Thursday, October 3

Today was the final day of our mainland tour of Greece. We awoke to a cloudless sky over Mt. Parnassus and Delphi. Half way through our morning "van" check to be sure everyone was aboard the bus, we stopped to sing "Happy Birthday" to Peter. As we made our way down from Delphi to Corinth, we listened to some soft Greek music.

Both our first stop of the day and also our lunch a bit later were on the Corinthian canal. This four mile, lock-less canal connects the Gulf of Corinth and the Saronic Gulf. Prior to its completion in the last decade of the 19th century, a slipway had been used since ancient times to transport ships and their cargo across the narrow isthmus. One of the most entertaining aspects of the canal was the submersible bridge right by the restaurant where we ate lunch. We actually got to watch as the bridge was lowered beneath the waters of the canal to allow past one small tourist boat and then a tanker being pulled by a tug boat. Between our first view of the canal from a bridge across it and our lunch stop, we visited the site of the ancient port of Cenchreae from which Paul had set sail for Ephesus. Tomorrow we will sail for Ephesus from the Athenian port of Piraeus, and we expect our accommodations aboard the Olympic Countess to be substantially better than those that Paul encountered.

Well-fed and having celebrated Peter's birthday with birthday cakes, we made our way to the site of ancient Corinth. The excavated agora portion of the city is dominated by the Temple of Apollo. Perhaps even more impressive is the mountain top Acrocorinth (the Corinthian acropolis) that rises some 1500 feet above the city. Here in Corinth we saw yet another bema, but this one significant for its important role in fixing the chronology of Paul's life. An inscription discovered in Delphi fixes the date of Gallio's proconsulship at Corinth as in 51 CE; thus, Paul's brief "trial" before Gallio (see Acts 19) must have occurred during that year. Inside the museum there we could see a fine statue of Augustus Caesar (Octavian), the Roman emperor at the time of Jesus' birth.

With one more shopping stop in Corinth, we then made our way to a taverna in Athens for our dinner. During the drive we shared good-byes with Christiana, our guide, and Costas, our driver. Tomorrow we begin our sailing adventure. We will post a summary of our voyage once we return to Athens on Monday.

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