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Well, the ferry didn't go to Santorini last Tuesday after all. Unfortunately, the winds and the seas were just too strong and the next ferry after that would have been Friday. So we bought a plane ticket back to Athens for Wed, the 19th in the morning and flew out of Crete at 10:30 am. It was quite a travel day but not too difficult since we had already navigated the Athens airport once. The flight was about 1 hour. We took the airport bus downtown which took about 45 min., then walked over to the local bus 024 to take that to the intercity bus terminal B which took about 40 min. We bought our ticket and 2 hours later boarded the bus to Delphi which was a 3 hour ride. We arrived in Delphi about 6:30 pm. We met some American girls (studying in England for now) on their 6 week Spring break (yep, 6 weeks)who had reservations at a hotel not in our book. It was cheaper than anything we had listed. So we followed them, and got a room with heat and our own bath and a TV for 20 euros! It was good that we had a TV so we could watch the insanity and inhumanity show being broadcast on CNN.

We stayed in Delphi for 3 nights, it's a beautiful place. It's up in the mountains with a view of the Gulf of Corinth. The Temple of Apollo and the other ruins at the site were excellent including a very well preserved theater and stadium. There were tons of school children there on the 20th, primarily from France, Spain, and Greece. Unfortunately, they can't read because they kept climbing over the ancient ruins. The signs are written in Greek, French, and English. When the staff would yell at them to get down, arguments would ensue with the teachers. I didn't get it and my language skills weren't good enough to interpret. Tim thought that maybe the adults thought that people had been sitting on and climbing on these old rocks for 2500 years, so what's the big deal? No respect, as one of the staff said. It started to cloud up as we headed down to the Temple of Athena and the Tholos, so Tim decided he would go back again the next day to finish getting his pictures.

It's been easy, for me at least, to take naps as we still have our stupid colds. So we did a lot of that besides watching the bombs fall on TV. The next day (21st), we walked back down to the site and I headed off to the museum (free) while Tim went back to take more pictures. Only promblem was, the museum only had one room open, the room with the Charioteer so I waited for about 1 1/2 hrs for Tim to come back. They closed the site from noon to three as part of the Peace Demonstrations. We went back to the hotel and watched the peace demonstrations degenerate into violence, nice.

We decided to go out to a cafe which was showing music videos and had a fireplace but when the massive attack started, the videos ended and we got to see more of the war games. I was not very happy at that point and lost my appetite.

We took the bus back to Athens on the 22nd, We headed back to John's Place where we had stayed before but either he really was completely booked or maybe he didn't want us there anymore. We got another place for 30 euros which includes coffee and bread and jam in the morn but no private bath and no heat! Unfortunately it's like 40 degrees here, I don't get it, they have the radiators why no heat? We got 5 blankets each instead, in our twin beds. Today we went to the National Art Gallery and the Byzantine Gallery. It was somthing to do, inside where it's warm and we have already seen alot of the city. The Art Gallery was pretty good but I have to admit, the only famous Greek painter I have ever heard of is El Greco. They only had 2 of his paintings. The museum in Crete only had 1. I guess the rest of them must be in Spain. We'll see, I expect to visit the Prado. (is that the right word?) So here we are, trying to find inexpensive things we can do inside until it warms up. I think we will take a day trip to Cape Sounion to see the Temple of Poseidon on Tues. It's supposed to be warmer then.

Don't worry, we are fine. We are citizens of the Planet Earth.