Delphi

The final chapter of my trips last summer was Delphi in Greece. It is around 2 hours bus ride from Athens. The town is located on a mountain overlooking a wide valley. The view from the top was amazing. Some of the restaurants there are built on the edge of a cliff so that people can enjoy the view downhill.

Delphi was the site of the Oracle in ancient Greece. I like Greek mythologies because it has many fantasy creatures and also because of its storyline. However, visiting the place is a different story as the mythology is often better than the reality.

The main place to visit in Delphi was an archeological site located on the mountain. Despite the ruins appearance, the site still gave some trace of its majestic past. Well, at least it is still good to enjoy because of the scenery, plus since we were EU students at that time, we got free entry to the sites.

Cape of Poseidon

Just an hour drive from Athens, there is this cape of Poseidon. We were lucky that the weather was pretty good when we arrived there. The temple overlooking the sea is now in ruins but at least it still shows the trace of the shape.

One thing I like about capes is that it has a wide horizon view of the sea. It brings tranquility and relaxing feel to look at the infinity. It also helps that the sea and sky is clear blue and not gloomy.

Athens

The final part of our last summer trip was a trip to Greece (it's almost a year now from the trip itself, indeed how lazy I am . . ). Athens looks more similar to Indonesia rather than the other parts of Europe, no piazza or medieval buildings, lots of cars on the streets. The exception was the existence of some ancient archaeological sites in the city. These sites, however, are much less glorious than it was in the past.

In the valley there was the temple of Zeus, only some massive pillars are left now. The main site was in a small hill housing Parthenon. Restoration works are in progress but I still feel somewhat pity that these once majestic buildings are becoming ruins now.

Below the Parthenon hill, there is the Mars hill or Areopagus where Paul presented the Gospel to the Athenians. It is not exactly the best place to sit and discuss anything as the hill is not flat. Perhaps the ancient people were just stronger than us.

Mini Switzerland

At the end of our swiss trip, we went to see a miniature park with some of the famous landmark and landscape of Switzerland in a smaller scale. It is hosted in a small town called Melide.

While the theme park was more aimed for kids/families, with small trains for children running around the park, it was pretty enjoyable. In particular, we could identify the landmarks that we visited before and also get to know the landmarks in other areas of Switzerland that we missed.

ICF Easter Retreat 2009

Recently, I attended an Easter retreat for the Indonesian Christian Community in the UK. It's refreshing spiritually, with plenty of good food as well. I had a good time meeting other Indonesian and, of course, to stop speaking English for a while . .

Lugano

Another small town we went into was lugano. It is the Italian-speaking part of switzerland and thus all the signs were in italian but with swiss flag.

The station is on the hill, so in order to go down and around we need to walk down through the city center. But it was a pleasant walk because the city center has a typical medieval pavement.

At the end of the walk there was the lugano lake. The lake brought about the feeling of calmness and freshness as it is surrounded by mountains.

Luzern

The next part of the trip was luzern, a small town easily reachable from zurich. The town as pretty with a river flowing across it. I like the river because it is green in color and not brown like in the big cities. Also the place is surrounded by mountains, so it feels closer to nature.

As with swiss cities, the houses are painted in a light colors giving extra feeling of brightness. And since we visited during summer, the flowers were blooming adding the richness in color.

One thing that is supposed to be famous was the dying lion carving on the wall, I couldn't remember why. I find it more enjoyable to going around the city and the rivers.