As my experience travelling through Greece and Turkey comes to an end, my Italian adventure begins! On Wednesday we spent the whole day in Rhodes. The morning was spent walking around the town and looking at the history. There is so much of it! In one of the towns the tour guide showed us their new mosque - their "new" mosque is older than the United States of America! The amount of history that I have been able to see this last week has been incredible. After a morning exploring, we went to Mass at a small Catholic Church called Our Lady of Victory. We all went to lunch together and then went to the beach! Swimming in the Aegean Sea was awesome. St. Paul was shipwrecked there in Rhodes so basically we were swimming in the same water he swam in a few years ago... Pretty awesome. Early Thursday morning we arrived in Crete. It was a short stop so we walked around a bit and stopped somewhere to get something to drink. I got lemon juice, thinking it would be like lemonade. Nope. They just got some lemons and squeezed them into a glass and brought it out to me just like that. Soooo sour! Our afternoon was spent in Santorini, perhaps the most beautiful place I have ever seen. We had to climb up over 600 steps to get to the city. The city is what remains after a volcanic eruption in 1950-ish. The view from the city is breathtaking! We really enjoyed the evening. This morning we boarded an airplane to Rome and will begin our adventures in Italia first thing tomorrow morning!

The Aegean Sea in Rhodes.

Exploring through Rhodes.

Holy Metropolitan Church of St. Menas in Crete.

Stinky donkeys that people could ride up and down the hill to Santorini.

Roman Catholic Church in Santorini - St. Therese on the side altar! Yay!

The beautiful view in Santorini.

Santorini.

γειά σου! Hello! It is day 5 of my adventures through Greece and Turkey! It has been truly incredible to say the least! We have been to Athens, Istanbul, Ephesus, Patmos, and now we are in a small island called Syros! After departing from Athens on Friday afternoon, we arrived at Istanbul on Saturday morning. We visited the Basilica of the Epiarch, went and explored at the Grand Bazaar, and went to Mass at The Church of St. Anthony. The priest there was from Nigeria and explained to us that the Catholics in Istanbul are not allowed to live their faith openly there. He cannot even wear his clerics out of the church. We spent the evening exploring the culture there in Istanbul. It was such an incredible experience! On Sunday we had another day in Istanbul. We went to the Blue Mosque and Hagia Sophia (Holy Wisdom). Both were beautiful! It was interesting to see the Muslim culture, rather than the Catholic culture that is more familiar to me. Hagia Sophia used to be a Greek Orthodox Church but was later turned into a Mosque, at which time the Catholic mosaics were covered with plaster. Today, the Hagia Sophia is just a museum but it was a beautiful place to visit. On Monday we arrived in Izmir and went to visit Ephesus. Our first stop was the house where Mary lived with St. John. It was one of the most beautiful things to pray a decade of the Rosary together with the rest of the group from BC and sing the Salve Regina together in the place where Mary once lived. After we left Mary's house we went to Ancient Ephesus. There is a huge ancient amphitheater there where we gathered and sang the BC fight song proudly!!! It was SO awesome! Then we saw the Church of Mary where the third Ecumenical Council was held and Mary was called the Theotokos! (I knew that thanks to Ms. Garnem!) We finished the day at the Basilica of St. John and got to visit his tomb. Early this morning we arrived in Patmos, where John was exiled and where he wrote the Book of Revelation. We got to visit the cave where he lived while he wrote the book and then made our way up the mountain to the Monastery of St. John, a Greek Orthodox Church. Tomorrow we are off to Rhodes and then we will visit Crete and Santorini before we head to the lovely Italia! I pray for you all on every step of this journey!