Patmos Island

June 22, 2022 • Place

June 18-24, 2022

Patmos was one of the most visually stunning and restful locations we’ve ever visited. Here are a few highlights from our week:

Visiting the Cave of the Apocalypse, where St. John is thought to have written the Revelation. The location remains a cave, but a modest stone church has been incorporated into the walls. The morning we visited, a worship service was already in progress with priests and nuns chanting, locals and tourists crossing themselves in response. I was struck by how John must have felt completely marginalized on this remote, thornbush-covered prison island. Yet his time living in the cave became one of the most significant of his life.
We saw the stone desk where the Revelation was apparently written, and a small niche carved into the rock at waist level, thought to be a handhold used by the elderly saint to rise from bed.
Eve and I seeing our first octopus in the wild one evening at Petra Bay
Getting lost in the maze of narrow alleys of Chora that still elude Google Maps
A sweaty, stunning hike to the highest point on Patmos, Profitis Ilias
Swimming in the saltwater pool at Onar Patmos
Seeing codices from the Byzantine era and earlier in the fortress monastery of St. John
Mind-boggling roads: harrowing blind alleys, hairpins turns on sheer mountainsides with no guardrail, roads that suddenly go right-on-the-beach, driving over rock fields
The kindness of Marianthi, Dimitris, Elena and Stefanos at Onar Patmos
“It is the MOST beautiful place. And I’ve never slept better in my life. I don’t think I’ll like a place on the whole trip as much as this.” -Anna Spray