Greece Trip Days #3-4

On the morning of October 3, we left our Corinth hotel before 7:00 and drove towards Athens. We stopped for about 15 minutes at the Corinthian Canal to take pictures and wait for someone from our hotel to bring an iPod that one of the students had left in the dining room. Then we proceeded into the greater Athens area, skirting the center and ultimately arriving at the port of Piraeus, where we boarded our cruise ship. It took some doing to get everything situated: we had to go through a security check, check our luggage through to the ship, and turn over our passports to be stored in the ship's safe. In return we received plastic cards that were to be scanned whenever we boarded or disembarked from the ship. They also functioned as credit cards for anything we purchased while on the ship.

We sailed from Athens at 11:00 a.m. and headed for the island of Mykonos, which does not have much to recommend it from a historical standpoint. However, it is very picturesque and is a playground for the Mediterranean upper class. We arrived at 6:30 and had a few hours to wander. My family only stayed ashore for about an hour before returning to the ship for supper and to put the kids to bed. The food on the ship was excellent, and most meals could be taken either in the full-service restaurant or the open-air buffet at the top of the ship. We enjoyed the service at the restaurant but took some meals from the buffet during the cruise to simplify things with the children.

Our ship sailed around 11:00 p.m. from Mykonos, and the following morning we woke up in the Turkish port of Kusadasi. We disembarked at 7:00 and boarded a couple of tour buses that took us about ten miles to the site of ancient Ephesus. Our tour through Ephesus lasted over an hour and culminated with a short devotional in the theater where the mob gathered in opposition to Paul's ministry, as recorded in Acts 19. Dr. Gardner and I both spoke to the group there about the significance of Ephesus and its place in early Christianity. Many of the students were clearly overwhelmed by the setting. I later heard compliments about our group's singing from other people on the cruise ship who overheard us in the theater that morning.

After leaving Ephesus, the buses took us back to Kusadasi and dumped us at a carpet workshop where we received a mandatory demonstration and sales pitch. The two buses actually separated our group and took us to different places. A couple of students did buy small carpets to take home. A persistent salesman took my family into a room by ourselves and tried to sell us something. The carpets were all very nice, but we ultimately succeeded in resisting the pitch. I heard later that a student from the other bus narrowly avoided spending most of his money for the semester on a leather jacket.

Everyone eventually made it back to the ship, which sailed in the afternoon to Patmos, the site of the writing of Revelation. Our tour bus took us to the cave where, according to church tradition, John received the revelation from God and composed the book. After our visit there, the bus took us up to the top of the ridge to visit an Orthodox monastery founded in the 11^th century. The monastery's museum contained a number of important manuscripts, including one of the oldest known copies of Mark's Gospel. The chapels of the monastery also contain important frescoes that have been brilliantly restored in recent years.

Our bus took us back to the port. Most of the students (and my wife) took advantage of some free time to do some souvenir shopping. I took the kids back onto the ship to play in the children's area. We sailed for Crete around 8:00 p.m.