Athens and Delphi (Greece)

As you can see from the photo above, we visited the Acropolis of Athens yesterday.  The weather could not have been more ideal, and the breathtaking beauty of the Acropolis cannot really be captured in photos.  Speaking of which, I took more than 400 hundred photos yesterday.  Today I took more than 500 photos in Delphi and several other sites.  It will be very difficult to select what photos to include in postings when I get back to Rome.  Here are a few to whet your appetite.

The next few photos are from Delphi and the icon is from the Monastery of Osios Lucas (St. Luke).

Ruins of the Temple of Apollo in Delphi

Monastery of Osios Lucas

Visit to Corinth on a Rainy Day (Corinth, GR)

Just a brief posting today with much more to follow on today's adventure when I get back to Rome and a better WiFi connection.  We visited the ruins of ancient Corinth.  As you can see in the attached photo, the original city was on the side and top of a very high hill.  The sea is in the background.  It was a rainy day, but we were able to get in a full day of visits to sites which have an association with St. Paul.  More on this to come with many more photos....

Greetings from Greece (Thessaloniki, GR)

3 Jesuits in Philippi, Greece - Jaime (Chile Province), Scott and Dennis (both from New England Province)

We arrived in Greece on Thursday.  We took a flight from Rome to Athens, then took a short connecting flight to Thessaloniki.  The program and tour is being led by Father Scott Brodeur, SJ who is in the photo with me and another Jesuit from Chile who works in Rome.

The WiFi connection in Thessaloniki was poor, so I did not post anything on the blog.  Given the slowness of the WiFi, I will probably wait until I return to Rome to write about the trip and post photos.   Right now I am writing this from the hotel lobby in Villia, Greece, which is not the best environment to use my computer.

We return to Rome on Friday afternoon, so until then...

Visit to the Burghese Museum (Rome, IT)

I finally visited the Burghese Museum, undoubtedly one of the most spectacular collections of art in all of Rome! I squeezed it into my recently busy schedule.  I have attached several photos of the many which I took at the museum.  If I get an opportunity in the next few days, I will post more of them before posting photos from Greece.  

We leave tomorrow morning for Greece...and I still need to pack, so this is the end of this posting.  If WiFi works in Greece, I will post on my travel blog whenever I get the opportunity.  If no WiFi, then I will post when I return to Rome.  Time is flying by!  Before you know it, I will be saying arriverderci to bella Roma, as I begin my long trek back to Boston.  There is still a lot more traveling ahead of me, so stay tuned!

Visit to Santa Maria sopra Minerva (Rome, IT)

It has been a very rainy day in Rome, so I decided to spend the day indoors and visited the Basilica of Santa Maria sopra Minerva.  I have visited this beautiful church before and posted photos of the church.  I never tire of visiting here and taking photos inside since there is so much beauty in the interior of the church, including the photo above which is at a side altar of the church .  It is a painting entitled The Savior, and is attributed to the artist, Perugino.  I could not get that close to take the photo, so this is a photo of a postcard.  What follows are photos I took inside the church of actual things!

Michelangelo's statue of The Redeemer

Tomb of St. Catherine of Siena (encased within the main altar of the church).

Easter Monday (Rome, IT)

Easter Monday is a national holiday in Italy.  Everywhere you turn in Rome there are thousands of people strolling with their families.  There are also thousands upon thousands of tourists in Rome, most of whom are lining up to get into St. Peter's Basilica.  As has become my habit, I took photos as I walked the now familiar streets of Rome.  The photo above has the Piazza Navona in the background.

The next few photos are of paintings displayed by vendors in the Piazza Navona.

The next series of photos are the stairs of St. Peter's Basilica where thousands of flowers surround the outside altar which was used by Pope Francis I for Holy Mass on Easter Sunday.

The last set of photos on this post were taken at the restaurant where I stopped for lunch and of the flower bed of a neighboring hotel.