Corinth and Athens - two ancient Greek powerhouses

Day 2 (10 Nov 2025)

Today, we made our way to Corinth. Today, I guess people outside of Greece would not have heard of Corinth but the tour guide explained that in ancient times, Corinth was one of the three greatest powers in the Peloponnese civilisation (region south of Greece) apart from Athens and Sparta. Corinth was a powerful naval state, owning two ports. This meant it was a multi-cultural city that thrived on trade. 

In the Bible, Corinth was where the apostle Paul met and stayed with Aquila and Priscilla. 

"There he met a Jew named Aquila, a native of Pontus, who had recently come from Italy with his wife Priscilla, because Claudius had ordered all Jews to leave Rome. Paul went to see them, ³ and because he was a tentmaker as they were, he stayed and worked with them." - Acts 18:2,3

Previously, I read tentmaker and it meant nothing to me. It was simply an occupation, I guess. But our tour guide explained that Corinth, being a bustling city, used to organise sports and games, and people would come from all over to compete. Since they were just visiting temporarily, they needed tents to stay in. So tentmaking was an important and lucrative business. Who knew!

We visited the archaelogical site in Corinth. By this time, the Roman empire had conquered the land so what is uncovered is essentially a Roman city. Typically, it contains an agora (marketplace) with inns, shops, restaurants. However the agora was not just to buy and sell, but also talk about important ideas like politics and so on. It was like the town square, if you like. It felt a little unreal walking amidst the agora where Paul would have preached to the Jews and then the Greeks. 

 

The Greeks built temples to their gods everywhere. This one in Corinth is for Apollo and is the oldest temple standing today, 27 centuries old.

 

I went back to the hotel and did a quick sketch of it.

 

 

 

 

Paul stayed for one and a half years because God told him to stay and teach the word, and he built a church here (of people, not a building).

"One night the Lord spoke to Paul in a vision: “Do not be afraid; keep on speaking, do not be silent. For I am with you, and no one is going to attack and harm you, because I have many people in this city.” - Acts 18:9,10

The Greeks would regularly gather at the agora to debate their ideas, they valued intellect and education. Greece is considered the cradle of democracy, politics and thought, it was home to philosophers like Plato and Socrates. Since Corinth was one of the centres of Greek civilisation, it made sense that Paul would have chastised the Corinthian church for their intellectual pride in his first letter to the Corinthians. 

We also visited the Corinth canal, an important conduit for trade. 

Stopped for lunch at a restaurant by the sea. It's only the second day but I'm already starting to find Greek food very salty. And way too much greens.

The view by the sea was nice though.

After lunch, we drove back to Athens. Athens is a truly ancient city. Similar to Rome, excavation in Athens always uncovers stuff. When digging to build the subway, the authorities kept finding antiquities which they stored and eventually displayed in subway stations. When people build houses in Athens, they sometimes find antiquities on their land. They're supposed to declare to this to the authorities and archaeologists will come examine it. The trouble is that if the artefacts are found to be of value, they might decide to buy over the house to perform an archaeological dig. So some people just don't declare and say they found nothing. 🤷‍♀️

We climbed up the Acropolis (which refers to the highest part of the city. Acro = high which is where we get the word "acrophobia" - fear of heights). 

An ancient music hall that seats 5,000. Concerts are still held there, artists like Elton John and Maria Callas have performed there. Imagine seeing Andrea Bocelli in concert there!

 

 

Right on top of the Acropolis is the Parthenon, a temple dedicated to Athena. I have to say, it looks pretty spectacular, especially during dusk with the light streaming in between the columns. It feels crazy standing among ruins that are more than 2,000 years old, similar to how I felt looking at the Pantheon in Rome.

 

 

 

The Parthenon was built with columns sloping upwards, to create the optical illusion of height when looking from ground level. To achieve this, it was built using 70,000 unique pieces of marble. Over the  centuries, it has been ruined by earthquakes and wars but the biggest destruction to it was only 400 years ago when it was under the Turks under the Ottoman Empire decided to store gunpowder there in the battle against the Venetians 🙄. The Venetians bombed the area, the Parthenon exploded and marble was scattered all over like debris. The Parthenon took only 9 years to build (in ancient times with no modern machinery) but restoration has been going on since 1992 as they're trying to figure out which bit of marble belongs where like some massive jigsaw puzzle. 

 

 

Everywhere the Greeks went, they built temples to the gods and it wasn't just to Greek gods. It was also Roman gods and Egyptian gods because Greece was a melting pot. We saw this most clearly in Athens. It explains why Paul was so troubled by the idolatry he saw there: 

 

“Paul then stood up in the meeting of the Areopagus and said: “People of Athens! I see that in every way you are very religious. For as I walked around and looked carefully at your objects of worship, I even found an altar with this inscription: to an unknown god. So you are ignorant of the very thing you worship—and this is what I am going to proclaim to you.“ - Acts 17:22.23

This trip is more than just a visit to a new country, it puts a context and pictures to the places Paul went, bringing the Bible to life. What struck me though was when the tour guide said that Paul thought he had failed in Athens. He never returned to Athens and he never wrote a letter to the Athenians. How could he ever have imagined that one day, Athens would be 80% Christian thanks to the seed he planted? 

 

Also, today when we talk about Jesus or Christianity to others, they at least have heard of it. In Paul's time, Jesus was a completely alien concept that was so radically left field it must have taken Paul so much courage to face the learned Greeks and share it. No wonder he was mocked. 

 

We saw the guards come to lower the flag that's on the Acropolis at sunset.

 

What a breathtaking view.

The Ancient City of Athens

Day 1 (9 Nov 2025)

I'd always wanted to visit Greece and last year when I was planning for my trip to Italy in May, I explored adding a cruise portion to the Greek islands. But it turned out to be very complicated and expensive so I tossed the idea because it was too complicated and expensive.

Then while I was at Tung Ling Bible School in the first quarter of this year, they announced that they would be organising a Bible study trip to Greece for the very first time which included a three-night cruise! For some strange reason, my friend Agnes who's a Tung Ling alumnus, popped into my head, so I called her and asked if she would be interested in going on the trip with me. She was super keen and said she had been asking her friends if their churches were organising one!

  

It's like God heard the desires of our hearts 😍 So here I am with my friend Agnes and other lovely Tung Ling alumni. I generally don't like package tours but it's different when you're among friends and God-loving people. Everyone looks out for each other and there isn't the usual ugly jostling and kiasu-ism like with other Singaporeans. 

 We flew into Athens this morning and were instantly whisked away to lunch at a 120-year-old tavern, the oldest and most historical in the area.    

It's a full-fledged Greek lunch which means huge portions of Greek salad with feta cheese, bread and olive oil, fried zucchini and eggplant, loads of meat (beef, chicken and pork), and of course Tsatsiki. This yoghurt based sauce appears at every dish and goes with everything. We also had a fantastic Greek yoghurt dessert with honey and quince. 

We quickly find out that cats are king in Greece. They get to roam everywhere, even into restaurants! They even paw your legs to ask for food. 

After lunch, we started our tour of Athens, the capital of Greece. First, some facts: Greece shares borders with Turkiye, Albania, North Macedonia and Bulgaria. It's surrounded by the Aegean Sea, Ionian Sea and Lybian Sea. Being surrounded by water, shipping is one of the country's most important industries. Greece accounts for 60% of shipping in the EU and its biggest export is petroleum. Throughout the millennia, Greece has fallen under different rules - the Romans, the Turks, and not to mention various civil wars. They became a parliamentary democracy only in 1947 which struck me as a tad ironic and the Greeks were the ones who invented democracy way back in 6 BC, allowing males to vote in ancient Greece.

80% of Greece is Greek Orthodox Christian (more about this later on). In fact, Christianity is so entrenched in Greece that the cross features on its flag. Which is pretty astounding and poignant if you think about it, because the apostle Paul was the first person to introduce Christianity to Greece and he met with a lot of opposition then. He meant to go to Asia Minor but he was stopped by the Holy Spirit and had a dream to go to Macedonia instead (which is Greece today). 

"During the night Paul had a vision of a man of Macedonia standing and begging him, “Come over to Macedonia and help us.” After Paul had seen the vision, we got ready at once to leave for Macedonia, concluding that God had called us to preach the gospel to them." - Acts 16:9,10 

Paul travelled throughout Greece preaching God's word, and in this trip, we would be retracing his steps. But first, Athens. Greece has a population of 11 million people and about half of them live in Athens. It's one of the oldest cities in the world, about 4,000 years old. Athens has 7 hills, we went up the tallest one - Lycabettus Hill. 

 

First, we had to walk up steep slopes that went on forever. Then they told us we had to walk 100 steps. One of the group mates said indignatly, "It's not 100! I counted more than 200!" It felt like 500 🥵 Bearing in mind we had just disembarked from 15 hours flight time - hiking up Athens was not what we were counting on.

 

Anyway, after the climb, there was a ride in the funicular for the final ascent.  

 

Made it to the summit! And what a view of Athens.

 

 

There are several iconic sights. First is the Acropolis (which means "high city". Even though it was not the highest point in Athens, it was the strategic fortress and religious centre of Athens within the ancient city). You can see the Parthenon temple on top.

 

We could also see the stadium where the first modern Olympic Games were held in 1896.

 

Quite coincidentally, we happened to be in Athens the day before the marathon was to be held so many of the roads were closed to traffic. I thought it was quite momentous to be in the city where the marathon was first started - in Greece, during the first Olympic Games. The marathon ends at the stadium.   

 

Because of the road closures though, we ended up having to walk everyone since the bus couldn't get through. Quite odd to see all the roads so empty.

 

The guide showed us some sights in Athens including the changing of the guard in front of Parliament building.

 

We also saw the Academy of Athens which had statues of Athena and Apollo, gods of wisdom and the arts respectively, right up front. 

It is also flanked by seated statues of Plato and Socrates, fitting I guess, since this is the highest research establishment in Greece. 

 

 

Finally, the bus picked us up and dropped us at the Stanley Hotel for dinner.

 

 It's clean and reasonably sized for a hotel in the city centre. No complaints!