For our first excursion outside of Athens we travelled around 2 and a half hours to Delphi. When we first arrived, we all noticed just how beautiful the view was. There were mountains in practically every direction and it felt like I was inside a postcard. Our tour began with the small museum below the historical site. Unfortunately we had far too many people in a small building so I could barely hear the explanation behind the pieces. Despite this, it was interesting to see artwork which was thousands of years old.
After we had seen the entire museum, we were given some time to visit the ruins. We didn’t get any explanation on what the ruins actually were (or if we did I couldn’t hear it). This required me to read about it later which gave me much better insight into what I had actually seen. Delphi was seen as the navel of the ancient Earth and the ruins date back to around the 4th century BC. The ruins themselves are comprised of multiple different buildings but the main one we looked at was the Temple of Apollo. The Delphi ruins are listed as a UNESCO World Heritage Site.
Reflecting on what I saw there made me understand why they believed it to be the centre of everything. You can see mountains and valleys in every direction and it feels as though you are inside a sphere. As much as I would’ve loved to sit there and soak it up, we were quickly moved on so we wouldn’t be late to our lunch reservation in nearby town, Arachova.
Arachova is a ski town which is currently quite busy due to the snowy mountains nearby. Nearly every store sold fur coats, hats and gloves which was cool but a little off-putting. We also found a little store which sold vintage goods including hundreds of t-shirts and postcards. I think that I could happily stay in a little town like Arachova for a couple days just to wander around.
