November 16, 2016 - Delving into Delos

Our ship brought us to Mykonos today, but we decided to visit the nearby island of Delos. This area is part of the Cycladic Islands. In ancient times Delos was a very important island despite its small size. It was a sacred place halfway between mainland Greece and Asia Minor. For many centuries BCE Delos was Greek. Next came the Romans, who built it up t a major commercial port. The population grew to 30,000. However, in 88 BC the town was attacked and looted by Mithridates, King of Pontus and an enemy of Rome. The invaders killed 20,000 citizens and captured the rest to serve as slaves. The buildings were burned and collapsed in on themselves. As a result, much of the city was preserved under the rubble. The site was rediscovered in 1872. Since that time about 20% of it has been excavated. Yes, it's a very slow pace.

  It is quite amazing to see the foundations of so many buildings and realize that this was once a large civilized urban area with shops, temples, neighborhoods, harbors, palaces, public art, and indoor plumbing. There was a theater, a stadium and a large hippodrome. There was even a synagogue. A small museum houses some of the statues and some magnificent mosaics. There is also a display of household artifacts. In addition to the usual pottery, there were several cases holding small metal tools and implements. I was surprised at how sophisticated these objects were. Today Delos is in ruins and is uninhabited because the entire island is designated as a museum. Delos is worth seeing, but not through a Princess tour such as ours. Our tour was terrible for two reasons: First, our guide, George, was really bad. He made things up. He was very unprofessional. He made us listen to his personal political opinions, which happened to be rather offensive. I suspect he was not a rofessional guide. It was obvious that he didn't know much about the history of the place or about art history. Second, the process of getting to Delos was poorly managed and it wasted over an hour of our time. We had to sit on a non-moving boat waiting for God knows what. It is possible to go there n your own during the summer season, but this time of year there is only one boat and it makes only one trip over. If you are not part of a tour organized by the ship, I don't even know how you would get on that boat. We had to go into town on another boat to get the boat to Delos. After the tour, of course, the boat from Delos took us directly back to our ship, making it impossible for us to get into town without paying them for another ride. They really had us coming and going. At that point we had a little time before sailaway but did not feel like trying to get into town and depending on a boat (waterbus) with no particular schedule to get us back to the ship. No siree. It was great to be back in a more predictable environment. We had a nice dinner and enjoyed one of Princess' best production shows, Do You Wanna Dance?