Yesterday was a
long day. We left our hotel on Samos Island at 5:30 a.m. and arrived at our next temporary home just before 9 p.m. Turns out it was the air traffic controllers striking just for the afternoon, right when our trip to Rhodes was planned. We ended up with ten or so hours to kill on our extended layover in Athens. Since we're spending three days in the heart of Athens in a couple weeks, Leroy and I decided to take a bus from the airport to the seaport where cruise ships and ferries deliver folks from the islands. The bus first dropped us off at a bleak spot near several now-defunct and decaying venues from the 2004 Summer Olympics. As we waited for a second bus to take us all the way to the port, a friendly older gentleman started talking to us in Greek When we gave him our "we're sorry, we don't understand Greek" look, he asked us in English where we were from. Turns out he's a resident of Hamilton Ontario, an hour from Buffalo, visiting family in Greece. He helped us get on the right bus and gave us helpful sightseeing advice when we all got to the port. We visited a fish market with octopi and other creatures, looked over the huge cruise ships, and caught the return bus to the airport.
We're in Rhodes now, one of the large Greek Islands in the Aegean Sea. It's just off the coast of Turkey, like Samos, but there are no direct flights thus the layover in Athens. We rented a car with Stephen and Jim and headed to Afandou on the south shore. We are staying four nights in a small, modern house with its own swimming pool. There is a view of the sea, which is just a short walk down a dirt lane from the house. We spent the day being lazy and catching up on necessities: reading, laundry, swimming in the pool, shopping for groceris. Leroy and I put on our bathing suits and strolled to the beach, but the weather turned cool and windy again so the beach was empty and we didn't go in the water.
The Apostle Paul visited Rhodes on at least two of his missionary journeys. During his day, the harbor entrance at Rhodes Town was dominated by the Colossus: a nearly-one hundred foot tall statue of a Titan that was later toppled by an earthquake. We're looking forward to visiting the Crusader-era Old Town of Rhodes tomorrow morning.
