Mykonos

Mykonos is just like you imagine it to be - little white houses and blue doors and shutters scattered across the hills. The hills are rocky and mostly barren, just a few trees manage to grow in the nooks. The old town is stretched out along the harbor with more town, "Little Venice," in the next inlet and then maybe even more modern establishments.

We only made it to the old town and the view of the windmills in Little Venice from a distance. Our shipped docked a short distance away from the town and we took a shuttle bus. The we wandered. This is not a good place to get lost from the group, better to wander on your own or with one companion. That way when you find a little alley to go down and find some wonderful view, you don't have to worry about the companions left behind.

The other occupation of the Mykonos-ians is selling stuff like jewelry and other souvenirs. In preparation for going home Lesley and I and several others bought a new suitcase. I hope this works out. Others were looking at the beautiful jewelry, but most of us managed to resist this expense.

Carol and I were in search of the post office which of course closed at like noon and did not reopen while we were there. We got conflicting info about whether we would find stamps for postcards anywhere. So we wandered in a mostly residential area and then found this great little hotel, Elena Hotel. When we asked if they had stamps the man said he would mail the postcards for us. So we trusted him. Then we picked up the brochure of the place. It seemed charming, and we are busy making plans to return to Mykonos when it is warmer.

This is the very end of the season for Mykonos. Many of the restaurants were closed, and some of the shops were also closed. Some shops that were open had limited stock on hand. They are definitely getting ready for winter. The best months are June, before it gets too hot, or September. November is a bit cold, but some ladies did take off their shoes and see if the Mediterranean was cold. They said not.

The other activity on Mykonos was the kitty sighting. We found cats in most of the cities we visited, but the ones in Mykonos were trying to be particularly photogenic. Carol wants me to make a calendar of the cats. Okay.

More later.

If its Friday we must be...somewhere in the Adriatic

Cruising is such an interesting experience. Last night was our final formal night and three of us got all dressed up in our finery, went to a cocktail party and then a show, and then the late dinner seating. (Lesley was sick in bed with a cold.)

During our sea day yesterday we had experienced some sort of engine trouble and the ship was actually stopped for a while. I was not aware of this because I was having a hot stone treatment in the spa so did not even notice that the ship was particularly quiet or still.

Then during the show the ship seemed to start rocking a bit more than it had been. During dinner they announced that the ship had lost one of its engines, or thrusters or something so that instead of 24 knots we were only going about 15 knots and thus would not have time to get to Split on time on Friday and still make it to Venice on Saturday. SO... We have an entire day to obsess over packing and weather in Venice and other such information while we sail up the Adriatic Sea toward Venice. Just sea as far as the eye can see (unaided by binoculars). (Not "ocean" as we ignorant Californians tend to call these large bodies of water.)

Or to go on to the internet and think of you.

We are all getting ready to reenter the real world, first on land in Venice (that can't be called the real world, yet). Then getting home. We were talking about what we would be doing next time this week - cooking, cleaning house, blogging.

Home soon. Later

Istanbul!

Here is a map of the section of Istanbul that we were in.


View Larger Map

I thought that the pink arrow is where the ship docked, at the tip of the "Golden Horn," but in fact that is not where we docked. But it did not matter because we took a ship excursion. This was our first ship excursion. There were hundreds of people trying to get onto busses at the asme time. Once we were on the bus, the traffic was pretty bad, but the tour itself was great. Also we did not have long lines in most of the places because we were the only ship here. Sometimes there are three or four ships here at the same time!.

The green arrow is the Topkapi Palace.

The yellow arrow is the Hagia Sophia, or St. Sophia as the guide called it.

The purple arrow is the Blue Mosque.

The aqua arrow is the Grand Bazaar.

After the Blue Mosque we went to a carpet making lecture (or sales pitch), then walked to the Grand Bazaar. There are 4000 shops in the covered bazaar and about 14,000 in the area. Wow! mostly they were tourist shops of souvenirs mixed with tourist shops of jewelry, leather, carpets, spices. Pashminas are the tourist item de jour.

Oh no! She is speaking french. I know no Turkish. Sorry.

More later.

If its Tuesday it must be... where are we?

If it is Tuesday it must be Istanbul. Or it is Wednesday? Well today I forgot what day of the week it was, but I did know that I was in Istanbul. Yesterday we went to the Topkapi Palace which has this amazing exhibit of jewels. The Topkapi dagger, featured in the movie Topkapi which we will all have to rush out to rent, was particularly amazing with three egg sized cabachon emeralds so green it did not look like anything you had ever seen. That was preceded by a large coffer of emeralds of the same size. Then came the rather "boring" (according to our guide because of the emerald cut) 55 carat diamond, then the rather spectacular 86 carat diamond (with a brilliant cut).

Okay. We also saw Moses' rod, St. John the Baptist's arm surrounded by a gold case, and other relics. Things wars have been fought over. You can really imagine those crusaders charging through here. Then we went to St. Sophia which was the largest building at the time it was built as a church (I think). It is now a beautiful museum/monument. Today we went to the Blue Mosque (pictured). It is still a mosque, so we had to take our shoes off. We were not there during a prayer time.

One of the most striking things about Turkey is that it is a secular government, not religious, and according to our guide most of the citizens are not practicing (or strictly practicing) Moslems. So there was not a rush of men to the mosque when the time of prayers were called.

We drove across the bridge to Asia, just for the view back toward the old part of the city, and to be able to say we had been to Asia. Fun day.

Oh yes, and the bazaar. Well, more later.

Rome was Wonderful

So, Lesley, Carol and I dilly-dallied around until late morning on Wednesday, before leaving the ship to take the train to Rome. We got on the high-speed train and reached Rome in about 45 minutes. We took a cab to the fabulous Hotel Raphael. The rooms were fabulous -- we were upgraded to suites.

Then we took off to explore Piazza Navona, the Pantheon, Trevi Fountain and the Spanish Steps. We walked to all of the places and then back to the room where I took a nice bath in the big bathtub, We then went across town to meet Judy at the Trattoria Monti. This was a very nice place. We were seven for dinner and the waiter recommended the special appetizers and then we ordered mostly just a pasta dish each. Very delicioso!

On Thursday, we took a cab to the Colisseum were we hooked up with two American girls who were selling tours. We were so charmed by their California accents (one was from Bakersfield), that we signed up. The guide was such a character, she must have been Italian, but she had some sort of strange accent. She had the men acting out the gladiator fights. That was fun.

Then we hiked up the Palantine Hill and down through the Forum. Then went to the Castel d'Angelo to see the wonderful bridge. Back to the hotel to get our bags and then to the Termini. We had to stand in line for about 20 minutes, so missed the high speed trains. The train took more like an hour to get back to Civitavecchia and we barely made the last bus to the ship! Exciting.

More later.

Edited to add the photo which is a view from the roof of our hotel in Rome!