Ionian Sea. The hotel isn't really a mansion but a charming boutique hotel and there is some shuffling of rooms until everyone is settled. Our room has one double bed and one fold out sleeper chair. But is lets us each have a bed and after sharing at the last hotel, we're not giving this one up! The floor plan is interesting with the sink in the bedroom and the toilet and shower in the bathroom but there isn't a shower stall, so I think pretty much everything might get wet in there. Also, you have to take your toilet paper from the roll before you sit down because you can't reach it from the toilet and you don't flush the paper to protect the old, narrow pipes.

By the time we're all settled, have let our hotelier copy our passports and regrouped for dinner it's almost ten o'clock. There are winding stairs down to the water and it's good that phones now have flashlights! Art has found a seafood restaurant only 400 feet from the hotel and that's where we're headed. The food is delicious, the prices are surprisingly low, and the quantities threaten to do us in!! There is much sharing and two bottles of wine.