Superficial Joy

The last segment of my whirlwind summer was FRANCE!  My friend Zena invited me to join her some of her hiking friends on a week-long trip to the Alps in the south of France. WOW! I have always wanted to do this! Zena!! I took the train from 3 nights' rest in Geneva, Switzerland, to Lyon where I met my 7 newest friends! Together we got to Veynes where we were met by our guides. The following 7 days were absolutely amazing! The women I was with are all retired and know each other primarily from a hiking group. We hiked from lodging to lodging and because of the drought several of them had no electricity (apparently the electricity is hydro-powered). It was fantastic to be unplugged for a week. With the exception of lunches in the high mountains, we didn't get a signal.  I turned off airplane mode long enough each day to keep my 200+ day streak on Duo-lingo alive! Here  is the trip we did and here are a few snapshots of the week--just know that the pictures don't do it justice

After my rest in Geneva via the not-so-shiny Stansted Airport, I flew to Thessaloniki to join a 13ish day tour of Greece. Back during the 2020-2021 school year, I took the first level of Hebrew at  Citizen Cafe Tel Aviv  (which I highly recommend). It was on Zoom and everyone except 2 of us was in America. One of these was a lovely woman in California named Debbie. She visited Israel later that year and we got together. As it turns out, she organizes tours of the Holy Land. This summer her tour was going to Egypt, Jordan, Israel and Greece and she invited to me join any combination of the four. I chose Greece because it fit into my summer and because I wanted to go to some of the Christian sites on the tour: Corinth (where Paul was), Ephesus (we took a cruise that visited the port there) and Patmos (where John wrote the book of revelation) among others. Debbie and Joy It was a wonderful trip! I made 18 new friends and got to experience full-on-tourist travel again!  I even got to pract