Half-way up: a pessimist's perspective

In the morning, we went to the Temple at Delphi.  For the uninitiated, this required a lengthy and steep pilgrimage from the street level to the temple proper (the columns sticking up in the clearing of the cypresses).  From there, you would continue to ascend to the Theatre (the stone ampitheatre to the left of the columns.  Amazing acoustics - I made my debut with a little impromptu singing), and then ascend twice that distance over to the Stadium (that flat line/plateau just below the sheer mountain face).  The view was, at that point, literally, breathtaking.  We wondered if the athletes that competed in the games had to engage in high altitude training, or if it was a plot to rig the games in favor of the mountain-loving Delphians over the lowland Athenians.

But the real cruel part was descending halfway to the base of the valley to the Temple of Athena Pronea (pictured above in the foreground), looking up at everywhere we had climbed.  The street level is only midway at the picture just before the first cypress line, and we still had to climb out of this site.