Vacation of a lifetime!

This is the vacation I (Bob) have dreamed of for years! Not sure the kids were as excited about all the ancient history locations Dad was making them study up on prior to leaving. We took a 13 day cruise leaving from Istanbul, Turkey winding its way through the Greek Isles. Just a few of the stops were Ephesus, Crete, Alexandria, Egypt, Olympia and Athens.



This is the theatre of Ephesus. Imagine Paul the Apostle defending himself against the tradesman of Ephesus as 12,000 people filled the theatre yelling "Great is Artemis of the Ephesians" (Acts19:28).


You should have seen the size of that camels tongue!








The Great Sphinx! The largest statue in the world carved from one large piece of stone. Napoleon's men used the nose for target practice in case you were wondering about the unusual profile view.



This is the Palace of the legendary King Minos of Knossos in Crete. At one point we lost Ben and thought that he was lost in the Labyrinth to be sacrificed to the Minotaur.










This was Ben's favorite part of the vacation. He had been reading all about Heiroglyphics and Jean Francois Champollion, the man that cracked the code of Hieroglyphs in 1822. He carried his backpack with books about hieroglyphs, notepad for drawing and pencils everywhere. On the night of this picture, we were in the middle of a huge Ramadan party in Istanbul. Vendors were racing around, large families had spread blankets out to eat on. There in the middle of it all sat Ben on a bench drawing the hieroglyphs off this obelisk brought from Egypt to Constantinople in the 4th Century AD. It was originally carved to honor Pharaoh Thutmose III 1,500 years before Christ.







This was my (Bob) favorite part of the vacation. Here we are standing on Mars Hill with Acropolis in the background. That morning we read through the account of Paul's address to the Areopagus in Acts 17:22-34. That afternoon we acted it on Mars Hill itself. It was awesome! The Agora, of which Paul was referring when he spoke of the Athenian objects of worship (Acts17:23) is right behind me in the picture.