Day 16: Nafplio & all its beauty !

 

" There is no longer Jew or Gentile, slave or free, male and female. For you are all one in Christ Jesus " 

      This is such a beautiful quote to encapsulate as we took on the beautiful city of Nafplio today. To go into the day knowing and realizing how much we would see, was the extra deep breath of preparation that I needed on the 2 hour bus ride there from Pikermi. 

 

    These are the first of many photos that I took to get me in the mindset to get to the top of the 'mountain' in the picture on the right. I can't read much of the picture in the left as it is in greek, but its at the start of the 1000 or so stairs of death that were staring back at me, laughing. The 'mountain' is called the Fortress of Palamidi. Which is a beautiful castle that sits a the tippy top of the stairs that nearly defeated me. ( the fact that people pay to walk up these stairs blows my mind ) jk, they pay for the views at the top, which you can also ride a bus to get to. 

This was  the top of stair like 122, and I wanted to fall out after cheering, then remembered I had about 80998 ( don't call me dramatic until you make it to the top) left to go. I just knew I couldn't stop: 1. because the bus had already taken others to the top and 2. I had to push myself because I knew I  could do it. 

 I of course tracked the steps and the views whole way up, on my breathing breaks to see how much the views would convince me to keep going, but also to see if they were being so for real when they said it was 1,000 steps...because WHAT.. & as I continued to pace myself and make it to the top where the ticket booth was, sure enough it was about a thousand LONG,  treacherous, beautiful , most rewarding steps I have walked up on this entire trip. ( there has been quite a bit, so this is big)! 

    As I made it to the top, I was at loss for words.. not just because I was out of breath from the stairs..but because the top was absolutely breathtaking and astonishing. I had to just breathe, look, and take in the all of the things at once.. the beauty, the peace, and sooooo much freedom; not only of the accomplishment of making it up the stairs but to just sit in awe of the creation in front of me. I got to briefly reflect on how my journey up those stairs were much like my journey in life and to know that I made it to the top to see the most sublime view thus far, it gave me hope to continue to push through the crazy things of life and keep trotting along. Even if I cant breathe, my knees are burning, and I can't yet see the top because i'm on stair 647 and hunched over sucking in O2 for dear life; I gotta keep going because behind me is just a bunch of past steps I have already walked through that got me to where I am today. 

    

    

Although you would think the day should be over after such a expedition, we had lunch at what is now MY favorite gyro place in Greece: Gyro Grill. It was so full of flavor and filling in so many ways, it made me do my lil 'happy I have food' dance. After this delightful date, we got  to explore the little city at hand and it was a voyage of encounters, not of just food but of art in my opinion. From the types of gelato, the graffiti on the walls, even down to the individual variety of shops that stretched for about 1/2 mile on 2-3 streets, and some even up some stairs behind other shops.

    This was super cool, because I saw art like never before, and nothing you could find in a museum. But the art of shoe making by hand, gelato scooping with a smile because its their form of love, passions of explaining types of honey, pride in the hand made jewelry that was displayed, and so much more. Here in Nafplio, I enjoyed one of the most exuberayting experiences one could experience walking around at the shops and such. I felt like I was on an unexplainable journey in another persons' world and each person had a story of their own; yet it was hard to find them as equal because we all are on our own journeys... but that's exactly what I had to do as I walked around the Old town of Nafplio that was built by some of the people standing in it and creating their lives there. 

  

        This was such a rewarding and significant day, not because I accomplished the stairs ( partially) and not because I got gelato ( even though this is always a plus), but because I got to freely be me but also  learn how to see Jesus in the divergence of people that I saw today. Not because they were christians or because they had a cross necklace next to their countries flag, but simply because they were humans on a journey called life and that in itself was more beautiful and freeing than anything else. The passion behind each store owner or worker and why they do what they do behind the scenes does not even half way show how many difficult flights of stairs they had to climb up to be where they are today, but today we, the SEU Cohort, was favored enough to be exposed to a small portion of a  variety of cultures in just a few hours... and that is Nafplio... We were not lucky to just visit Naplio, but I feel like we were blessed to have been able to ENCOUNTER Nafplio. 

~ Deona Webster