Supplementing my history knowledge

We started our day out in Nafplio, taking some time to tour the Palamidi castle ruins. George offered us the chance to climb the 999 steps up and I was embarrassed to confess that I have too many injuries to take it on. But I bet some of you would:

Then we moved on to our drive to Delphi, which we tour tomorrow. George says you need at least two hours there and I aim to convince him that’s not true. He provided an introduction to Delphi as we drove today and I failed to follow much of it. There was discussion of an oracle and some water and some hallucinogenic theories. I was grateful to Ron for his on point and impressive questions. Every once in awhile, I would gain some credibility by interrupting George to ask Ron to hand up the snack bag so I could rifle through it. I asked about the solar panels that blanket the country and how much he pays for his car insurance is ($250 per year) or his property taxes ($400 per year). For fun, and to test his distractibility, I’ll share the corresponding Tacoma figure (car $1800 and house $8000).

En route to Delhpi, we were able to stop at a few places that I researched and that are most definitely not archaeological sites.

The first is a town called Distomo, a little village that was the site of a Nazi massacre on June 10, 1944, just 4 days after the invasion at Normandy. The Nazis knew they were going to lose the war and they were paranoid and angry. Troops descended upon Distomo, certain that it was a guerilla stronghold of some type and ended up murdering almost everyone in the village – babies, adults – shooting, disemboweling.

There’s a little memorial museum at Distomo. We were the only people there but it was staffed by two women who showed us a short movie with survivor stories and then we were led upstairs to their memorial wall, which had pictures of each murdered person and a wall with a picture of each recovered skull.

There was also this picture of the Nazis, relaxing after their victory:

We also stopped at Livadia, at the suggestion of George. It’s gorgeous!

Here’s Livadia:

And here’s George, fabulous driver, confidante, teacher and Greek escort. If you find yourself in Greece, Private Greece Tours is definitely the way to go!

Our final stop of the day was Hosios Lukas monastery because I’ll do pretty much anything to get to wander around someone else’s house. This place was built, or at least initially built, in about 950 AD.

Here’s a monk’s room:

We’re having an awesome time. Ron’s had some issues with his underwear not drying quickly enough. I’m not sure how he’s compensating for it but I’m not getting involved. I’ve learned to check each toilet’s locking mechanism before pursuing any business in a bathroom and a warier, smarter me was able to notice this today and leave the door slightly ajar: