The Monasteries at Meteora

This is the final stop on our tour of Greece. We are visiting the famous monasteries built on top of tall rock formations. The monasteries are home to Christian Monks and Nuns. Within the monasteries are churches of the eastern orthodox type. Our guide gave us a detailed explanation of all the icons painted on the walls and the ceiling. Suffice to say that the depictions were a narration of the life of Christ. It seems that this was the way common folk were able to understand the narration because many couldn't read. No photos were allowed inside the churches.

A Monastery at the top of the Rock

Monastery that we visited

Another Monastery

Heading back to Athens today. For lunch we stopped over at a special restaurant where the meals were prepared ahead of time. We had to line up and pick and choose our entrees.

Lunch waiting for us

The Meteora Restaurant

We are flying back tomorrow.

Delphi the Oracle

Today we are visiting the temple of Apollo. The Oracle had accommodations in the basement (for want of a better word).

People would come from all over the Greek world to visit the temple and ask the Oracle questions. The Oracle, who was a woman, would render an answer in the form of a riddle. The riddle resulted in ambiguity and it had to be interpreted. The Oracle could never be wrong, because the answer a riddle.

The Oracle had a term of 4 years. It is not known what happened to the Oracle after the term. All Oracles were picked by the priest of the temple from one particular village nearby.

According to the myth, Zeus let fly two eagles from the West and the East. The point at which they crossed each other was to be the site. This was also known as the Navel or the center of the universe.

Temple at Delphi

Temple of Apollo at Delphi

We then visited the museum where some of the Artifacts are housed.

Stopped over for lunch at a restaurant called Scala where fish was the speciality. It was great. Lot of Ouzo, of course.

View from Restaurant at Lunch Time

My Delicious Lunch

After lunch we headed out to Meteora. On our way we visited a monument dedicated to the battle of Thermopylae, the famous battle where the Spartans delayed the Turks on their way to Athens.

Spartan Monument

Olympia — Ancient Olympics Site

Off to an early start again. Breakfast at 7 and heading out at 8 to the archeological ruins of the ancient Olympic games site.

This site was where athletes from the city states in ancient Greece gathered every four years. These athletes were the best athletes from each of the city states. There was a dedicated area for athletes to cover themselves with Olive oil and practice their craft. The athletes also had dedicated rooms for their stay during the duration of the olympics.

The Olympic games were in honor of Zeus. Not only were the sports dedicated to Zeus, but there were also animals who were sacrificed in his honor.

Only the athletes, their sponsors and dignitaries had assigned quarters during the games. Ordinary folks lived in tents outside the complex along the river bank that ran alongside.

The pics below don't do justice to what was once a magnificent complex. Without our guide's narration, we also couldn't have grasped the magnitude and scale of these games. Many artifacts were stolen over the years. They were able to move a lot of these into the museum for preservation and display.

The games were discontinued by the Emperor who had converted to Christianity during roman times. The games were discontinued because it was in honor of Zeus which incompatible with Christianity.

Entrance to the Stadium

Events were held at this Stadium

We next went to the museum to see the actual artifacts. The displays were beautiful. Some pictures below.

Zeus

Chariot Race (Usually in the Triangular Area at the top of the temple)

We then stopped over for lunch where we got some cooking lessons and Greek style dancing lessons!

Cooking Lessons

Dance Lessons

Our next stop is Delphi, where the famous Oracle lived. Arrived at around 6 in the evening with dinner at 7:30.

Off to Olympia — the capital city

We are all up bright and early. We had an early breakfast at 7:00 am and were in the bus at 8:00. This will be our routine for the next several days. In fact, it almost seems like we are on a work schedule!

We are now starting our land tour. Here is the itenerary we will be on for the next week.

Our Itinerary For The Week

Today, we are at Athens, of course, on the right side of the itinerary you can see above. We are heading west from Athens towards the Peloponnese peninsula. Technically, this is today an island because the ancient greeks cut a canal at the city of Corinth, separating the Peloponnese peninsula from the mainland.

The canal at Corinth was a main attraction on the way to Olympia. The canal was dug to create a short cut from the Aegean sea in the east to the Ionian sea in the west. Going south around the peninsula was fraught with danger because of the high winds. The shipwrecks there were plentiful.

Before the canal was built, a road was constructed between the west and east. Porters would drag boats across from either side on what we would call today trailers.

The Canal At Corinth

The canal was dug between two sea-level bodies of water, so no Locks are needed. It is very narrow, only about 80 feet, which means traffic is always one way. The walls are deep, around 300 ft. It's tall enough to give you vertigo.

After around 30 minutes at this site, we headed out to Mycenae. Mycenae was a pre-historic site built at a height of around 900 feet. The name for a high location is Acro. Combined with city, it becomes AcroPolis, meaning city at a high point. The most interesting thing about this civilization was the Lions Gate where you can see one of the first uses of a key stone to build an arch.

The Lion's Gate in Mycenae

But the most interesting architectural construct was the Treasury of Atreus. This was constructed just as if it were a mold in the foundry. As the building was being raised, mud was brought in to the inside and the outside while the stones were being set. The stones also were ground to accurate angles to give the impression of a dome. After the construction was complete, they simply dug out the earth from the inside.

A side note: there were hundreds of bees around. Our guide warned us about it and asked us not wave our hands around to avoid irritating the bees. She also said that if anyone was allergic to Bee stings should stay away. Interestingly enough, the bees didn't bother me at all.

The Tomb of Atreus — An Engineering Marvel

After around an hour, we continued on. Our lunch stop was at Nauplia (Ναύπλιο in greek). This was also the city in which our guide, Matina, was born and raised. It is a seaport. It is spectacular. We had around 2 hours for lunch and walking around. Look how fantastic it looks. The weather was not hot, not cold, perfect.

Scenes of Ναύπλιο. So beautiful!

We walked over to an eating place. My first question was, "do you have Ouzo". The guy at the front said, "of course". So we walked in. There was a couple on our right who were obviously very much in love (and probably had too much Ouzo).

A very petite young lady greeted us and led us to our table. We got talking and it turned out she was a Punjabi girl, whose parents lived on a different island. She commuted every day from a different island. Sounds exotic. Very nice girl. She spoke broken English, but was fluent in Greek. As usual, I used my limited vocabulary in the language and said 'Ki Gal eh', and also told her those were the only   words I knew in Punjabi. She was surprised and happy.

I had the Souvalki (a greek kebab), of course. I was stuffed.

All in all, a fantastic lunch. Did I mention that I had a lot of Ouzo. Made me very happy!

Mandeep and Sandhya at Naflplio

Happy, buzzed, we headed out to Olympia. Got to Olympia around 6 in the evening and checked in to the Royal Olympia Hotel. Everthing were perfectly organized. We got our bags to our room in around 10 minutes.

Dinner was great, lot of conversations with our acquaintances and an early 'go to bed' because we have a an early day tomorrow.

Athens, the City of Athena, the Godess of Wisdom

The real start of our vacation. Sunday, March 31, 2019.

Jet lag meant that I was up at 5 or so in the morning. Greece also goes to Daylight Savings Time overnight.

Breakfast was sumptuous. Had my usual scrambled eggs as well as fried eggs with some sausage thrown in, just for fun.

We started the day by a short tour of the city by our tour bus, taking in the sights of temples of a variety of greek gods like Zeus, Athena, Apollo etc. There were so many that it was hard to keep track. We also glimpsed the parliament building. We would be back to watch the change of the guard in the evening.

The City of Athena from atop the Acropolis

The Guards in front of the Greek Parliament

We arrived at the Acropolis (meaning Acro — top, edge, high and Polis — City). The Acropolis houses the Parthenon a temple dedicated to Athena, the patron goddess of the city of Athens. There is an interesting myth about how Athena, also known as the goddess of Wisdom, got to be the patron of Athens. Zeus, here father wanted to leave the city to one of his heirs and Athena won the competition because she offered the Olive tree where as her competitor Poseidon (the god of water) offered water. But water was useless, because it was salty, whereas the Olive tree was useful. It produced wood, oil etc. So Athena won the competition!

Temple dedicated to Athena

The Parthenon at the Acropolis

The Parthenon from the bottom of the Hill

We then headed over to the museum after a tour of the Parthenon. Interesting story about the meseum: when they started to dig the foundation, they discovered an entire city. They had to stop the digging and lay a glass ceiling on top of the digs. So while walking around in the ground floor of the museum  you can see the archeological digs through the glass floor.

We ended the day with a walk around the city in the evening. We also witnessed the changing of the guard at the parliament.

Our guide took us to the Metro underground where you could see the archeological digs preserved behind a glass wall. They actually had to build the Metro carefully by routing them while preserving the archeological remains.

For dinner we got a Gyro (finally!) from a local eatery.

We are off to the next city tomorrow.

It's Saturday morning now. Landed at Schiphol International in Amsterdam. The airport was quite unimpressive as we got out of the aircraft. But as we kept going to the interior it improved considerably.

The day started with a mini adventure! After disembarking from the plane, Sandhya and I followed a bunch of people like sheep and ended up outside security, just before passport control. We realized we couldn't go back, because the doors only opened one way, to the outside. We asked the lady who was guiding people towards the right passport control kiosk how we could get back to connecting flights. She raised her eyebrows (I guess she couldn't believe 'these people who got off the boat can't read signs'), shrugged her shoulders and asked us to go to the immigration counter and ask them to call security so that they could send someone to escort us back inside.

We went over to the immigration control counter. Strangely enough there was a high wall about 6 feet behind the counter. We could see a bunch of guards behind the wall; we could see their caps in fact. We waited for about 5 minutes before one of the guards jumped up to see if there was anyone waiting at the counter. About 5 minutes later a guard came over and asked what we wanted. We said we needed to get to gate C for a connecting flight. Another surprised look from the guy. He said he would call for security to come and get us. I asked him if he could escort us inside; I said we could show id, boarding pass etc. He said no, he couldn't, because he would then lose his badge. He pointed to some seats across the hall and asked us to wait. He said he would call for the guard.

We waited for about 20 minutes when a security guy appeared and took us all the way back to security and then showed where to go for gate C.

An interesting episode to say the least.

Here are some pictures while inside the airport. Standard Issue stuff.

Vacationin Greece! Yay!

Hi All,

Heading out for another vacation. This time in Greece, the land of the mathematical language!

Weird to think that Greek is not just for math, but for speaking too!

Starting our vacation with a smile. Doesn't we look happy? Well, may be I look smug more than happy. But that's the happy me.

Lunch time before boarding. Of course, I had to have a double shot of Makers Mark, double, neat and I had two of those. Sandhya could only get a Heffeweizen. She wanted the Blue Moon, but they were out. But the waitress was very nice and we didn't mind.

Needless to say, I was happy. Is 'happy' becoming a theme now?

Also a view of the restaurant at Seatac. It was very, very busy.

Ok. Gotta go. They are boarding now ...

Our first stop is Amsterdam. May be I'll post a few pics when we land. ETA at Amsterdam is 8:15 in the morning.

Heading back to Seattle

My, how time has passed! We arrived on the 10th Feb in Cambodia and we are leaving today on the 25th Feb. I am writing this blog at the airport as we speak. Sandhya and  I have our boarding passes, have gone through security and are now waiting at the departure gate. The scheduled departure time is 12:30 pm.

As usual, Gate1 has come through with flying colors. Their tour management process is excellent. The attention to detail is unbelievable. Up until our departure from the hotel, our tour guide was there to make sure our baggage was loaded on to the mini-bus that brought us to the airport. This is our 3rd tour with Gate1. We'll probably use Gate1 for our next trip.

Our Travel Itenerary

To recap, we visited three countries and 7 cities. We flew from Seattle to Bangkok via Seoul, from Bangkok to Siem Reap in Cambodia, and then from Siem Reap to Saigon (Ho Chi Minh city) in Vietnam. In Vietnam we toured Saigon, the ancient city of Hoi An, the ancient capital of Hue, the beach in Da Nang and Hanoi--the sparkling city. We also made an excursion to scenic Halong Bay.

By the end of the trip we were a very happy group with boisterous laughter coming from the backbenchers in the bus. The guide had to sometimes raise his voice to get people's attention. But it was all fun and games. Here is a picture of our group that we took in Halong Bay.

Our tour group

That's it for this trip. Keep an eye out for our next trip, perhaps in the next year.