An Explosion of Senses!

On Friday, we did not go on an excursion; we went on a pilgrimage. It would be more appropriate to consider ourselves as pilgrims this day rather than tourists. In fact, our trip was called “In the Footsteps of Jesus”, a true pilgrimage indeed! First a word about our port. In Israel we docked at the port town of Haifa. When we were docked, we could look out our stateroom window directly to Mt. Carmel, which overlooks the port of Haifa.  Mt. Carmel Mt. Carmel is very significant in the Bible. It is the location where Elijah challenged the 450 prophets of Baal to call down fire from their god, and when they failed, he called down fire from his God, which proved that his God was the true God. You can read the story in 1 Kings 18:21-39. Our tour guide for the day, Judith, showed us the place on Mt. Carmel where this is believed to have taken place. As mentioned, our tour guide’s name was Judith, and our bus driver’s name was Hamudi. As Judith reviewed our day’s activities, I found ...

This is going to be a short blog today, as we did not have any excursions. Today was a travel day, as we traversed the Mediterranean Sea, making our way from Athens, Greece to Haifa, Israel. We had total sunshine all day, which made the sea sparkle and lended even more to the beauty of the view. We spent a relaxing day on board, for the most part. We spent some time sitting on the balcony enjoying the beauty of the Mediterranean.  I also located the fitness center and spent some time on the treadmill. The treadmills are set up so that you can look out the window and watch the Mediterranean Sea go by while walking off the gelato calories.  I also took advantage of a lull in the excursion schedule to do some laundry, not that we needed to do laundry so soon, but just taking advantage of the scheduled day off.  Viking offers guest lectures in the amphitheater, so I attended one called “Incidents of Travel in Egypt, Arabia Petraea, and the Holy Land.” It was interesting to se...

Today we took our first Viking excursion. The excursion was called “The Full Acropolis Experience.” Our tour guide’s name was Marianne and our bus driver was Costas – short for Constantine. Marianne is from Athens as all the tour guides are local. That way they give you a flavor of the local culture by their stories and their personalities. Marianne was very friendly, witty, and of course, knowledgeable. We rode from the port where the bus picked us up to the Acropolis, with Marianne pointing things out along the way. There were beautiful views of the coast of Athens.  We saw some people swimming in the sea. Marianne said that people swim all winter, as the water is warm and the sea temperature doesn’t change much during different seasons. The port of Athens is called Piraeus.  It is the largest passenger port in Europe. We passed the many different kinds of ports: besides passenger, also cargo, fishermen ports, and some beautiful marinas.   The name of the street we dr...

Our hotel in Athens was in the heart of what is called the Plaka district. You can’t even tell from the outside that it is a hotel. There is just a set of doors set amidst other store fronts.  Our hotel entrance Our hotel room The Plaka district is in the shadow of the Acropolis, and has narrow cobblestone streets lined with stores, sidewalk cafes, coffee shops, etc. The streets are very narrow, and people walk in the streets (because the sidewalks are also narrow), but there is vehicular traffic occasionally. So you have to always be on the lookout for cars and especially motorcycles, who will run you down if you get in their way. (I think they are looking for a teacher!) View from hotel window Street view We got an early start this morning and were out and about the streets of Athens by 7 a.m. It was still  dark outside, and we were practically the only ones out walking around. It took us awhile, but we finally found a coffee shop that was open.  After a light breakfast...