Saturday (6/20) - Dion and a Rest Day

Today was a fun day, with a site visit in the morning to the nearby ancient city of Dion, a nice lunch, and then a free afternoon with opportunities to swim, walk the beach, take a nap, or even just check email or grab a seat near the pool with ocean views. Not a bad way to spend a day in Greece! On to the pictures:

Dion was an important port city in the northern parts of Greece, in what was in ancient times Macedonia. (there is also major controversy over the modern name of Macedonia, with the independent former Yugoslavian country named Macedonia and the Greek administrative district Macedonia fighting over turf...I won't get into that debate here though). Anyway, the site is pretty neat, with some temples and some cool ancient streets. I always like to walk the excavated streets, since we know for a fact that these are the same stones the ancient peoples walked on just the same way.



In the museum on-site, there were a number of interesting artefacts from the area. (okay, I'll admit that I find pretty much all this stuff interesting, since it's my area of professional study... but not all of us intrepid "Holy Landers" are finding museums the most fascinating places anymore... :-) Here are a really neat group of statues representing the children of the god Asclepius, a god associated with healing. It is quite rare to find these together.



I also really like ancient coins, and this is a good one of Philippos (or Philip), I think Philip II, father of Alexander the Great. Anyone able to read the Greek below? (it's genitive case)



There was also a pretty awesome tombstone with the below carving. It commemorates a husband/wife team who have died, and it mentions things that each of them enjoyed and were skilled at in life. The wife (left) enjoyed music and the husband (right) worked as a scribe/writer of some sort.



Finally we broke for a satisfying lunch and then returned to our resort for an afternoon of rest and relaxation. I took a little nap and got caught up on some emails. And baseball scores. :-) Such activities made me thirsty, and when I perused the beverage choices at the little store nearby, I found these little gems.



Hah! I find this so hilarious because the name of this Greek soda is in fact an ancient Greek word that means "youth" or "youthfulness." Looks like it survived into modern times too! Awesome.

Tomorrow: Church service (at a Greek evangelical church!) and then on to Meteora...