Hey everyone, the week is slowly coming to an end and I hope you have been able to gain some interesting experiences and you are doing well so far! Today I took the time to write something about my trip to Greece and I am happy if you like my travel blog.
I once said that travelling is like a kind of investment in yourself and this was noticed again on my day trip to the historic place of Delphi where I could learn a lot about the Greek culture as well as mythology and saw this unique area with much nature. I spent my time in Athens and decided to make a day trip which lasted about ten hours and it was a perfect change to the big city feeling and a special experience to explore the mountain landscape of Greece and during the trip, I also met some people from different countries which also was very interesting. The drive from Athens took about 2,5 hours and I decided to join a small travel group and unlike the typical tourist routes with overcrowded buses, it was a rather private tour with a few people and a friendly guide who shared a lot about Greek culture during the trip and had a lot of information in store that I would not have learned otherwise and during the time in Delphi I was independent again and not tied to a group and had a few hours to look at the well-known Oracle site as well as the museum which costs only a few euros in entrance fee.
The Oracle of Delphi is probably one of the best known sites from Greek mythology as well as a place that is full of wisdom and was dedicated to the god of light Apollo and in the immediate vicinity of the oracle, there is also a temple which is dedicated to the god. It was a relatively central and popular place that people from different areas visited to get advice and whether it was about general living conditions or questions about the future, the oracle was involved and also many rulers from different regions made a long journey to get strategic advice there. Not infrequently it was even considered the heart of the ancient world and the prophecies came from a woman with the name Pythia and was considered a strict protector who only entrusted people with wisdom when they also paid them for it in offerings or money. It was not a simple process of questions and answers, but a ritual that took some time and in which various priests participated who acted as a kind of medium, so to speak, and then went to Phytia to get the wisdom.
It's not entirely clear how she came into contact with the gods, but it was assumed that she had put herself in a kind of trance state for this and could thus come into contact with the gods and here there are different interpretations and some are the assumption that Phytia used a certain substance which she used for the ritual. The father of the gods Zeus is said to have once put two eagles in the air in this place, which later met again exactly in this place and therefore it was also declared the centre or the heart of the old world and once supernatural things are said to have happened here which had the consequences that it became a magical place and it was considered in ancient Greece as an extremely authentic place in which the humans had a lot of trust and since many of the prophecies turned out to be true, it enjoyed a very high reputation. The Oracle is located on the Mount Parnassus from which I could enjoy a breathtaking view of the surrounding landscape and it's perfect for a day trip from Athens.
Many thanks for the visit and I hope you could learn something new about this unique place! I captured these pictures with my Sony Alpha 6000 plus 55-210 mm lens.