Corinth

Today we visited the ancient city of Corinth where St Paul founded a church, wrote two letters to the Thessalonians and later wrote to letters to the church at Corinth to address various issues that were causing trouble in this congregation.

Our first stop was at the Corinth Canal. This 225' deep cut was complete in 1893, even though it was first proposed in the 4th century BC and several Roman emperors also drew up plans to build it. While an impressive feat of engineering, it is mostly useless today due to it's small size.

Next we visited the ruins of the ancient seaport on the Aegean Sea which Paul used during his journeys. Not much is left, but I found it quite interesting. Corinth is located on an isthmus and was a large trading city. Goods would arrive at either the Aegean Sea or Corinthian Sea port, be traded, and shipped out the other port. A stone causeway was also in use for a while to portage entire ships across the isthmus, but I'm guessing it was not used very much.

This fully excavated street dates back to the time of St Paul so he most likely walked this very street as it led to a stage where many speeches were given.

We were both amazed at the large size of the ruins of the ancient city of Corinth. They are only partially excavated and much work remains. Work on some sections is much father along than others as you can see. Also a few buildings are being rebuilt from fallen pieces.

With so much of the ancient ruins reasonably intact, both Mary and I had a strong sense of history during our visit.

Tomorrow we fly back to Detroit and resume normal life. I'm sure it will take a few dys to get acclimated, but that is how it goes. Even our visit to Venice seems like it was so very long ago and that was just 2 weeks ago. This has been a wonderful trip and I hope you have enjoyed these posts as much as I have enjoyed writing them.

Departing is such sweet sorrow...

Today we had to leave the Pacific Princess. We had a very nice cruise but, unfortunately, all good things do come to a close. It was a "trip of a lifetime" for both of us, seeing things that, a few years ago, we never thought we would see. We appreciated the Princess' Elite level departure lounge since we delayed our departure until 9:00. Our driver was waiting for us as we left the terminal. It was neat seeing our names on one of those placards the drivers hold up.

Last Friday we celebrated our anniversary on board. Princess even scheduled a formal night for us to help celebrate the occasion! They served lobster and king prawns for the main course and Mary's favorite "Floating Islands" for dessert. While we're speaking about food, the Sail Away dinner last night featured Baked Alaska for dessert with the traditional waiter parade around the dining room. It was a fitting way to end our cruise dinners.

Today we are relaxing at our Athens hotel. We can see the Parthenon from our room and our hotel has a rooftop viewing area where you can take great pictures. We talked about taking the Hop on/Hop off around the city just to tour it, but it's election day in Greece and everything is closed except for hotels and restaurants. And being quite hot and sunny it would be quite uncomfortable on the open top of one of those busses so we decide to skip it.

Ephesus

We arrived in Turkey this morning, docking in Kusadasi, which is a short bus ride away from Ephesus. Ephesus used to be on the seacoast, but over time, the sea was pushed back by silt from a river. We had a very knowledgeable tour guide who normally leads 12-14 days tours focused on the journeys of St Paul since he spent several years in this area, known as Asia Minor in the New Testament.

Our first of three stops was the house where Mary, mother of Jesus, lived in Ephesus. John brought her here when he moved to this area between 37 and 48 A.D. to avoid persecution in Israel. It is a small house, but what puzzled us is that it is very high on a hill so it was a very long walk to the city and back. Maybe Mary was able to ride an animal to and from the city.

We walked the length of the recovered portion of the ancient city of Ephesus, about 1 mile, but fortunately it was all downhill. The restoration efforts continue, but most of the cost is not in excavating, but in preserving what has been excavated. You can see how steep the marble street is in this picture. (The two story building at the end is the restored facade of the LIbrary.) This is the original street so we can be pretty certain that St Paul walked this street.

One amazing thing is that this city had running water in all the buildings as well as a sewer system. They build a 25 mile aqueduct to bring water to a large cistern building, then ran pipes from there to the buildings. One large street has a 6x8' sewer underneath it that remains operational today.

Also pictured is the great amphitheater that could seat over 50,000 people. There were also several smaller amphitheaters in town, one of which could "only" seat 2500 people. It's also pretty certain that St Paul preached here during the three years he lived here. Our guide mentioned how they recently used it for a concert and verified the near perfect acoustics. Both Mary and I had a much greater sense of history in visiting Ephesus than in Jerusalem and Bethlehem.

Our last stop was St John's Basilica. This is a 6th century church built over the tomb of St John the Apostle. It was destroyed in a severe earthquake around 1365 and never rebuilt. Restoration efforts started in the 1920's. They have a scale model on display (see picture) so you can appreciate how large it was when originally constructed.

Relaxing on the Ship

Today you are getting several random photos of interest. The first shows how pilots and other inspectors get on board the ship as we approach a port. The ship is met by a small craft (small being a relative term!) that pulls alongside. The ship drops a wooden ladder down from deck 3 and the people climb on board. It's a very interesting process to watch.

Yesterday we had an Arabian dance team on board for a show while we were in Alexandria. A guy was singing in Arabic (Egyptian?) so we had no idea what words he was singing, but the dancers were pretty good and we got to see our first "belly dance". It must take a lot of practice for the belly dancers to get their hips moving like that.

Today was the cooking demonstration with the head chef and Maitre D. They did a nice job, preparing an appetizer, pasta dish and Black Forest for dessert. They were selling a recipe book, but we did not buy one. After the demonstration we had a galley tour that was interesting as well. It's on two levels and has an escalator for bringing the food to the dining room.

We had a Chef's Special Buffet for lunch today. The food was excellent and the desserts even better! Delicious!

Egypt

We had a very long excursion in Egypt, mostly due to the 3-4 hour bus ride each way. {Nile} We docked in Port Said and had a police escort for our convoy of busses both ways. That delayed our return by a good half hour since we had to wait for the busses that visited the Egyptian Museum.

On the way we crossed the Nile river in downtown Cairo. It was split into two branches where we crossed it. It was beautiful and clean as it has been since the Aswan Dam cut off the periodic floods and most of the silt.

Our first stop was the Pyramids. It was hot, dry, and covered with very aggressive vendors. We had a few minutes to walk around and get pictures. It was somewhat amazing to see how close the city comes to the Pyramids. On our way there, we got several pictures of the Pyramids, shot between apartment buildings.

We paid for our pictures to be taken on a camel which was quite a trip. You really have to leave back when that camel stands up or you'll go over its neck! They are are quite tall so you are sitting quite a ways off the ground when you are on one.

Next we drove a short distance to the Sphinx. Our guide said the Sphinx was probably an afterthought that they carved our of an area of stone they could not use for the pyramid blocks. It was quite a bit smaller than I imagined.

We had one more stop to see the Step Pyramid. This is the oldest of the Pyramids and he first to have ore than one level of stonework. The area buildings contained the first known stone archway. It dates back 4750 years to before the time of Abraham.

After the mandatory shopping stop, we headed back for our ship, arriving more than a half hour *past* the all-aboard time. Fortunately we were near the front of the bus convoy so we were able to get to the buffet ahead of most of the people since over 80% of the passengers returned in our convoy.

We are skipping an Alexandria excursion as nothing caught our interest and, after three full days of on-land tours, we are ready for a quiet, relaxing day before another day at sea as we head to Ephesus.

Preliminary Egypt Post

Preliminary Egypt No long entry tonight. We had a very long day today since we had to be ready for our excursion by 6:15 am and did not get back on the ship until 8:15 pm.

Teaser Photo:

Jerusalem and Bethlehem

We had our second day in Israel today, this time in the central part of the country as we visited Jerusalem and Bethlehem.

Our first stop of the day was the Mount of Olives where we had a beautiful view of the Temple Mount area, dominated by the Dome of the Rock from across the brook of Kidron. As you can see we had a beautiful clear day. You could see the entire Old City from here. It was hard to stop taking pictures as the view was so spectacular.

Next we drove down into the Kidron Valley to visit the Garden of Gethsemane. While very impressive to be in this garden, the formal nature of it, with stone paths and evenly spaced, ancient olive trees did not leave me with a strong feeling of this being a place where Jesus visited.

Next door is the Church of the Agony which contains the place where Jesus prayed the night before He was crucified. The front of this church was very impressive, with the four pillars topped by statues of the four Gospel writers, each holding an open book to their passage of this event' and topped by a beautiful mural.

After this we headed into the Old City of Jerusalem. to see the Temple Mount close up as well as visit the Wailing Wall. I prayed Psalms 46 and 95 at the wall. The women's side is much smaller than the mens' side, yet had about as many people. Mary said it was 3-4 people deep so she, unfortunately, could not get very close to the wall.

Next up, we continued our walk across the Old City by walking up the Via Dolorosa, the path where Jesus walked to his crucifixion. As with the Garden of Gethsemane, the tightly packed vendors calling out for your business made it hard to visualize the significance of walking this path.

We took the Via Dolorosa to the Church of the Holy Sepulcher which contains the site of Jesus' crucifixion as well as His tomb. It's a little hard to believe that they have the exact spot of His crucifixion, down to preserving the hole the cross made in the ground, but that's the claim. People were also venerating a rock slab where His body was supposedly laid to be prepared for burial. After this we headed out the Joppa gate for a bus ride to a buffet lunch in a kibbutz and on to Bethlehem.

Bethlehem is in Palestinian controlled territory so we had to pass through a double checkpoint and through "the wall" (which is a result of the 1994 peace accord) to see it. That was kinda eerie - like passing into another country. The "wall" came about to stop suicide bombers who were targeting civilians in supermarkets and pubic areas. It's a 12-15 foot high cement wall that marks the border of Palestinian controlled territory. According to our guide, once it was finished in 2003, all suicide bombings have stopped so it has been effective.

We only had one stop in Bethlehem, at the Church of the Nativity. I found it quite humorous that there are actually three churches on this site. A Greek Orthodox that sits on top of the famous grotto is in the middle, with a Roman Catholic church on one side and an Anglican church on the other. Due to a pending worship service, we were not able to visit the actual grotto, but we were able to visit the another part of the same cave under the Roman Catholic church. That area had several smaller rooms carved out, one of which commemorated the Blood of the Innocents. The Greek Orthodox church is also the oldest church in the Middle East since it was not destroyed in the 6th century along with the other churches since it contained an image of the three wise men.

That brought today to a close. On to Egypt and the Pyramids tomorrow!