Greek and Turkey Cruise Part 2

Ephesus/Kusadasi Turkey

This was our second visit to Kusadasi and we had visited Ephesus 10 days ago so while that is a great place to visit, we skipped it.  Instead we headed to a winery.  Yes there are several wineries in Turkey.  The one we visited is 12 years old and is called the Seven Sages.  It is a restaurant, hotel, spa and winery.  All of which came across as a nice place.  We had a short tour of their facilities including a view of their gravity fed wine production and a view of their wine casks.  They commented that it has gotten too expensive to use American Oak for barrels these days since all the bourbon places are using so much.  Anyway, after that we went to a long table on the verandah for our tasting.  They gave us 2 types of cheese and some wonderful pretzel like sticks to go along with the wine.  We tasted 5 different wines starting with a white.  The winery has vineyards right there and in other locations of Turkey so that they can grow different types of wine including both European and local Turkish grapes.  True to form for us we came home with a bottle of wine - a red blend.  We both said ahead of time we are NOT buying any wine - yeah right.  We also left with a package of those bread/pretzel sticks.  we are now hoping the wine makes it home safely in the suitcase!

Carol on right

Old Fortress on Peninsula guarding the bay

At the end of the day we wanted to check out the fancy Cocktail bar aboard ship.  It was a fun experience with exotic drinks.   Jeff opted to have his Whiskey based drink infused with smoke.  It was a choice of apple or walnut shavings burned in a small machine.  (See photo) The cruise line describes the venue as:

        Atlas Bar is an exclusive venue found only aboard Azamara Onward. Atlas Bar is a unique concept offering artisanal cocktails created using the latest one-of-a-kind techniques. These crafted beverages are as delightful to drink as they are to watch being made!

Bar tender is a good photographer, even staged the photo with the menus

Jeff’s smoke infused drink under glass

Dikili

This was a replacement port for when they cancelled all of the Black Sea (at one point we were still going to Bulgaria).  Anyway I can't say anything nice about the port itself since it is obviously a commercial shipping port - although small.  We had a choice of a whopping 2 excursions - Acropolis and Asklepion of Pergamum or Pergamum panoramic.  We took the full on because of the gondola ride and that it was a strenuous excursion - great reasons.  So while in many ways it was more Greek and roman ruins there was something different here - a hospital.  Asklepion is a hospital.  I was often amazed on this trip of the things ancient people were able to do and this hospital would be included in that statement.  The hospital is a kilometer away from the city (bottom of the hill too).  The people had to be able to walk there and they had to appear to be curable to get in the hospital.  The treatment included a bit of psychotherapy in that they did things to convince you that you would get better.  When we first got to the hospital, it appeared to be a lot like a marketplace.  The guide explained that you had to buy a figurine related to the body part that was your problem.  There were different grades of goods based on your class in the city.  At the end of the marketplace section, was an underground area.  This section had exam areas and overnight stay areas.  Throughout this underground section were little skylight holes.  They used these holes to do strategic things to play with your mind so you thought you would get better.  They did things like whisper in the middle of the night "you will get better" and told you when water fell from the sky you were getting better and would strategically drop a little water on you through that hole.  Now how they know that I do not know, but it is what I was told.  I do know that the building included water pipes in the walls so in the winter they could send hot water through them to warm the area.  Uh yeah remember this is biblical times here.

Entrance to hospital where you were evaluated and then sent to market

Hospital had its own smaller theater

Underground room with both running water and heated water in walls

After the hospital, we hopped on the bus to get to the gondola to tour the acropolis.  Truthfully I think this was the smallest acropolis I saw.  It was nice and we have some pictures for you to see.  Great view since acropolis means city on the hill and then back to the ship.

This large theater is unique in that it had a wooden stage that could be moved out of the way to restore the view

The Acropolis had an upper and lower section, both high above the valley

Istanbul

Again this is our second time in this port.  We again did an overnight stay which is nice, we thought about eating out but were hot and tired so we ate one last meal on the ship.  We also had a final get together with 2 couples we met early on in the cruise at the chef's dinner.  Per our prior guide Ali's instructions, we headed to Galata Tower and then to the 2 palaces on the Bosphorous:  Dolmabahce  and Ciragan which is now a 5 star hotel.  Oh we also walked a bunch and unfortunately it was a hot day!  We overshot Galata Tower so we walked uphill more than we needed to.  Galata Tower is an old stone tower.  It was built in the byzantine period only to be destroyed and then rebuilt in the 1300s.  It has been used as a watch tower, prison and fire tower.  Supposedly in 1638 Hezarfen Ahmed Celebi jumped off the top of it with wings attached to his arms and made the first intercontinental flight.  It has been restored a couple of times and is currently a small museum.  Honestly the best thing was all the views because you can do a 360 walk around the top of the tower and see a lot of Istanbul. 

Asia in background across the Bosphorus with our ship docked in Europe (middle ship)

Looking across Golden Horn estuary to
Left Topkapi Palace
Middle Hagia Sophia
Right Blue Mosque

From there we walked to the Dolmabahce Palace.  We were going to catch the tram but the line to buy tickets was a block long so we walked instead.  This palace was built in the 1840s and 50s and was used off and on until the revolution in the 1920s.  It is much more modern than the Topkapki since several hundred years earlier.  In some ways, I thought of some of the fancy homes you can find in the USA probably because of the time period.  Having said that you have to imagine everything much grander than any in the USA.  Like Topkapi there are several buildings.  We did not tour all of them because we did  not feel like spending the recommended 3 hours there.  I think there was an art museum as part of it and probably we should have done that, but my goal was to see the building because I had heard of things like a Baccarat crystal staircase.  Our photo opportunities were limited so not too many photos here.  Yes there is a grand staircase with Baccarat crystal spindles and lots of yells of "don't touch the crystal" as we walked down it.  There are huge rooms some with gorgeous plasterwork on the ceiling and some with beautiful painted ceilings.  Also noticed a trompe l'oeil in one ceiling where they wanted you to believe that it went on further than it really does (painted archways got smaller).  We did make a point of enjoying their Bosphorous waterfront view too.

Palace grounds Gate

Parlance entrance

The spindles are Baccarat Crystal

When we had seen the main building and walked around the grounds (the palace is 45 acres), we headed for Ciragin Palace.  It was past lunchtime so we were hungry and thirsty and knew that it was now an upscale hotel run by Kempinsky.  Unfortunately it was a longer walk than we had expected but the promise of food kept us going.  You start passing the palace long before you can actually enter it and I was wondering if we were in the wrong area or something.  Finally stumbled into the entrance and  was impressed.  Nice high grand ceilings and just a grand feeling.  It was not as ornate as the last one and as we were enjoying our lunch we learned that this palace had bad karma with people dying shortly after building it, another living under house arrest in it and then the building burning.  Seems the palace sat in ruins for almost 80 years (fire in 1910 and rebuild started in 1987).  When it was rebuilt, the exterior walls were kept and the inside was rebuilt with the purpose of being a grand hotel.  We wandered just a little inside, but the outside was much more impressive.  There was a gorgeous view of the Bosphorous with infinity pools and lawns with areas for get togethers.  Where we ate lunch, was a separate new building for the restaurants, shops and meeting rooms that blends in well with the original palace.  We contemplated taking a water taxi back to the port but decided against it and leisurely headed back to the port and the ship.

Palace

Restaurant entrance

Our new friends from LA and Gibraltar 

Greek and Turkey Cruise Part 1

 

Kepez, Turkey (Troy and Gallipoli)

Why did I place a picture of a cat at the start of this post?   Because we were told its an ancient tradition.  Or to get you to click on it? Both are true to some extent, but the real reason is that there are Cats everywhere in Greece.   For the most part, these Cats are not anyone persons pet.   People feed the Cats in the neighborhood.   They also value the Cats for keeping the rodent population under control, though I wonder why these well fed sleepy felines bother.  

Gallipoli (Jeff)

This tour had a wonderful guide, lets call him The Professor as he gave us an in-depth education.   He had plenty of time to educate us as we had to go from our port in Asia to Europe via Bus and Ferry.   He started with a Sultan who realized a long time ago that to protect Istanbul he needed to stop potential enemies at the end of the Gallipoli peninsula over 100 miles away from the capital of the Ottoman Empire capital in Istanbul.  He then shared with us the story of the Battle of Gallipoli with its 500,000 casualties. 100s of thousands of which died in the trenches.  It is an amazing number when you consider there were only a total of 6-7 miles of trenches compared to the 100s of miles of trenches in Europe.  

Our tour consisted of visits to two of the three landing sites and a Museum.   We saw Memorials erected by Turkey, Australia and New Zealand.   We learned about life in the trenches and how close those trench lines were at times.

Gun installation lined both sides of the Dardanelles

Turkish and Australian War Memorials

Anzac cove where Australians landed and had to climb a large steep hill before realizing their maps were wrong

While this has been reconstructed, you can still see signs of some trenches around the park

Looking down at the landing site when the Alies attempted a second assault months later the initial landings

Today this same straight has strategic implications for the war in Ukraine just like it did in WW1.   The Montreux Convention gives Turkey the authority to limit the passage of belligerent warships.  It’s why Turkey is in a strong position and playing a role in negotiations like mediating the grain shipment deal and managing the inspections.   

Troy

So as you might have figured out Jeff and I split up this day.  He went to Gallipoli and I went to Troy.  As my tour guide said I went to the original world war and he went to WWI.  Troy was the site of many wars and the war that ended with the trojan horse lasted for 10 years and was very much an eastern versus western world war.  My sole reason for choosing this site was I wanted to see the trojan horse – yeah great reason I know.  So let’s start with the important stuff;  here are my trojan horse pictures.

 

So, while I was perfectly happy others expected more from the tour.  Off we went to explore the ruins of ancient Troy.  There is active exploration going on right now so shortly before we got there, a new older version of Troy had been found which they are calling Troy 0.  It is believed to be from around 3,000BC which is a similar age to the ruins we saw up in Orkney Island in Scotland earlier this year.  Below is a picture of that recent find, but it is a bit underwhelming since they have covered it back up temporarily with a tarp!

 

this is the site of the recent findings

one of the earliest settlements at the site.  The walls are made of mud and they could tell there had been a fire at one time.  It is covered with a tarp to help preserve it.

I always like walking past the graveyard of pieces they don't know what to do with

Carol in Troy

ancient walls

Before we move on, I should tell you more about the Trojan Horse and Helen of Troy.  Seems that when Helen was a young lady several young men including 2 brothers thought she was beautiful and agreed that whomever she agreed to marry the others would always help him.  Well she chose 1 brother and was married.  Then she meets this other man who was from Troy and she is spellbound so she leaves her husband for the guy and moves to Troy.  Well big surprise husband is not too happy here so he wants to wage war and get his wife back.  He needs help to do that, but the other brother isn't exactly excited at the prospect of a war.  A deal is struck the brother will help fight if he can have Troy when they win.  The war went on for 10 years.  Then they come up with the idea of the Trojan Horse.  Horses are a new weapon and viewed as strong and desirable.  The invaders build the horse and leave it at the bay with 1 lone soldier.  The Trojans see the horse and inquire to the soldier who tells them the others have left and this is a gift for you.  Big lie.  So the Trojans being interested in the horse take it into their walled city.  That night, the warriors who were hiding in the horse wage war and let their comrades in who had just been out of sight and take over the city of Troy.  

After we finished walking around the ruins, we went to a new museum they have.  Oh was I in for a surprise - they had old gorgeous jewelry.  Sorry no pictures of the other findings like ancient medical scalpels but I do have jewelry for you.  The jewelry was amazing to me because it looked as well made as something I would see in a store today.  The workmanship was great.

This is from the Hellenistic Period which was 4 BC

Top Left Bronze Age
Top Right are gold earrings from early Bronze Age 3000BC
Bottom Right is from the Hellenistic Period 4th - 2 c BC

Back to the scalpels for a minute.  There was a small exhibit on medical tools they had.  And yes they had several scalpels amidst some other tools.  They even had a skull where they could tell they had tried to do some type of brain surgery on the man.  Remember this is mostly BC or early AD times here and they were doing surgery.  

 Kaval (Philipi)

This stop was a late addition to the cruise after the Black Sea portion was cancelled completely.  Jeff and I both chose to go see the ancient city of Philipi and the stream where Lydia was baptized.  We first went to Philipi which is named after King Philip of Macedonia father of Alexander the Great.  Later the Romans would take over the city.  It was valuable because it was on trade routes and surprising to me there were gold mines nearby.  I guess I should not have been surprised since in Troy they had ancient gold jewelry, but none the less I was surprised to learn Greece had gold mines (at least at one time).  As in most of the ruins we have visited, we found some columns intact or fun little things here and there.  Like in Philipi St Paul was supposedly arrested and held overnight so we saw what they believe are the old jail cells – did not photo well.  The other thing that always makes me think of Global Warming is that this city like several of the others we visited were seaports at one time, but now are a couple of miles inland.  Here 2 rivers meet and their silt has filled in the delta till it is now good farmland.  If the sea level keeps rising maybe some of the ancient cities will be sea ports again!  Ok so that is a stretch.

First view of Philipi

ancient mosaic floor in Philipi

Theater

Battle of Phillipi where Mark Anthony fought Octavia resulting in Rome going from a Republic to having an Autocracy

After we finished exploring Philipi, we hopped on the bus for the short ride to the stream where Lydia was baptized by St Paul.  There is a very nice chapel there too.  At least to the Orthodox, Lydia is a saint since she was the first European to be baptized as a Christian.  At the time, Lydia was an influential woman in the city of Philipi so she was able to convince others to convert to this new religion called Christianity too.  The stream where they believe she was baptized has a small amphitheater and they have covered the stream with concrete and left a cross shaped opening.  Every year in May on her holy day they have a big celebration and baptize people at this site in the river and use the beautiful, modern shrine/chapel.  The chapel is full of mosaics.

baptism site/cross in the river

Shrine for Lydia

beautiful mosaics of St Paul and Lydia

alter area

all the monasteries had people on the wall this one had scenes too

Three mosaics

mosaic on floor that had St Paul's route

We had heard while on the cruise that if you can see the sun right as it is setting over the water, you will see a green flash.  We were never able to see that partially because there was often an island off in the distance.  However, on the evening of our Kavala stop we went out on deck to watch a pretty sunset and had an added bonus – dolphins!  They were little and completely jumping out of the water.  Jeff was able to get a photo of one.  They seemed much smaller than our dolphins in Alabama. 

Greek dolphin

Thessaloniki

Thessaloniki is Greek's 2nd largest city.  For those of you following this as the Christian history tour this is the town where Paul wrote to the Thessalonians so another old city.  Oh and Philipi was letters to the Phlipians.  Anyway, we opted to explore town on our own.  There was a Hop on Hop off bus which was good since there was a fortress at the top of a tall hill.  When you get back to the sea level, there is a very nice promenade along the water and a couple of parks perpendicular to the water and lots of nice shopping streets.

view from the fortress

just outside the fortress

cute town pictures

nice street art

one of the parks

Volos

Was another late addition to the cruise and was meant as a stopover site to go up to Meteora.  Since we had just spent 5 days there we opted to explore the town on our own.  On weekends they have a skinny, skinny narrow gauge train that goes up in the mountains, but we were there on a weekday. So we explored their waterfront and found a Greek Orthodox church that was built into a cave.  A couple of ladies were mopping floors and asked where we were from.  I did not recognize her reaction when I said America for what it was I just thought oh long way.  Um no we then met the priest who had perfect English.  We kicked ourselves, we never asked him where he was from or where he studied because he sounded American!  We also came away with some holy cards.

entrance to the church

another sunset from the ship

Paros

This was our second visit to Paros.  The first time we visited the ancient byzantine road and learned about marble.  This time we did a walking tour of the town of Parikia which is the port we were at and then a visit to a winery.  On our walk around town, we learned about a church that had been built because a lady had taken refuge there from a shipwreck.  The lady was the mother of Emperor Constantine.  Over the years there have been additions since this is viewed as a very important shrine.  It is a very pretty place and Jeff and I had wandered in it before and though it was quite pretty.  It is now a shrine to Mary and they were getting ready to celebrate her assumption in a few days so the area was buzzing.

in a courtyard

inside main chapel

alter area

New Church was built around this prior Church

streets of Parakia

church right on the water

example of how they reused portions of prior buildings  the cylindrical shapes are former columns

Then on to the winery which is of course out in the country.  We had a short tour where we learned about the history of the Moraitis Winery.  It is a family owned winery and on its 4th generation. There were a couple of pictures of the winery from the 1960s - the island of Paros has grown  a lot since then.  We went outside and tasted 3 of their wines - a white, rose and red.  The white had a mineral aftertaste which they said was from the soil.  The rose was a mixture of the white and red and had a little different taste then most roses.

where they keep some of their older wines

various transportation systems over time and wine barrel storage

1 of 3 wines we tasted

Mykonos 

This was our second visit and we had a plan.  We had seen an upscale beach area we could walk to and buy a day ticket - we just had to be there by 11am.  No problem.  Um yeah not so fast there.  We woke up to a projected high of 79 - huh? (It had been in the upper 80s). And true of Mykonos lots of wind.  Hmm to go or not to go?  Well ship made our minds up - it was so windy they had to move the ship - the poor tenders were getting bounced around like crazy as they went to the port.  By the time, they moved the ship it was almost noon.  We decided no beach time - and yes I pouted some.  Instead we had a nice lunch by the water, shopped a tiny bit and went back to the ship and enjoyed its pool.

lunch by the water

pretty view of Mykonos

waves right by us