It's All Greek to Us

After several weeks in Bulgaria , Anne and Mark finally made the trip to Greece .  It is about a 2 hour drive to the border and we went about another hour and a half to a beach resort on the Aegean Sea between Thessaloniki and Kavala, near a town called Nea Paramos.  It was one of those places that you would not notice from the road and we probably never would have visited on our own.  So we were fortunate to have made this trip with a couple other faculty members who had been to this particular resort before and invited us there.  It was a beautiful resort with beach access just down the stairs.

And when Mark was not lounging on the beach, he found a few minutes to notice some ruins.  Just beside the road we found the Lion of Amphipolis.

Later, Mark went to the ruins at Fillipi.  This was a city that Philip of Macedonia ruled (and named after himself) just before Alexander the Great started being Great.  Fillipi is now famous as a pilgrimage site for Christians.  It is pretty well established that Saint Paul was imprisoned here, and probably wrote a letter or two (2^nd Corinthians?) while serving his time.  They do not know exactly where he was held, but have named a spot as the most likely place where he was held, and just declared that to be correct.  The ruins are of the “walk-through” variety, so I was able to get pretty up close and personal with most of it.  The cell where tradition states that the Apostle Paul was held was not open to actual walk-throughs. 

The large structure furthest away is the baths, the city forum is in the foreground.

Le Forum

The cell which may have held Paul of Tarsus