Arrive in Greece

Early morning departure from Heathrow to the new E. Venizelos Airport in Athens. We hum Norah Jones’s Come Away with Me in the Mini Cab. An uneventful flight, we are met by the young hire car rep. We had agreed rally plans, pick up points etc on the plane to avoid decisions and consequently arguments in front of the hire car rep. Adrian inadvertently changes all plans at the last minute so we argue in front of the hire car rep anyway.

The area around the airport has been newly developed and is signed in English. We have road books to get us in the right direction. We make a good start by encircling the airport carpark a few times. And we’re off…

First cultural hitch, the petrol station – why can’t companies renting to foreigners deliver cars with petrol? Turns out you pay a little old man who works the pumps. This system doesn’t work when you use overseas credit cards. This takes some miming to work out.

Now we’re off! Sun shines on the motorway to the Delphi turn off. Rowena shows off and reads signs in Greek before they are translated in English. So far the signs are for place names so only transliterating not translating is required.

We drive past the turn off for Thiva / Thebes. Rowena gasps and murmurs a lot about being IN history. Rowena tells Adrian about Oedipus, and Oedipal complexes.

We come into Arahova first. Like the Lonely Planet Guidebook warns us, the streets are flanked by handwoven carpet sellers. Despite the motivation of the tourist dollar, it makes the town look attractive. But it would be better without the tourists. We play spot the nationality. Germans are easy.

Arahova is where many Greeks stay to holiday at the nearby ski resort of Mt Parnassos (1750m).

We come into Delphi, the ruins, or more the tour coaches around the ruins. We glimpse columns and gasp. Delphi is atop a hill and below the roads wind through hardy greenery with the odd Doric column – more gasping. Delphi overlooks the Gulf of Corinth. We see it below as we take the parallel one way streets of the town. We like it a lot more than tourist filled Arahova and finally spot our hotel, Hotel Pan. We marvel we keep managing to find our pre booked hotels in Europe without any town maps and instructions like 100 metres after the BP, which can lose a lot of important detail in translation. Our room is simple, lino floors, bare walls. But we have a balcony looking down the hill towards the Gulf of Corinth. Priceless. We were to spend many moments on this balcony, eating kebab, drinking local beer, eating pistachio nuts a plenty, listening to the music from the bells around the wandering goat herds (me especially) doing yoga stretches (me again, a fad I’ve now grown out of), contemplating life and listening to the loud and pretentious Australians next door.

Adrian rests, Rowena explores. There are many cats to chase, old wooden doors to photographs. Adrian is quickly woken with tales of doors and cats.

Dinner is plates of cheese - fried, cheese baked, vine leaves – stuffed, meat – grilled, wine – drunk.

We sit on our balcony, the goats silent, the Australians elsewhere, listening to foreign chatter on the breeze until we sleep.