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.