Greece: Athens, Delphi, Meteora, Patras

I am terribly sorry about the huge huge delay in posted to this blog but I haven't really had a chance to sit down on a computer and get it done, I have been busy doing a heck of a lot of not much (many ours on trains, ferries and appreicating stuff). I will try and get up to date now as I am sitting in an air conditioned internet cafe and its super hot outside. One post for the entire main land of Greece does not do it justice, but thems the breaks.

So Greece then... after an 8 day celebration of us conquering Crete we arrived back in Athens. It felt like we had never left. We went and stayed with Cams mates which was super handy.

We went to the Acropolis, its pretty old, on a hill and looks alright. It was actually more impressive from a distance rather than up close as there was heaps of restoration going down.

Who would have thought ancient architecture could be so interesting? I thought they were all just stacks of rocks... that why we travel I guess. Live and learn. Check out this wicked Ionic capitols on fluted columns.

We jumped on a bus and heading down to Delphi, in the south, about 3 hrs by bus from Athens. It is here that the Ancient Greeks through the centre of the world was, it also is home to a big Temple of Apollo and was where a super wise Oracle lived. So its a pretty important and impressive set of ruins. There was a neat sports stadium here tiered seatingand a row of starting blocks for sprints, all this is 2000+ years old, its good to see they enjoyed sport back in the day as much as we do.


We also spent a night up in Meteora where there are a bunch of Monasteries built on top of cliffs. The rocky cliffs rose out of some green bush and we did a bit of exploring around the bush which was cool. The Monasteries are all Greek Orthodox so it was cool to get an insight to where they are coming from.
We left Greece via the town of Patras. Now, if you read Lonely Planet or any other guide to Greece they will probably write off Patras as merely a transit point, a place to leave as soon after you arrive as you can. This was our intention but due to ferry times etc we ended up staying a night and spending a day. After some help from the best tourist information place in the world we got some free bikes and rode around the town for a day. There were some very neat churches, ruins and friendly people. We also semi-accidentally got on to a main high way and rode out on to a massive bridge. It was an exciting adventure.





I shall finish this post with a quote I read at one of the monasteries. Not sure who wrote it. Ponder this:

"Faith is not a matter of understand, but of confidence. And confidence is not unreasonable, it transcends reason. It does not contradict logic and reason, it goes beyond them. In the Orthodox Church, this transcendence of reason is not its denial but its elevation to a point where it can accept the experiences of the divine revelation. The transcendent reason is faith is the absolute surrender of our self, our abandonment to the will and mercy of God."