Getting to Delphi

Bus station in athens...took me a while to find this bad boy.
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Wwo today was an adventrue.  Yes typing still bad.

I woke up early this morning because the bus ride to |Delphi was three hours long.  I started out at 900.  I completely forgot about the spring-forward daylight savings time change.  So I thought I stated out at 800.  No porblem, bus leaves at 1030.  I asked the reception at Zorba how to get to Delphi and he told em to go to Syndagma and catch a bus from there.  I went down to the center area to find out that today is Greece's Independence day from Turkey!  So the entire area including roads were closed off!  No bus to be caught there!  I was told to catch the metro...but I didn't understand to where so I just went.  On the metro Imet Eugene, a local man, who helped me to find out where the heck I needed to go.  I finally got off at Attiki metro station and walked up stairs.  I was to catch the "everything" bus, which I took to mean any bus that passed by.  I asked a local at the bus stop which I should catch and he had no clue.  Probably because I wasn't asking it correctly.  Midn you, I was doing all of this with the few Greek words that were translated in the back of Let's Go!  So I caught the first bus and asked the driver if he was going to Liosion Bus Station (which was where the bus to delphi left from).  He nodded.  Then, after a couple of minutes he turned to me and said "This not Liosion"!  I was like "crap".  So I got off and asked a pedestrian how to get to Liosion Bus Station = "leoforeo stathmos liosion?"  He talked a bunch to me in Greek and then finally told me to follow him.  He walked me to the station which was a solid mile away.  I finally got to the bus station when my watch said 10:25 so I was really happy, turns out that I didn't change my watch's time last night and my cell phne's time reset to the incorrect time even though I changed it!!!  ahhhh!!!  So I was an hour late for the bus and the next one left at 1300!  Okay, I got this far, might as well take the 3-hour ride to Delphi and just hang there for a couple of hours before the last bus to Athens left at 1800.

I had so much fun playing sharades with the locals and using less than 5 greek words to get around!

beautiful scenery on the way to Delphi
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I fell asleep on the bus for the first hour, but the second two hours were beautiful!  Of course, tons of countryside and small towns here and there that looked to have populations of ~300.  We finally got to Delphi after navigating through some RAELLY small and narrow roads.  Delphi was a lot smaller than I thought it would be but it was soooo beautiful.  It was right on the cliffside overlooking a mountain range.  An asian man and an asian girl were on the bus and they went running off into a direction that was the Temple of Apollo.  I huried quickly after because we all kenw that we only had a couple of hours to see the temple of apollo and the temple of athena.  The girl went to Apollo and the man and I went to Athena.

welcome to Delphi!
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It was another amazing ruin site and I unpacked my sandwich that I bought in the morning and had luch in the ruin site.  Took tons of pictures and eventually got talking to the Asian man who turned out to be a Japanese National.  He is a photographer.  The asian girl turned out and she ended up being Korean, though I had thought they were together, it turns out that we all missed the bus at 1030 because we all forgot to change our watches!  Yuk-shuan told us that the Temple of Apollo was closed for Independence day.  Anyway, the temple of athena also had Thollos, which is probably more famous.  We also stopped off at the gymnasium where I took some neat photos.

The city has one main street that runs for several kilometers...other than that theres nothing but mountains!
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After gazing, we all headed back to the bus station and had a drink at a bar across the street.  The man, HIroshi, highly recommended that I go to the Cyclade islands, but I can't because of my limited time here.  He said that of all the places he's been (and he's been to many as a 20-year photographer), the Cyclades is his favorite.  I talked to him a bit about being 4-generation removed and all that jazz.  He showed off his $5,000 digital SLR camera to us and his pictures, they looked great, but not 200 times greater than mine.

They are surrounded by green lush mountains
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On the bus ride back we all had great conversations about being home and what we planned on doing while abroad.  Apparently Hiroshi just came back from Chile and will be heading out to the Greek islands.  Yuk-shuan is a pharmacist who just quit her job to go traveling and she's heading to Egypt!  It was great meeting them and sad when we had to part.  There's a good chance that we'll all meet up at the Cape of Sounion to see the Temple of Poseidon tomorrow since we all plan on going there.

a view of the "gynasium" from above. I guess this is where Romans came to just hang around in Delphi...
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I had a quick dinner and came back to the hostel and it is now 2345.  Tomorrow I will head out, early in the morning to the Cape of Sounion.  At night, I will meet up with Christina, a stuent I met who studies at King's College and lives in Athens.  She can't tour me around because she's too busy with family, but we're going to have a drink/dinner tomorrow night.

I'm still healthy and loving every minute of this trip.  I had so much fun playing sharades with the locals and using less than 5 greek words to get around!  Traveling is amazing.  I did laundry last night.....in the shower.  I washed my stinky socks.  I will wash my shirt and pants in Berlin's shower...and no, I do not stink yet (to my knowledge).  Of course, still no pictures...I promise to hit an internet cafe tomorrow.