Gigi and Bearpaw travels

May 2, 2026 Our journey today took us inland to the mountain city of Delphi.  What is now an archeological site is still accessible by a long climb up the side of the mountain.  It was colder at Delphi, only about fifty degrees, windy, and damp. In Delphi you could view the ruins of the city as well as the temple. In this next image if you zoom in between the corner pillar and the next one to the right you will see three pillars of another temple far down in the valley. Delphi was considered the center of ancient Greek civilization.  They had a Greek term for that which roughly translated meant ‘navel’, or in American terms, ‘belly button’.  This next image was discovered and labeled as the navel.  We think it was an ‘outie’. Nearly every city at the time had a treasury.  Delphi had three.  One was rebuilt from donations from the people of Athens.  It was then renamed as the Treasury of Athens. The long wall adjacent to the Treasury of Athens was ...

May 1, 2026 We had nothing planned today so we took the opportunity to sleep in.  Of course that meant being up by  eight o’clock.  Nothing but some shops and restaurants were going to be open.  So it was our opportunity to just wander around this end of town.  It wasn’t until we were actually out wandering that we discovered how close we were to the historical sites like the Acropolis. After breakfast we made our way down to the lobby and were a little surprised to see that the hotel had lowered their outer shutters.  I am sure they did this as a precaution, just in case the ‘Labor Day’ demonstrations got out of hand.  There were throngs of people.  Loudspeakers had been installed so you could hear the speeches even though you weren’t close to the speaker.  During the morning we could hear them from over half a mile away. shutters closed from the inside shutters closed from the outside We decided we would make our way across town to get a pi...

April 30, 2026 This morning we headed out of the city to see a few sites that might prove interesting.  About an hour out of town we stopped for a pit stop (there’s a lot of old people on the bus).  We did manage to find some Golden Oreos.  They were good and a touch of home. In the late 1800’s a major undertaking in the area was begun.  A canal was built that joins the Gulf of Corinth in the Ionian Sea to the Saronic Gulf  in the Aegean Sea.  It is eighty feet wide and four miles long.  This canal would cut days off the journey around the peninsula.  It is too small for modern ships today, but it still exists. Our next stop was at the Epidaurus Amphitheater.  Built in the late fourth century B.C. it is still in use today.  It is said that this theater has the most perfect acoustics for any ancient theater.  A person can stand at the top of the amphitheater and hear someone on the stage if they are talking above a whisper.  The...

April 29, 2026 Yesterday was a somewhat hectic day.  It began with a visit to the European Union / Greek immigration control.  What was touted by the ship’s staff as “just a couple of minutes” ended up being an hour and twenty minutes.  To quote Maxwell Smart, “Missed it by that much!”. We did take a “panoramic tour of Athens”.  What this means in lay terms is “You will see a lot of trees and buildings but not much else”.  It was a good time for a short nap. We then had a quick tour of the Athens Archeological Museum.  They had a large number of artifacts from early Athens history, some dating back as far as the 18th century B.C. After returning to the ship we had dinner and spent most of the remainder of the evening packing. This morning we left the ship and prior to checking into our hotel we made a journey to the Acropolis of Athens.  The parking lot is at the bottom of the hill so it was a climb to get to the top.  It was well worth the hike....