BOX 149: Delphi to Athens.

The ruined city of Delphi was one of the memorable places that my friend Max and I visited on our way from Corfu to Athens, preceding our overnight boat to Crete to spend a week with another friend. As I reported in my previous post, we had taken a bus from Igoumenitsa on the western shore of the Greek mainland to the otherworldly Meteora, and now were continuing southeasterly toward Athens.

The route took us through more rugged mountains:

Delphi was the site of the famous oracle, and a whole city grew up around it. Here is my first photo, taken along the winding path leading through the upper city:

One of the landmarks along the path is the well-preserved Athenian Treasury, dedicated to the victory of Athens over the Persians at the Battle of Marathon (490 BC):

Another landmark is the set of columns of an altar to Apollo put up by the citizens of Chios:

Just above the Chian Altar is an amphitheater:

And above that are the remains of a stadium:

The views from Delphi were pretty magnificent:

And here's another look at that partial column with the mountains beyond Delphi in the background:

You can tell from some of the previous photos that it was raining lightly while we were walking. As we stopped in the nearby town for lunch the weather began to clear and we saw a rainbow:

Afterward we walked through the lower part of ancient Delphi,

The most famous architectural feature here is the remains of a tholos, a circular columned temple. Here are two views of the Tholos of Delphi:

And here are the Tholos columns with the upper city beyond them:

Yet another bus took us farther southeastward to Athens, though my next photos are of the Temple of Poseidon at Sounion, another 40 miles or so beyond Athens. Either we bypassed Athens or settled in the capital and soon after took a side trip to Sounion. In any case, the distinctive columns of this temple and its situation on a cliff above the sea make this one of the most beautiful in Greece.

In Athens our hotel was in or near the Plaka district below the Acropolis, but the first photo I took was of the Temple of Haphaestus in the Ancient Agora (marketplace):

Another landmark adjoining the Agora is the Tower of the Winds. Here it is up close and then looking down from the Acropolis:

Walking up the pathway to the Acropolis we could look down at the Odeon, the ancient theater still used for performances. (One evening we saw the National Ballet of Cuba there.) That's the Mouseion Hill beyond the top of the Odeon.

And at the top of the "High City" is the Parthenon:

Somehow I'd never noticed the couple with the matching backpacks and shorts till I scanned this slide. Here's a second photo I took a bit later:

Looking down from the Acropolis we had good views of other ruins, like this Temple of Olympian Zeus:

And up on the Acropolis, near the Parthenon, a small temple dedicated to Athena Nike (Victory):

These were all the photos I took of Athens. Soon enough we were on our overnight boat ride to Crete. I'll show photos of that island and our later stop on Santorini in my next post.