Day 17 - Thessaloniki to Kalambaka

Here is yesterday's post from Kalambaka.

This morning we left Thessaloniki and drove to Berea. Before we left I walked down to the Starbucks by the sea shore and started the day with an Americana, that was nice. Berea was the town where Paul went after he was run out of Thessalonica, it is notable because the Jews there searched to scriptures to see if what Paul said about Jesus was right and many of them believed. There wasn’t much to see in Berea, there is a pretty cool mosaic where they think the synagogue he preached may have been and there is a spring near there as well (synagogues or places of prayer always had running water next to them for the ritual washings.)

(The mosaic of Paul at Berea.)

When Paul left Berea (some of the Jews from up north who didn’t like him came to town and tried to kill him,) he went to Athens, most likely by way of a ship from Dion. So we also visited Dion today. Dion was an interesting place. It is right at the base of Mt. Olympus, where the Greeks believed the 12 main gods lived. There is an interesting story about Dion and Alexander the Great that Josephus wrote about that we heard today. Before Alexander went on his conquest that ended with him as ruler of everything from Greece to India he went to Dion to make sacrifices to Zeus and dedicate his army. And apparently he had a dream in Dion. We find out about the dream when Alexander gets to Jerusalem, when he sees the Jewish high priest Alexander goes up to him and bows down before him. And when Alexander’s generals ask him why Alexander is bowing to anyone he tells them that he saw the high priest in a dream he had at Dion. Alexander was in his tent, thinking about how he could move east and defeat the Persians and he fell asleep and had dream, where a man dressed like the high priest (including the name of God across his forehead) told him that he should go forward with all haste because he would be successful against the Persians and the man dressed as the high priest told Alexander that he would go before Alexander’s army and would make sure they were successful. And the high priest in Jerusalem was the first person that Alexander had seen who was dressed as the man in his dream, so Alexander bowed before him and told him that he would grant the Jews anything they wished. They asked that they be allowed to keep their own laws and Alexander happily agreed.

(The altar at Dion where they made sacrifices to the gods of Olympus.)

(Mt. Olympus, it's elevation is about 10,000 feet. The base of the mountain is at just about sea level.)

The other place that we visited today was called Vergina. It was the royal burial place of the Macedonian kings. Phillip the Second, Alexander’s dad was buried there, and Alexander IV, Alexander the Great’s son was buried there. It was pretty cool to see some of that stuff, it’s amazing to see how good gold looks 2300 years after it’s buried underground. The crown that they put on Phillips corpse when the burned in on a pyre looks like it was just made yesterday. It is a gold crown that is shaped to look like a really delicate oak branch full of leaves. It was way different, and way cooler than what I typically imagine when I think of a crown.

(The mound that Phillip II's tomb was buried under.)

We weren’t allowed to take pictures inside Vergina because the findings there haven’t been published yet, so I was going to say that I sketched what the inside of the tomb looked like then show pictures of us getting attacked by mummies but I’m too tired to do that now. I did draw a couple of pictures of mummies on the bus, mostly playing checkers, I might post those pictures later.

Tonight we’re staying in Kalambaka, which is right at the base of the mountains that have the Meteora monasteries. Tomorrow we’re going to go visit an icon factory, where they paint icons, and visit one of the monasteries, it is supposed to be one the most beautiful places in Greece. Then we’re going to visit Thermopylae, where 300 Spartans and a few thousand other Greeks held off the Persian army (not sure on the exact number, I think Herodotus says it was a million or five million or 10 million or something like that,) for four or five or six days (I’ll give you the real numbers tomorrow.) Then we’re spending the night in Delphi, which was the center of prophecy in the pagan Greek world.