It’s late Monday night, the 24th, in Heraklion, Crete. We’ve had a wild couple days since we last posted. We left Ancient Olympia just as the first few hundred of what eventually would total more than 1,000 Greek policeman took over the ruins and the little town for the official torch lighting ceremony for the 2008 Olympics in Beijing. The cops shut down the ruins, ordered everybody away and seemed highly uptight and nervous. We had a moment of dismay as one officer told us the museum and everything was shut down until 3 p.m. — meaning we wouldn’t have seen one of the most important museums in Greece. (Rick was intrepid and found out we just had to find another route to the museum — but thank Zeus we had toured the ruins the afternoon before, or we would have been out of luck.) As we left, we met busload after window-barred busload of police officers rolling into town. As it turned out, they were right to be tense:  The next day, during the official torch lighting, in front of the president of Greece, top officials from China and everybody who is anybody in the International Olympic Committee, Tibetan protesters disrupted the ceremony, including a woman covered with fake blood who threw herself in front of the first torch carrier. We can’t seem to stop getting tangled up in major news events. Please, this is supposed to be a vacation. Anyway, yesterday we drove to Delphi and Arachova, this tiny village on a cliff below Mount Parnassus, where they are still skiing this spring. All the traffic is funneled into a twisting one-lane street through the center of town, tour buses, giant construction equipment and all. And the sidewalks are virtually non-existent — imagine a leisurely apres-ski stroll leaping away from careening buses…. We drove through it twice looking for our hotel, and a place to park — also virtually non-existent. We lucked on to a parking place on the outskirts of the village, then dragged our luggage up and down cobblestone alleys and stairways, looking for our hotel. We asked for directions twice, and might still be looking for it at this very moment, if Courtenay had not deciphered the Greek lettering, written in calligraphy style, a name written on a little piece of wood on a nondescript door. It was our hotel! It was really cool inside, with odd-shaped small rooms, fireplaces and, in the basement, the first heated, open pool that we have had since our vacation started. Will was thrilled. Will and his father later went swimming, and shared the pool with a comely European woman, whom Will later advised his mother, was wearing a swimsuit that was “too small.” So it was. We went from Arachova to the ruins of Delphi, which were flat-out the coolest thing we’ve seen in Greece, just a spectacular place, a spot of sacred worship for millenia, carved out of towering mountains. This is the mythological center of the earth — the place where the two eagles that Zeus turned loose at each end of the earth met as they flew around the world. The Delphic Pythia (an oracular priestess) gave oracles for centuries, including to Oedipus Rex. We walked past the temple of the Apollo, and climbed to the top of the site, where there is a nearly intact stadium from thousands of years ago. It was a remarkable morning — sunny, beautiful, full of birds and wildflowers, with few people at the ruins as early as we were. The slide show above this post shows some of the things we saw. We left Delphi and its museum in the late morning, and drove back to Athens. We killed several hours in the airport, and then flew to Heraklion, Crete. We’re here the next two nights. Tomorrow is Independence Day in Greece, and there will be a parade here in Heraklion. We’re hoping for a quiet day, with no news, no strikes, no protests. Just this once.  Early morning note: Courtenay opened up the curtains to the room to see a row of policemen marching through the square — we’re hoping they are participants in the parade, and not that the flame will be run through town, or George  Bush has decided to vacation in Crete (like he did when we were in Kyoto.) Cheers! We’ll let you know…