Sunday, October 24

Here’s a photo of Stromboli fuming away. The Captain sailed slowly almost all the way around, then spun (again slowly) the ship in a circle so everyone had a great view.

On to Civitavecchia, arriving very early in the morning so that several thousand pieces of luggage could be off-loaded before the passengers went ashore. Again only about 100 people were staying aboard for the next cruise. They’ve made changes to their debarkation procedure. No more waiting in the public lounges until your baggage tag color/number is called. Now they give you a letter that tells you what time to go ashore, you wait in your own cabin and when the time comes, you just go. As the cruise director said, “We figured out that if you tell people when to go, they’ll go by themselves...who knew?” By the time we got off, ours was the only luggage left in our color group...easy, easy process. And since we weren’t going through customs in Italy, we just went out an climbed on a bus to our Rome hotel.

At the hotel, the Holland America agent quickly arranged three van tours for the afternoon. Jill  and I had lunch on the hotel’s patio then set out with a group at 2:30 p.m. Our guide was Maximo, and he drove us back and forth all over the central section of Rome for three hours. I won’t list all the places here, but we drove past and/or stopped at just about all the biggie sights to be seen. This photo is your basic overview...just like our tour.

My main impression of Rome (which I did not have from my first visit back in 1962) was of how impossibly narrow and maze-like the streets are. We would be zipping (or crawling through pedestrians) along a street, and looking ahead, all I could see was space closed off by buildings on all sides. Then we would reach what looked like a dead end, and a little road would appear going off an some impossible angle between the buildings that had looked completely solid a minute before. Thank heavens I didn’t need to navigate that city by myself!

We had talked about going to a nearby restaurant for dinner, but by the time we got back to the hotel, we opted to eat there again. After all, it was real Italian pasta regardless of whether it was at the hotel or some restaurant!

Monday, October 25

Up at the crack of dawn again...partly because we had to leave the hotel at 7:15 a.m. and partly because I set the alarm clock wrong.  Off to the airport, then a long uneventful flight back to Washington, D.C. Jill went on to Denver and home, while I spent the night there near Dulles and then next day flew to Houston for a week.

And that’s all for this trip, folks. See ya next time (maybe for Norwegian fjords in April...).

Saturday, October 23

At sea. The big excitement today was sailing through the Straits of Messina ( location of the sea monsters of legend, Scilla and Charderis, although I’ve probably spelled at least one of those names wrong). Then we sailed around the island of Stromboli in the Aeolian Islands. Stromboli is an active volcano, continuously venting gases which makes for a lovely plume above the peak. I did take photos, but can’t upload any because I’ve already packed the USB cable for my camera. Sorry.

Packing was the exercise of the day. Gack. The single, solitary good thing about packing to go home is that you don’t have to make decisions about what to put in the suitcase...just keep stuffing things in untll all the closets, drawers and shelves are empty.

Tomorrow we are off to Rome for the day and night. We hope that we can arrange some sort of city tour for tomorrow afternoon. Then on Monday it’s back to the States and home for Jill and Houston for me. It’s been a really great trip to see lots of places I never expected to be able to see. Still, however, seeing the pyramids at Giza is the high point of the trip for me.

Ciao for now.

Thursday, October 21

Mykonos, Greece.  Originally scheduled to be a tender port, we docked at the brand new, not-quite-finished ship port. Jill had a tour to Delos a 35 minute ferry ride away to see the ruins there. She reported that there is no shade and lots of ruins at this UNESCO World Heritage site.

I took a tour on Mykonos itself. It is a member of the island group known as the Cyclades. The island has lots of very square white buildings mostly with blue shutters and doors, ooldes of rock walls running every direction, and about a zillion rocks that are not in walls. Legend says that the granite rocks on Mykonos are the bodies of the Titans that were slain by Zeus. Ah...I almost forgot the olive groves and prickly pear cacti that were everywhere.

We stopped for views of Delos and several beaches although how sand beaches got there with all those rocks on the island is somewhat of a question...must have been many eons of waves on those rocks. Mykonos has long been a popular tourist spot so there are many small hotels, condos, etc., and the local population is quite cosmopolitan even given that many are still actively farming. Most of the farming is of olives and grapes as the island is so arid. Water is, of course, why the buildings all have flat roofs and cisterns.

We stopped in a town called Ano Mera to visit a monastery’s church. I stayed in the little town square and communed with some of the herd of smallish cats of just about every color that were wandering around. I even found a postcard of “Cats of Greece,” but I’m keeping that one myself. Then we went around the square to a taberna where we were offered a snack of Greek hors d’oeuvres and either water or ouzo or ouzo with ice in it to make it cloudy. It was 10:30 in the morning, for heaven’s sake! I passed on all of that and just got a Greek beer which was cold and quite good, although it was a very large bottle, and I didn’t finish it. It was very pleasant to sit in the sun, drink cold beer, and watch the other tourists try to skritch the cats...mostly successfully.

Back to the ship in time for lunch and a lazy afternoon. We sailed at 5:00 p.m. with Frank providing “color commentary” again. (Fortunately he can only e heard on the open decks or on the closed circuit tv on the BridgeCam channel.) As we left, the Costa Fortuna arrived to take our place. Then another Costa ship arrived, but a rather small and old one for which we couldn’t make out a name. (Note to self: next time I travel to foreign climes, I really must remember to bring my binoculars and some decent maps of the area.)

Friday, October 22

Monemvassia, Greece. I can spell it, but still have trouble pronouncing it. This 1,000 foot high crag is known a the “Greek Gibraltar.” It separated from the mainland during an earthquake in 375 A.D. Now it is reached by a low causeway. The place was in its heyday during the 12th century, and is the original home of Malmsey wine. By the way, it is located on the southeastern corner of the Argolid Penninsula, i.e. the southernmost tip of Greece.

There is a fortress at the very tip top. Down at water level on the seaward end (to the right in this photo)  is the walled lower town which is only accessible on foot or by mule via a single narrow gate. (“Monemvassia” actually means “one way in.”) Although several thousand people once lived there, only a few do so now, and they have to park their cars outside the gate.

Once inside, there is a very narrow zigzag walled path that leads to the upper village...only two people wide with arrow slits at every turn. The place was ruled by the Turks for about three centuries, but was retaken by the Greeks after a siege in 1821.

This information comes from the screed that the ship provides on each port. The ship spent the day doing creative drifting in the little harbor area while people were taken ashore on the ship’s tenders...a very bouncy ride with today’s stiff winds. I am no longer interested in competing in the “tender high jump” event, so I stayed aboard. I must say that Captain Gundersen and his staff and crew are wizards at creative drifting (i.e. remaining in about the same place without using the anchor) as well as at head-in, back-in and parallel parking this ship at docks.

The last tender from shore was supposed to be at 1:30 p.m., however it appeared that two passengers were late, so it was after 2:30 before we got going again. We had a very good view from our veranda of the crew raising one of the tenders back into position. Now that we are back out in the Aegean, the wind is very strong, and the ship is moving around a lot more than it has on this whole trip! The final formal dinner tonight should be an adventure also.

Tomorrow is the final sea day as we head back to Rome and will be filled with repacking the suitcases for the trip back to the U.S. Jill and I will be spending one night in Rome, and hope that we can arrange some sort of tour in the afternoon. So this is probably the penultimate posting for this trip.

Tuesday, October 19

At sea, cruising the Bosphorus and Dardanelles. We woke up this morning just in time to watch the ship pass through Istanbul. This time we had a view of the Asian side instead of the European side. Massive amounts of traffic through the Bosphorus Strait. Boats and ships of all sizes going in every direction. It was right about rush hour as we passed under the Bosphorus Bridge, and traffic on the bridge was at a total standstill. It’s easy to see why there are so many ferries in Istanbul. Thats Kemal Ataturk's palace just left of the bridge.

It’s interesting that the Bosphorus, like the Panama Canal, does not run east to west. Like the Canal, what one would think is the east end, the Black Sea, is actually the north end with the south end opening into the Sea of Marmara which eventually leads to the Dardanelles and the Aegean.

We had a lovely lunch today in the Pinnacle Grill (the fancy restaurant on board). And it is full-bore fancy, with full silver and crystal settings and multiple wait staff, even at lunch. We also had a great view of all the ships we passes on the Sea of Marmara. They were mostly cargo ships, and we tried to identify what kind of cargo each had, but were probably way off base on our guesses.

About 3:30 p.m. we entered the Dardanelles aka the Hellespont. The ship’s port guru, Frank Buckingham, did almost a full three hours of running (although sometimes walking) commentary on all the Greek history, Greek legends and World War I history associated with the area. Everything from the Golden Fleece to Kemal Ataturk. I won’t go into all of it because you can find it in the history books. Suffice it to say that we saw Gallipoli on one side and a faint hill on the horizon on the other that is supposed to be the archaeological site of Troy.

Somewhere in there I went and got my hair cut. Naturally, she parted it on the other side so I don’t look like myself, but she did put enough spray on it to survive the winds on our veranda (which are up around 35 or 40 knots at present), and the formal dinner tonight.

Wednesday, October 20

Kusadasi, Turkey (again). No tour today...been here, done that. I did manage to wake up before the alarm bells sounded for a crew drill this morning. Again, cloudy in early morning, but cleared off to a spectacularly brilliant, perfect temperature day. Again two other cruise ships in port with us: Seabourne’s Odyssey and Classic International Cruises’ Princess Danae. But this time we got the “A” parking place and the great view of Kusadasi and its yacht marina, as you can see.

After lunch Jill and I walked ashore to visit the shops at the port. A few with souvvenir stuff, but a lot of high end boutiques selling leather goods, clothing and jewelry. We spent an interesting half hour in one jewelry store negotiating prices on emerald and diamond rings, but both decided that such a purchase would entail far greater expense in the future to take more cruises to have occasions to wear the rings.

As we wended our way back to the ship, we saw a class of young men, all in uniform, lots of brass buttons on their double-breasted coats, and all wearing ties, albeit loosely tied. They appeared to be a class from, perhaps, the Turkish naval institute, and were obviously being escorted by their teacher on a field trip. They went in through the port management office, then out onto the pier where their teacher pointed out something about the Prinsendam, and they all took photos of each other with their cell phones standing mear the bow of the ship. Shortly after we got back to our veranda, here they came chugging past us on a tug boat.

The rest of the afternoon was blissfully uneventful as we have very early tours at Mykonos tomorrow which will probably include tendering into the port.

Sunday, October 17

Sinop, Turkey.  Both yesterday leaving Trabzon and today leaving Sinop we were escorted by groups of small dolphins. Today’s sunset was one of the most spectacular we’ve seen. Since there wasn’t much photogenic about Sinop, here is the sunset.

Founded in the 7th century B.C. and believed to be the birthplace of Diogenes, Sinop is also said to derive its name from the Amazon Queen “Sinova.” It is the first place we have seen in the Black Sea that is built mostly on relatively flat land. Although the mountains aren’t far away.

Neither Jill nor I had a tour booked for today, plus it was actively raining this morning, so we did’t go ashore. Instead we opted for a leisurely fat breakfast down in the dining room, then spent the morning relaxing in various locales around the ship. In mid-morning the rain stopped and the sun came out which made sitting up on Lido Deck very pleasant.

Frankly, all these Black Sea ports have a similar look to them. Buildings very close together, more or less weathered-looking, narrow streets, mosques, churches, museums, nice parks, and parts of old city walls. (This photo is Sinop’s version of an old bastion with Byzantine, Roman and Greek elements.) Each one claims to be the terminus of the Silk and Spice Road. Each one is a popular resort area for its country. None are tourist-oriented as we tend to think of that in the U.S. Of course you could do a somewhat similar general description of the Caribbean islands by substituting sugar cane plantations and rum distilleries for some of the items above.

Monday, October 18

Sevastopol, Ukraine. Having determined that the tour I had originally booked for Sevastopol involved an inordinate amount of walking, I canceled it, and Jill and I simply went ashore and did some easy ambling and shopping in the area near the port. One thing we got was a very picturesque bottle of beer with which to toast our departure from our last Black Sea port.

Periodically during the day we watched the “dance of the buses” on the dock as they loaded and unloaded tours from the ship. I am still amazed at the maneuverability of tour buses and the skill of their drivers. While others buses are okay, my new favorites are those made by Mercedes-Benz. They tend to have a bit more leg room than the others, better handgrips to help you up the steps into them, and more comfortable seats.

Sevastopol is quite a large city on a relatively flat peninsula of land about in the middle of the northern shore of the Black Sea. Serving as backdrop in the distance are the Crimean Range and its foothills. The city was established in 1783 by Catherine II after Russia got control of the region. Thus it is somewhat of a johnny-come-lately among our ports of call on this cruise. But of course, there were older settlements in the area long before that oldest of which was a Greek colony called Chersonesus in the late 5th century B.C.

The parts of the city that we saw demonstrated just about every style of 20th century Russian and Soviet architecture. This photo shows the port building in a very typical mid-century style.

All the weather gods have been blessing us this whole trip...well, with the possible exception of the 105 degree temperature at the pyramids. At each port where there were clouds and sometimes rain, the skies have cleared for the duration of our tours. The same thing happened here at Sevastopol. Here’s hoping the rain gods are still on vacation as we head back towards the Mediterranean.

Friday, October 15

Batumi, Georgia. I haven’t been near a single shop in about eight days now. The last time I had an opportunity to buy even a postcard much less any other souvenirs was in Kusadasi. Of course, part of that is due to my not being able to hike around much, but in the other places I’ve visited around the world, there were always souvenir shops and street-side entrepreneurs near the docks. This is probably just as well as I do not really need more souvenirs, but I would like to send some more postcards to some of my friends.

There are still a few of the little birds hanging around the ship. Last night at dinner, two of our tablemates told us that, after we had told them about the bird getting into our cabin, they wound up with six of them in theirs. It started with one, and when they tried to evict it through the veranda door, more came in. They finally closed the veranda door and shooed the birds into the interior corridor. From there the little pests either found their way out or were captured and removed, although one seemed to find its way down several decks and appeared in the up-scale dining room at breakfast time.

As we arrived in Batumi this morning, there was a very strong smell of oil. Batumi is the terminus for both the Transcaucasian Railroad and the Baku oil pipeline. Evidently once in a while there is a leak while a tanker is a tanker is being loaded, and we happened to sail through a patch of it.

Batumi is a beautiful city. Lots of towers, spires and minarets, and even a ferris wheel on the horizon. Like Sochi, it occupies the space between the Caucasus mountains and the sea. There is a great deal of building and restoration of buildings going on. Also the great majority of the roads, streets and sidewalks are torn up, and the ones that aren’t torn up are riddled with potholes. I believe much of this is the result of a massive flood that occurred in 2008.

Some of the older buildings are quite ornate, and there is a geat deal of wonderful ornamental iron work throughout the city. The newer buildings and monuments are very imaginative and modern in style. The one you see here is still under construction, but is going to be a hotel. I was fascinated by its multiple zig zag shape.

Jill stayed on board today, but I took an afternoon tour of the city. Our first stop was at an artist’s studio. The man is a woodcarver of excellent talent. His studio is actually a small museum of his work. There were scale models of several local churches and synagogues and life-sized vignettes of people doing their jobs like basket weaving, and how a room in a rich person’s home would have looked in the old days. Plus he had interesting carved goblets, flasks, trays and other decorative objects.

Our next two stops were at churches: one, a tiny little Catholic church named St. Barbara’s, and the other a large Armenian Orthodox church. We then went up Mt. Batumi to a hotel terrace for tea and a fabulous view of the whole city. We were offered tea or coffee, and the tea was so strong that it looked like coffee, but several lumps of sugar made it drinkable.

The weather was mostly cloudy, but the sun came out for our tour in the afternoon, although that made things quite steamy. When we arrived back at the ship there was a brass band playing Georgian tunes an a girls’ chorus singing folksongs...a happy send-off. As an additional send-off, a group of dolphins escorted us back out to sea.

Saturday, October 16

Trabzon, Turkey. For about the first time in 36 cruises, I was up, awake, dressed, had breakfast and out on the veranda to watch us dock. This was because Jill’s tour leaves very early. For only the second time on this whole trip, there was actually a little rolling motion to the ship ... just enough to let you know that you’re on a ship. There was some rolling the very first night out of Rome, and a lot of people thought it was rather severe, but it certainly wasn’t for us having been through that hurricane in Drake’s Passage on the South American trip in 2007. I suspect that most of this past night’s motion was due to our doing some “creative drifting” between about 3:00 and 7:00 a.m. since Trabzon is just not that far from Batumi.

My tour set out in a light rain this morning. Our guide, Hakan, was part of a group of guides flown in from Istanbul for today’s tours as there are not enough guide in Trabzon. He told us that it rains 300 days a year here. We were lucky, then, that it cleared off some for the majority of the time we were touring.

Hakan told us that the Black Sea Coast area of Turkey is quite different from the rest of Turkey, and that elsewhere in Turkey they tell Trabzon jokes like people in the U.S. tell Polish or Aggie jokes. He provided several examples during the tour.

This was billed as an “easy” tour, but everywhere we stopped, the thing we were to see was a rather long walk involving either a steep hill or lots of steps. As a result, several of us opted to stay with the bus, but we had a good time chatting while the others wound up exhausted.

Back to the ship, and it had clouded over again. I grabbed some lunch and used the afternoon to catch up on photos and this blog.

Thursday, October 14

Sochi, Russia. Sochi is the longest city in Europe stretching some 90 miles along the coast perched between the Black Sea and the Caucasus Mountains. It is an extremely popular resort area where both Czar Nicholas II and Joseph Stalin built dachas (vacation homes). Nearby (about 30 km from the port) is Dagomys which is the “tea capital” of Russia.

I took a tour to this tea capital. First, of course, we had to get through Sochi...easier said than done as the roads are narrow with traffic jams about every mile or so. Sochi is, however, a lovely, very green city with extensive botanical gardens, amusement parks, etc. It is also the site for the 2014 Winter Olympics. The actual venue for the Olympics will be about 20 km east of the city where construction is underway even now on the ice skating rinks, etc.

The roads, even in the city, are one long set of curves, many of 180 degrees or more. By some miracle our driver managed to negotiate them even while occasionally talking on his cell phone. Once out of the city, the curves got even steeper and curvier. Fortunately our driver did not receive any calls during this stretch.

As you can see from this photo, the scenery at the tea plantation is absolutely spectacular! We had a short stop for photos and a description of the tea industry here in Russia, then we went on up a one lane cobbled road to the very top of this particular mountain to a tea house. The tea house was about a quarter of a mile from where the bus parked, and the “road” to it was extremely rough underfoot and somewhat hilly, but I got there eventually. We were served strong black tea and a delicious bread with poppy seeds and sugar folded into it as you would find in a marble cake. There were also three kinds of jam and honey to go with it. The hike back out to the bus almost did me in, but I managed to make it.

According to our guide, we are only the fourth ship to stop at Socki this year. Prinsendam is the only ship of the Holland America fleet that can fit under the bridges at Istanbul to come into the Black Sea. This means that very few cruise ships come here.

We got back to the Sea Terminal (built during the Stalin era, and looks it) about 1:15 p.m. I spent a while sitting in a nice little park with a huge fountain and a rose garden which also included what appeared to be yucca plants in full bloom before hiking back out the pier to the ship.

I haven’t posted for several days beause our internet reception has been very low.

Sunday, October 10

Piraeus, Greece. “Never on Sunday” was our theme for this day. We were booked on a “panoramic” tour of Athens, but it was canceled. The reason given was that the center of Athens was supposed to be closed. We have heard various causes of the closing from demonstrations of some sort (evidently the Greeks like to demonstrate for practically any reason) to a bicycle race. So Athens has joined Jerusalem on the list of places that will have to continue their existence without me. It’s just a well, as the weather has been cloudy with attempted rain all day.

All but the 125 of us who are continuing on were off and away by about 9:30 a.m. Jill and I had free run of the Crow’s Nest this morning where we watched a huge number of passenger ships and ferry boats (some large enough to be ships) dance around in the harbor. After lunch we handed in our passports yet again. Each country on this trip seems to have their ideas whether we need to personally carry our pasports around, or whether the ship should keep custody of them, so it’s been “pick ‘em up then turn ‘em in” all the way fo far.

As I type this, my ears are assaulted by the very loud General Emergency Alarm for the life boat drill. The good news is that we don’t have to go to it since we did it at the beginning of the last cruise...also, that people no longer have to drage their life jackets to the drill which makes everything so much easier. That change was probably brought about by someone suing the line over tripping on someone else’s dragging life jacket straps.

And speaking of drills...at 10:45 p.m. everyone on board was startled out of a week’s growth or of at least a sound sleep when the alarm bells went off. It appears that there was a small fire in the laundry area, quickly controlled according to the Captain’s announcement a couple of moments later. Jill and I had both turned in some laundry today, so we were hoping that it was not ours that burned up. A bit later the Captain came on again and announced that it was a burn-out in an electric motor. That’s the first time in 36 cruises that I’ve ever heard the alarm bells other than during an announced drill. For future reference, short long short long short long means fire.

Monday, October 11

At sea then Istanbul, Turkey. Early this morning we sailed past the Dardenelles, but I slept through it. A lazy morning and early afternoon.

We sailed into Istanbul around 3:00 p.m. On the way in we had excellent views of the Blue Mosque, Hagia Sofia and the Topkapi Palace. We docked between Kilic Ali Pasa Mosque with its golden crescent and the older Nusretiye Mosque. The ship was cleared by 4:00 p.m. and passengers began heading ashore, including Jill who had a tour to the Spice Bazaar this evening.

My own tour this evening was called “Istanbul by Night” and didn’t leave until 8:00 p.m. We went to a nightclub called Kanvaserei where we were given a very nice dinner of a Turkish appetizer place, another course of cheese dumplings, then salad, followed by shish kebab, rice, potatoes, and mixed veg, with fruit or ice cream for dessert along with all the wine, beer, soft drinks, coffee, etc. that you could want. Meanwhile we were entertained by some truly amazing belly dancers, folk dancers, and a comedian/singer. On the way back we were shown some of the local sights lit up at night and got back to the ship about midnight.

Tuesday, October 12

Istanbul, Turkey. Early this morning Cunard’s sparkling new Queen Victoria arrived and docked in front of us. It is huge!

This morning’s tour was done in a continuing light drizzle of rain. We went to the Blue Mosque (which I didn’t go in as it was a lot of walking and you had to take your shoes off...I have enough trouble walking around with shoes on!). We also saw the Hagia Sofia (originally a church, then a mosque, now a museum). This photo taken as we arrived shows both of them with the Blue Mosque on the left.

The next stop was the Grand Bazaar where I did not buy any rugs. Then we went across the Bosphorus Bridge to the Asian side of Istanbul and back in a huge stop and stop traffic jam. Again I am impressed with the skills of tour bus drivers eo navigate super narrow twisty streets with tons of traffic on them.

There are so many mosques in Istanbul that the call to prayer five times a day is almost like a competition between the muzzeins from each mosque chanting through their loudspeakers. It sounds like each one is using a different set of music and lyrics, and some throw in extra trills and grace notes. It probably wouldn’t sound so chaotic if I knew the language.

We sailed about 5:00 p.m. passing under both bridges that cross the Bosphorus Strait and into the Black Sea.

Wednesday, Ocyober 13

At sea. We are living an Alfred Hitchcock movie. The ship is infested with a large flock of small brown birds.

Last night, as we got ready to go to a formal night dinner, we discovered our first one...a little sparrow-sized bird that had somehow gotten onto our veranda. When I tried to go out the door, suddenly this bird flew right past me into our cabin, fluttering madly. We chased it out of the closet with one of my canes (and closed the door), then chased it out of the bathroom (and closed the door). Finally we got it back out the sliding glass door. But when we tried to go out again, thinking it was gone, in it came again. Jill finally chased it out by waving her needlepoint project. We went off to dinner thinking it would be gone when we got back because the lights would have been off for several hours.

It wasn’t gone, and had been joined by three others.  So we went up to Lido deck so Jill could have a last cigarette of the day. On Lido deck there was a whole swarm of these birds, flitting about, cheeping and pooping everywhere. This morning our four were not on the veranda, but there was plenty of evidence of their overnight stay out there. Since we are in the middle of the Black Sea, the ship is obviously their home until we reach Sochi. I hope that they will leave us there and that the Russians won’t mind that we are bringing them a new bird colony.

Friday, October 8

Kusadasi, Turkey. We were here for a second day. It’s a very good thing that I took photos of the harbor and Kusadasi yesterday, because this morning there were two “apartment blocks at sea” docked on either side of us. Our veranda view of the harbor and city was totally blocked by the Celebrity Century, and the other side was blocked by the Thompson (an English company) Celebration which used to be the Niew Amsterdam.

The wind was up and the temperature was down making the open deck areas pretty chilly. We sat out on Lido for a while before lunch, then Jill went for a walk in to look at shops ashore while I stayed on board and looked for a warmer area to sit. When Jill got back she said that there was another Celebrity ship, the Eclipse, docked on the other side of the Century that was even bigger! Ye gads! I am even gladder that we did our touring yesterday!

To pass the afternoon we found deck chairs where the wind was blocked by the Celebration. Then after a while we came back to our cabin and watched a movie. A nice, quiet afternoon. Resting up is a good plan since we sail this evening at 11:00 p.m. and have tours at Santorini very, very early tomorrow morning.

Fortunately, all three slab-sided ships sailed in late afternoon, so Jill and I were treated to a second evening of viewing beautiful Kusadasi’s lights at night. It is the most colorful night-scape I’ve ever seen on a cruise.

Saturday, October 9

Santorini, Greece. Up early enough (i.e. before dawn) to see the lights of Santorini as we arrived. Two other large ships were also here today: Ibero Cruceros’ Grand Celebration and Costa’s Deliciosa..

I canceled my tour today as my back was acting up, and I just couldn’t face the stairs down to a tender, the tender itself, and a bus tour probably followed by either a cable car (not my favorite mode of transportation) or a donkey ride (of all things) from Thira back down to another tender back to the ship. This photo shows the donkey trail leading up to (or down from) Thira. When Jill got back she confirmed my decision by saying that the tours were lots of walking and even more steps. We figure that everyone who lives there must have extremely good legs.

640 of our passengers went on tour, leaving only 168 aboard, many of whom will head ashore on their own. Having off-loaded our touring folks at one village (Athinios, I believe, or maybe Megalochori), the ship headed a short way north to Thira where the captain and his crew did about six hours of very creative drifting until we sailed at about 3:00 p.m.

Nonetheless, Santorini is lovely. Here in the caldera left when  the volcano Stongyle erupted some 3,600 years ago, we were surrounded by islands with steep, almost vertical, cliffs topped by sparkling white villages just like all the photos you’ve ever seen of Santorini. The sky was very blue with beautiful white clouds.

The various islands are not really islands, but are one land mass flooded by the eruption. There are actually five pieces of the original island left above sea level, with the majority of the villages on the largest one. Supposedly they have beaches here, also grow grapes and make fine wines, but that must be on the outer sides of the islands as all I could see was bare cliffs with little white towns on top.

Thursday, October 7

Kusadasi, Turkey. As we sailed from Bodrum yesterday, we passed both the Wind Star and the Wind Spirit. These gorgeous four-masted sailing cruise ships each separately blew their whistles at us three times, were answered by us with three blows, then tooted once and we tooted back once. A fun send-off. Of course, their line is also owned by Carnival which owns Holland America. The Wind Star was docked alongside us when we arrived at Kusadasi. Also here was the Arethusa from Overseas Adventure Cruises.

This morning was cloudy and definitely cool, but as we went ashore around 12:30 p.m., it began to clear off and turned into a truly perfect day weather-wise.

Boys-o, boys-o, as my grandmother would have said, I have now been spoiled to a whole new level of luxury! One that I will probably seldom attain again. I hired a private van and driver for this afternoon’s tour of Ephesus and Sirence....very expensive, but what a joy to not be rushed onto and off a bus and to arrive back not totally drained and cramped up.

Our guide was named Tuch...or maybe Tooch...and was quite good. Ephesus is about 15 or 20 miles from the dock, through the city of Kusadasi (pronounced Koo-SHAH-dah-suh) and along the plain created when the port of Ephesus silted up long ago so that it is not about 4.5 kilometers inland. We wandered at our own pace (slow for me) from the lower gate along a cobbled walk beneath wonderful 60 year old pine trees to see the ruins of Roman baths, shops, and the magnificent amphitheater that would seat 25,000 and the Harbor Road. Ephesus is the best preserved city of that early time, and is, even now, only about 30% excavated.

Next we headed up into the mountains to visit the little village of Sirence. From the number of tour buses there, I at first thought it would be way too crowded. However, we found a parking place near the entrance to the grounds of the Artemis Restaurant which had originally been the village’s school. The grounds were lovely, and the views were fabulous! The little village, the surrounding mountainsides covered with vinyards and orchards, and a very comfortable table to sit and relaz under more pine trees. Jill had Turkish coffee and a kind of Turkish pancake filled with cheese and spinach, and I had Turkish tea which is strong enough to curl your tonsils...all for only 5€ (euros). Tuch sat with us and had his lunch...a pancake with lots of different fillings and a milky-looking tonic drink of some sort. We talked of all sorts of things from information about the village and general area to cruising in the Caribbean.

On the way back to Kusadasi, we passed what is left (one column) of the Temple of Diana, another of the Seven Wonders. Then we paused briefly outside the Basilica of Saint John (of the Book of Revelations fame). He evidently lived here for quite a while before he died. Then back over a ridge of mountain to Kusadasi with a fabulous view of the bay and port. It was easy to see why this is such a popular resort area. If I lived in Europe, I wouldn’t mind spending my vacations here.

To continue my ratings of driving in various countries...here in Turkey, or at least in this area, the lines on the roads are much fainter, but the drivers seem to believe in them more.

Wednesday, October 6

Bodrum, Turkey. What perfect weather!!! The temperature is just right! Not a cloud in sight, but a beautiful town to view from our veranda. Neither of us had any tours booked today, but we did wander into the port terminal for a little while. Mostly we just enjoyed the view and the weather, and tolerated the lone cricket that somehow got onto the Lido Deck a few days ago and chose today to sing very loudly non-stop from our favorite corner which acted like a megaphone for him.

Modern Bodrum, formerly called Halicarnassus and founded about the fifth century B.C., is a center for tourism and yachting. The harbor was full of both sailing and motor yachts of every size and description. The town spreads around the harbor in a circle of very white and clean-looking buildings. I am still somewhat startled by just how sharp the demarcation is between town and not-town here in the Middle East.

The Mausoleum of Mausolus was built here for King Mausolus who died in 353 B.C. At 148 feet high and decorated with reliefs and sculptures, it was one of the Seven Wonders of the ancient world as much for its size as its beauty. It stood for 1700 years before being destroyed by earthquakes. Crusader Knights arrived in 1402 and used the remains to build the Castle of Saint Peter, also known as Bodrum Castle, one of the last examples of Crusader architecture in the East. In this photo, the original site of the Mausoleum is behind the castle. On the hill behind the castle you can see Mausolus’ amphitheater which could seat 13,000 spectators and is still used for a September arts festival.

Since we are sailing around the “ancient world,” I suppose that it’s no surprise that we are stopping at, or at least sailing near, most of the original Seven Wonders. We counted up this afternoon that we will have been at the closest port to five of the seven (although won’t have actually been on their grounds in person every time), and last night we sailed past Rhodes...but that was at 3:00 a.m., and we didn’t get up for it. The only one we will miss completely is the Hanging Gardens of Babylon.

Sunday, October 2

Ashdod, Israel. I was supposed to take a ten hour tour to Jerusalem today, but after the heat and exhaustion of yesterday, I just wasn’t up to it, so Jerusalem will have to continue its existence without a visit from me. I should have known better than to schedule three full-day tours in a row...especially in a sweltering climate. Instead I just lazed around the ship with the mere handful of people still on board. I did have my ritual Myers and coke in honor of all my previous cruising buddies who aren’t with me on this trip.

Ashdod is a major port, and we were docked a fair ways out into it. I don’t even have any photos of Ashdod itself from the ship because we were docked in the middle of a veritable sea of newly minted cars, vans and buses as far as the eye can see...there must have been a couple of thousand of them. It was interesting to watch the various strange vehicles loading and unloading cars and container ships etc. There were several vehicles that I couldn’t tell what they did. One was a huge green monster that looked a bit like a folded up praying mantis on tracks that was loaded very slowly with much beeping onto a flat-bed semi and barely fit on it.

Jill had a great but very hot and shadeless tour of Jerusalem today including a walk through Old Jerusalem and a visit to the Western Wall as well as to several outstanding museums. She didn’t get back until after 7:00 p.m., and we didn’t sail until 11:00 p.m. We skipped dinner in favor of room service again.

I forgot to tell you about the Egyptian drivers. Riding on the Egyptian roads is very much like riding on the Paseo de la Reforma in Mexico City. An improvement in Egypt is that they do have lanes painted on the road, but as in Mexico City, none of the rivers seem to pay any attention to them. A road with two lanes going in one direction will commonly have the equivalent of thrree lanes of vehicles, and occasionally four, all zipping along! The only place I’ve seen with worse traffic was Ho Chi Minh City, and that was due to the millions of bicycles and motorbikes there. Yet another reason to be thankful for the convoy escort.

Monday, October 4

Haifa, Israel. This getting up at 5:45 a.m. has got to stop! But today is the last of my full-day tours, so that’s good. We did get a nice iew of docking in Haifa as the sun rose.

Today’s tour was of the “panoramic” sort which means “not much walking.” We went from Haifa past Har Megiddo (aka Armageddon). I always thought that it was a plain, but it turns out to be a small hill with a few trees on top that overlooks the Yizreel Valley. It was important because it was a stop with a well on the hill route north through this area. Our first brief stop was at an over look of the south end of the Sea of Galilee. We were at sea level, and Galilee was 600 feet below us as you can see.

Next we had a nice stop at the south end of Galilee at Yardenit, The Baptismal Site on the River Jordan. Since Galilee had been dammed at the south end, at that point Jordan is not a flowing river, but the gardens there were lovely. If you have time, you can pay a small fee to rent a white robe and get baptised in the Jordan. The Tourist Center there is very nice. and has a major tourist shop with, among other items, bottles of Jordan River water, jars of date honey, and stupid male tourists who can’t resist blowing on the souvenir shofars.

Then we headed up the east side of Galilee between it and the Golan heights. At the north end, the Jordan still flows into the sea. Our bus driver, Josef, had lightning reflexes and managed to save us all from a horrible accident when a truck which had apparently (but evidently not) pulled far to the right to let us pass, with no turn signal, suddenly tried to turn left directly into us. Thank you, Josef! Lanes on the roads here seem to be a somewhat stronger suggestion to drivers than in Egypt, but are still freuently disregarded.

We stopped at Capernaum where I opted to forego the hike to see whatever it was that everybody else went off to see. I stayed on the bus and was quite entertained. The parking area was very small, on a slant, and there were a LOT of BIG tourist buses as well as some small cars and tourists on foot dancing around in it. One bus would pull out, and immediately another would come in and maneuver to back into the vacant space with only a couple of feet to spare between buses. During the turning and backing process, even an extra coat of paint would have been too much! This “dance of the buses” went on the whole time we were there. I continue to be amazed at the skill of bus drivers.

Next we briefly visited the site of the Church of the Beatitudes, again with lovely gardens and a church maintained by (if I remember correctly) a convent of Carmelite nuns. On to lunch at a hotel called Nof Girosar owned and operated by a kibbutz. I even tried an Israeli beer (“our genuine taste since 1950," evidently it took two years to get the brewery built and running).

After lunch we passed through Tiberia, Cana, and Nazareth. In the latter, we did not stop to go into the Church of the Annunciation (see photo), but we did circle a roundabout several times to get a good view of it making most of us almost dizzy, but it was a lovely view. For some reason, I had never thought of Nazareth...or Cana, for that matter... as being on top of rather high hills, but they are. Most of the villages and towns are very compact...no yards or lawns...with sharp edges between the houses and the surrounding fields, and many are pn hilltops. This leaves the most of the arable land for growing things. Finally back to Haifa where we went up Mount Carmel to view the city, the harbor and, if you could fight through the other tourists, a view of the gorgeous Baha’i Gardens.

It was at this last stop that I discovered that there is now a screw loose in Israel. The screw in question adjusts and holds in place the right handle of my walker, and when the walker came off the bus for the lst time, it was just gone. After a completely lop-sided hike from the bus back to the ship, the Front Desk sent me a nice little ship’s carpenter who took my walker away and brought it back about 20 minutes later with a new screw complete with a wing nut for a handle. Not pretty, but quite effective.

We didn’t sail until 11:00 p.m., and after dinner Jill and I sat on our verandah and watched the many comings and goings in the harbor: several container ships leaving and arriving with their attendant tug boats and pilot boats, lots of navy vessels including a submarine and at least four little little patrol boat sized ships, and one little speed boat that we immediately dubbed “Zippy.” The navy ships were identifiable because they ghosted in with only the minimum red and green running lights on. Everything else was brightly lit up.

Tuesday, October 5

At sea. I haven’t posted in several days because we have had very low and slow internet reception while in Israel, and also during this afternoon at sea.

Today we slept in then headed for our favorite table in the shade on Lido Deck until after lunch. The Mediterranean is the calmest sea I’ve ever cruised on...not even much in the way of white caps, never mind any rolling motion.

Saturday, October 2

Port Said, Egypt. Now Jill’s purse and my sandals have officially been to all seven continents!

We took a tour to the Pyramids at Giza, had lunch at a Marriott Hotel that is in a huge palace built in 1869 to house important guests for the opening of the Suez Canal, then went to the Egyptian Museum in Cairo, and finally back to Port Said. It was over 3 hours on a very nice but snug bus each way, and I hope I never again get that close to a heat stroke! Hotter than hot the whole way especially at the Museum which is not air conditioned in any way. I swear I discovered that there are even sweat glands inside my sinuses! But I was actually at the Pyramids!!! It was really really exciting! (See photo, note that there are no camels anywhere near us.)

Our no-knee-room bus was one of about 8 or 10 buses that traveled in convoy in both directions. Each bus had a security guard on board armed with a LARGE modern-but-evil-looking hand weapon under his dark suit coat. There were also two escort vehicles bracketing our group. I never discovered whether they were police or military. They were the Nissan equivalent of a jeep with flashing lights and 3 men in the back of each armed with rifles. Aside from giving the tourists a feeling of safety, their main purpose appeared to be clearing traffic for the convoy (Gangway! Tourists coming through!)

The guide on our bus, Eman Bahaa, was absolutely fabulous! She studied comparative religion at university and got her degree in Egyptology in 1989. She studied and worked several years with Zahi Hawas, and spent two seasons on the dig at the Pyramid workers’ complex at Giza. She’s a free lance guide, and has guided a whole raft of famous people visiting Egypt over the years including many visiting dignitaries from other countries. We were so lucky to have her on our tour! And she also went way out of her way to make sure that I got to do as much as I could. For example, at the Sphinx, before she headed off with the main group, she pointed me to a café where I could sit in the shade with a fantastic panoramic view of the Sphinx and all the pyramids while the others all went and stamped around in the sun.

So, while typing this, I have managed a room service hamburger and a whole bunch of “fluid replacement.” I don’t know when I can actually post this as tomorrow and the next day are also long day tours in Israel. And don’t anyone look for postcards from Egypt because I didn’t have time to do any shopping for them.

Thursday, September 30

Larnaca, Cyprus.  Beautiful clear day but hot, hot, hot! Still haven’t seen any birds. I did hear some twittering in trees at Lefkara during my tour, but none at the port.

Larnaca is the 3rd largest city on the island of Cyprus. I and most of the passengers I talked to were surprised at the size of the city (population about 75,000). We had been expecting something much smaller. It is built on the ruins of Kition, a city state originally established by the Phoenicians about 1200 B.C. There were inhabitants of Cyprus long before that, but they hadn’t much in the way of an organized civilization.

Touring out of Larnaca we passed the 10th century Church of St. Lazarus which was built atop his tomb (the second time he died). His tomb was found in 890 A.D. with the inscription “Lazarus, bishop of Larnaca, Four days dead. Friend of Jesus.” At the village of Kiti we visited the lovely little Panagia Angeloktisti (“angel built”) Church with a 6th century mosaic of the Virgin Mary salvaged from the original construction. From there we went to Choirokoitia to visit a UNESCO World Heritage archeological site. The ruins there (see photo) date from 6800 B.C. The actual ruins are up a very steep hill, but there are some reconstructed houses lower down to show what the settlement would have looked like. They are round, built of stone with a log framework inside, and remind one of a Navajo hogan.

Next we went through several small villages to stop at Pano (“upper”) Lefkara. There is also a Kato, or “lower,” Lefkara. This is an incredibly vertical village where you are amazed that even one tourist bus can navigate the narrow twisty streets, much less five tourist buses! The women of Lefkara make wonderful lace and embroidered linens called Lefkaritkia. They also do a great deal of silver work there. Then we headed back to the ship.

Overall, my impression of Cyprus is an extremely dry limestone island with a magnificent road system. Lots of olive groves and carob groves, but not much other agriculture that I saw. The parts I did see were interesting, and from what I learned from our excellent guide it appears that there are lots of other interesting areas to visit also.

One bit of history (although Cyprus has more than its share of history, both ancient and modern). When Constantine’s mother, St. Helena, was returning from the Holy Land, her fleet stopped at Cyprus to wait out some bad weather. They were here about a month, during which time she decided that, because there had been a long drought and the people were in sad straights and there were too many snakes around, the island needed cats (there had been cats here even before the Egyptians began worshiping them, but were none left). She sent one of her ships back to Lebanon to bring several hundred cats to Cyprus. The descendants of those cats still live here, and during the British period of the island’s history, the British established a sanctuary for cats at Cape Gata that is still in operation. At Choirokoitia there were at least a half dozen small, slender white and beige cats that evidently reside at the ticket booth. Several were friendly enough that we tourists could pet them.

Why are ships’ railings always at the exact height to block your view of everything when you are sitting down?