Friday, April 27, 2007

Classical Olympia & Delphi (Greece)

To explore Ancient Greece outside of Athens, and to take a break from having to think of everything ourselves, we decided to take a three day tour. We dragged our bags through the streets of Athens to our pick-up point, but after watching all the other waiting tourists get picked up by other buses we discovered that our coach was running on "Greek Time". Forty five minutes later, we finally joined our tour group.

There were some interesting characters in the group. There was Roula, our tour guide, who was an archaeologist, a linguist and a fabulous guide, and Kostas our driver, who manoeuvred the big bus through the narrow streets like it was a Mini Cooper. Then there were the other tourists. The Couple Who Was Always Late, The Lady with Hair the Colour of Vacuum Cleaner Fluff, The Indian Family Who Had to Video Tape Everything (Twice), The Young Honeymooners (dismayed by the twin beds in all the hotel rooms), The Grumpy Old Man with the Weak Bladder, the French Couple, and the French Canadian Couple (who were the only ones they could understand other than Roula). There was the Young American Girl with the Annoying Laugh (travelling alone) and The Australian Cattle Farmer and his Wife (who found themselves unwittingly adopting her for the tour. To name a few!

The first day was fairly long. We saw the Corinth Canal, the Theatre of Epidaurus, the ruins of Mycenae and the Tomb of Agamemnon. At lunch we discovered the joys of tour group meals as we were driven to an out-of-the-way restaurant/cafeteria. After lunch, we were taken to a "gallery of replicas" for "shopping activities" where we got a lecture on why we really had to buy the expensive vases, not the cheap ones. The hotel was "adequate", but thanks to our awesome travel agent we were one of the lucky few who got a free bottle of water. Dinner was also "adequate" and the conversation was a little stunted because we ended up sitting with the French couple.

On Day Two, after being picked up by the bus (20 minutes late, because of The Couple Who Was Always Late), we visited the beautiful site of Olympia, the birth place of the Olympic Games - this was Karina's favourite part of the tour, not least because of all the beautiful purple blossoms. Lunch was at another isolated tour group eatery, where we had very expensive slop masquerading as Greek food. We were even more annoyed to later discover that we'd been only a three minute walk from the the centre of town and dozens of reasonably priced cafes and tavernas. The highlight of the afternoon was crossing the new bridge across the Corinthian Bay, where we were told where to point our cameras for the obligatory photo of the bridge, and then back on the bus and heading for Delphi. Dinner and accommodation was much improved on the previous night and we thought that Delphi was very quaint, if somewhat touristy.

On the last day, after checking out the ruins of Delphi, we wandered around the town some more and had a surprisingly good lunch. While most of the bus was doing a four day tour, we were only doing a three day tour and so had to join another bus (with a much less interesting guide and a very angry driver) for the trip back to Athens. On the way we stopped at what could only be described as Carpet Town, where we could buy all the Greek and Persian rugs we wanted. We even had the great luck of arriving while they were having a sale! Arriving back in Athens, we dragged our bags back to Hotel Tempi for one more night before heading to the Greek Islands.

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