Mt. Lykavittos, and the 999 steps that were not

Among the super awesome things we got the chance to do on this trip was go on hikes in Athens and Nafplion. The first one we did was relatively early in our trip, up Mt. Lykavittos to see the church of St. George. The view from the top was really amazing:

Me on top of Mt. Lykavittos :)

Yay! We made it to the top!
(and half the girls wore flip flops... now that's skill!)

Once everyone made it to the top, we went inside the church for a moment, hung out for a bit, and then listened to Joe tell the story of St. George. One of our doggy friends, Glykas, took the hike up with us, and listened to Joe too as he rested his paws:

Such a good doggy :) Oddly, in this country, stray dogs seem
to be a lot nicer and smarter than leashed dogs. Weird.

The time spent atop Mt. Lykavittos would be the beginning of a string of plays the students in our group performed while in Greece. It was very entertaining watching Joe tell each story, and have some of us take on roles and act out each scene. I'll go more into detail about the educational significance of this in another post, but just thought I'd post one of the funny pictures here as a teaser:

Believe it or not, this has relevance to the story of St. George

The next hike we went on was in Nafplion, up the 999 steps of the Fortress of Palamidi. Upon beginning our hike, Brandon decided that he wanted to know if it really was 999 steps, so several people in our group took turns counting all the way up to the top. Interestingly enough, Brandon's curiosity led us to find out that it, in fact, is not 999 steps! Rather, it was 1050:

me climbing the 1050 steps

... But, since "999" sounds like a cooler number, I GUESS I'll keep saying that. Anyways, we were all very excited to make it to the top of the fortress! It took a while for the whole group to make it all the way up, so we took the opportunity to take pictures!

Joe and his snazzy hiking outfit!

These hikes were yet another thing that I believe helped bring our group together. Motivating each other to make it to the top, and cheering everyone on brought us all closer (not to mention, we all got a pretty nice workout too!). I can't explain how great it feels to have people believing in you when you think you don't have any strength to move on.

So for these precious moments with all those on this trip, I am truly grateful :)