Pictures from Greece

I got back on Tuesday from my wonderful trip to Athens and Istanbul, and now it is picture time! I took over 1000 pictures, although some have gotten tossed because of bad lighting or being fuzzy. There are so many beautiful sights over there, and I'll try and share as many as possible without boring you. And I'll try to fill in the stories with the pictures too. But really, you kind of had to be there because it was AWESOME!

Fliers at the LDS church building advertising our Athens show

Theater of Herod Atticus and Parthenon on the Acropolis

Standing on Aeropagus (Mars Hill) with the Acropolis in the background. The building hidden in scaffolding is the Temple of Athena Nike and the one on the far left is the Erecthion

Sarah and I on the ferry to Aegina Island

With the local delicacy: octopus. No, I did not eat any.

Swimming in the Aegean Sea!

Some of our team in the Aegean Sea

Boats in the harbor at Aegina

What a beautiful sea! It was absolutely gorgeous to spend the day there. It was almost as lovely to sleep the entire ferry ride back.

We ate most of our meals at the street cafes in Athens. After our island trip, we changed and stopped by Gods' Restaurant. It was a lot cooler before we noticed the placement of the apostrophe. Oh well, the food was great!

This sweet old man herded us off the street and into Gods' Restaurant. I imagine he's the owner... and somehow he seems like a perfect image to represent his restaurant. This is our island/dinner group of me, Sarah, Jen, Riley, and Miranda.

The next day, we had our shows. After the children's show, we went to a nearby park to get food and relax. We also did some advertising for the evening show. I went over to this group of guys to invite them. It was pretty intimidating to walk over there, but I took one of the guys in our group with me for moral (and physical) support. Just in case. They didn't go to the show, but they did come over and watch the band play for a while.

The missionaries used the band music to help contact people and invite them to the show. Maybe they even made some legit missionary contacting. I hope so! That was part of the reason we were there... help build interest in the church. It wasn't official or anything, but it was really great to be a boon like that in a country where missionary work is very difficult.

The band had a fun jam session, and a few of us got up and danced too. Fun times!

This was the view of trees from the park. It seemed quite pretty at the time.

And those are the first set of pictures from Athens! I have a lot of pictures just of the day we spent touring the Acropolis, Ancient Agora, etc, so those will be in a different post. It's good to be back!