Wednesday September 10 was a day with some Biblical history, some Christian Orthodox history, and some geological awesomeness!

We firstly drove from Thessaloniki to Veria, the ancient Biblical town of Berea where Paul and Silas were helped to get to from Thessaloniki when things got a bit hairy for them there. This is a beautiful little town on a Greek hillside with so much appeal. We firstly went to a spot remembered as a place where Paul preached, and there was a plaque with the very telling verse from Acts 17, saying that the Jews there were more noble than in Thessaloniki, and that they received the word from Paul with eagerness. We walked to the Jewish portion of Veria, where there is a small but quaint synagogue.

We drove through some very mountainous terrain with picturesque valleys to get to Kalambaka, the town at the base of the incredible rocks of Meteora. Geological study tells us that these rocks were under water tens of thousands of years ago, and a geological event then drained the area of water and these rock formations appeared. From the 14th and 15th centuries there have been monasteries built on the top of many of these rocks, but now, out of an original 24, there are only six left, due mainly to Nazi bombing in the second world war.

The drive from the town to get to the top of these rocks had so many wonderful moments of oohs and aahs. We felt privileged to be seeing how awesome our God is to gift us with these amazing and wonderful sights. Also the ingenuity and skill of the builders of all the monasteries continually stunned us.

Of course, it was also wonderful to see the location of the James Bond movie, ‘For Your Eyes Only’ – the monastery of the Holy Trinity although it was not a monastery we visited.

We walked up 200 steps to visit Varlaam, and saw the very tiny orthodox chapel with every possible portion of the internal walls and ceiling covered with intricate paintings depicting Bible stories, and the life of Christ, along with many of the apostles.

Following that we went to a nunnery, St Stephen’s, and at the entrance greeting us was a young Aussie Orthodox nun from Perth.

It was only a short drive to our hotel on the outskirts of Kalambaka, and we enjoyed a wonderful dinner and breakfast there.

Thursday morning we knew was to bring a long day of driving to get back to Athens. Quite early in the journey we visited a Byzantine icon workshop and saw the method of hand painting orthodox icons, from the preparation of the canvas, the wooden frames through to the intricate painting. There were three artists in the workshop and it was fascinating to see how they worked, and also to find out that every icon is hand painted, and not printed. Each one is a copy of the 11th or 12th century established forms of each parable, miracle, saint or Bible story. If any of the tour group purchased an icon the artist was there to personally sign the back.

Further on our long drive we stopped at the monument to the 300 spartans at the likely place of the Battle of Thermopylae. We walked up the walls of the fortification, which now simply look like, and are used as a walkway. The modern monument has a huge statue of Leonidus, the Spartan King wielding a spear. The Spartans held off the Persians for 3 days, and are remembered as great heroes of nationalistic fervour. The Persian victory was, in effect, hardly a victory as they suffered almost as much loss as the Spartans, but the impact of the victory meant that the Persians were able to conquer much more of Greece in the ensuing years.

We arrived back in Athens, after a long day’s journey and there were a few of us chose to go to our wonderful restaurant we found last weekend, near the hotel, rather than pay an exorbitant amount of money to go on the optional dinner excursion in the city. We had a wonderful evening together – a pair of Aussies and 3 pairs of yanks, joined in fellowship through the gospel.