John wanted us to see some of the historical sites around mainland Greece, and generously bought us a tour package that took us to Delphi, Meteora, and where the battle of Thermopoly was fought. We had just seen the movie “300” again a few days ago, so we were very excited about seeing Delphi and Thermopoly, places portrayed in the movie.

We boarded the tour bus at 0830 near our hotel. Traffic was slow getting out of Athens. The city all looks pretty much the same until you get to the outskirts of town. On the outskirts, you see big stores with parking lots, industrial buildings, and the typical three and four floor apartment complexes actually have space between them. A little farther out of town, there was some farmland in between the apartment buildings and industrial buildings, and pretty soon, the buildings faded away and it was all farmland. The area we were driving through is relatively flat, which is a surprise, because Greece has very little flat land. Greece is one of the most mountainous countries in all of Europe. We could see large mountains in the distance to our left.

One of Greece’s main industries is farming. They are the largest cotton exporter in the EU. They also grow a lot of wheat, olives, olive oil, honey, corn and assorted produce. The area we were driving through had a lot of cotton and wheat fields. We passed a couple of lakes, one man made and one natural. The tour guide, Irini, explained to us that a large portion of this flat land we were driving through was once marshland that had been drained to make more farmland.

We passed the city of Thebes, which is famous for the mythology story of Oedipus. Oedipus’s father, Laius was king of Thebes. He angered the gods, and the gods cursed Laius, telling him if he ever had a son, the son would kill Laius. Laius and his wife did indeed have a son, and they told a servant to kill the baby. The servant had the baby smuggled to Corinth, where he was adopted. Oedipus did indeed kill a stranger at a crossroads, not knowing he was Laius, the king of Thebes, and most certainly not knowing the man was his biological father. Oedipus later went to Thebes and defeated the sphinx (part animal, part human) that was terrorizing the city. As a reward, he was given the widowed queen of Thebes and the throne. He did eventually find out he married his mother.

Eventually we turned and headed towards the mountains, which are northwest of Athens. The scenery changed as we climbed up, looking more like it does in Crete. The sides of the road were loaded with oleanders, Spanish broom, and thyme plants, along with assorted wildflowers. There were lots of evergreens, especially pine and fir, with the occasional Cyprus rising majestically amongst them. Most of all though, were olive trees. There were literally hundreds of thousands of olive trees planted along the mountainside, and as far as you could see it was endless olive trees below and above us. Here and there you would see a mining site. They mine marble and granite, which are both large export products for them. They are also the largest exporter in Europe of bauxite, the mineral used to make aluminum, which is their only real natural mineral resource.

We climbed higher and higher into the mountains, and eventually came to an adorable little ski town on Mt. Parnassus. The town was pretty upscale and swanky, apparently the most popular ski resort in Greece because it is the closest to Athens. The town was terraced on the hill, and it looked like a lot of stairs to go from the top of the town to the bottom.

It was only a few more minutes in the bus beyond the ski town before we came to the ruins of Delphi, also at the top of Mount Parnassus. Thanks to “300” we had a clear idea of what the Oracle of Delphi building was going to look like. It was going to be an isolated, marble pillared, round gazebo at the very tip of a tall vertical mountain that could only be accessed by rock climbing. We were ready to don our rock climbing gear and scale the mountain. When we got there, we saw the movie seriously exaggerated the setting. Yes, the Oracle building is located near the top of a tall, steep mountain, and not too far above the building the mountain does become vertical. While it is a heck of a walk to get up there, no rock climbing is needed. Of course, the oracle building is in ruins, but from what we could tell, it looks like it was rectangular and solid walled.

And, most importantly, the Oracle wasn’t an isolated building at all. It was actually situated in the center of a small village-like setting terraced on the mountain. This is a model of what they believe the city looked like in it’s hey day.

The Greeks believed that the village of Delphi was the center of the world for a number of reasons, one of them because there was a lot of earthquake activity, which they thought was the gods’ way of communicating. Being the center of the world, it was the logical place to go to speak with the gods direct.