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Izzy's Trip To Greece 2019

This past month I had the amazing opportunity to go to Greece, Turkey, and Italy with my Grandma and a group from her Church! We were out of the country for a total of two weeks! On the trip we followed the footsteps of Paul, the Apostle, which included going to Athens, Corinth, Berea, Phillipi, Thessaloniki (Thessalonica),the islands of Crete, Santorini, Patmos, and Mykonos! We also visited Izmir, in Turkey, and Rome! I'm so thankful I got to go and experience a piece of Biblical history!! I'm also thankful for the chance to meet such amazing people and spend that time with Grandma! And now for pictures! WARNING! There will be a lot!! :)
Right before we left Denver!!!
 It took one in a half days to get there, with two layovers.
 But, by God's grace, we finally arrived!! :D


At our first hotel!
And here we are in Thessaloniki!
Then we headed for the ancient city of Philippi (Acts 16:12), where Paul preached his first European sermon and baptized Lydia, the first convert in Europe.
The city was built by Philip of Macedon, father of Alexander the Great, in 358 BC.
This was an amazing first place to visit!!
The group
Harriet
 Devotions before our first day of touring!
The river that Lydia was baptized in!
A beautiful Greek Orthodox Church!
The inside was just beautifully cool!!



"Shooting" each other!
This is Pastor Lindeman! He was a lot of fun!! :)
In Phillipi:
What they believe to be the location (behind the wall) where Paul and Silas were imprisoned
Inside the prison.
This was an archaeological excavation of Roman Philippi from the time of Paul!  
You can only imagine what it looked like in its glory days!



The remains of an actual floor from Paul's time!!
It was beautiful!
An ancient toilet! Pretty neat, huh?
Paula and her Mom, Mrs. Spark



An old amphitheater! If you faced the seats and talked, your voice echoed...
...so Gene was the first to try it! :D
Becky
This view from our bus was amazing!
Back to Thessaloniki
An ancient wall!! Awesome!!

Selfie!!

Looking over the city





"This is the most famous monument in Thessaloniki today. The infamous White Tower dominates the entrance to this ancient city. The White Tower was built sometime after 1430 by Ottoman Turks to replace the earlier Byzantine fortifications. It has also been referred to as the Tower of Blood or the Red Tower due to the tortures and mass executions carried out there when it served as a prison. Today it is a museum of Byzantine Culture." (tour book)
 The streets didn't seem as organized over there as they are in the U.S!


 A Catholic Church we toured!
And into the basement we go!

A Roman bath
The Church was very pretty!
This was one famous tree!
And here we are at Berea, where Paul
 and Silas ministered to the Jewish community around 54 and 55 A.D and where Paul found Jewish travelers who examined Paul's message to see if it was true to scripture!
FUN!!! But also kind of creepy!! :)
The Corinth Canal!
"The Corinth Canal connects the Gulf of  Corinth with the Saronic Gulf in the Aegean Sea. It cuts through the narrow Isthmus of Corinth and separates the Peloponnese from the Greek mainland, arguably making the peninsula an island. The canal was dug through the Isthmus at sea level and has no locks."  
It's so pretty!!!
A beach we stopped at for only a short amount of time.
It was so awesome!
Looking out over the ocean!
This was just amazing beauty!! 




Ancient Corinth, if you didn't guess, where Paul spent 18 months in ministry. 
Corinth was a major commercial crossroad in the ancient world. 





 This was absolutely AMAZING!!! :D
The group! So many amazing people!! 

Oh, it's Pastor Lindeman again!!! :)
Dorothy, Mary, and Grandma
The museum was really neat! Seeing all the ancient sculpures they dug up was just amazing!
 Inside the museum




This poor guy had a cracked head!
Not ancient, just pretty!!


Becky, Mrs. Spark, Paula, Barb, and Sharon!
(One of my favorites!)

And Brad! He was a lot of fun!! :)

One of the streets that Paul actually walked down!

Ancient Corinth from a distance! 
So pretty!!
Another bus view!
The view from our hotel in Athens!

 And we're off to a new site!
 This picture was kind of hard to get!
From my spot on the bus!

 Headed up to see the Acropolis!

The view halfway up!
Overlooking the city
And the Acropolis! This was just spectacular!!
"The Acropolis of Athens is one of the most famous ancient archaeological sites in the world! Over the centuries, the Acropolis was many things: a home of kings, a citadel, a mythical home of the gods, a religious center and a tourist attraction. It has withstood bombardment, massive earthquakes and vandalism, yet it still stands as a reminder of the rich history of Greece."  






Wow, that's a lot of buildings!!



Thankfully we caught it right at golden hour!



 Mars Hill!
The soldiers marching up to the Acropolis to do the night shift guarding.
The view of the Acropolis from Mars Hill!
 The view of the city! Spectacular!

 We got there right when the sun was setting!

 Simply awesome
Another shot of the Acropolis!
The cruise ship!! Not too big and not too small!!! We spent three days on it and sailed to the four islands of Patmos, Mykonos, Santorini, and Crete!
Some cool creatures the staff made with the towels!!




On the inside of the boat!! 
Some people said it wasn't very fancy, but I sure thought it was! 
 Pastor Lindeman :p
 Paula and Mrs. Spark :)
And the stage they use for shows!! 
 Our cabin
 We got to go up on deck for "take off"!!
And, as you can tell, it was very windy once we got going!! 
It was like sticking your head out of a car window!! 
 And pretty soon, it was just Grandma and me!
 Goodbye, Athens!! It was fun!!
 Hello, sea!! Here we come!!


 Some more boat pictures!!



 Thankfully I got all these pictures when almost no one was around!!
Where everyone was, I have no idea!!
And the staircases going down, down, and further down!
It got pretty crowded in the main lobby at times!! 
 And we arrived at the island of Mykonos!!


 It was so pretty!!! :D
This boat was neat!!! :)



All the buildings were white!! 

Walking through the streets!! (The staircases led up to houses).
 The streets got kind of tight at times!!



Windmills that are over 100 years old!! It was hard to get a clear picture due to the lighting!!

 The view of the island at night!!

 This was a neat idea!!
Yup, lots of street pictures!!! :D
The show on the cruise ship that night! 
 And after sailing all night, we reached Izmir, Turkey!!

 The color pattern of the buildings was rainbow-ish!

Our boat way back there!
 This is what we would call an amusement park!
 Overlooking the country side!



A statue of Mary
"*Erected by the American society of Ephesus
(George B. Quatman foundation)
In honor of the blessed virgin Mary, mother of Jesus
Her last years were spent in Ephesus.
October 13, 1996*"
Touring an Ancient city that Paul actually lived in for a short time!
Clay pipes


Walking down a street that Paul walked down! So cool!!
 
Pillars!


Grandma and me





 More ancient toilets! And a cat.

 George, our tour guide, Ida, Doron, and Harriet



There were lots of cats for all you cat lovers!! 
An old library

  At a rug shop!
 Although all they were trying to do was get
us to buy them, I still really enjoyed looking at some!!
I don't think I would ever step on these!!






This one was absolutely beautiful! But who would use it as a rug?! 


  The people who worked there got pretty annoying after awhile!
 And there's a KFC restaurant! Who'd a thunk!
 Some more carpets

We set sail again and arrived on our second island, Patmos! Where we departed the cruise ship and headed to the island on a smaller boat!


 The view was amazing after we climbed a little!!
The cruise ship
 The building we were going up to!



 This place was amazing!
Unfortunately you couldn't take pictures inside the Holy church that we toured.....
But hey, I got pictures out the windows!!

It looked better in person! :p
Looking downstairs from upstairs!

Another pretty sunset
Gene, Mrs. Spark, me, Brad, and Barb







The island of Crete!! Honestly, this was my least favorite part of the trip! But all good things, all good things!! :) St. Paul stopped on Crete on his way to Rome, but it was on the southern shore at a place called Fair.


 The "charging bull" fresco!
 The history part was actually really amazing!! "This site is what still exists of an ancient civilization referred to as Minoan, and the abandonment dates from approximately shortly after the exodus of the Israelites from Egypt. The reasons for the abandonment are unknown.
It had been estimated to be built between 1700 BC and 1400 BC. The ruins contain amazing frescos including the famous "charging bull." Frescos are painted before the plaster on a wall or ceiling becomes dry. Thus the color is incorporated into the plaster and becomes permanent."





 Dave

Brad and Barb








 Martha



 And into the city of Crete we go!!!



Hey, look!!! A Ben & Jerry's!


St. Mark's Basilica!

Grandma's reflection
This was my favorite picture from Crete!
 I have never seen pottery this beautiful before!
These knives were really cool! I regret not getting one! :)


And back on the ocean headed to the last island.
It was amazing how blue the water was!
Now that's what I call heavenly!
The window in our cabin that was a lot of fun to sit in! :p
And we have arrived to the island of Santorini!!! This island is the site of the largest volcanic eruptions in recorded history which occurred some 3600 years ago at the height of the Minoan civilization.
The cruise ship again! :) And the volcano behind!!

The "snow" up there is actually buildings!!
This island was by far my favorite!! :) 


There were lots of old buildings! Which was very cool and amazing to see!
These two guy's were up there getting
 their picture taken by a drone! I'm sure that was an amazing picture!


An actual road! Yeah, it was tight when a car came through!!




I don't think I would want a house these colors!!

And down we go!
These are the best pictures I could get of the cave!






Someone spent a lot of time on this!
The view of the ocean from up there!


A different angles of the view! 


All the boats coming in!
There sure were A LOT of people!!


The moon that night was spectacular!!! :D
The sky went through many fazes before the sun went down!

The blue domes! And the amazing sunset!!!
And we're headed to Rome, Italy!!! 

And we made it! Our first evening there
 we took a little walk through one of the squares, which was just amazing!!
I absolutely loved getting pictures like this!!
And we got to see the Pantheon!!!
"The Pantheon is a former Roman temple, now a church, in Rome, Italy, on the site of an earlier temple commissioned by Marcus Agrippa during the reign of Augustus. It was completed by the emperor Hadrian and probably dedicated about 126 AD."
The best picture I got of the inside!
The roof!
(They had drains on the floor for when it rained!)
The scenes walking back to our hotel!!




The next day was probably the busiest day of touring yet! Here we are at Vatican City!!
"Vatican City, a city-state surrounded by Rome, is the headquarters of the Roman Church. It's home to the Pope and a trove of iconic art and architecture. Its Vatican Museums house ancient Roman sculptures such as the famed "Laocoon and His Sons" as well as Renaissance frescos in the Rapheal Rooms and the Sistine Chapel. famous for Michelangelo's ceiling!"
The line to get in!



Inside the city!
Creepy! :)

It was really awesome!


Some of the statues were really kind of creepy!
Such a pretty ceiling!!
That ceiling!!
All tapestries along the walls!
The ceiling here was just beautiful!!





The actual statue!







We got to see the actual paintings that Michelangelo painted, but you couldn't get pictures of them! :(

Next was touring the Basilica of St. Paul! One of Rome's four major ancient basilicas!


Tourists....
The Holy door!!
The inside of St. Paul's Basilica.  
It was AMAZING!!!

One of my favorites!


Colosseum, here we come!!!
There it is!!! :D

Yup, I got a lot of pictures like this of Pastor Lindeman!! :)

The inside was just spectacular!!!! :D

Harriet

Amazing ancient buildings!!!



So old fashioned! Until you get to the back. But hey, it's still cool!!!
So pretty!!
On our second day in Rome we did a walking tour! This was one of my favorite parts of the trip! Not rushing here and there, or riding on a bus, just walking around and seeing their way of life!
It was a ton of fun!!

These two are awesome!! :)

Sharon, Sandy, and Barb
Our group
(Missing a few people)

<3



I'm so glad I got to meet Pastor and Mrs. Lindeman!
 It was so awesome to have a few other "kids" on the trip!!!


This was perplexing! 
After I took this picture he pointed to his bowl on the ground wanting me to put money in. I didn't have any bills small enough to give him for his picture being taken at the moment. Sorry!
A sand dog!
And the Spanish Step!!!
So amazing!!!
After racing Brad up the stairs, the view was fabulous!!! 
Grandma and me

 Trevi fountain!! This was absolutely beautiful!!!
They said you can't touch the water, so I did....
Such a beautiful temple!!
No street lines! :0 :)


Who wants a car like this?! I know I don't!!!


 Just having some fun!!! Our tour guide!
 Me
 Sandy
 Brad
 Becky
 Mrs. Lindeman
Mr. Lindeman
Our last official meal with the group before we all head out!!
 I had such an amazing time!! Thank you so much, Grandma for taking me along!!! :D
Colorado bound! 
Just thinking back on the trip to Greece, Turkey, and Italy! It went by way too fast, I met some amazing people who I will never forget, and I'm just so thankful I got to go! 
It's so extraordinary to be reading the Bible and get to say, "Hey! I've been there!" 
Because I love  history so much, this trip was extra special! 
The history just came alive like never before for me, and what I probably would have forgotten if I had read it in a book will be forever in my mind because I not only read about it, I saw it!

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