today was our driving day. 3.5 hours to get us into delphi. we crossed over a massive new toll bridge at patra, though the fee was €10 i’m sure it beat taking the ferry. for most of the trip martin and i passed the time by talking politics and music, while katharine probably decided we are both morons, only interrupting us to ask if we were going to fill up the petrol tank any time soon. we made it despite martin’s insistence that it was worthwhile to drive with the needle on ‘E’ to look for gas a few eurocents cheaper per liter. fortunately i didn’t end up pushing the hyundai, he gave up and we ended up paying €0.998/l, only about €30 for a full tank.

delphi was surprisingly high up in the mountains – i guess that is a reasonable place for an oracle but for the center of the world? not surprisingly, it was jam-packed with tourists. we hiked to the top passing all the fine monuments and eventually reached the stadium. i tried to interest my compatriots in a foot race or perhaps a pickup game of soccer but they were more interested in taking pictures and the like. we headed back down the hill to the gymnasium and the three columns of the sanctuary to athena. we then hiked back up to the road again and went through the museum. it had a number of very impressive sculptures and friezes; in particular the roman work was exquisite. we grabbed a lunch of sandwiches and paprika pringles and continued on to kalabaka.

we made it to kalabaka with little incident and quickly found our hotel. exceptional for the price, and we made it early enough to have some time to kill. unfortunately the town seemed mostly dead, so we settled in to watch a little hercules the legendary journeys (with greek subtitles) and eurobasket 2005. we also found out that a day before the structure at akrotiri had collapsed killing a german tourist, quite chilling considering we had just been there not three days prior. we finished off the evening with a simple dinner at the taverna next door, and chatted basketball with the propreitor while eating fried cheese and baked lamb.