Greece, Part 2

So, we rested quite a bit on Saturday, and then that night were ready to be going again. We went up and took pictures of the Acropolis off of our roof, then decided it'd be good to go out and walk for awhile--I was antsy and I wanted to get out and do something, not just stay in the room. So, we walked down toward the Monastiraki square and the Plaka (the old town) and decided we'd go a little further than usual, just to go for a walk. We ended up walking down toward the Agora and while there met a lady who was passing out fliers for Benny Hinn's even the next day. She didn't speak a large amount of English, but she said her church was going and we managed to get directions to go to the church the next morning. We said our goodbyes, thanked her, and went back on our way toward the hotel, but a few minutes later she ran up to us saying that there was a festival for Jesus going on and we should come. Following her back we had no idea where we were going, but I was reasonably sure I could get us back, so I felt safe enough going. She introduced another to another girl who spoke more English and who told us about what was going on: there was an African-Greek church that was doing a concert with their choir, in English, and they were just setting up but had had some delays because of the rain. She also gave us directions to their church so that if we liked the music we could go there the next day. Well, the rain decided to not let them play for a long amount of time and it POURED. I have not seen it rain that hard since the hurricanes in FL last year. We were getting pretty soaked, and we did not want to get sick, so we went back before things got started but that was alright because we had found two options of where to go to church the next day.

We ended up going to the African church since it was English speaking and a bit easier to find. Valbona was a bit worried about the area, but I wasn't paying a terrible amount of attention since I was just paying attention to road signs and streets we'd passed. After a bit of confusion and some help from a man who looked like he might be going to church, we found the church and were invited in. We knew we had found the right place when we saw Acts 1:8 on the wall, or at least that was when I felt we'd found the right place. It was awesome--a bit difficult to understand the accented English at first, but people were great and so were worship and teaching. So, we had fun.

After that, we headed back to the hotel and got changed, then went out to go to the Agora. There was SO MUCH there. It was stunning to the ruins just stretched out as far as you can see. We wandered for a few hours, took a bunch of pictures, visited the museum, got in trouble for a taking a picture we apparently weren't supposed to (the lady yelled something in greek for us to move), wandered a bit more, and then headed back. By then it was later and time to get ready for Benny Hinn so we rested a bit then headed out to the Metro. We had checked it out earlier and bought our tickets so that was all set, it was just a matter of making sure we got off at the right stop, but the man who had helped us find the church was on the same part of the metro, so that told me we were going in the right direction.

Benny Hinn was not particularly thrilling. My main disappointment was that he did not present the Gospel that night. Worship was great, but then it needed a better follow-up than talking about his family's accomplishments.

We got dinner out there and the Olympic Stadium area was beautiful, so we had fun.

After Benny Hinn it was late, so we went to bed and the next day we went to Corinth, which shall be the next post. :)

Greece, Part 1

Okay, so I know that some of you really want to hear about Greece and here goes the beginning at least:
We arrived around 7 Friday night to our hotel after a very short flight in a VERY SMALL plane from an EXTREMELY SMALL airport. The airport in total is maybe the size of Wallmart, and had two gates with three flights leaving besides ours that evening. What I could see from the window (Valbona had the window and we were only slightly in front of the wing) was beautiful, and Athens was just spectacular. And huge. We left small, we came into something incredibly large. Since it was evening, the lights were just starting to come out and the city was just starting to glitter a bit. Our taxi had taken us through lots of small winding streets, which we found were common to Athens and finally arrived at our hotel. I loved the elevator, but I don't think any of the pictures I got did it justice--there was also a wooden spiral staircase that was very pretty, but the old iron elevator was very nice and worked smoothly unless we happened to stick our hands to far out, then it would stop wherever it was (we didn't do that often).

Our room was teeeny but it was very clean and when you looked out the window you could see the acropolis, so that was very nice. We wandered around that first night in a square that we ended up visiting just about every day, got our bearings a bit, and had some very greasy souflaki/soufflache (if you need to know what one of those is, go here: www.kojaxsouflaki.com/fr/menu.htm).
We'd gotten a tourbook but decided that we didn't want to pay 50 euros to go on the Athens sightseeing tour, so we decided we'd start with the Acropolis the next morning. Hotel breakfast was small but that was good since we didn't want to eat a huge amount, and really if I had wanted to be stuffed I could have eaten more. Overall, the only complaint we really had about the hotel was that they didn't change our towels/sheets, they just fixed them up and made them nice each day.

Anyhow, the Acropolis is just the name for the area, there's the Parthenon, the Erechthenion, and the Propylaea, plus a museum and an entrance to Mars Hill (the Areopagus). After a reasonable walk but not a terrible one, we reached the top and got a spectacular view of the city. It reminded me a bit of climbing the mountains in Xining, except the mountain here was higher and the city was much larger. The ruins were amazingly huge and it was neat to image what the city must have looked like when the buildings were standing and not in ruins--though for things in ruins, they were in remarkably good shape. We were there well into the afternoon and then took a break from sightseeing to go eat ice cream and nectarines and to sit/lay down in our hotel. And that, for the moment is where I shall leave you. I'll get to another update another time.