MONASTERY OF OSIOU LOUKAS & PARTHENON

Wednesday, October 31^st, 2007 Heading south to Athens

One would never know its Halloween; I don’t think that they celebrate it here in Greece. We woke about 7 :30 this morning and headed down to breakfast about 8:30…should have gone down earlier as the large tour group that arrived late in the evening last night had depleted most of the food before we arrived. But, we did find plenty to eat. After breakfast we checked out, took the elevator down two floors into underground garage to get the car. Then we worked at finding the shoe repair shop that our desk clerk had mapped out for us. Jim’s sandal strap needs repairs. Around and around we went and finally Jim parked the car and walked. Sure enough the street we were looking for was about six feet wide and looked more like a sidewalk. The fellow was great and now his sandal is just fine. That took about an hour.

Headed out of town with overcast weather and sprinkles every once in a while. We went down the mountain for about half an hour until we found the road to Distomo. We were headed for another monastery with a side stop on the way.

Our first stop was in Distomo, a small town that has a war memorial built by the German government in 1996. The memorial is to honor the 200 people in the village that were killed by the Nazis in June of 1944 in reprisal for a guerrilla attack. Sits at top of a hill above the town and is very stark but beautiful.

Then we headed further out into the mountains to find the Monastery of Osiou Loukas. This was founded around 944 AD by a monk known as Holy Luke. Different from St. Luke I think as he was nearly 1000 years after the death of Christ. But it is now a famous pilgrim site for tourists. The main chapel is under repairs but the inside was beautiful with many religious mosaics on the walls. There were two important things to find and Jim found the mosaic of the washing of the apostles’ feet and I found the crypt. Yes, there in a glass sarcophagus was the body of Holy Luke who died in the 10^th century. They had a veil over his face but you could see his boney hand. Creepy!

Drove back to the main road and continued on our way to Athens, finally arrived in Athens about 3 pm. Went back to our old hotel, the Acropolis View and they had a room for us for tonight. Unloaded and headed for the Acropolis so that we could see it without the rain that appeared eminent. We’d waited to see this with Brian but when he was delayed we decided to wait until our return today.

Walked all around the Parthenon, you can not enter the building itself and they are constantly blowing their whistle every time someone touches a piece of marble. There is also a lot of construction going on at this time.

After the Parthenon and also the Erechtheion with the virgin statues, we saw the Temple of Athena Nike, the Theater of Herodus Atticus that is still used for performances, and the ancient theater of Dionysos.

The sites were closing by that time and we headed over to Vitros for dinner. Tomorrow we will change hotels in the morning and then spend the day seeing the rest of the buildings in the Acropolis complex.