Delphi

Today Sean and I joined a three day tour group that is going to take us to Delphi and Meteora.  After our amazing tour guide in Greece, and having explored Athens and the Islands on our own, I was super excited to have someone there to answer questions and show us around.  Our tour bus picked us up at 6am from our hotel and we thought we were on our way.  WRONG, instead we rode around on the bus for about an hour picking up other passengers before heading to a central meeting location where we had to get off the bus and onto another bus with a 1 day tour of Delphi.  The drive up to Delphi took all morning and most of the afternoon.  We made a few stops along the way and finally arrived in Delphi. 
One of the major stops we made was in Parnassus, a small ski town in Greece and home to Dr. Georgios Papanikolaou who developed the Pap smear! Here are some pictures from our brief stop.

Georgios Papanikolaou MD

Once in Delphi, our tour guide took us around the ancient ruins which were incredible.  For those of you who don’t know, Delphi was one of the major worship sites for the god Apollo.  It was considered to be the middle of the earth (Now Sean and I have been to the center of the earth in Greece and the center of the universe in China!  We are on a roll…) and home to the great Delphic oracle.  The ancient city of Delphi dates back to 1600 BC. It is the site of the Pythian games which occurred every 4 years and were a precursor to the Olympics. The ruins were incredible and I loved hearing the history from our tour guide.

Cute cats!

If you look closely, you will notice that all of the walls
 had writing on them.  This is where ancient civilizations
would write the names of important people or important news.

Athenian Treasury

The 6th Temple to Apollo where the Oracle would  predict the future

Theater at Delphi

The stadium where the Pythian games took place

After touring the Delphi, we headed to the Delphi Archaeological Museum which houses hundreds of statues and art from Ancient Delphi.

Cow

After our trip through the museum, our tour group dropped us off at a hotel in modern Delphi, and headed back to Athens.  We walked around the city, had dinner and enjoyed another beautiful sunset!