May 15: Delphi rest day
It’s always nice to have a rest day. We had a leisurely breakfast and then headed out.
First, we walked around town to see if Chris could reconstruct his movements from the time he visited Delphi with his dad and a group of students back in the winter of 1980. And he could!
Then it was time for some archaeology. We began with the museum. Chris started to film a video in which he described some of the artifacts, and was immediately shut down by a docent. Greek museum docents live to shut down personal photography and videos. Apparently the trouble was that he was narrating the video. He asked if it would be all right for him to shoot the video without speaking. Yes. And would it be all right for him to explain the objects to his wife? Yes. But both at the same time? No.
It’s heartwarming how consistent Greek museum people are on this subject. I suppose they do have reason to be territorial about their artifacts and prehistory.
Really, you can’t claim to have visited Greece unless you have been scolded by a museum docent. Bonus points if you take a surruptitious photo of a vase or something.
Then it was on to the site itself. Even on a weekday in early May, the place was crowded, though it was nothing compared to August. I haven’t seen the place in August, but I can imagine. Oh, and if you visit the site at Delphi, wear sensible shoes and be prepared to climb!
We do find ourselves increasingly disinterested by touristic historical sites. A heap of stones never feels very lifelike, and certainly most of our fellow tourists don’t give the impression that they know why they are there. It’s heretical to say this, but I think Sir Arthur Evans wasn’t completely off base with his reconstruction of Knossos. At least it looks interesting now.
We gave up on visiting ancient sites turned into tourist destinations and wandered back to town. There, we returned to our cliff-top cocktail bar to meet Eleni, the Trekking Hellas rep who had been our point of communication since we arrived in Eptalofos. Chris had been texting her multiple times every day, but we had yet to lay eyes on her or speak viva voce. She brought along her husband, the Giorgos who had picked us up at the Athens airport, and their five-year-old daughter Kristina. She also gave us a fun bag of Trekking Hellas swag. Young Kristina was very good, but her patience with sitting there while mom and dad talked in English to random Americans had a natural limit. Old hands at parenting, we cut the visit short and allowed our friends to get on with their day.
That evening, we dined at Epikouros, a restaurant that our hotel had recommended and that appears to be owned by the same business; nothing wrong with that. One thing I love about Greek restaurants is that the servers don’t hesitate to refuse to grant some orders. The previous evening, our waiter refused to bring Chris a second glass of red wine with his dinner on the grounds that his meal was “too heavy.” The server tonight wouldn’t let us order moussaka because we already had enough food coming; she didn’t care that we might just want to taste it and not finish everything. Even if we were willing to pay for it all.