Delphi Day 1: Laurel Leaves do not make you Prophecy

The day started off rather traumatically as we saw a dead cat on the plaza on the way to the bus.  It was really gross, but we were all more concerned about how Talulah, a self-proclaimed cat lover and 10 year old kid would react.  She did pretty good props to Andrew the dad for diffusing that situation.

We rode the bus for about 2 hours before getting to this little monastery to walk around.  It was really beautiful and there were two incredible Byzantine churches there.  Unfortunately due to an earthquake, time, and moisture nearly all of the frescoes were complete restorations.  The scenery was breath taking too.  Lot of giant mountains everywhere.  And it was raining a bit so you could see the clouds that were getting caught in the mountains.

We toured the monastery for a bit, more like wandered around in the rain, and then got back on the bus and headed to this little town right outside of Delphi for lunch.  Anne, our prof, told us that they make really good fried cheese and I thought "I like cheese and I like fried things, so let's get some."  So we went to Anne's favorite place for lunch.  Two hours later.....we're still sitting there and should have been on the bus 45 minutes ago.  Whoops!  But Anne stopped on the way back to look at slippers, so we had an impromtu family photo shoot with all the shaggy haired people.  We had a bunch of fun, my stand in brothers and I, poking fun at each other.  Funny thing is, we all do kind of look related....

We finally got to Delphi and went down to the lower part of the sanctuary were the temple to Apollo is.  There we had a little lecture.  Anne was mostly rambling about how here and her friends like to reenact the oracle by fasting and chewing laurel leaves to see if they have hallucinogenic properties.  Yup, she went to Berkley in the 60s.

After my daydreaming hour, we checked into our hotel.  It smelled really good, like the Yankee Candle store.  A bunch of the girls just hung out and had a super stereotypical girl talk hour before we went to dinner.  Dinner was good, but nothing really to write home about.

After dinner, I went with Sienna and Ryan back to his room to watch Percy Jackson, the Lightning Thief.  You know those awkward situations where you are totally the third wheel and Mr. Handsy totally wants you to leave so he can make a move on your roommate?  That was my life for an hour.  So uncomfortable, so I decided I was 'really tired' and left.  I ended up having another girl talk and then hitting the hay.