Day 14 - Canakale to Kavalla

Well, we're in Greece. Tonight and tomorrow we actually get to stay in the same hotel, which is really nice. I did a bunch of laundry (in the sink) and now it's hanging out on the balcony. I wasn't really excited about hand washing my clothes and I've found it pretty unsatisfying but it's the only option so that's what I do. Whenever I'm washing them I just keep thinking that no matter what I'm doing, my clothes aren't going to be as clean as they would be if I had put them in a machine. All that being said, since we are at this hotel for a few days I washed some shirts and a couple of pairs of jeans because I knew they would have time to dry before I packed them back up again. I just hope that hanging them out on the balcony won't make them smell like exhaust.

Today was mostly travel. We left our hotel at 6:15 so we could take a ferry across the Dardanelles strait and then drive through the Gallopoli region for a few hours until we got to the boarder. I guess up until a few years ago the boarder crossing was pretty intense, you would unload from your bus in Turkey, exit through customs, then walk the 3/4 of a mile that is between the boarders, with soldiers and watchtowers on each side, then have to bribe someone to let you into the Greece side (or maybe it was bribe someone to get out of Turkey, I'm don't quite remember.) Now there is a bus that takes you from one side to another and you just unload for the exit stamp on your passport from Turkey, then a customs agent from Greece collects everyone's passport in a big stack, then takes them off, stamps them and brings them back. No intense walks and no bribes, all pretty boring. The bathrooms were an adventure though, I guess that's better than nothing.

We stopped in Alexandrapolis to talk about the Island of Salmonthrace and have lunch. It was really cold and I left my gloves in the bus, which was a bad decision. Our new teacher Gordon, told us the four reasons that Salmonthrace is important (he also gave us a quick and easy cure for tear gas just in case anyone decided to go looking for a riot in Thessaloniki or Athens, the cure is to eat a raw onion.) Salmonthrace is important because: some of mythology says that Poseidon, god of the sea, watched the Trojan war from there, it was the home of a major mystery religion in the New Testament times, Paul was there twice, maybe four times, and the statue 'winged victory of Salmonthrace' is from there. We got into more specifics about the mystery religions and Paul's time there (2nd journey and maybe 3rd) but I won't get into them here.

In Alexandrapolous one of the girls, who hadn't told her bank that she would be traveling abroad, had her debit card eaten by a machine because her account was on hold and she couldn't get it back because the bank was afraid of fraud. That was pretty terrifying to the rest of us, but I think just about everyone else told their bank where they were going so we didn't have any problems. I think I'll be nervous every time I use an ATM from now on though.

After Alexandrapolis we drove to Kavalla, which is on the ancient city of Neapolis, which was the port town to Philipi. Paul sailed into Neapolis when he crossed over from Asia to Macedonia. Philipi isn't around anymore but Kavala is a pretty big city. Before we got to the hotel we walked along some of the Egnatian way, which ran from Neapolis to Rome. That was cool, it was a section of road that Paul walked as he went up from Neapolis to Philipi.

(Above, modern day Kavala. On the other side of the finger pointing out to sea is the ancient port of Neapolis.)

(A section of the Egnatian way just out of Neapolis)

Tomorrow we visit what's left of the ancient harbor of Neapolis, check out a museum here in town, then head up to Philipi and hike to the top of the Acropolis (the hill that the city was built on.) Then it's back to our hotel here for the night.

Thanks for reading and until tomorrow...