October 13th- 16th And the Bus ride begins...Northern Greece!

So here goes the story of the longest time that I have ever spent in a traveling vehicle within four days in my whole entire life. Let's just say it was quite the adventure.

Day one: Thermopylae and Berea. The first place that we stopped was a random non-historical site (to our knowledge) where it had this HUGE statue of a lion. Ash and I took an appropriate picture of us by it trying to look scary.

You can only imagine how tall it was!

We then got back in the bus and went to Thermopylae. This is where the Battle of Thermopylae was. Elinor (a girl on the trip) gave us a detailed story of the battle and it was so crazy to be standing where they had that battle. It was a three day battle that was basically called a  "suicide mission." We stood where the gates were supposed to be and took pictures of the statues of the spartan warriers! Then we continued our travels to our first break stop where we had lunch and took a "technical break" meaning bathroom break. Then we were on the road again. Then we got to Berea! Berea was super pretty and the museum and ruins that we went to were one of my favorites. That day it started to sprinkle, and it reminded me of home. I even wore my rain jacket :) I loved this day...we got free time to just walk around the ruins and look at what we wanted. The main whole place was called Dion which was a whole sanctuary for Zues. Most of the ruins were from the 2nd century A.D. during the Roman times. What I found the most interesting was the fact that they had rules for coming to the sanctuary. Criminals were not allowed to enter it until 40 days after their crime, if someone died in your family, and also you also could not enter it within a certain amount of days. Those are just a few of the rules! I kinda find the last one a little extreme...but it's what they believed.

Day Two: Berea and Thessoloniki: So today was a lot of traveling. Basically, we left at 9 this morning from our hotel. We had to pack up all our things cause tonight we are staying in a different hotel. We spent the whole day traveling and the only historical thing that we really did was go to the Museum at Vergina. The actual location of the museum was a previous palace of Macedonia. This actually was my favorite museum that we have been to thus far but we weren't allowed to take pictures :( The museum was really dark inside and had a whole bunch of different places where they had the actual graves and burial sites of ancient leaders such as Phillip the 2nd. We were only like ten feet from where he was supposedly buried! That was pretty awesome and surreal. The musesum was very unique and instead of just looking at pictures or statues or countless peices of pottery, we were able to see more than that.

After the museum the rest of the day was just traveling. We stopped to have lunch in this little town that had one place to eat. Everything else was closed! It was interesting. So the sign said that it had pizza...but when we asked if we could have pizza the waitress looked at us as if we were crazy. So that was a fail. Instead I ordered a burger...which literally was just a burger, no buns or anything. Haha...but it was okay. I ate most of it. Then, Ashlee and I had to go to the bathroom. Well, we were in for a surprise. The toilets were holes in the floor. Therefore that was an interesting experience. I won't go into detail, but you can only imagine how difficult that was. I'll try to post a picture of the toilet haha :) Then later on we went to the museum in Thessoloniki I think...The part that I enjoyed was the marketplace that was reconstructed. It reminded me of our VBS that we do each year, so I liked that...I also liked the graves and skeletons (but I don't even know if I believe that they are real).

as you can imagine...this was difficult

Day three:  Also, we visited the place where Lydia was baptized in Acts 17! This was my most favorite place...it was so incredibly beautiful. We sang a few songs, and Dr. Manor read the bible to us and honestly it was one of my most favorite places that we have been to thus far. It was indescribably beautiful/stunning/gorgeous. And it was the most perfect fall day of my life. Perfect. Then later that night, Ashlee, Skylar, Kalie and I walked around the town and talked to some of the Greeks. It was a really fun night :)

me and ash at the creek of lydia's baptism :)

some ruins in pella

bridge at lydias baptism

look how beautiful it was...perfect right?

Day four: Today was the ride home! We stopped and looked at the ruins in Pella. In 168 B.C. Alexander the Great created a great empire here. The city was by the sea and actually was abandoned after Thessaloniki until the 20th century when it was excavated. The museum here was actually super boring.  The acropolis here was built to protect the citadel from the Sea during the Byzantine times. The Turks eventually came and occupied the city.