Saturday, June 14, 2008

Our Church Sanctuaries

I'm a little behind in my blogging, I'll try to catch up, and add some pictures while I'm at it.

Our first night on the road, June 1st, we stayed inside a partially built factory. The Egyptian watchman hesitated when we asked if we could sleep under the olive trees across the way. They're not mine he said. He could see that it was getting late and we needed a place to stay. He called his co-worker, a kind faced Bangladeshi man. They chatted for a moment and finally let us in the compound and said we could sleep there. We looked around for the ideal spot and in the meantime, the two came back to us and told us we could stay inside an office in the partially built factory. A clean floor, and a bathroom and some wonderful foreign hospitality (they invited us to share their food, but we said we'd already eaten, and went to sleep). That was our first night of camping on the road.

The second night was under the roof of a seaside taverna.

From that night on, except for when we paid for a room in Nafplio we have been taking advantage of a wonderful Greek phenomenon. The countryside is literally dotted with little churches dedicated to this saint or that. You can go in and light a candle and say a prayer. You can also set up your tent beside it and take advantage of the structure for shelter. We've really been enjoying visiting all these little churches and sleeping at some of them. I was lucky enough to load my GPS with a very detailed map of Greece from Anavasi which actually shows where all these churches are located, so we know when one is coming up, but each one is different and a new surprise for us when we arrive

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