Nathan and Rachel Ann Take On the World!: Episode 76: The One Where Our Heroes Find Pleasant Surprises in Greece

So this story starts on Friday morning. We woke up, bright and early, ready to do some more research about how exactly we were going to get to Philippi. This is how Nathan and I usually travel you see. We wake up, figure out what bus to get on and go. Well, Mama and Daddy weren't too keen on 6 hours of bus rides, so we decided to see if there was another way than the via Thessaloniki route we were planning on.

We turned to Pavlina, the international student coordinator and all-around wonderful person, to help us. She found us a direct bus route, but we'd have to not come back until Tuesday. We asked about a cab (because we have classes and whatnot on Monday and Tuesday) and, lo and behold, it was only 10 Leva more to take a cab. Hurrah! Pavlina arranged the cab and the four of us crammed into a cab with our super delightful driver.

Our driver--wonderful. He, however, had never driven to Philippi and when parts of the road were blocked off for some unknown reason by the police, we drove in a few circles and stopped more than a few times for him to ask directions of the old men that seem to hang out at gas stations in every country in the world. Seriously--why do old men love to hang out at gas stations? Are they waiting to help lost travelers?

Anyway, we made our way into Greece and Nathan had found a hotel on the internet that claimed to be only 600 meters from Philippi. That's all we understood--everything else was in Greek. Our wonderful cab driver found the hotel, got us two rooms and promised to come back and get us on Sunday. Really, he was awesome. So we settled in and got ready to walk around a bit.

We first visited Lydia's baptistry:

That of course is not the ancient baptistry. We saw the ruins from the first one and this is the modern construction outside of the church for baptizing in the river.

Then the sun started to set so we went to have dinner in the hotel restaurant which they opened just for us. You see, there is NOTHING in Philippi except for ruins, so no one really visits except tourist season. Off-season we got a great deal on our rooms, breakfast and a delicious meal that first night. No pictures because we forgot our cameras, but we had huge, delicious Greek salads, baked eggplant and Daddy and Nathan had some meat of some sort. Mmm....

The next morning, these guys were outside our window while we had breakfast:

After breakfast, we set off into a field to see if we could stumble upon the ruins of Philippi. We weren't expecting too much and before long we came across the ruins of columns and stones with inscriptions in the field:

We kept walking up a hill toward the archaeology museum. Beyond the museum lay a land of surprises! They uncovered the entire city of Philippi. You can go to 4 churches, the forum, the theatre, the shopping district and the episcopal complex. So cool. Here is Daddy in what is commonly attributed St. Paul's prison:

It is actually a cistern that was turned into a church, but still very, very cool.

Here we are in the stone archway that leads into Basilica B:

And here is Mama and Daddy:

The city was ruined in an earthquake in the 7th century and abandoned, so everything is really well-preserved because it was torn down to make way for new construction. Here is just a portion of the site with the mountains of Greece in the background:

On Friday afternoon we had seen a castle on top of the mountain across from our hotel. We knew it was Philippi's citadel, so we decided to climb the mountain to check it out. Whoa. It was a strenuous one hour climb (complicated by the fact that we had to find the trail by wandering through the grass). On the way we passed this little terrapin:

Here is Nathan sitting at the top. We could see everything for miles around. So beautiful.

Isn't the farmland so pretty?

We found the tower and decided to climb around in it a bit. Nothing was marked or patrolled at these sites. Here is Mama and Daddy (picture taken from the spiral staircase going to the top of the tower).

And here you can see how big it is. See Nathan in the archway?

Here's a panoramic view of the towers of the citadel.

This little guy climbed the entire mountain with us and made sure everyone stayed together. He got upset whenever we did something he thought was unsafe. He was excellent traveling companion, but unfortunately we had no snacks to give him. We only packed Fruit, Seed and Nut bars which, by the way, are delicious and chock-full of protein.

Going up the mountain, we had been counting all of the flocks we could see. At the base, we stumbled into this flock of sheep and upset this sheep dog with our presence. His shepherd had to reassure him that we wouldn't steal his sheep.

Seriously--read that again. We climbed a mountain and then stumbled into a flock of sheep. Sometimes in the Balkans you fall into a time warp.

After we showered we headed to Kavala to dinner. We had another excellent cab driver who stopped his friend who we passed to ask what the best seafood tavern we could go to was. We went there and it was excellent. Daddy and I had calamari, Mama had the biggest shrimp I've ever seen and Nathan had spicy Greek meatballs.

Here we are with yet another Nathan and Rachel Ann by the Mediterranean picture. For real--this is the life!