Antioch

I really want to go to Antioch. I began re-reading "The Silver Chalice" by Thomas B. Costain a few days ago, and the book simply reeks with Biblical history. Much of the book takes place in Antioch (now Antakya) and tells of the beauty of the city. Evidently, much of the ancient city is now buried, but it would still be very cool to be in the presence of so much history. And some new "old" mosaics have been uncovered (see below). I'm not religious, but I am fascinated by religious history...okay, any history...so I'm dying to cover as much ground as possible.










The Cave Church of St. Peter is believed to have been dug by the Apostle Peter himself as a place for the early Christian community of Antioch to meet, and thus is reputed to be the first Christian church. At any rate, it is certainly one of the oldest.

IN THE BEGINNING: choosing the destination

This is the hard part - so many places and so little time. My younger brother generously gave me frequent flyer miles as a graduation gift from law school, and I agonized for weeks, even months, over where to go. I've been to most of western Europe, and wanted to go someplace exotic that I hadn't been before. I narrowed it down to Egypt, New Zealand, Eastern Europe and Turkey.

Safety concerns were an issue as I would be traveling solo, so I reluctantly dropped Egypt from my list. I thought about New Zealand, but since I only had two weeks for traveling, I didn't want to spend two days getting there and back. That left Eastern Europe and Turkey, and in the end, I decided on Turkey. For one thing, if I picked Eastern Europe I had to make more decisions and pick the countries I wanted to visit. And the more I looked at websites and books on Turkey, the more excited I got about visiting the place.

So Turkey it is...