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The bed did not fall through the floor!
I enjoyed a very scenic drive toward Delphi today. You can be sure I zoomed out and panned my GPS before starting to drive, to be sure I was aiming at the proper geographic region of the world! A word of warning: it is very expensive to drive in Greece. The superhighways are toll roads, with a $4 booth every 10 or 20 miles. I probably spent over $40 yesterday driving in circles to nowhere, and another $30 today. But the roads are beautiful... very smooth, well marked, with nice rest areas every 30 miles and small roadside indoor toilets every 10 miles or so. I'm now eating an authentic Greek salad for lunch, in a small town about 5 miles (I hope) before the monastery, about 20 miles from Delphi. Some of the beautiful scenery along the way is shown below. Plus, the Greek salad: no lettuce, just cucumber, green pepper, tomatoes, onion, olives, oil, and a thick slab of feta cheese. That's all for now.
I'm waiting for supper in Delphi right now, so can write down my afternoon diary while everything's fresh. I really liked the 11th century late-Byzantine Osios Loukas Monastery. It's quite an ornate building on the outside, and filled with mosaics on the inside. This 3- or 4-story tall space is shaped like a Greek Cross and topped with a dome. Other structures were added after the original building: a bell-tower, a small chapel, and several other building which appear to be "only" one or two hundred years old. It's setting is gorgeous, being situated on the edge of a mountain, overlooking a valley and a range of mountains beyond. Photos are below.
The drive from there to Delphi should have been 45 minutes, but turned into 2 hours because I just had to stop every couple miles to take a photo of the beautiful mountainous landscape. Over and over again. A couple of examples are below.
Little did I know that my hotel room in Delphi would have a balcony with the view shown below. It would be nice to get back and see the sunset from that balcony, but this restaurant is a bit slow. That's ok, I still have the view from my table, but no tripod to get the best shots.
I should mention that all the photos while traveling are straight out of the camera; I have only my iPad for posting and grabbing photos from my camera, and no computer to make them look their best (that's this winter's task)! So the dark parts of many of the photos will be too dark, for now.
Sunset from my table is in the first 3 photos below, one from later on my balcony is the 4th. I guess after today's sights, yesterday is forgotten.
Finally, here's a map of my journey thus far (ignoring the flight from Toronto, and my day of traveling in a circle with a thump thump thumping bumper).
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