The Center of the Universe

Back from the last all-school field trip, this time to Delphi.

Day one (Friday, 14 November 2008):
-Bus B departs from the Kallimarmaro at 7:45 in the morning.
-First stop is the Sanctuary of Amphiaraios. It's a small sanctuary, kind of out of the way, and our group is the only ones there. Amphiaraios, for those who don't know, was a seer who was one of the Seven Against Thebes. He didn't want to take part in the war against Thebes, because he could foresee that he wouldn't survive it, but he ended up being a participant anyway. At the moment when he was about to die, Zeus took pity on him and had the earth swallow him up whole. The Amphiaraion is supposedly located where he was swallowed up (although Thebes itself is a two hour drive away, so not exactly sure how well that matches up). Anyway, Amphiaraios gained a reputation for healing, and his sanctuary became an incubatory oracle, where people would go to dream healing dreams. It was relatively well preserved, because by the time that the edict came out to cast down the pagan temples, it was already fading from importance, so it didn't get cast down with as much fervor as more important sanctuaries did. We got actual fall at the Amphiaraion. It was kind of cool, and we were tramping through fallen leaves. We did this for a bit, and then we all realized, hey, these are fallen leaves! Fall at last! (The rest of Greece, especially the part that Athens is in, doesn't really have much of a fall.) Among the really well-preserved artifacts is a water clock. We got to climb all in and over it. It was pretty cool.
-Next stop was the Byzantine monastery of Hosios Loukas. It's still a functioning monastery, so we only got to go into the church and the courtyard around it, but that was enough. It was really pretty, and inside the old part of the church there were mosaics from the 11th century. The arm of Hosious Loukas himself (or his supposed arm. It's a long story, and there are supposedly parts of him all over the place, from the Vatican to Turkey) was on display in a glass-topped coffin, where they had arranged a robe to look like the rest of the body was there, but our professor told us that it was just the arm that was in the monastery. There was also a spring with supposed healing properties in the courtyard. The monastery itself was built near the top of a hill, so the view out over the valley was really pretty.
-After that, it was off to Delphi itself. Delphi is a pretty big site, located on the side of a mountain. This afternoon, we just visited the lower sanctuary. So we started with the springhouse for the Castilian Spring, then moved down the mountain to the gymnasium and the Santuary of Athena Pronaos. There's a site guard at the lower sanctuary of Delphi who has known our professor since she was three years old, but still doesn't recognize her whenever he sees her, so we got to witness an exchange between the two of them. We've been hearing about this guard all semester, so that was fun.
-Next, we went into the town of Delphi to check into our hotel. Fun fact: until relatively recently (I don't have the date off the top of my head), the town of Delphi was located right on top of the archaeological site, and you couldn't see any of the archaeological remains because they were buried under three meters of debris from rockfalls over the ages. When they started excavating the site, the government moved the town to its present location to preserve the archaeological site.
-My roommate and I had dinner at a local taverna: formaela, which is a local fried cheese, for an appetizer, and then rabbit in a mustard-tarragon sauce for an entree. I'd never had rabbit before, so it was an adventure, though not much of one, comparatively. I am glad to say that it didn't taste like chicken; I am disappointed to say that it tasted like chicken would if it were a slightly redder meat.
-Back to our hotel, and my roommate and I talk on our balcony for three hours before going to bed.

Day two (Saturday, 15 November 2008):
-Today's main adventure was the main sanctuary of Delphi itself. We walked up the remnants of the Sacred Way, past the remains of various treasuries, up to the sanctuary of Apollo at Delphi. On our way there, we passed the omphalos. This is a sacred round stone that the Ancient Greeks believed to be the center of the universe. Now, as any good Seattleite knows, the center of the universe is the Fremont signpost, but to be fair, the omphalos has a lot more history behind it, so I'm willing to accept its claim on a provisional basis. There are also tunnels beneath the Temple, which they probably used to get the priestess into and out of the temple without people seeing her, and also to swap out the priestess in case she got overcome by prophesying too long. You can still go a bit into the tunnels, not very far because they collapsed a little way in, but still about twenty feet from one entrance to the tunnels to another. So, of course, I went in. You have to bend over double to walk along them, and they're completely dark once you go past the entrance. It was so cool. After this, we went up to the stadium, at pretty much the highest point of the mountain that they'll let you climb up to. The view from Delphi was amazing. It was all misty, with this diffuse light, and you could look down from the mountain into the valley below and see so far. It was so amazing.
-After we had explored the sanctuary, we had to make a stop in at the Archaeological Museum associated with the site. We got to see the pediment and friezes from the Sisyphian Treasury, which was kind of neat, and the really famous Sphinx statue. We also got to see the really famous bronze statue of a charioteer, which was also kind of cool.
-After we left Delphi, we stopped for lunch in the town of Arachova, which is apparently a ski town over the winter. It was a pretty town, but it was too windy and cold to really explore (it must have been a good ten degrees Fahrenheit colder than it was in Delphi fifteen minutes drive away). We just wanted to find a taverna to go inside out of the cold and eat lunch.
-After lunch, we got back aboard the bus and commenced our two and a half hour bus ride back to Athens. We got back to Athens at about 4 o'clock in the afternoon.