Saturday Oct 27, 2012 - Home Just in Time

   We made it home on Saturday afternoon just before Hurricane Sandy arrived and we were very lucky to ride out the storm with no damage. We have friends and family out of power still after a week since the storm passed through.

   We left Venice on Saturday morning with tidal floods through the streets. We walked on raised platforms out the water-covered hotel lobby and found the streets drowning in over a foot of water. The hotel concierge had an Excel spreadsheet with all the weekend tide charts at the hotel's private water taxi landing; seems like they have plenty of experience dealing with it. Mary & I both want to go back to Venice when we have plenty of time on our hands.

   Our water taxi had a little trouble making it under the canal bridges with the water levels so high, but we got to the airport in plenty of time for our our flight home. It felt great after checking our bags, our US Air flight was direct and I was almost done worrying about getting home ok.

   We both agreed the trip was wonderful, but it was good to be home again. Mary was away for over a month and she was anxious to visit her cousin Barbara, and very happy to spend some time with her talking about Ireland and our cruise.

   Thanks to all my friends who followed along with my travel blog .... it was fun to post updates and I felt a little better connected from so far away.

   Love to all ..... John

Friday October 26 - Venice II

From the ship on Thursday we took a water taxi to our hotel front door and checked in for a quick nap before venturing out for more time in the city. It was great to be close St Mark's Square and we had some dinner and wandered through the square at night. There were 3 restaurants with musicians playing outside and small crowds moved from one to another as the music rotated from place to place. We were both tired especially after a glass of wine each, so we didn't stay out too late.

On Friday we were up and out early. Mary wanted to spend some time at the museums in the square and I was anxious to walk, so we split up for a few hours. There are no cars, busses or even bicycles allowed in the center of the city, so it's a great place to walk.

I crossed over the Rialto Bridge and wanted to walk as much of the Grand Canal as I could. I did pretty well even though there wasn't a continuous walkway around. I'd come to a dead end and have to double back into small walkways and passages between buildings. There were so many really nice shops I didn't mind the couple of times I got side tracked. I eventually got all the way over to the train station so I felt I had a good look around. It started to rain later in the afternoon and a few of the paths were so narrow my umbrella just about fit.

On the ship's way up to Venice it seemed we went a long way up the Adriatic Sea to get there. I did some quick checking and was surprised to see that Venice is north of Boston, and almost as far north as Montreal.

On Saturday morning we catch a water taxi to the airport, it seems strange to take a boat to catch a plane. We loved everything about Venice and it's now our favorite city of all we've seen. I'll do one last wrap up post when we get home, but thanks for following along with us on our great trip. If you find yourself trying to kill some serious time one day, feel free to check out all my pics from the trip on my Flickr site. Here's the link, and click on the icon that says Mediterranean Cruise.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/19368857@N02/sets/

Wednesday Oct 24, 2010 - Venice

We pulled intoVenice on Wednesday afternoon, exactly on time. It was fun for me watching as we approached the city from sea. The ship sailed right passed St Mark's Plaza on it way to the cruise ship terminal, the weather was clear, cool and perfect.

We took a walking tour around the major sites, St Mark's Square, the Grand Canal, Rialto Bridge and of course a tour of a Venetian Glass factory & outlet. Their glass was really beautiful but with their prices being so outrageous, only a middle east oil sheik or Michael Jackson would buy anything.  We spent our last night onboard the Norwegian Spirit and we both agreed the ship and the whole cruise turned out to be a really special memory.

Thursday morning we left the ship and took a water taxi to our hotel, just a block from St Mark's. The many, many water taxis all looked chaotic at first but it was a pretty efficient (if a bit pricey) way to get around. I'll still reserve judgment until we get off the water taxi that takes us to the airport on Saturday morning. If we get there dry I'll be happy.

Later today (Thursday) we'll take a walk with our camera and see how much of the center city we can cover on foot.

Monday Oct 22, 2012 – Athens

We stopped in Athens for the day and tied up in the port of Pireas, a close 15 minutes from the capital center. We were last here in 1973 when Mary and a group of navy wives came to visit my ship on deployment. We were curious about how much of the city we’d recognize after almost 40 years. There were lots of ships in the harbor including another 8 to 10 cruise ships. The weather was a little cooler, cloudy and in the mid 70’s; perfect for seeing the sights.

Our tour went first to the Acropolis, ancient marble ruins high on a hill, visible from almost anywhere in the city. The most famous of the buildings is the huge Parthenon, erected in the 400’s BC. It turned out the Acropolis is about the only thing we recognized from the city, and it hasn’t changed much in the last 2,500 years.

We climbed up the side of the Acropolis hill, but it started to shower so we didn’t stay long. The worn marble steps leading up were slippery enough even when they were dry. We waited for the rest of the tour crowd to come back down and headed to our next stop, the temple of Poseidon, which was about an hour drive south of the city along the coast line. After we cleared the city limits the coast line view out of the bus window was terrific.

With all the economic problems the Greek people have been facing, we halfway expected the city might be a mess of litter and graffiti. But everything looked very nice, good for them!

Our ship left port around 7:00 PM and went south to clear the Greek mainland, then turned right, passed the heel of Italy’s boot into the Adriatic Sea. We’ll be spending Tuesday at sea heading north in the Adriatic with Italy on our port side and the ex-Yugoslav countries to our starboard. We’ll arrive in Venice (last stop) on Wednesday afternoon and have a night in the city before we debark on Thursday morning. I’ve booked a couple of nights at a city hotel so we can spend a little time exploring Venice before we catch our flight back to Philly on Saturday.

My next post will likely be from the hotel, their internet has to be better than the ship’s. I’ll try to post our travel pictures on my Flickr page before we head home. I’ll let you know when I get that done in case someone wants to take a look.

Sunday Oct 21, 2012 – Izmir, Turkey and Ephesus

I was feeling good about getting out of Istanbul without having to drag a new carpet around with me for the rest of the trip. But yesterday I realized I did take something away from the rug shop, a nasty head cold. But I think we’ve managed through the worst of it.

On Sunday we pulled into Izmir, in Southwest Turkey, an Asian port on the Mediterranean that many people have never heard of; its original name was Smyrna. The city has around 4 million people living in and around it, but the main reason for our stop there was to explore the nearby ancient city of Ephesus.

I can’t say I ever heard of Ephesus before planning our trip, but Mary got excited when she saw it on the itinerary. She’s been reading about it in National Geographic magazines since she was a kid. It was founded around 2,000 BC and was occupied by the ancient Egyptians, Greeks, Persians, Romans and more over the centuries.

During the Roman age it had 250,000 people there and it’s thought that St Paul and St John the Apostle both lived and wrote in the city for significant periods of their lives. It’s also believed that the Blessed Mother moved here after the death of Jesus and lived in Ephesus until she died (maybe she started the taxi service for some extra pocket change). After the Roman period, the city was abandoned, covered over by dirt and sand over the years and almost forgotten. Excavations were only started a little more than 100 years ago.

To get there, our tour bus drove south of Izmir about for about an hour, through small farms growing olives, figs, hazel nuts, pistachios and all kinds of fruit including citrus. Around the ancient city gates there were the expected groups of people selling to tourists, looking at the signs around town, some of them seemed to have a sense of humor.

We left Izmir around 7:00 PM headed for Athens the next morning.

Saturday Oct 20, 2012 – Istanbul, Turkey

We entered port at 9:00 AM and tied up at a pier next to the old city part of Istanbul. We parked in the Bosporus Straight that opens into the Black Sea just to our north, and separates Europe from Asia. As we sailed into town we passed about two dozen cargo and tanker ships anchored to the south near the newer commercial part of the city. From where we moored we could see the modern suspension bridge that connects the continents. It was great to be able to sail right into the heart of the city, like we did in Naples.

In addition to being old, Istanbul is a huge city with 15 million people living here. It’s no surprise that car traffic is crazy, but even ferry boat traffic is crazy too. The harbor in old town has mosques end to end at the skyline and ferry boats end to end on the shore line.

We took an all-day tour inside the old city that included a shoes-off walk inside the Blue Mosque, and later to the very old St Sophia Cathedral, built around 530 AD by the Byzantine Emperor, with 10,000 workers. For over 1,000 years it was the largest cathedral in the world; and in 1453 it was converted into a mosque when the Turks conquered the Byzantine city. The Turkish government converted it into a museum in 1934.

On the tour we got to walk through a giant underground reservoir constructed by the emperor in 500 AD that held a 90 day supply of water for the city. The reservoir walls were brick with the roof supported by over 360 columns. Mary was familiar with the place from her reading and was thrilled to get to walk inside.

The tour ended at the Grand Bazaar, a building that houses over 2,000 shops with high end items like jewelry and carpets in the main hall. But the passages became narrow as we walked deeper inside with the goods getting smaller and cheaper.

We were afraid to venture too far into the smaller passages and I’ll have a new recurring nightmare about being abducted by a carpet salesman and bargained to near-death in a dark shop deep inside the bazaar. There would be no escape without the purchase of a $5,000 hand woven wool and silk “art treasure” when all I was looking for was a $2 souvenir lapel pin.

We got back underway at 6:30 and headed south, back through the Dardanelles. Tomorrow we visit the city of Izmir, Turkey and tour more ancient ruins in Ephesus.

Friday Oct 19, 2012 – Mykonos, Greece

We enjoyed yesterday at sea, and caught up on our sleeping, reading and relaxing. Thursday night we sailed into the Greek Islands and Friday morning we docked for half a day in Mykonos. Mary remembers it as a celebrity hot spot when she was a kid and now it still has a pretty old town area with a maze-like area of white shops that seem to get nicer the deeper inside you go. There are villas dotted all over the brown rocky hillsides, and all the villas are colored the same bright white.


It was very windy but the temperature was in the mid 70’s and it’s supposed to stay warm the next few days for us. Mary had some luck shopping and bought a hand stitched white summer top. She needed something cooler because she brought mostly long sleeves for the Ireland part of her trip.

The streets in old town were really narrow and it was easy to get lost. I had a map in my pocket but reading the street names in Greek took more than I could do quickly. I started worrying about getting stuck inside the maze and not being able to find our way out in time for the ship’s departure. We made it out and back in plenty of time, so it was just me over-worrying, again.

Mykonos has lots of friendly pets wandering the narrow streets and we stopped to say hello to more than a half dozen cats and dogs. At a café where we stopped for coffee, a huge pelican decided to lumber his way inside. He didn’t want to leave and had to be picked up and tossed out by our waiter. Mary was already outside waiting for me to pay the bill and she was petting the big guy’s feathers when I walked out. When I wouldn’t let the big bird back inside he started biting on my leg; nothing serious but his beak was sure big. I finally got a picture of our ship on the way back, the ship’s size makes it impossible to get into one shot unless we’re far enough away.

We got underway on time at 2:30 and are sailing for the Dardenells and Istanbul. We’re not sure how much of the narrow straits between Europe and Asia we’ll see in the dark when we get close, but we’re hopeful. On Saturday in Istanbul we start another three straight days of touring, so again hopefully we’re rested up and ready.