The Sacred Way
I arrived in Delphi tonight (pronounced "del-fee" if you want to sound authentic) after renting a car and driving for a few hours along what the ancient Greeks called "the sacred way." The path was revered because Delphi was considered the omphalos--the navel of the earth, literally, or what we might call the center of the world. Of course nowadays much of the "sacred path" is a motorway!
My first sight of the archaeological site at Delphi was reminiscent of driving to Stonehenge on the Salisbury plain: you know where you are heading, and you have a rough idea of what it will look like, but it's still rather breathtaking how it just appears on the side of the road unexpectedly all of a sudden.