Aboard the Louis Olympia

Having finished our time in Turkey, we boarded the Louis Olympia Cruise Ship for a tour from Kusadasi to Patmos, Santorini and on to our final destination of Athens. The time on the boat was designed to be 'down time'. This will therefore be a brief post but with plenty of photos nonetheless.



At 4.00pm we docked at Patmos. Patmos is the place where John received the visions from Jesus and wrote the book of Revelation while exiled there (Rev 1.9). For us, it was also our first experience of Greece. It seemed to be even hotter than Turkey in the heat of the afternoon sun, but it was beautiful! After several attempts to secure ten taxis for the forty of us, the majority boarded a bus and went up the very steep mountain to the fortified monastery of St John. We were "unguided" through the monastery and Church, so we were a little uncertain of which parts to pay particular attention to. However, the Church was small and ornate with traditional Orthdox iconography. The museum boasted various liturgical items, icons, books and vestments. There are priests still living at this monastery, so my own reflection was that it was great to visit a "live" Christian site, having been travelling to ancient Chistian sites in a Muslim country (Turkey).

We walked back to the bus via a donkey-track which gave us an opportunity to walk through "suburban" streets and local hang-outs. Along the way, we stopped at the Chapel of St Anne (Mother of the Virgin Mary) at the site believed to be the cave where John wrote the book of Revelation. Tim seemed to think that the relative absence of other caves in the region suggested the authenticity of this site. Authentic or not, Patmos is a beautiful Island and there was a sense of completion of our background study of the book of Revelation, having had visited all of the cities that the book was written to, we had now also seen the place (or at least the geographical location) where the vision was given and recorded. That evening, we enjoyed a lovely night on the boat that involved a buffet dinner, karaoke, dancing and good company.

After a late night, which made for a good sleep despite the rocking, we disembarked at Santorini. Now apart from the fact that Santorini is named after St Irene (Holy Peace), it has no biblical significance at all. So this was essentially a day of site-seeing, fine dining, visiting a winery and lazing on a beach. See the picturesque scenery below.

Fellow Ridley students, Ben and Rowan, had the previous day befriended a group of American Catholics who were doing a similar tour to us. Therefore, upon our return to the ship, at their invitation, we joined them for evening mass, and then went to the a-la-carte restaurant with Ben and Rowan and had a lovely dinner together.



Heather opted for an early night, but I joined a large group of travellers for the final of the European Cup between Spain and Italy. Suffice to say, given the outcome, I wished I had followed Heather's example. The next morning would be an early disembarkment at Athens where we were to have another very full day of biblical sites.

3 July 2012