Spending the afternoon amidst the 17,000 art works in the New York Metropolitan Museum’s comparatively new Hellenistic and Roman galleries to prepare for a meeting tomorrow with curator Sean Hemingway (Ernest’s grandson) and my upcoming MedTrek around The Peloponnese in Greece.

You can Follow The Idiot there beginning with my seance with the oracle at Delfi at sunrise on September 5.

And my friends at the Met will help me on my way.

A poser in the Met’s Greek Gallery.

The Three Graces have their own guard.

The face of Zeus.

Heracles shows off.

Another poser in the Met’s Greek Gallery.

As I walked through the Met exhibit yesterday I reminded curator Sean Hemingway about the anecdote in “A Moveable Feast” when his grandfather described a visit to the Louvre with F. Scott Fitzgerald. They went to scrutinize penises on Greek statues to reassure Scott that his wasn’t too small. How sweet!

Now exiting Manhattan for a dawdling drive through New England that will take me to the shores of Lake Champlain in Charlotte, Vermont, and back to New York City through the Berkshires/Cape Cod during the next week. Then to London on the 31st and Greece to meet the oracle at Delfi on September 5.

Text and Photos by Joel Stratte-McClure

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About Joel

Joel Stratte-McClure has been a global trekker since the 1970s. He lived in France for over 30 years, working as a journalist, before he turned his attention to a unique life-time-project of walking the shores of the Mediterranean. The first 4,401 kilometers are explored in his inspirational and entertaining first book "The Idiot and the Odyssey: Walking the Mediterranean." The next 4,401 kilometers are covered in the gods-filled sequel, "The Idiot and the Odyssey II: Myth, Madness and Magic on the Mediterranean,” published on Valentine's Day 2013. The last 4,401 kilometers will be discussed in the last book of the trilogy currently entitled "The Idiot and the Odyssey III: Alexander the Great Walks the Mediterranean."