I said to Carol the other morning, "We are in Greece!" And it was true! Thanks to a generous and supportive congregation, we are following in some of the footsteps of the Apostle Paul (they call him Saint Paul, or Hagios Paulus over here).
After a great 9 hour flight, we landed in Athens Monday morning at 6:38 am (approximately) and drove the beautiful 500 km stretch from Athens to Thessalonica to our hotel in the Seich Sou Forest overlooking the city and harbour (and, just 45 Euro a night!). The drive was fantastic, cruising along in our Hyundai i20 at 130 kilometres per hour (the posted speed limit), we became accustomed to seeing the sea on our right and the mountains on our left (and, occasionally on our left, BMWs, Mercedes, and VWs whizzing past us at north of 150kph!). This incredible highway with world-class views, snakes around and sometime right under the mountains, with tunnels reaching 2 kilometres long. The crumbling Greek economy picked up some lost ground on us as it collected 26 Euro in tolls. Monday night we went to bed tired and eager to hit the road again Tuesday.
Tuesday: Philippi, which they pronounce here as - filippy - a tiny little dead town 150 kilometres east of Thessaloniki. As we sped along the Egnatia Odos (remember the Via Egnatia from history class?), we thought of Paul, Silas and Timothy walking this path and seeing some of the same sights we were taking in -- fields of poppies, goat-herders, the sea, the mountains, and villages set at the base of the mountains where the fields of green produced lush olive, fig and grain crops.
When we arrived at the ruins of Ancient Philippi, we were about the third car in the parking lot. The grounds-keeper, cutting the grass with a cigarette in his mouth (I think every Greek except the smallest of children smokes), nodded as we passed. We first looked for the WC (Water Closet) where we spent .45 c on toilet paper from the dispenser (how IS their economy in shambles with ingenuity like this?). The man in the guardhouse took our 4 Euro each (a combined pass for the ruins and the museum, works out to $5.20 each, ok, I can see how their economy is a mess, they could have charged us WAY more here).
Then, Ancient Philippi. There were many interesting sites and we took lots of pictures, but the one most interesting to us was the prison in which Paul and Silas praised God even though they were prisoners, and then were set free when an earthquake rocked the prison.
After seeing this in person, more of a cistern in a pit than the kind of thing we would see on movies like "Dead Man Walking", I got a bit of a sense for the intimacy of the place and how close the prison was to so many other things. In fact, this prison was just a few feet away from the Egnatia Odos and the main town square (Agora) of Ancient Philippi, where Paul and Silas were likely arrested, just a few dozen yards beyond that.
After Philippi, we went just up the road to the town of Lydia, which includes a little spot just outside the town of Philippi, along a river (you readers of Acts 16 know where this is going). We stopped at Lydia's Baptistry, which seems to have gone through a few upgrades since that historic day when the first convert on European soil received Christ.
On the way back to Thessaloniki, we stopped to buy some supplies (read: wine) at BritMac (read: Walmart, Philippian style) where we met the lovely couple who run the place -- Steve and Chris. She is from Holland and he is from Britain. He told me that there were a "*****-load" of religious sites to see and that, 'as everybody knows' Lydia was Paul's girlfriend. He reminded me that even people close to the story can miss the story. And then he said, as he told me about a nearby monastery I should visit: "God's there, you can feel it." And I was reminded, that God really did create all of us with an impulse, even a desire for him. Which is really what this trip is all about.
After a great 9 hour flight, we landed in Athens Monday morning at 6:38 am (approximately) and drove the beautiful 500 km stretch from Athens to Thessalonica to our hotel in the Seich Sou Forest overlooking the city and harbour (and, just 45 Euro a night!). The drive was fantastic, cruising along in our Hyundai i20 at 130 kilometres per hour (the posted speed limit), we became accustomed to seeing the sea on our right and the mountains on our left (and, occasionally on our left, BMWs, Mercedes, and VWs whizzing past us at north of 150kph!). This incredible highway with world-class views, snakes around and sometime right under the mountains, with tunnels reaching 2 kilometres long. The crumbling Greek economy picked up some lost ground on us as it collected 26 Euro in tolls. Monday night we went to bed tired and eager to hit the road again Tuesday.
Tuesday: Philippi, which they pronounce here as - filippy - a tiny little dead town 150 kilometres east of Thessaloniki. As we sped along the Egnatia Odos (remember the Via Egnatia from history class?), we thought of Paul, Silas and Timothy walking this path and seeing some of the same sights we were taking in -- fields of poppies, goat-herders, the sea, the mountains, and villages set at the base of the mountains where the fields of green produced lush olive, fig and grain crops.
When we arrived at the ruins of Ancient Philippi, we were about the third car in the parking lot. The grounds-keeper, cutting the grass with a cigarette in his mouth (I think every Greek except the smallest of children smokes), nodded as we passed. We first looked for the WC (Water Closet) where we spent .45 c on toilet paper from the dispenser (how IS their economy in shambles with ingenuity like this?). The man in the guardhouse took our 4 Euro each (a combined pass for the ruins and the museum, works out to $5.20 each, ok, I can see how their economy is a mess, they could have charged us WAY more here).
Then, Ancient Philippi. There were many interesting sites and we took lots of pictures, but the one most interesting to us was the prison in which Paul and Silas praised God even though they were prisoners, and then were set free when an earthquake rocked the prison.
After Philippi, we went just up the road to the town of Lydia, which includes a little spot just outside the town of Philippi, along a river (you readers of Acts 16 know where this is going). We stopped at Lydia's Baptistry, which seems to have gone through a few upgrades since that historic day when the first convert on European soil received Christ.
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