Singing for the Greeks

Sunday was definitely one of the highlights so far. We sang at the Greek Evangelical church, which is actually a reformed Presbyterian church. The reverend and people there were SO wonderfully nice...we were in the balcony, and they had a translator on staff who sat in a little media booth and translated, while we all listened on wireless headsets...I felt like we were U.N. ambassadors! We sang before and after the scripture reading, two pieces during communion, and one piece for a postlude. The ultimate compliment came from one of their resident musicians who told us that "Cantate Domino" sounded extremely European, and that our latin was "perfect"...."no American accent at all!" he told me. :-)
After the service, and lots of hugs and well-wishes goodbye to and from the people of the church, we changed and ventured across the street to the temple of Zeus for pictures (see the facebook postings). This is the largest of the temples in Greece, even bigger than the parthenon (which we'll see Friday), because, of course, Zeus was the father of all the Gods. We learned that the parthenon, though, is on the highest point in the city because it is the temple of Athena, for whom Athens is named.
We then had some free time back in the plaka district, and we got lunch on our own (Kris and our group followed Dimitra, our guide, and she led us to a little out-of-the-way gyro stand where we got the freshest, most DELICIOUS hand-carved gyros...yum!). Kris, Joyce, Will, and I chose to visit the national gardens adjacent to the parliament building, which was a nice afternoon spent...we saw lots of varieties of trees and other flora, and even a nice exotic birds containment.
We went back to the hotel and the five catholics on the trip freshened-up for mass. Dimitra arranged cabs for us to get to St. Dennis by 7pm, where there was an all-English mass...it was PACKED! It was interesting to find that it was mostly a philipino (sp?) and african crowd, but an all-english mass. They had a HUGE choir, very contemporary, with keyboard, guitar, and bass...but BEAUTIFUL singing...really lifted our souls. It was truly enjoyable. We were picked up by the bus, and the whole group then headed to dinner back in the plaka, where we visited a lively restaurant (VERY animated wait staff), who served us lots of traditional greek sample-platters...gyros was the main course...but lots of greek salad, feta (of course), french fries in olive oil (I'm getting addicted to these)...VERY nice.
We ended the evening by being taken to the highest point in the city (surprisingly, this is NOT the acropolis), where got a breathtaking view of the city at night, and I attempted to take some pictures, but they didn't come out very well; I may post some on facebook later. We got back to the hotel and turned-in by midnight, and are now up bright and early Monday morning, ready to head to our most anticipated portion of our trip, the cruise around the Agean Sea to the Greek Isles!
This may be my last post for a few days, because I don't think they have internet access on the ship; we may be pleasantly surprised, but stay tuned and I'll catch-up on Friday when we return to Athens. You all have a great week...we're excited to hear they've capped the oil leak!