Going to Greece

If you are reading this, you likely know that I was recently in Turkey and Greece for a school trip. And if you did not know that...now you do! :) We left on May 18 from JFK airport in New York. The flight was 10 hours, which is a really, really long time to be in the same seat. I didn't sleep much on the airplane, but I got a few short naps in. This is the first week of travels, where we were in Greece.

May 19

We landed in Istanbul around 5am local time, went through customs, got our bags, and got on a bus to head towards the Greece/Turkey boarder. The first bus ride was about 2 hours, and then we switched buses to get across the border. I don't remember much about the border crossing, I slept through most of it. Then right after the border crossing we got on another bus for about 3 hours. During this bus ride we stopped for lunch in a little city along the water. I had the best chickpeas of my life, but it also could have been that I was really hungry and tired. We made it to our hotel in Kavala, Greece and I tried really hard to not fall asleep before dinner (though I may have taken a little nap), but I still slept really well at night.

May 20

This morning we started by seeing Philippi. We then went to the Church of St. Lydia. Lydia is thought to have been the first pastor of the Christian church in Philippi. My professor had asked if I would be willing to speak at the river by the church where Lydia was baptized. This was an amazing experience, especially as a woman in ministry, since Lydia may have been the first female pastor. After our site visits we started driving towards Thessaloniki, Greece where we were spending he night. We had a buffet for dinner and then went out for gelato after. We found a place in the town square that had gelato made with buffalo milk, which was great since I generally stay away from cow's milk.

May 21

Today we spent some time in a museum where we saw a lot of sculptures, some ancient jewelry...some of it was even pure gold! My lack of sleep started to catch up to me today, but we continued the morning walking around the city center which helped to keep me awake. We even went to the "top" of the city and got to see large portions of the old city walls. A few of us then went to lunch where I had a black lentil salad with mackerel, which was almost as good as the chickpeas from two days ago. The rest of the afternoon we had some free time so Allison and I walked around the city a bit (and got a picture because we were accidently twinning) and made it back to the hotel without a GPS which made us feel like we were really smart. After dinner we went out again for gelato because "when in Greece."

May 22

We were changing cities today so it was an earlier morning than before. Our first stop was at the tomb of Philip II. When we stopped for lunch after, I found paprika Pringles which are amazing, but you cannot buy them in the States. We then spent the afternoon visiting monasteries. They were on the top of these sort of pointy rock and mountain formations. There were churches at each of the monasteries that had some amazing and detailed icons, but we couldn't take pictures in the churches. After the monastery visits, we began our drive to our next hotel.

May 23

Today was our travel day to Athens, Greece. It began fairly early so we could have some time to explore Athens in the evening. I took a few little naps on the bus on the way since I was still feeling tired from all our travel. We ate lunch in Athens before visiting a museum. There were a lot of pigeons in the city and so we "accidently" dropped a few French fries on the sidewalk. (Most restaurants are right along the road on the sidewalk with lots of outdoor seating.) We then went to a museum in Athens that had a lot of sculptures throughout hundreds of years. When we got to Athens we went to the Plaka (which is a lot of streets that wind around and all look the same...super easy to get lost) to get some pre dinner desserts because again "when in Greece." I had a lemon tart that was delicious, and still had room for our buffet dinner. After dinner a few of us went out to walk around again and got surrounded by 3 people trying to sell us flowers. It is a way people try to make money off tourists by forcing flowers in their hands and then making them pay you even if you don't want the flowers. We knew what they were doing and that they were trying to scam us, so we got out of there and kept walking. That night we went up to the roof of the hotel to take some pictures of the Parthenon in Athens which we had a great view of.

May 24

This morning we made the hike up to Acro Corinth, which is the highest part of the old city of Corinth. There really wasn't much left from the old city; a few walls and some parts of buildings. The hike was mostly for the view and to say we had been to the top of Corinth. It was a long and hot hike that we did as quick as possible so we would have enough time the rest of the day. We then ate lunch, where I got a gyro platter which is all the parts of a gyro, but not wrapped up. In the afternoon we went to the main part of the old city of Corinth and had fun taking turns standing where Paul likely spoke to the city from.

May 25

Naturally if we were staying in Athens, at some point we were going to go to the old city of Athens. Today was that day. It started early so we could try to beat some of the crowds, but there were multiple cruise ships in Athens so there were crowds all day. We got to go right up to the Parthenon, which made it look a lot bigger than a few nights ago. After seeing the Parthenon we went to Mars Hill which is where it is thought the curtain between the divine and the human is thin. For lunch we had authentic street gyros which are one of my favorite foods in Greece. The rest of the afternoon was free time so we wandered looking for some souvenirs since it was our last day in Greece.

Stay tuned for another blog post about the Turkey part of the trip!