Greece - Peloponnese and the Mountains

Kim and heap of crap - all ready for the mountains.
The mountains. None of these pics really do them any justice. Suffice to say, you had to be there.
Lots of scenes like this. You just turn a bend and there it all is.
There are a few villages up here with proper bars, cafes and squares.
It's also cold right now and the roofs are slopey enough to suggest that they get some snow.
An old outhouse.
More scenery. The plan was to head in a roughly easterly direction and see where the road went. It went here.
After a day's driving, we ended up in Namea, missing Klitoria by a whisker.

Greece - Olympus

Today we wake up in Nafpaktos, walk, bleary-eyed, on to the balcony, and head off to Olympus - home of the original Games. But first we have to cross the bay...

Nafpaktos obviously has a bit of history about it - there's a castle on the hill above the town. Probably there to guard the port.

There's the Rio-Antirio Bridge again. This is something of an engineering masterpiece. It has to handle tsunamis, earthquakes and the fact that the ends are moving apart at about 30mm a year (plate tectonics and all that). This is partly solved by having the pylons sitting on gravel - yes, gravel - that allows them to move about a bit!
Of course, we didn't know it was on gravel when we drove across it.
Olumpus. This site was pretty much dedicated to sport, like today held every 4 years. Unlike today, only men competed. Ah, for the days before water ballet.
Here's me standing in front of some more of them columns. This was a temple of some sort. I don't think you could buy steroids here.

The plaque that tells you that this is the place where the Olympic flame is light before setting off to wherever the games are being held. They use a mirror affair so that the Sun lights the flame. Bugger if it's cloudy that day.
And it's on these self-same rocks where the lighting watsit takes place.
This hole goes down to some really ancient stuff. The site was in use way before the games were held here.
And there's the stadium. The atheletes competed naked and women weren't allowed in to watch. Bet the beard stall was popular.
This - along with Delphi - was dedicated to Apollo. This is what happenned to his temple in an earthquake.

This is part of a practice area that the Romans turned into a swimming pool.
This is where visiting athletes were stabled.
There is also a sculpture's workshop. Along with a lot of other stuff, this is where Apollo's statue was made. To get an idea of the scale of this, Apollo's temple was about 10m high - 3 stories - and his statue would have just fitted inside.

Some more outbuildings - these one's are in pretty good nick.
I couldn't figure out what this was but here's a guess. Stuff like wood and cloth disintegrates over time but, if dust or earth surrounds it before it disappears, you can get a copy of the shape by pouring plaster into to what remains (there are wood-type textures here). This, then, could have been a wooden table of some sort.

Greece - Delphi

That's enough of Athens - time to see a bit of the rest of the country. We hired a car and did a little trip round a few well-known sites, went up the mountains for a look-see and stumbled across a surprise bridge.

First call was Delphi, home of the Oracle. As it's half-way up a mountain, it was bloody freezing but well worth the trip.

The Oracle had predictive powers. You could come here and ask a question in the full knowledge that you would get an answer that, though correct, you would not really understand until it was too late. This got around the sticky question of causality. If you didn't know what to do to avert the horrible fate that stood in your way, you couldn't do anything about it and it would happen anyway. But you still got to worry about it.

It was several thousand years before public transport systems were invented and stress was turned into a proper science.


Delphi is a large spread-out site, and up a hill to boot. That means that you have to do a lot of walking to see it all. As we are pretty lazy, this is a long-shot of a bit we couldn't be bothered to walk to.
That's better, a close bit. Some more of them columns.
Writing on a stone. There seems to be two different types here - but, then, it's all Greek to me.
Kim gets up-close and personal with a piece of rock.
The site had a shed-load of temples. A lot of Gods got a look-in but Apollo was the big guy round here (and, incidentially at Delos which we will see later).

A lot of broken stones. Up a hill.
The top of a column which is probably of a type that has a special name.
Here's Apollo's temple, as expected, the biggest one here.
A lot went on here. This is the theatre.
And here's the stadium. This was right at the top of a very steep hill. You probably got a gold just for making it up here.
A different view of Apollo's temple. He was the son of Zeus and seems to have had a big portfolio (healing, music, the Sun, herds, flocks, etc.).
A sarcophagus - and that's the end of Delphi.
Time to get a move on. We stopped for lunch in the lovely seaside town of Itea and then headed off to Nafpaktos for the night.

The car, taken from the hotel balcony. Me (thinks): "That looks like a piece of crap". Kim: "Ahhh, it's sooo coooote". Me (thinks): "Thought so".
When you've got a room with a balcony overlooking the Med, you might as well make use of it.
And we could also see this. Before we got here, we thought we would either have to go all the way back round the bay or get a ferry across to get to Olympus. Not so, the brand new Rio-Antirio Bridge will do the getting-across-the-water thing and what a beautiful structure it is. More of this tomorrow.

Greece - Athens - National Archeological Museum

I like the occasional museum but I'm not a real beast for them. Kim, on the other hand, needs to be dragged kicking and screaming. Sooo, I have to pick them carefully. This was a good choice as you would expect with a name like the Athens National Archeological Museum...

It's a mock-up, of course, but the front looks like it will deliver.
A floor mosaic, err, stuck on the wall. Him in the middle is Hermes; the phallic (I kid you not) God of travel and other stuff.
Somebody's sarcophagus.
Some pots.
A statue of a horse. It looks like that because it spent some time at the bottom of the sea. Apparently, the Romans used to go round nicking stuff and sending it back to Rome by ships - which occasionally sunk.
The garden inside the museum.
A big brown pot. They have really good pictures on them.
A bird / lion / woman / hat thingy.
A bloke with his willy out.
Zeus - the top God. Here we see him in the middle of chucking a thunderbolt - from when the Gods were a real force to be reckoned with. Dunno what happenned to the thunderbolt. He has his willy out. The Greek Gods had their willies out a lot - except the lady Gods, who had their norks out instead.

Some people sitting around having a chat.
Yo dude, I'm gonna do a 50/50 Grind and den a Kick Flip and den I'm gonna pop a cap in yo ass. Just as soon as I figure out how to get this silly hat off and put on a back-to-front baseball cap. Oh, and do something about this dress.

The sort of helmets worn by bad hombre's.
Aphrodite amuses her nipples.
A fierce-looking lion.
Not sure what this is but I liked the dragons on the top.
This looks like someone fighting a horse - which I thought you really weren't supposed to do.
Apollo - and, yes, he's got his willy out. They must have had a shed-load of fun, these Gods. When the weather was nice, anyway.
Zeus again, up to his thunderbolt-throwing shenanegins - this time keeping his naughty-bits under wraps. Looks like he's doing the 'changing your undies on the beach' dance.
Aphrodite, the Godess of lurve and the two-backed beast. I like this because what's going on is not what appears. Pan, the horney little devil, is trying to get it on with Aphrodite while Eros looks on, and Aphrodite is just about to belt him with a slipper. Pan isn't evil - rather sexually playful. No wonder the Christians took on the image and corrupted it - the guy was having WAY too much fun.
Emperor Augustus. Not all good and not all bad. What's he doing here? The Romans ran the place for a while.
A Roman torso. Apparently, if you wanted a statue of yourself, you went to the statue shop and ordered a body. It's like going to the gym - but without wasting all that time. Then you had your head made up and plonked on the top.
Some gold stuff. This is really old, from the very early days of the ancient Greeks.
Aha, some pointy swords. You wouldn't like one of these up you.
The government's latest anti-binge drinking campaign.
Another big pot with drawings on it.
Part of a wall mural. Not bad for an ordinary house. This one's from Crete.