November 24 – Tuesday – Aqaba, Jordan
This promises to be the day that tests my knee’s ability to carry me through the day. We were on the bus by 6:30 a.m. where we were greeted by our Jordanian guide, Sami, who is getting his PhD in Australia, but comes home to be a tour guide to make money. Great sense of humor, even if his English wasn’t exactly impeccable.
Aqaba is the only port of Jordan which is otherwise a totally land-locked country. Unlike Egypt, Jordan seems to be a thriving country. Evidence of this was as we left the port, Sami pointed out large groups of men waiting at one corner to get day work – he said they were all Egyptians since there was little unemployment in Jordan. From Aqaba you can look across the Gulf of Aqaba to Eilat, Israel , just a stone’s throw away.
The current ruler is King Abdullah, the son of King Hussein. He was not the first choice since his mother was British, but his father chose him ahead of his uncle or another of his brothers. He, and his very attractive wife, seem to be well liked in the country. He has managed to maintain peace and economic and political stability. There were many posters of him and his father along the road, in stores etc. The ride was about 2 ½ hours to Petra, which is about 5000 feet above sea level. So the whole trip seemed a gradual up-hill climb past sand dunes, desert limestone outcroppings, and a few camels. The best was a traffic warning triangle with the symbol of a camel in the middle. We just don’t see those in Peacham. Tractors, cows, children … but very few camels.
The modern town of Petra is designed with one purpose: take care of the tourists. Hotels made from older structures, new hotels, and lots of small shops selling groceries or tourist junk. As we got off the bus we were all suddenly aware that we had climbed 5000 feet. It was cold and windy. People were buying all manner of scarf, sweater or fleece from the very happy vendors lining the large courtyard where tickets are bought. Draped in all manner of warm clothing, our group started down a fairly steep stony path where we had an opportunity to ride a horse for about 500 feet. At that point you could hop into a horse-drawn buggy, but as Sami told us, we’d miss all the things he wanted to tell us and wouldn’t have the excitement of suddenly coming upon the structures of Petra. So our group walked the 1 ½ miles - sometimes on gravel, sometimes on old pavement from ‘days of yore’. All along the way were little remnants of votive sites, small monuments, or large impressive gateways. It was an overcast day so the rock faces did not show their amazing colors as well as we might have hoped. But you couldn’t help but be impressed as the path descended and became narrower and narrower. The gorge, or Siq, we were walking down was caused originally by an earthquake which split this massive rock, and subsequent erosion by water and wind carved out the path we were now walking. The rock walls rose up over 200 feet above our heads as we kept descending. At one point Sami asked us to gather on one side of the path and to look back at a rock formation shaped like a lion. Next he asked us to cross over to the other side of the path and look ahead. Voila! He had tricked us so that we would all suddenly see through the rock fissure the impressive ‘Treasury’ building carved into the rock below us. Everyone got ‘photographitis’ as we walked the last 40 feet into large open courtyard. Here were all the tourists we hadn’t seen so far …along with a tourist shop, camels, horses and buggies, and very aggressive sales people. But you could avoid all this simply by looking up at this amazing structure hewn from the rock. In one of the “Indiana Jones” movies, Harrison Ford and Sean Connery ride through the Siq to look for the Holy Grail at this site. It never was a ‘treasury’, in fact no one really knows what its purpose was, but there it was, a 100 foot carved structure. Bob took lots of pictures, and continued on to explore the Roman ‘colonnade’ street, and the huge theater carved out of solid rock. I decided I better start the climb back because it would be straight up hill for the same 1 ½ miles, and I didn’t want to feel rushed. It was quite lovely being on my own since there were times when I was walking in the gorge completely alone before another tourist would either pass me or come towards me. At times it is nice to be alone to appreciate the quiet of the site. Of course it began to rain, which it NEVER does at this time of year. So when I got to the top of the ravine I bought a lovely ‘disneyland’ blue poncho, and waited at the hotel for the rest of the crowds to return.
Once more a typical tour lunch – this time at a Mövenpick hotel. But by the time we were done the rain had abated and we boarded our bus to head to Wadi Rum. For all fans of Lawrence of Arabia (the real man and the movie), this was where he hung out with the Bedouin tribes. His book, “The Seven Pillars of Wisdom”, tells of his time here leading the ‘Arab Revolt’ against the Turks during WW I. As I type this, Bob is reading “Seven Pillars…” on his Kindle. Another long bus ride and we drove into the desert in the back of open pick-up trucks meant for traversing sand. We saw the massive stone outcropping which looks like seven pillars and was theoretically the source of T. E. Lawrence’s book title. We had expected a fairly lengthy desert ride, but in actuality the path was paved through the very poor village of Wadi Rum, and we were on sand only for the last fifteen minutes. Suddenly we were at a campsite – built uniquely for us tourists. It was a U-shaped site made up of Bedouin camel-hair tents where we were to sit on brightly clad cushions and rugs to eat our meal. As one fellow tourist said – like eating in a Japanese restaurant without the place for your feet. We were treated to a fine feast – the only problem being that we had finished lunch no more than two hours earlier. But it was laid out so elegantly, how could we say no. There was lamb which had been cooked in the sand for hours before our arrival; many salads; rice, couscous and beautiful pita-like flat breads made right before our eyes. To accompany our feast we watched ten gentlemen, and two young boys, dressed in traditional attire dance with their very large swords, doing dances that reminded me of Greece. I am told that, like Greece, men dance with men here, and they were accompanied by a few musicians who were amplified by very modern equipment.
It was fairly surreal. You’re in the middle of real, spectacular desert scenery, and thanks to generators, trucks and modern refrigeration we were enjoying a feast that no Bedouin could afford or create. The scenery as the sun set was absolutely magnificent.
Once we had consumed our feast we headed back to our sand buggies to meet the bus and head back to the port of Aqaba going by a wonderful place: The Lawrence of Arabia Grocery Store. It had been a strenuous but truly memorable day and the knee held up.
Now we look forward to four full days at sea: no waking up to alarms, no sites to visit, no knowledge to be imparted, just vegetate and enjoy the Red Sea, through which we’ll be sailing.
November 25-28 – At Sea
I was reading the diaries of Walter and Daddy as they took ten days going from Suez to Colombo. Nothing seems to have changed much when it comes to days at sea. Life slows down to a crawl and everyone defines their own ‘schedule’ in days that have no structure what so ever.
The ship has been providing all manner of goofy events to keep people entertained – putting contests in the Horizons bar, make your own boat out of materials found on the ship, ice and fruit carving contests, shuffleboard, ping pong, trivia games etc. There are lots of classes being offered in Adobe Photoshop, Bridge, and digital photography.
But there are those of us who tend to avoid most of these activities and chose to read by the pool, read in the library, sit on our decks staring at water or dawdle around in the pool chatting with people.
Thanksgiving on board was as good as could be done when one is at sea. At dinner there was a ton of fresh turkey (which became turkey croquettes and turkey salads the next day), cranberry relish, potatoes, brussel sprouts, pumpkin and pecan pies. For all non-Americans – which is over 50% of the ship - they got to enjoy our tradition but if they chose to could have other items off the menu. It was as nice as could be, but I missed having a real Thanksgiving with friends and family around me.
The big excitement, of course, was the pirates off the coast of Somalia. Last year this very ship was a target of the pirates, and the tales of what happened grew with each telling. Luckily we had a talk by the Captain, a wonderful Croatian ,who told us that the talk he would give us for 60 minutes was longer than the attack by the pirates which was only 12 minutes in length. We learned lots about the pirates however (type of boat, type of guns, times at which they chose to attack etc.), and we learned about all the deterrence measures taken by the ship:
· There are now distinct corridors in which all ships are sailing and these corridors are being guarded by helicopters, naval frigates and ship to shore communications with US Navy HQ in Bahrain.
· Our ship has on board an Israeli security ‘force’ made up of young handsome gentlemen. They stood out in our crowd being the only faces below the age of forty.
· The ship has now a series of high pressure hoses which were lined up on deck with which they could douse the pirates should they get near and a directional sound device that emits a sound so piercing that it hurts.
· Since our ship can out run most small boats, and since we are quite high, the fear of attack was minimal.
But just in case, we were all told that if we heard an alarm we were to leave all open decks or balconies and proceed to the middle of the ship and sit on the floor. We figured out that this would be right in the Martini Lounge or the Casino and we would happily slurp martinis on the floor while guns whizzed overhead.
We were quite convinced that since the pirates had been unsuccessful last year that they may try to board us this year, but for all the rumors and speculation – nothing happened and tomorrow having lolled about we will land at Salalah, Oman. This is a port that has absolutely no charm or tourist attractions , but does have the cheapest oil to be found in the Middle East. So we will stay on board and watch our ship being re-fueled.
We have had four days to get to know our fellow passengers and I confess that I have yet to find those people with whom I’d chose to ‘hang out’ on a regular basis. There are some very wealthy people who are always dressed to the nines and sitting by the pool working on their tans; there are just plain old people who are hidden from the sun reading in various corners, or napping; there are the dedicated casino players who are at the slots morning, noon and night; there is an interesting Middle Eastern family of five who seem to move in lock step on the ship. But amidst this crowd we’ve found some people we look forward to seeing at the bar or at dinner – especially Russell and Di our ANZAC friends. They are one of the younger couples who are still working stiffs helping oil companies to find off-shore oil. They live a large portion of their lives on the sea doing geological mapping of the sea floor and obviously love being at sea since not only are they on this tour, but they’ve already signed up for another 40 day cruise next year.
One amusing anecdote: we were watching When Harry Met Sally on Dubai t.v. and looking forward to the scene in the restaurant scene - which was cut!!! One of the best scenes totally removed!! The t.v. has limited but good stations. We have the Fair and Balanced Fox, CNN and BBC as our news sources; Dubai One for local t.v. where there are lots of American sitcoms and quite a few ship-specific channels which tell us about up-coming tours, provide repeats of lectures we might have missed, and most important of all: the map which shows us where we currently are sailing.
Life on a cruise ship is definitely a specific type which has its appeal – and its drawbacks. But without this cruise we would never have seen the places to match Daddy’s trip, and as I play bridge or loll on my deck chair staring at the water there is little to separate our two voyages.
November 29 – Sunday – Salalah, Oman
Salalah sounds more exotic than it actually appears to be. It represented the end of the pirate threat and was our first stop of the up-coming Gulf State ports. Bob and I looked at the available tours, and listened to the destination staff who basically said “there’s nothing to do in Salalah except to see how Frankincense is grown”. So why did the ship stop here? Because it’s the cheapest oil in the Arabian Peninsula. As soon as we pulled up to our berth, a very large oil lighter hugged up against our ship and began to ‘fill the tank with high octane’. We sat on the deck with the sweet reek of oil and enjoyed a leisurely day of doing nothing. This is a one day stop and tomorrow will be another sea day. We’re getting quite accomplished at moving around the ship and are actually looking forward to our next port, which is Muscat, in two days.
December 1 – Tuesday – Muscat, Oman
As promised, a day to go on shore and examine the highlights of Muscat. As we sailed into the harbor we could see the towers of mosques, a huge white structure on a rocky outcropping, and lots of cargo ships unloading goods. We disembarked the ship and were met by a delightful young guide in a brown dishdashah (the long gown worn by men of Oman) and a kumma, (the small woven headgear worn only by the men). He had one of the weirdest haircuts,and we were to discover he wasn’t alone – it is obviously the style. It looks exactly like the haircut seen on the statues of the pharaohs. While men wear the dishdashah, women wear black abayas and many had their faces covered by a black mask-like object. While this is no longer required by the current sultan, many women continue to hide their faces in this manner. This current Sultan – His Majest y Sultan Qaboos Bin Said - appears to be quite well loved by his countrymen since seizing power in 1970 at the age of thirty. He is single, was briefly married, and has since given his life to transforming the country. Under his leadership, Oman has moved from being an underdeveloped state to a true 20th century country. The entire infrastructure has been improved – be it roads, education or health coverage …and it shows. The towns are incredibly clean, there is construction everywhere, and never have I seen so many medical buildings in one short drive.
Our tour took us first to the large and impressive Sultan Qaboos Grand Mosque, which was built in five years and completed in 2001. It is the third largest mosque in the world with one of the largest woven Persian carpets in the world, with something like a zillion knots and weighing a gazillion tons. The mosque also has an enormous central chandelier made of Swarovski crystal. Any way you look at it, this place was huge, gorgeous, shiny, new, and an egotistical demonstration of what one man’s wealth can create. Of course we learned that Abu Dhabi, not to be out done, has built a bigger mosque and has a bigger carpet. We’ll see that in a few days. The mosque was immaculate and lovely and we took lots of pictures.
Our next stop was the museum of Oman, which tells its history and showed the various costumes and materials which were used throughout its history. Since its history is not all that old, it was a fairly small museum, but again it was orderly, excellent signage in Arabic and English, and it did educate. There were plenty of Khanjar daggers – the personal weapon of choice, with elaborate silver work in the sheath and handed down from father to son.
We made a quick photo stop at the Sultan’s palace and then headed to the Muttrah souq before it closed at 1:00 p.m. It was a large enclosed warren of shops each showing pretty much the same thing in each shop , but all of it was quite lovely: scarves, incense burners, spices, pashmina and typical Omani clothing. There appeared to be more Omani here than tourists, so we knew it had to be an authentic place. I was enjoying the people-watching as much as poking into a lot of little shops. I made my first acquisition since the rug in Turkey, buying a few dishdashah to wear in Florida …they looked too comfortable to leave behind.
In the evening to celebrate the full moon overhead, there was a dance outside under the stars – Sheikh , Rattle and Roll – with everyone asked to dress in some form of Arabian dress. There were many abayas and dishdashah, and only a few masked women. Bob and I watched for a few minutes before going back to our cabin for a good night’s sleep. We have to rest up for another day at sea tomorrow.
December 2 – Wednesday at Sea through the Straits of Hormuz
We woke up to find ourselves sailing in parts of the world recently in the news. We can see on our maps that we’re sailing between Oman and Iran where the sea lanes are very narrow, and we’re once more in some form of convoy since we’re sailing at little better than 11 knots. Bob and I attended a Kendall meeting. At least that’s how it was written out in the program – the cruise director has never heard about Kindles and thus all of us who gathered had to smile at this slight error. Everyone who has one of these new book readers swears allegiance to it and couples claim you have to have two since there will be too much squabbling without that. There were many who were curious about the object and were there to learn more about how it worked and its benefits. My guess is that with each subsequent cruise, and with the new international version now available, there will be many passengers toting their e-books. It is the perfect environment – bring all your favorite books and documents on one small object. So far only Bob has the large model, but many of the older folk saw its advantage with its very large print capability.
Sunday, November 29, 2009
Friday, November 27, 2009
Sharm el Sheikh and Luxor
November 21 – Saturday – Sharm el Sheikh Egypt
A ‘do-nothing’day on board. We took a few pictures of the harbor and that was as much all we saw. We were not in the mood to get off and scuba dive, or snorkel, and that was pretty much the goal of being in this elegant Egyptian resort… so we read, relaxed and enjoyed the sunshine from the pool deck.
November 22 – Sunday - Luxor (Port of Safaga)
An early start to what was promising to be an exciting day. In a very groggy state, we boarded our bus where we were greeted by our Egyptian guide Rita. She was delightful, amusing and very knowledgeable about the antiquities of her country. Like Mohammed Ali, who had guided us in Cairo, Rita had a degree in antiquities and used every minute of our three hour bus ride to fill us with knowledge about the history of Luxor. Having almost no previous knowledge about the various kingdoms, their sequence, their important pharaohs or the time period, much of it just flew into our brains for a brief moment in time, and disappeared the next day. That is why while I’m typing this blog on the 26th, most of the information Rita imparted has disappeared in a haze. Luckily I bought a brochure of the Valley of the Kings, and had a guide book for Egypt on my Kindle. Otherwise this would be a very short entry indeed.
As always in Egypt, we were going to be part of a large bus convoy from the time we left the secured harbor until we returned. Like all ports we’ve seen in the Middle East, these are primarily working industrial ports rather than cruise-specific harbors. Here the specific country’s goods and materials are off loaded ,and our docking space in Safaga was next to large gray behemoth cranes used to take cargo off of the ships. With passports in hand, and armed security guard in the front seat, we boarded our fairly elegant bus – complete with en suite toilet. (Desperate times would call for desperate measures since our convoy would not be allowed to stop until we reached our destination). Leaving the port of Safaga, where men sat outside in coffee shops staring at our bus, and we staring back at the men, we quickly started climbing into the desert. Large sandstone structures against a brilliant blue sky. At each border of a unique ‘county’ we were forced to go through a phalanx of guards in towers with their guns facing us, weave our way between cement barriers to slow us down while huge photos of Hosni Mubarak stared down at us looking very serious. This is truly as close to a police state as I’ve ever been in. While they declare that all these guards and safety procedures are to make us feel safe, it seems to have the opposite effect.
As we headed west towards the Nile, the land gradually became less barren and sandy and started to have fields which were obviously being used for agriculture. The closer we got to the river, the more one could see irrigation. Sometimes it was nothing more than a large pole with a bucket at the end hanging over the water with a simple lever that allowed a farmer to get water directly from the Nile and its side canals. In other cases one saw a large ‘spigot’ allowing water to gush into a particular field, and of course some had more elaborate means of irrigation similar to that we would see in the USA. No matter where we looked there were date palms, banana trees, mango, sugar cane fields and olive trees. Other than the cars on the main paved road we could just have easily been moving down a road in the time of the bible: mules and camels acting as modes of land transportation; simple flat bottomed punts, being dragged by a rope and guided with a pole, to get people from one side of a wide stream to the other (to cut down the commute of getting to the next closest bridge); houses made of mud adobe at best; simple tents or huts with grass woven roofs. It was beautiful and yet sadly primitive. Somehow I expected that if I looked behind a bed of reeds along the water I’d find Moses tucked into his little basket. For the most part, people along the way were as curious about us as we were about them, but I’m guessing that the volume of tour buses to Luxor probably makes them inured to our passing. I kept wanting to take pictures, but the bus was moving too quickly and as we knew, there was no slowing the convoy for sociological photo taking.
Our first stop – most critical to the happiness of the tour bus – was lunch at the Sheraton located right on the Eastern side of the Nile. (“The East is for the living, the West is for the Dead”). Luxor is an obvious tourist destination and it is probably the nicest town we saw in Egypt. The small horse-drawn carriages, the men in their Galabeiah (long caftans), the one-sail feluccas on the water, the many tourist ferries, and the large and elegant hotels along the shore speak to a town that knows where it makes its revenues. These lunch stops associated with our tours are a bit frustrating because it takes at least an hour out of every trip and the food is not particularly exotic since they want to please the palate of tourists – and not necessarily that of natives. But we now know the drill: walk into a large dining area, sit at the allotted tables, go through the buffet line, visit the toilets and pile back on the bus. If there is a ‘next time’, I think we will do far more private tours where we’re in control of our environment and not dependant on the slowest member of the tour to gather at the allotted spot. (A slight bit of whinging going on here).
Our first stop was the Valley of the Kings – on the West bank. Nothing prepares you for the arrival at this amazing spot hidden from civilization for hundreds of years. In the crevices and nooks of the surrounding innocuous mountains on either side of the valley, the most important kings/pharaohs and their families were buried with all their worldly goods, and with the whole story of their lives written in hieroglyphics on the corridors leading into their burial chambers. To go into finite detail would bore most readers, but let’s just say that Bob and I were amazed, in awe, and left totally speechless. Until now I’ve always looked with awe at the ancient Greek temples of a few hundred years BC, but these tombs went back thousands of years and had sophistication and complexity that is amazing to consider. What was truly astounding is that so many of these tombs are pretty much still intact -barring the treasures which were stolen. In beautiful colors, made from native herbs and minerals, one could see written on walls the story of a particular pharaoh, his entourage, the crafts and skills of his people and his departure to heaven with all its symbolism. And all of it was there for us to see up close with no plexiglas to protect these ancient artifacts from our modern backpacks, fingers and purses which could rub against them. The only prohibition seemed to be the use of cameras. At the entry of the valley we all went through detectors and if stupid enough NOT to have listened to our tour guide, who had told us to leave the camera behind, the camera would be confiscated. At least they understand the impact of flash cameras on these tombs.
Our entrance ticket allowed us into any three tombs – of which of which we could have chosen from at least twelve. There are actually over 60 tombs in this valley. The only two for which we would have had to pay extra were that of Tutankhamen and the most recent find of Ramses VI. The Egyptians understand how to make money, and know that most tourists want to see the famous tomb of King Tut even though there is absolutely nothing much to see …AND the newest find needs revenue to continue its dig, so they charged more here as well. Our guide made it quite clear that King Tut wasn’t such an important ‘guy’. What made him famous was that his tomb which, when found by Carter in 1920, was completely intact. Otherwise he would be just another pharaoh. With a little less than two hours to wander in this vast necropolis, Bob and I happily went to three other of the tombs.
Each one was entered through the ‘original’ but newly reinforced door past the door-keeper who punched your ticket – god forbid you try to enter more than the three allotted tombs! Then we proceeded down a long corridor which told (in hieroglyphics) the story of the death and resurrection of the pharaoh. The air became more leaden and ‘dead’ the deeper one went into the tomb but everything on the walls and ceilings was quite visible thanks to indirect fluorescent lighting. To protect the painted walls from dust, the corridors were lined with wooden planks to keep our modern feet from scuffing up too much dirt and slowly destroying the walls. It is my bet that in another 20 years we won’t even be doing this. (Daddy remembers being led into the dark tombs with a simple phosphor-lit flare.) Once one had progressed through the long corridors which continued to slope downwards you came to series of large rooms – one which would hold the sarcophagus, another which would have held all the worldly goods the dead took with them to start their new lives in the next world. In these larger rooms the walls were absolutely coated with ‘stories’, pictures, columns and bas relief images which related the story of the pharaoh. No words can do this justice - it was plain amazing. Thank god that someone found the Rosetta Stone, or we still wouldn’t know what all that hieroglyphic writing meant.
Our only regret was that we knew so little about the religions of these ancient people, didn’t understand all the hieroglyphics, hardly understood the history and therefore could simply stare like dumb but admiring tourists. What a magical experience! I would come back here again armed with more information and really try to understand what I was seeing. To think that this was here for over two thousand years, with almost no one detecting it. Those old pharaohs, and their acolytes, certainly did a fine job of ‘covering their tracks’, and while tomb robbers may have stolen artifacts over the centuries it is quite obvious that there are hundreds of tombs still to be discovered. After all, this was only the Valley of the Kings -where there continue to be discoveries. There were also other necropolis valleys in the area meant for the artisans and scholars as well. In fact some of these tombs weren’t ‘discovered’ until recently because very entrepreneurial residents of the area had found them earlier and had surreptitiously built their 18th and 19th century homes to encompass the front of the tomb entrances, thereby allowing them to rob in the privacy of their homes and to sell the artifacts in the markets. We’re told that that was stopped by the government which tore down most of these houses, but who knows. In some ways the Egyptians seem quite cavalier about their treasures except as they are a source of revenue.
What was most amazing was that in mid November, on a warm sunny day there were really very few tourists. Going down the long tomb corridors which were no more than 3-4 feet wide, you could imagine real human traffic jams in the midst of summer. But there were none, and at only a few places did we have to wait to look into a little nook or cranny to see something special. Nor were there many guards considering the significance of these tombs. I saw at best only one guard, in his galabeah, in each of the large rooms within each tomb.
Brain-exhausted from too many new sights, we headed next to the Colossi of Memnon (not Greek) . Here were two huge faceless statues of Amenhotep III at the entry of what was once a temple site. At this point there is little of the temple to be seen, and so we took what was called a photo opportunity and moved on. Next we came to the tomb of Hapshetsut (pronounced, said Rita, as Hat+Ship+Suit). She was the one and only woman Pharaoh. Her father - Tuthomosis I - had been a pharaoh, she married a gentleman who thereby became a pharaoh – Tuthomosis II – but unfortunately he died shortly thereafter. He had a young son by a prior wife who became – Tuthomosis III. It was decided that Hapshetsut would reign until he was able to take on responsibilities. She co-reigned for 22 years dressing and behaving like a man. When she died her step-son now became pharaoh, defaced most of her monuments leaving only this one major monument to her.
Our last stop as the afternoon was drawing to a close was the Temple of Luxor on the East Bank. Here was what I had been waiting to see since it was here that Daddy and Walter walked around and took so many photographs. But by the time we arrived it was actually dark so all our photographs were taken by flash. This did not diminish the grandeur of the site and the lighting was really quite dramatic, but I had wanted to see this in daylight so felt a bit gypped. It is a wonderful temple made up of structures started by Tuthomosis III, continued by Amenhotep, Ramses II, Tutankhamen and Alexander the Great. In front of the main entry is one of two large obelisks – the other is in Paris at the Place de la Concorde. We walked quickly from one end to the other and got back on the bus. We drove past the Temple of Karnak, but took no pictures. (Another site Daddy loved, but which was not on our tour). Connecting these two major temples in ‘days of yore’ was a two kilometer long avenue lined with human-headed Sphinxes, of which only a few remain.
Thoroughly exhausted, both mentally and physically, we began the long drive ‘home’. Because there is not much development in this area of Egypt the stars were amazing. I saw full constellations I had never seen before – not even in Peacham. Absolutely beautiful. At 9:00 pm, a mere thirteen hours later, we arrived back at the port and were greeted by the ship’s crew, cold towels, cold drinks and the band playing from the 5th deck. We may have been exhausted, but we suddenly felt peppy enough for a quick shower and dinner.
Some people took an overnight tour which would have allowed us to see Karnak the next day, but we hadn’t chosen that, so I’ll just have to come back to Luxor again.
One amusing joke told by Rita: “You know why Moses was lost in the desert for all those years? He had a Jordanian tour guide.” As she admitted, were this same joke to be told in Jordan it would be the reverse.
November 23 – Monday – Safaga
A relaxing, do-nothing day on board the ship. A day of rest, after a thirteen hour tour yesterday, and a thirteen hour tour tomorrow.
A ‘do-nothing’day on board. We took a few pictures of the harbor and that was as much all we saw. We were not in the mood to get off and scuba dive, or snorkel, and that was pretty much the goal of being in this elegant Egyptian resort… so we read, relaxed and enjoyed the sunshine from the pool deck.
November 22 – Sunday - Luxor (Port of Safaga)
An early start to what was promising to be an exciting day. In a very groggy state, we boarded our bus where we were greeted by our Egyptian guide Rita. She was delightful, amusing and very knowledgeable about the antiquities of her country. Like Mohammed Ali, who had guided us in Cairo, Rita had a degree in antiquities and used every minute of our three hour bus ride to fill us with knowledge about the history of Luxor. Having almost no previous knowledge about the various kingdoms, their sequence, their important pharaohs or the time period, much of it just flew into our brains for a brief moment in time, and disappeared the next day. That is why while I’m typing this blog on the 26th, most of the information Rita imparted has disappeared in a haze. Luckily I bought a brochure of the Valley of the Kings, and had a guide book for Egypt on my Kindle. Otherwise this would be a very short entry indeed.
As always in Egypt, we were going to be part of a large bus convoy from the time we left the secured harbor until we returned. Like all ports we’ve seen in the Middle East, these are primarily working industrial ports rather than cruise-specific harbors. Here the specific country’s goods and materials are off loaded ,and our docking space in Safaga was next to large gray behemoth cranes used to take cargo off of the ships. With passports in hand, and armed security guard in the front seat, we boarded our fairly elegant bus – complete with en suite toilet. (Desperate times would call for desperate measures since our convoy would not be allowed to stop until we reached our destination). Leaving the port of Safaga, where men sat outside in coffee shops staring at our bus, and we staring back at the men, we quickly started climbing into the desert. Large sandstone structures against a brilliant blue sky. At each border of a unique ‘county’ we were forced to go through a phalanx of guards in towers with their guns facing us, weave our way between cement barriers to slow us down while huge photos of Hosni Mubarak stared down at us looking very serious. This is truly as close to a police state as I’ve ever been in. While they declare that all these guards and safety procedures are to make us feel safe, it seems to have the opposite effect.
As we headed west towards the Nile, the land gradually became less barren and sandy and started to have fields which were obviously being used for agriculture. The closer we got to the river, the more one could see irrigation. Sometimes it was nothing more than a large pole with a bucket at the end hanging over the water with a simple lever that allowed a farmer to get water directly from the Nile and its side canals. In other cases one saw a large ‘spigot’ allowing water to gush into a particular field, and of course some had more elaborate means of irrigation similar to that we would see in the USA. No matter where we looked there were date palms, banana trees, mango, sugar cane fields and olive trees. Other than the cars on the main paved road we could just have easily been moving down a road in the time of the bible: mules and camels acting as modes of land transportation; simple flat bottomed punts, being dragged by a rope and guided with a pole, to get people from one side of a wide stream to the other (to cut down the commute of getting to the next closest bridge); houses made of mud adobe at best; simple tents or huts with grass woven roofs. It was beautiful and yet sadly primitive. Somehow I expected that if I looked behind a bed of reeds along the water I’d find Moses tucked into his little basket. For the most part, people along the way were as curious about us as we were about them, but I’m guessing that the volume of tour buses to Luxor probably makes them inured to our passing. I kept wanting to take pictures, but the bus was moving too quickly and as we knew, there was no slowing the convoy for sociological photo taking.
Our first stop – most critical to the happiness of the tour bus – was lunch at the Sheraton located right on the Eastern side of the Nile. (“The East is for the living, the West is for the Dead”). Luxor is an obvious tourist destination and it is probably the nicest town we saw in Egypt. The small horse-drawn carriages, the men in their Galabeiah (long caftans), the one-sail feluccas on the water, the many tourist ferries, and the large and elegant hotels along the shore speak to a town that knows where it makes its revenues. These lunch stops associated with our tours are a bit frustrating because it takes at least an hour out of every trip and the food is not particularly exotic since they want to please the palate of tourists – and not necessarily that of natives. But we now know the drill: walk into a large dining area, sit at the allotted tables, go through the buffet line, visit the toilets and pile back on the bus. If there is a ‘next time’, I think we will do far more private tours where we’re in control of our environment and not dependant on the slowest member of the tour to gather at the allotted spot. (A slight bit of whinging going on here).
Our first stop was the Valley of the Kings – on the West bank. Nothing prepares you for the arrival at this amazing spot hidden from civilization for hundreds of years. In the crevices and nooks of the surrounding innocuous mountains on either side of the valley, the most important kings/pharaohs and their families were buried with all their worldly goods, and with the whole story of their lives written in hieroglyphics on the corridors leading into their burial chambers. To go into finite detail would bore most readers, but let’s just say that Bob and I were amazed, in awe, and left totally speechless. Until now I’ve always looked with awe at the ancient Greek temples of a few hundred years BC, but these tombs went back thousands of years and had sophistication and complexity that is amazing to consider. What was truly astounding is that so many of these tombs are pretty much still intact -barring the treasures which were stolen. In beautiful colors, made from native herbs and minerals, one could see written on walls the story of a particular pharaoh, his entourage, the crafts and skills of his people and his departure to heaven with all its symbolism. And all of it was there for us to see up close with no plexiglas to protect these ancient artifacts from our modern backpacks, fingers and purses which could rub against them. The only prohibition seemed to be the use of cameras. At the entry of the valley we all went through detectors and if stupid enough NOT to have listened to our tour guide, who had told us to leave the camera behind, the camera would be confiscated. At least they understand the impact of flash cameras on these tombs.
Our entrance ticket allowed us into any three tombs – of which of which we could have chosen from at least twelve. There are actually over 60 tombs in this valley. The only two for which we would have had to pay extra were that of Tutankhamen and the most recent find of Ramses VI. The Egyptians understand how to make money, and know that most tourists want to see the famous tomb of King Tut even though there is absolutely nothing much to see …AND the newest find needs revenue to continue its dig, so they charged more here as well. Our guide made it quite clear that King Tut wasn’t such an important ‘guy’. What made him famous was that his tomb which, when found by Carter in 1920, was completely intact. Otherwise he would be just another pharaoh. With a little less than two hours to wander in this vast necropolis, Bob and I happily went to three other of the tombs.
Each one was entered through the ‘original’ but newly reinforced door past the door-keeper who punched your ticket – god forbid you try to enter more than the three allotted tombs! Then we proceeded down a long corridor which told (in hieroglyphics) the story of the death and resurrection of the pharaoh. The air became more leaden and ‘dead’ the deeper one went into the tomb but everything on the walls and ceilings was quite visible thanks to indirect fluorescent lighting. To protect the painted walls from dust, the corridors were lined with wooden planks to keep our modern feet from scuffing up too much dirt and slowly destroying the walls. It is my bet that in another 20 years we won’t even be doing this. (Daddy remembers being led into the dark tombs with a simple phosphor-lit flare.) Once one had progressed through the long corridors which continued to slope downwards you came to series of large rooms – one which would hold the sarcophagus, another which would have held all the worldly goods the dead took with them to start their new lives in the next world. In these larger rooms the walls were absolutely coated with ‘stories’, pictures, columns and bas relief images which related the story of the pharaoh. No words can do this justice - it was plain amazing. Thank god that someone found the Rosetta Stone, or we still wouldn’t know what all that hieroglyphic writing meant.
Our only regret was that we knew so little about the religions of these ancient people, didn’t understand all the hieroglyphics, hardly understood the history and therefore could simply stare like dumb but admiring tourists. What a magical experience! I would come back here again armed with more information and really try to understand what I was seeing. To think that this was here for over two thousand years, with almost no one detecting it. Those old pharaohs, and their acolytes, certainly did a fine job of ‘covering their tracks’, and while tomb robbers may have stolen artifacts over the centuries it is quite obvious that there are hundreds of tombs still to be discovered. After all, this was only the Valley of the Kings -where there continue to be discoveries. There were also other necropolis valleys in the area meant for the artisans and scholars as well. In fact some of these tombs weren’t ‘discovered’ until recently because very entrepreneurial residents of the area had found them earlier and had surreptitiously built their 18th and 19th century homes to encompass the front of the tomb entrances, thereby allowing them to rob in the privacy of their homes and to sell the artifacts in the markets. We’re told that that was stopped by the government which tore down most of these houses, but who knows. In some ways the Egyptians seem quite cavalier about their treasures except as they are a source of revenue.
What was most amazing was that in mid November, on a warm sunny day there were really very few tourists. Going down the long tomb corridors which were no more than 3-4 feet wide, you could imagine real human traffic jams in the midst of summer. But there were none, and at only a few places did we have to wait to look into a little nook or cranny to see something special. Nor were there many guards considering the significance of these tombs. I saw at best only one guard, in his galabeah, in each of the large rooms within each tomb.
Brain-exhausted from too many new sights, we headed next to the Colossi of Memnon (not Greek) . Here were two huge faceless statues of Amenhotep III at the entry of what was once a temple site. At this point there is little of the temple to be seen, and so we took what was called a photo opportunity and moved on. Next we came to the tomb of Hapshetsut (pronounced, said Rita, as Hat+Ship+Suit). She was the one and only woman Pharaoh. Her father - Tuthomosis I - had been a pharaoh, she married a gentleman who thereby became a pharaoh – Tuthomosis II – but unfortunately he died shortly thereafter. He had a young son by a prior wife who became – Tuthomosis III. It was decided that Hapshetsut would reign until he was able to take on responsibilities. She co-reigned for 22 years dressing and behaving like a man. When she died her step-son now became pharaoh, defaced most of her monuments leaving only this one major monument to her.
Our last stop as the afternoon was drawing to a close was the Temple of Luxor on the East Bank. Here was what I had been waiting to see since it was here that Daddy and Walter walked around and took so many photographs. But by the time we arrived it was actually dark so all our photographs were taken by flash. This did not diminish the grandeur of the site and the lighting was really quite dramatic, but I had wanted to see this in daylight so felt a bit gypped. It is a wonderful temple made up of structures started by Tuthomosis III, continued by Amenhotep, Ramses II, Tutankhamen and Alexander the Great. In front of the main entry is one of two large obelisks – the other is in Paris at the Place de la Concorde. We walked quickly from one end to the other and got back on the bus. We drove past the Temple of Karnak, but took no pictures. (Another site Daddy loved, but which was not on our tour). Connecting these two major temples in ‘days of yore’ was a two kilometer long avenue lined with human-headed Sphinxes, of which only a few remain.
Thoroughly exhausted, both mentally and physically, we began the long drive ‘home’. Because there is not much development in this area of Egypt the stars were amazing. I saw full constellations I had never seen before – not even in Peacham. Absolutely beautiful. At 9:00 pm, a mere thirteen hours later, we arrived back at the port and were greeted by the ship’s crew, cold towels, cold drinks and the band playing from the 5th deck. We may have been exhausted, but we suddenly felt peppy enough for a quick shower and dinner.
Some people took an overnight tour which would have allowed us to see Karnak the next day, but we hadn’t chosen that, so I’ll just have to come back to Luxor again.
One amusing joke told by Rita: “You know why Moses was lost in the desert for all those years? He had a Jordanian tour guide.” As she admitted, were this same joke to be told in Jordan it would be the reverse.
November 23 – Monday – Safaga
A relaxing, do-nothing day on board the ship. A day of rest, after a thirteen hour tour yesterday, and a thirteen hour tour tomorrow.
Saturday, November 21, 2009
Alexandria, Cairo and Suez Canal
November 18 – Wednesday – Alexandria
We landed in the first of the many sites that Daddy visited and we each went our separate way: Bob to the Battlefield of El Alamein , where a critical battle representing one of the turning points of WW II occurred. It was here that Rommel’s Afrika Korps was defeated by the British under the fresh command of Montgomery. German domination of North Africa was ended, and they were prevented from capturing Cairo, and the Suez Canal. Bob had had high hopes for his adventure, but was disappointed by the guide (who was not very knowledgeable), his fellow tourists (who didn’t seem quite clear on the historical significance of the site), and the site itself, where only the German memorial to its fallen impressed him.
I was in pursuit of the sites seen by Herbert and Walter in 1927, and went to see the Roman remnants of the town with a lovely guide whose name translated to Eternity. Our first stop was the original temple of Serapis, and was known as the Sersapeum complex. It was destroyed by the Christians in 300 CE (one no longer uses the phrase AD since it is too Christian, rather one says CE, standing for Common Era). The only remains are the incorrectly named Pompey Pillar, the outlines of buildings and two statues. Much more has been dug up since 1927 and everything has been made more modern. From there, we were off to the Catacombs of Kom el Shugafa. It is amidst an entire necropolis area where its antiquities seem to be quite casually handled by the Egyptians. No signage, no attempt to protect things from tourists treading on old things, and all of it outside in the polluted air of Alexandria. We took a brief look at one tomb and the hieroglyphics on the walls depicting the noble once buried here. We then descended down over 100 feet via 89 shallow spiral steps into the first level of the catacomb where the mummified bodies were stored with their important belongings. One could look down to see the two additional tiers but they were not accessible to us. The sarcophagi were gone, the belongings had been taken, but one could still appreciate the techniques used to lower bodies into these subterranean places; the many recesses which allowed over 300 people to be buried here; and a few wall paintings, faded with time and light, which could still be seen.
Our final visit was to the Greco/Roman Amphitheater which had not been discovered in 1927. It is being dug by the Polish archaeological school in Warsaw. (who knew!). It is a wonderful excavation where the amphitheater, like all the others we’ve seen , is now used for concerts and other entertainment. The signage was non-existent except for one large description at the entry; the little store was closed, so I could get no information, and god knows where the items discovered are being stored or kept.
Alexandria is one large ruin, since it was the second most important city in Egypt, but most of it lies under the harbor or under the modern day city. To uncover much of it would mean dislocating all its 20th century inhabitants. Personally, this would not be a disaster since modern day Alexandria strikes me as a very poor, dirty and backward town. The two most important items of its past were the famous Pharous Lighthouse, one of the 7 wonders of the ancient world, and the Library of Alexandria which was established by early Ptolemaic rulers and held over 200,000 documents representing the largest collection of written knowledge of the Egyptians. Both these things are gone and while the “Alexandria Quartet”, of Lawrence Durrell, spoke lovingly of the Corniche, and the faded glory of 18th century Alexandria when it was a resort area, that too is gone.
I just kept taking pictures of streets teeming with humanity; stores selling all manner of things from meat hanging outside in the fly ridden air, fabrics and clothing, plastic ware of all sorts and chickens ready to turn into someone’s dinner. The main transportation was an ancient trolley whose cars were so patched and painted that it was a joke; donkeys laden with people or goods; ancient carts being pulled by humans, horses or donkeys; shared vans where people were hanging out of the windows so jammed were they; buses with windows missing; and in between elegant Mercedes or Toyotas.
This is distinctly a harbor town and near to the harbor was the poorest of mankind. Our guide had a different image of her town, which she spoke of as being clean and orderly and known as the Pearl of the Mediterranean. Wherever that may be, I didn’t see it. It was just sad to see a town with such an amazing history so completely neglected and down trodden. Cleopatra and Antony would not recognize their old hometown.
At dark our ship sailed on to our next port – Port Said, from which we will visit Cairo.
November 19 – Thursday – Cairo
Egypt is a country in a permanent state of security alerts. Here the threat is less from other countries, but is more from its citizenry, who are not all happy with the government of Hosni Mubarak. This is where Anwar Sadat was killed by his own military in 1981, and Mubarak has been in power since then. So we were very aware of the tourist police, who were there to protect us. We had to travel in a convoy of buses, with armed military leading and following the convoy. At all intersections as we left Port Said, heading to Cairo at 6:30 am, there were police holding back traffic so we could sail through, and all along our route there were soldiers with submachine guns. On most buses there was an armed guard in addition to the tour guide. There was no straying or wandering, and every time we descended from our bus we were aware that we were being guarded. Sometimes it was almost ludicrous – a large gentleman in a two piece suit with his gun sticking out of his jacket so awkwardly that he might just have well been in full uniform…he wasn’t fooling anyone.
We kept being told how much Egyptians love tourists, and we could see people waving at us and children smiling, but what about the youth who on their way to work , and were being held up because of us? And those women behind their burkas… what did they think about us heathens? While our guide, Mohammed Ali , was young, well educated, enthusiastic and humorous, you were always aware of a police presence.
Our three hour bus ride, from the port to Cairo, allowed us to see the countryside. It was eerie at one point to look to our left and see a large cargo ship apparently sailing through sand and grass – only to be told that we were following the Suez Canal. We passed new suburbs being built north of Cairo. The intention was originally that these new suburbs would be cheaper for young people to buy and it was designed for them. But like in all countries, wealthy real estate agents bought up the units and sold them to the people who had cars and were able to commute back into Cairo – the wealthy. So of course, the wealthy moved out to the new more open suburbs and the young people reside in crowded, dirty Cairo. According to Ali, Cairo is now the second most populous city, being preceded only by Mexico City.
Most of the suburbs looked like ghost towns, with gaping open windows and unfinished construction. We were told that this is because residents would pay a higher tax on a completed building, so it is left in a state of construction forever …but the satellite dish on the roof gives away its true state.
Driving, as we got into Cairo proper, was ‘creative’, to put it mildly. The concept of lanes was a joke, and traffic lights seemed to have only a decorative purpose. (That might have explained why we passed so many automobile repair shops.) Short cuts through narrow dirt roads and rutted paved roads gave us a chance to see Cairo’s less elegant housing: mud bricked huts, grass roofed sheds, old 18th century high rises black with soot where laundry hung out the windows, and modern 20th century buildings crumbling with neglect. While Ali saw new buildings and a vibrant hometown, we saw incredible poverty. There were herds of goats being guided down streets, water buffalo being herded near the pyramids; wild dogs roaming in packs; pony-led carts carrying people, grain or objects; small corner carts selling street food; sheep being slaughtered and flayed at the street corner while their still living comrades awaited their death; men sitting at coffee shops watching the world while smoking from a water pipe; floating dead donkeys in canals; and ancient buses and taxis – it reminded me of Delhi. Bob and I are agreed that we won’t be coming back to Egypt anytime soon.
But, we aren’t here for the sociology of 21st century Cairo! We are here to see the wonders of the ancient world, and to learn as much history as Ali could cram into our heads.
Our first stop was Sakkara to see the Stepped Pyramid, and the complex which was built during the reign of King Zoser around 2600 BCE. We walked across sand and through a colonnade made up of columns which looked like bunches of reeds, but built of limestone. We came into an open courtyard where important festivals took place and to our right was the famous Zozer Step Pyramid. Daddy had stood here, and it was eerie to be again in the same place. This tomb started as a simple mastaba , or rectangular raised structure, under which the noble was buried. But somehow it kept growing until there were five additional mastaba – one on top of the other forming the pyramid. At one point it was covered in a smooth limestone to give it a finished look, but this was removed as people built their homes. After all it was a hike to get to the quarries five miles away, and here were limestone blocks just for the picking. So now it looks fairly rough and of course, we couldn’t walk on it. We took our proverbial tourista pictures and returned to our bus.
Next stop was the ancient capital of Memphis, for a quick stop to see the small outdoor museum containing an enormous, reclining, statue of Ramses II, weighing over 120 tons…and a small sphinx. There were more little kiosks selling trinkets than there were statues.
At last, lunch at the Mövenpick, an elegant restaurant where we, and our armed guards, dined at a buffet lunch with lots of unique but interesting food. I tried a fresh date for the first time in my life and must say I like the dried ones a whole lot better, but it had to be tried along with lots of interesting ‘goo’ made of either sesame, yogurts or ??, who knew what, but it was garlicky and great. To accompany our sampler meal we each had an Egyptian Sakkara beer. We try to sample local beers where possible since all that the ship provides is Becks, Heineken and Budweiser. (!?!)
Our next stop was the famous pyramids of Giza. Of course because they are so famous they attract an enormous amount of very aggressive vendors who don’t easily take ‘no’ for an answer….“want to buy a camel, lady?”, “want a picture on camel, lady?”… and of course necklaces, hats, postcards, and real alabaster pyramids …for only one Yankee dollar. Like in India, you know that these vendors are all being driven by some hidden master who demands that they generate a certain amount of revenue each day or they lose their jobs. But no matter how persuasive, we avoided their blandishments.
There are three very large pyramids, each important in its own way. The biggest is the Great Pyramid of Khufu (Cheops) which in 1927 Daddy had the opportunity to climb. At one point it was faced with limestone blocks, but those have totally disappeared and one sees the huge rocks , each one at least four feet tall and three feet wide weighing 10-15 tons. (Thinking of the slaves required to move these from a quarry miles away gives one pause. The movie of Cleopatra showed slaves being whipped as they hauled each stone and I can only imagine the difficulty). Daddy described having two ‘assistants’ who helped him up to the top pushing and pulling him as required. Even then he commented on how hard it was, and I could only imagine getting up, and worse having to come back down again. Since no one is allowed to do this anymore, all we could do was take lots of pictures and be impressed…. Which we were!
We were then driven to a panoramic viewing spot where one saw the other two temples as well. The Khafra pyramid stands close to Khufu’s, and still has some of its limestone façade in place at the top. The last pyramid is that of Menkaura , which is the smallest of the three. This one being more ‘modern’ is made with granite a more durable stone. We took all our pictures and walked back to our bus which was making one last stop – the Sphinx. To get to the base was so crowded and claustrophobic, that we chose to simply take pictures from afar. When I was here fifteen years ago I had gotten closer, but it was no less attractive.
Having taken just a few more pictures we walked back to the bus past a TV show set, which was doing some interviews. Of course , there was the mixing console to remind Bob of his days of yore, speakers and Klieg lights everywhere, and translators doing simultaneous translation….. a little of the 21st century amidst the sands of 24th BCE. It is a shame that the pyramids are such a focal point of tourism. The buses, the vendors, the zillions of tourists take away from the site such that while you may want to stand and contemplate this amazing structure, there is absolutely no chance to do this without being pushed aside by another person with a camera or way-laid by some very aggressive salesman.
Our last stop was the last of the sales opportunities. We were shown how Papyrus was made and of course given the opportunity to buy some. Bob and I watched the demonstration and then headed back to the bus ready for our three hour trip back to the port. (I read on the news that that evening the youth of Cairo went on a rampage hurting many police – why? Because they’d lost their chance to be an African representative in the World Cup, by being defeated by Algeria at a game in Sudan).
Our trip back seemed endless since it was getting dark and difficult to watch the world outside. But of course we had our escorts at both ends of the convoy and this time they had flashing red lights and sirens to keep people out of our way. It was a very long day and as we came out of the customs building crew members, and a five-piece Dixieland band, were lined up along the gangway to sing and welcome us back with soft drinks and white moistened towels. It was a lovely touch, and made us forget how exhausted, gritty and brain-dead we were. A quick shower to refresh us and we were off for an elegant dinner. We are spoiled.
Bob stayed awake until 1:30 a.m. to watch the ship entering the Suez Canal. I slept.
November 20 – Friday – Suez Canal
Our ship convoy consisted of twenty-one ships of all size and purpose. Each ship has one pilot and is asked to go no more than eight knots and keep a distance of 2000 meters from the next ship. As a result of this careful choreography there have been no accidents in the Canal. (Only the time when Nassar sank all manner of boats, clogging up the Canal during the 1956 unpleasantness with Britain, France and Israel. ) In our convoy were container carriers, oil tankers, two other cruising ships, a navy ship, and assorted others which I never really saw. Unlike the Panama Canal which is made up of a series of locks, this one is ‘simply’ a waterway wide enough and deep enough to carry all but the new super tankers (that is to come). Each convoy coming from either direction stops in The Bitter Lake, and there await the opportunity to continue in one direction or the other. We awoke in The Bitter Lake, and were surrounded by ships. At noon we started south again on the last leg of the canal, which was interesting to see in the daylight. On one side of the canal it is lush (thanks to the Nile) and on the other it is a sandy wasteland. On both sides one saw the remains of armed sites where in prior times the canal was being guarded and defended by Britain or Egypt.
We slowed down as we neared the city of Suez, where we believe there was a change of pilots, and later we attended a lecture about Jordan given by a lovely Jordanian woman named Nadia, who educated us about the traditions of Jordan and other middle eastern countries. We learned that every person has four names: your name, your father’s name, his father’s name and your tribal or family name. Women do not take their husband’s name so that my name would be Beatrice Herbert Wilhelm Meyer and my husband would be Robert William Joseph Ring. We also learned that one doesn’t touch the mouth as you put food in – rather you allow it to pass through your lips via a piece of bread or such. Jordan is currently governed by King Abdullah, the son of King Hussein – both of whom are revered by the citizenry. Nadia also sells jewelry which is made of local stones of Jordan and created by women in small villages to give them employment. It is lovely modern jewelry.
And that was pretty much our day. Tonight we will sail the length of the Gulf of Suez, and by tomorrow morning we’ll be at Sharm-el- Sheikh, at the tip of the Sinai Peninsula. It is now a large, Egyptian resort town.
And so we relax and enjoy the sun and the warmth.
We landed in the first of the many sites that Daddy visited and we each went our separate way: Bob to the Battlefield of El Alamein , where a critical battle representing one of the turning points of WW II occurred. It was here that Rommel’s Afrika Korps was defeated by the British under the fresh command of Montgomery. German domination of North Africa was ended, and they were prevented from capturing Cairo, and the Suez Canal. Bob had had high hopes for his adventure, but was disappointed by the guide (who was not very knowledgeable), his fellow tourists (who didn’t seem quite clear on the historical significance of the site), and the site itself, where only the German memorial to its fallen impressed him.
I was in pursuit of the sites seen by Herbert and Walter in 1927, and went to see the Roman remnants of the town with a lovely guide whose name translated to Eternity. Our first stop was the original temple of Serapis, and was known as the Sersapeum complex. It was destroyed by the Christians in 300 CE (one no longer uses the phrase AD since it is too Christian, rather one says CE, standing for Common Era). The only remains are the incorrectly named Pompey Pillar, the outlines of buildings and two statues. Much more has been dug up since 1927 and everything has been made more modern. From there, we were off to the Catacombs of Kom el Shugafa. It is amidst an entire necropolis area where its antiquities seem to be quite casually handled by the Egyptians. No signage, no attempt to protect things from tourists treading on old things, and all of it outside in the polluted air of Alexandria. We took a brief look at one tomb and the hieroglyphics on the walls depicting the noble once buried here. We then descended down over 100 feet via 89 shallow spiral steps into the first level of the catacomb where the mummified bodies were stored with their important belongings. One could look down to see the two additional tiers but they were not accessible to us. The sarcophagi were gone, the belongings had been taken, but one could still appreciate the techniques used to lower bodies into these subterranean places; the many recesses which allowed over 300 people to be buried here; and a few wall paintings, faded with time and light, which could still be seen.
Our final visit was to the Greco/Roman Amphitheater which had not been discovered in 1927. It is being dug by the Polish archaeological school in Warsaw. (who knew!). It is a wonderful excavation where the amphitheater, like all the others we’ve seen , is now used for concerts and other entertainment. The signage was non-existent except for one large description at the entry; the little store was closed, so I could get no information, and god knows where the items discovered are being stored or kept.
Alexandria is one large ruin, since it was the second most important city in Egypt, but most of it lies under the harbor or under the modern day city. To uncover much of it would mean dislocating all its 20th century inhabitants. Personally, this would not be a disaster since modern day Alexandria strikes me as a very poor, dirty and backward town. The two most important items of its past were the famous Pharous Lighthouse, one of the 7 wonders of the ancient world, and the Library of Alexandria which was established by early Ptolemaic rulers and held over 200,000 documents representing the largest collection of written knowledge of the Egyptians. Both these things are gone and while the “Alexandria Quartet”, of Lawrence Durrell, spoke lovingly of the Corniche, and the faded glory of 18th century Alexandria when it was a resort area, that too is gone.
I just kept taking pictures of streets teeming with humanity; stores selling all manner of things from meat hanging outside in the fly ridden air, fabrics and clothing, plastic ware of all sorts and chickens ready to turn into someone’s dinner. The main transportation was an ancient trolley whose cars were so patched and painted that it was a joke; donkeys laden with people or goods; ancient carts being pulled by humans, horses or donkeys; shared vans where people were hanging out of the windows so jammed were they; buses with windows missing; and in between elegant Mercedes or Toyotas.
This is distinctly a harbor town and near to the harbor was the poorest of mankind. Our guide had a different image of her town, which she spoke of as being clean and orderly and known as the Pearl of the Mediterranean. Wherever that may be, I didn’t see it. It was just sad to see a town with such an amazing history so completely neglected and down trodden. Cleopatra and Antony would not recognize their old hometown.
At dark our ship sailed on to our next port – Port Said, from which we will visit Cairo.
November 19 – Thursday – Cairo
Egypt is a country in a permanent state of security alerts. Here the threat is less from other countries, but is more from its citizenry, who are not all happy with the government of Hosni Mubarak. This is where Anwar Sadat was killed by his own military in 1981, and Mubarak has been in power since then. So we were very aware of the tourist police, who were there to protect us. We had to travel in a convoy of buses, with armed military leading and following the convoy. At all intersections as we left Port Said, heading to Cairo at 6:30 am, there were police holding back traffic so we could sail through, and all along our route there were soldiers with submachine guns. On most buses there was an armed guard in addition to the tour guide. There was no straying or wandering, and every time we descended from our bus we were aware that we were being guarded. Sometimes it was almost ludicrous – a large gentleman in a two piece suit with his gun sticking out of his jacket so awkwardly that he might just have well been in full uniform…he wasn’t fooling anyone.
We kept being told how much Egyptians love tourists, and we could see people waving at us and children smiling, but what about the youth who on their way to work , and were being held up because of us? And those women behind their burkas… what did they think about us heathens? While our guide, Mohammed Ali , was young, well educated, enthusiastic and humorous, you were always aware of a police presence.
Our three hour bus ride, from the port to Cairo, allowed us to see the countryside. It was eerie at one point to look to our left and see a large cargo ship apparently sailing through sand and grass – only to be told that we were following the Suez Canal. We passed new suburbs being built north of Cairo. The intention was originally that these new suburbs would be cheaper for young people to buy and it was designed for them. But like in all countries, wealthy real estate agents bought up the units and sold them to the people who had cars and were able to commute back into Cairo – the wealthy. So of course, the wealthy moved out to the new more open suburbs and the young people reside in crowded, dirty Cairo. According to Ali, Cairo is now the second most populous city, being preceded only by Mexico City.
Most of the suburbs looked like ghost towns, with gaping open windows and unfinished construction. We were told that this is because residents would pay a higher tax on a completed building, so it is left in a state of construction forever …but the satellite dish on the roof gives away its true state.
Driving, as we got into Cairo proper, was ‘creative’, to put it mildly. The concept of lanes was a joke, and traffic lights seemed to have only a decorative purpose. (That might have explained why we passed so many automobile repair shops.) Short cuts through narrow dirt roads and rutted paved roads gave us a chance to see Cairo’s less elegant housing: mud bricked huts, grass roofed sheds, old 18th century high rises black with soot where laundry hung out the windows, and modern 20th century buildings crumbling with neglect. While Ali saw new buildings and a vibrant hometown, we saw incredible poverty. There were herds of goats being guided down streets, water buffalo being herded near the pyramids; wild dogs roaming in packs; pony-led carts carrying people, grain or objects; small corner carts selling street food; sheep being slaughtered and flayed at the street corner while their still living comrades awaited their death; men sitting at coffee shops watching the world while smoking from a water pipe; floating dead donkeys in canals; and ancient buses and taxis – it reminded me of Delhi. Bob and I are agreed that we won’t be coming back to Egypt anytime soon.
But, we aren’t here for the sociology of 21st century Cairo! We are here to see the wonders of the ancient world, and to learn as much history as Ali could cram into our heads.
Our first stop was Sakkara to see the Stepped Pyramid, and the complex which was built during the reign of King Zoser around 2600 BCE. We walked across sand and through a colonnade made up of columns which looked like bunches of reeds, but built of limestone. We came into an open courtyard where important festivals took place and to our right was the famous Zozer Step Pyramid. Daddy had stood here, and it was eerie to be again in the same place. This tomb started as a simple mastaba , or rectangular raised structure, under which the noble was buried. But somehow it kept growing until there were five additional mastaba – one on top of the other forming the pyramid. At one point it was covered in a smooth limestone to give it a finished look, but this was removed as people built their homes. After all it was a hike to get to the quarries five miles away, and here were limestone blocks just for the picking. So now it looks fairly rough and of course, we couldn’t walk on it. We took our proverbial tourista pictures and returned to our bus.
Next stop was the ancient capital of Memphis, for a quick stop to see the small outdoor museum containing an enormous, reclining, statue of Ramses II, weighing over 120 tons…and a small sphinx. There were more little kiosks selling trinkets than there were statues.
At last, lunch at the Mövenpick, an elegant restaurant where we, and our armed guards, dined at a buffet lunch with lots of unique but interesting food. I tried a fresh date for the first time in my life and must say I like the dried ones a whole lot better, but it had to be tried along with lots of interesting ‘goo’ made of either sesame, yogurts or ??, who knew what, but it was garlicky and great. To accompany our sampler meal we each had an Egyptian Sakkara beer. We try to sample local beers where possible since all that the ship provides is Becks, Heineken and Budweiser. (!?!)
Our next stop was the famous pyramids of Giza. Of course because they are so famous they attract an enormous amount of very aggressive vendors who don’t easily take ‘no’ for an answer….“want to buy a camel, lady?”, “want a picture on camel, lady?”… and of course necklaces, hats, postcards, and real alabaster pyramids …for only one Yankee dollar. Like in India, you know that these vendors are all being driven by some hidden master who demands that they generate a certain amount of revenue each day or they lose their jobs. But no matter how persuasive, we avoided their blandishments.
There are three very large pyramids, each important in its own way. The biggest is the Great Pyramid of Khufu (Cheops) which in 1927 Daddy had the opportunity to climb. At one point it was faced with limestone blocks, but those have totally disappeared and one sees the huge rocks , each one at least four feet tall and three feet wide weighing 10-15 tons. (Thinking of the slaves required to move these from a quarry miles away gives one pause. The movie of Cleopatra showed slaves being whipped as they hauled each stone and I can only imagine the difficulty). Daddy described having two ‘assistants’ who helped him up to the top pushing and pulling him as required. Even then he commented on how hard it was, and I could only imagine getting up, and worse having to come back down again. Since no one is allowed to do this anymore, all we could do was take lots of pictures and be impressed…. Which we were!
We were then driven to a panoramic viewing spot where one saw the other two temples as well. The Khafra pyramid stands close to Khufu’s, and still has some of its limestone façade in place at the top. The last pyramid is that of Menkaura , which is the smallest of the three. This one being more ‘modern’ is made with granite a more durable stone. We took all our pictures and walked back to our bus which was making one last stop – the Sphinx. To get to the base was so crowded and claustrophobic, that we chose to simply take pictures from afar. When I was here fifteen years ago I had gotten closer, but it was no less attractive.
Having taken just a few more pictures we walked back to the bus past a TV show set, which was doing some interviews. Of course , there was the mixing console to remind Bob of his days of yore, speakers and Klieg lights everywhere, and translators doing simultaneous translation….. a little of the 21st century amidst the sands of 24th BCE. It is a shame that the pyramids are such a focal point of tourism. The buses, the vendors, the zillions of tourists take away from the site such that while you may want to stand and contemplate this amazing structure, there is absolutely no chance to do this without being pushed aside by another person with a camera or way-laid by some very aggressive salesman.
Our last stop was the last of the sales opportunities. We were shown how Papyrus was made and of course given the opportunity to buy some. Bob and I watched the demonstration and then headed back to the bus ready for our three hour trip back to the port. (I read on the news that that evening the youth of Cairo went on a rampage hurting many police – why? Because they’d lost their chance to be an African representative in the World Cup, by being defeated by Algeria at a game in Sudan).
Our trip back seemed endless since it was getting dark and difficult to watch the world outside. But of course we had our escorts at both ends of the convoy and this time they had flashing red lights and sirens to keep people out of our way. It was a very long day and as we came out of the customs building crew members, and a five-piece Dixieland band, were lined up along the gangway to sing and welcome us back with soft drinks and white moistened towels. It was a lovely touch, and made us forget how exhausted, gritty and brain-dead we were. A quick shower to refresh us and we were off for an elegant dinner. We are spoiled.
Bob stayed awake until 1:30 a.m. to watch the ship entering the Suez Canal. I slept.
November 20 – Friday – Suez Canal
Our ship convoy consisted of twenty-one ships of all size and purpose. Each ship has one pilot and is asked to go no more than eight knots and keep a distance of 2000 meters from the next ship. As a result of this careful choreography there have been no accidents in the Canal. (Only the time when Nassar sank all manner of boats, clogging up the Canal during the 1956 unpleasantness with Britain, France and Israel. ) In our convoy were container carriers, oil tankers, two other cruising ships, a navy ship, and assorted others which I never really saw. Unlike the Panama Canal which is made up of a series of locks, this one is ‘simply’ a waterway wide enough and deep enough to carry all but the new super tankers (that is to come). Each convoy coming from either direction stops in The Bitter Lake, and there await the opportunity to continue in one direction or the other. We awoke in The Bitter Lake, and were surrounded by ships. At noon we started south again on the last leg of the canal, which was interesting to see in the daylight. On one side of the canal it is lush (thanks to the Nile) and on the other it is a sandy wasteland. On both sides one saw the remains of armed sites where in prior times the canal was being guarded and defended by Britain or Egypt.
We slowed down as we neared the city of Suez, where we believe there was a change of pilots, and later we attended a lecture about Jordan given by a lovely Jordanian woman named Nadia, who educated us about the traditions of Jordan and other middle eastern countries. We learned that every person has four names: your name, your father’s name, his father’s name and your tribal or family name. Women do not take their husband’s name so that my name would be Beatrice Herbert Wilhelm Meyer and my husband would be Robert William Joseph Ring. We also learned that one doesn’t touch the mouth as you put food in – rather you allow it to pass through your lips via a piece of bread or such. Jordan is currently governed by King Abdullah, the son of King Hussein – both of whom are revered by the citizenry. Nadia also sells jewelry which is made of local stones of Jordan and created by women in small villages to give them employment. It is lovely modern jewelry.
And that was pretty much our day. Tonight we will sail the length of the Gulf of Suez, and by tomorrow morning we’ll be at Sharm-el- Sheikh, at the tip of the Sinai Peninsula. It is now a large, Egyptian resort town.
And so we relax and enjoy the sun and the warmth.
Thursday, November 19, 2009
Rhodes, Cyprus & Israel
Nov 13th – Friday the 13th – Rhodes
No tours today. Bob and I feel very comfortable running around a Greek town without assistance, and since I’d been to the ruins in Lindos and Rhodes (neither of which overwhelmed me), we decided to mosey in the town with the million other tourists who had gotten off of cruise ships. There were at least four large cruise ships in addition to us…so the local merchants, selling all manner of junk, saw nothing but euro spenders walking through the main streets in their shorts, jeans and skirts.
Since absolutely nothing appealed (having spent our entire budget on a lovely Turkish rug), we walked along the waterfront to the furthest old city entry gate, and then meandered back to the first entry gate browsing at shop windows, stopping for a wonderful and simple lunch of fried calamari and a salata horiatiki with some Mythos beers. Then back to the ship for a dinner in the ship’s formal dining room.
On our Azamara journey last year (an identical ship owned by a different cruise line) we were underwhelmed by the main dining room and avoided it. But Oceania is a totally different and more delightful experience. The food selection is much better, and sitting at a table for two between two other couples, we could strike up nice conversations but it wasn’t compulsory as it seems to be when you sit at a table for six or eight. Everyone with whom we have chatted has a long cruise history and a seemingly interesting life before retirement. (But then we’re only to tier one after one week on the ship). Tonight we met Henrietta and Paul who are originally from Holland, but who now live in Melbourne, having retired with Shell Petroleum. With Diana our charming Russian waitress we enjoyed good food, good service and good conversation.
November 14 – Saturday - Limassol Cyprus
An early start to our day as we head into a totally new country – our first on this trip. Our local guide on the tour showed strong partisanship for the Greek portion of Cyprus where we were docked and where we’d be touring. When she spoke of the ‘northern part’ of Cyprus she said it was ‘under the control of the Turkish Army ‘and not that it was a self contained country. We learned about the primary sources of Cypriot revenue are tourism ,followed by olive oil and grapes. Otherwise for the most part they imported everything else.
Our first stop was Kourion, an archaeological dig which has uncovered a very large civilization of first Greeks ,and then Romans. The site is something of which Cyprus is very proud and so the infrastructure supporting the site was magnificent and orderly. Every walkway, diagram, visual affect was carefully laid out and described in multiple languages. We walked through the ‘house’ of a Roman citizen with its own private bathes structured similarly to the Roman bathes we had seen at Miletus a few days earlier. The key difference being that these baths were not public but rather private and the tile work and mosaics identified the man whose house it was. We then proceeded to the theater at Kourion, which , like many ancient theaters, is still in current use. After all, if your predecessors 2000 years ago have built a perfectly designed, acoustically correct theater, why not take advantage if it and simply improve the seating for 20th century butts. One can still see remnants of the original structure in all the little nooks and crannies at the edges of the structure just to remind you that this is truly antique. At this particular theater, which was Roman, we learned that not only did they have theater productions, but in addition they enjoyed the ‘sport’ of pitting man against beast. They would provide lions and tigers which had been left without food for three to four days and let them loose on the slaves for a ‘fight’. This event, similar to that performed at the Coliseum in Rome, seemed almost as much ‘fun’ as watching modern day boxing matches, or wrestling, or bull fighting. The small difference being that no one loses their life in our civilized 20th century ‘sports’.
From here we hopped back on the bus to drive to another part of the Kourian site - the Greek Sanctuary of Apollo. Like other sanctuaries we’ve seen in Greece, this one consisted of the ‘undressing’ rooms for the visiting supplicants, the baths, the sauna, the sacred way to the main temple, and the temple itself which had two columns re-erected so one could get a ‘sense of place’. I always enjoy visiting Greek or Roman ruins , particularly since every time I see another site, I can make comparisons between them, but more importantly each new site adds another new piece of data to my collected wisdom.
The whole site of Kourion, which includes the sanctuary, is large and for the most part not yet excavated. Here the primary responsibility for the dig is with the University of Pennsylvania and it is only money that stands in the way of their ability to open up more of the site.
The last stop of the day was almost a bust. It was advertised as a drive into the mountains of Cyprus to visit a ‘quaint’ village named Omodhos. Unfortunately its quaintness is primarily for the tourists and so as we arrived, all the little vendors were out selling lace, worry beads, honey or statuettes. There were old people sitting outside their homes to greet us, and in the main square the men were sipping their coffee and smoking like fiends as they watched the tourists and commented on them. The main purpose of the tour was to show the village, and its ancient church which was at one time a monastery, dating back to the 1500’s. Bob and I chose to amble on our own and as a result found a very small but poignant exhibit tucked away within the monastery. Here in one small room, under the ‘eaves’ of a portico, was a tiny memorial to the brave youth of the area who had given their lives fighting guerilla warfare against the British in 1955 – 1959. There was a description of each individual’s short life along with his photograph, some of his clothing and other items such as their schoolbooks or knapsacks. Each description was written in Greek, German, English and French. Who ever had funded this effort definitely wanted people to understand what had gone on. We were stunned, not only by the age of these young people, but more that we were so totally unaware that there had been such deadly skirmishes at that time. Research to understand this period of time is definitely required at some point in the future.
After a stop at a wonderful local bakery, we met up with the rest of our tour group and headed back to the ship for another dinner in the main dining room before crashing. Tomorrow is a long day in Isreal, with a very early departure.
November 15 –Sunday - Haifa Israel.
Israel having been attacked entirely too many times, and having far too many enemies, takes its security very seriously. Every passenger had to meet in the Nautica Lounge at 6:30 a.m. to claim our passports and landing cards, but more importantly to have a face-to-face meeting with a series of Israeli security personnel. Only then were we officially allowed to step foot on land -which we did after some breakfast.
We met up with bus # 11 and our guide for the day, Selwyn Rose, an impish man with graying beard and growing paunch. Selwyn was born in England but came to Israel in 1969 – two years after the six day war. He proved to be a very articulate, knowledgeable tour guide whose only issue was his inability to herd his tour group in any meaningful way. Our first stop of the day was at a town called Safed, which had a series of synagogues going back to the 1500’s. In 1948 at the departure of the British, the town was 10% Jewish and 90% Arabic. The Jews bravely fended off the Arab population through the trickery of a very large and noisy gun – The Davidka –rather than superior forces, and took control of the town. Since then this town has become a place for Jewish Scholarship where the ancient synagogues draw scholars to the town. In addition an arts community has grown up in the narrow winding streets and thus it is quite a tourist haven. We visited one Ashkenazi synagogue built originally by Sephardic Jews from Greece. Rabbi Yitzhak Luria came here and founded a sect known as the Luriaric Kaballah in 1500. One entered through a small doorway with a beautifully wrought modern steel door. Inside, a most holy Jewish scholar guarded this synagogue with great care and asked for donations. At one point during Selwyn’s talk there broke out a most boisterous ‘discussion’ between Selwyn and this Jewish scholar. The discussion was based on the place of women in the synagogue: were they historically separated from the men, or were they not. The Jewish Scholar took umbrage at Selwyn’s historical description and the ‘discussion’ ensued. As Selwyn described it, many of the traditions which have come down over time are not necessarily in the Torah, but are rather interpretations which hold no credence and are not obligatory. The scholar thought otherwise. One man was basing his wisdom on history and l the other on religion. The two men could not agree and neither was going to cede ground to the other. If we thought that Israel had problems with its geographic neighbors, it seemed that they have almost as difficult a time getting along amid the various tribes of Israel.
From here we came to another synagogue where the bema was painted in brilliant blue, the dome was painted in a variety of colors, and the walls were covered in different pictures and tablets. Even the place of the ark was wonderfully colored. It was very old, but had the look of a children’s schoolroom where your eye was caught by something colorful and interesting in every corner.
Having had our religious education for the day, we boarded our bus after a bit of retail therapy in the narrow streets of Safed, and continued on to a kibbutz high up on the Golan Heights. The ride took us around the northern end of the Sea of Galilee. We were right near the Jordanian and Syrian borders and we were aware of barbed wire, siren towers, and bunkers everywhere. It is one thing to read about this part of the Middle East, it’s another to be in the middle of it. In some ways the countryside reminds you of any rugged Mediterranean landscape – dry scrubby hills, cultivated fields fed by irrigation, rocky out croppings, and plenty of olive trees clinging to the sides of hills. But then you see a sentry with a machine gun, or the remains of an old tank and you realize you are in the midst of what was recently a war zone.
It was very eerie. We were seeing places which we’ve read about either n the Bible or more recently in Newsweek – all this within a very small geographic space.
The Kibbutz – Kfar Haruv (translated place of the carob) was started after Israeli won back the Heights in the ’67 war. Somehow we had in our imagination that we’d find a rustic enclave with healthy young people eating under lean to shelters. What we found instead were a series of factory buildings (this Kibbutz makes air valves for irrigation pipes), farm plots and sandstone buildings all looking fairly modern. Of course amidst this agricultural scene were bunkers, lookout towers and large siren/ speaker horns mounted everywhere to give out alerts. But otherwise it was a lovely ‘suburb’ in the hills. We ate in the main dining hall where we had a simple but tasty meal along with Kibbutz members coming in to grab their lunch before returning to their work. Once we had bussed our own dishes, we were met by a member of the Kibbutz who guided us around (with the help of her black dogs) for the next two hours talking about the life of members of the Kibbutz.
The original concept was that when one joined a Kibbutz you were there for life. Everything you owned was communal, all work was parceled out based on what was required, not necessarily on what your particular skills were, and all people were paid the same amount of money. All decisions were made communally by members and children were raised communally as well. Even living quarters were shared with many families in a common building. But as time and human nature prevailed, things have changed. That pioneer spirit and dedication to building a new country is still a part of a Kibbutz but now people are assigned work based as much as possible on their skills; they are paid according to the skill level of their job and children are now in a common area only during working hours and school but return to their families at the end of each day. Many of the children born at the Kibbutz chose to stay on after their military service, but this one had a specific membership size of 100, and so everyone else who lives there is not a voting member, including the returning children.
When asked what would happen when a member of the original 100 died, our guide admitted that when this Kibbutz had started they hadn’t thought about old age and the potential of death, and thus there had been no procedures set up. I’m sure that this too will be decided communally at some point. (Bob said the whole concept reminded him of a condominium association where there are identical rules about how one paints one’s home, designs one’s garden, landscapes one’s area and everything must be decided by the members).
One wonders how long the Kibbutz concept will continue to be viable. As Israel becomes a high tech country with 21st century technology in medicine, defense and agriculture will young Israelis continue to chose to be in a communal kibbutz environment or will the entrepreneurial spirit move them in new directions. I need to do more reading about this. Everyone on the tour was interested and kept asking question after question and this lovely woman, born in Morocco and married to a man from Rhodesia , quietly answered all questions as best she could.
At last we boarded our bus and started back down off the Heights, driving along the Jordanian border where we could look across a small ravine to villages in the other country. Selwyn pointed out various points of biblical interest, and our last stop was at a point on the Jordan River where John the Baptist was said to have baptized Jesus Christ. It is a combination holy site and tourist trap, and Bob and I chose to sit in the bus since our legs were sore. The report from those who went was mixed: some felt it was a religious experience, others thought it just a rip off place for people to sell trinkets. It is always a problem with places that purport to be ‘the spot’ where something happened. Who knows how accurate these are.
We were too tired to have a formal dinner so we ate in the buffet on the 9th floor before falling into bed. It was a most worthwhile day between learning ancient history, seeing the countryside and learning about Kibbutz life. Tomorrow will be a more intense city experience.
November 16 – Monday – Jerusalem
Our ship sailed a short distance to the port of Ashdod – the port where we’ll stay for two day, s so people can enjoy Bethlehem, Jerusalem, Masada and the Dead Sea. Bob and I had chosen a tour which focused old Jerusalem and on Yad Vashem – the newly built holocaust museum of Israel.
It was another early morning departure, and once more we had Selwyn as a guide. Our fellow travelers on this tour were for the most part what I would call New York Jews who probably gave lots of money through Hadassah to this city and felt a strong connection. As we drove through morning traffic on new highways into the city, we could look out and see that Jerusalem like much of Israel is in a permanent state of construction. Old buildings from the British period are either being renovated or torn down , and whole communities are being re-created. Our first stop was Yad Vashem where I had been with Gay and my cousin Bebe fifteen years ago. Since then then museum has been totally rebuilt, on a new site (thanks to American contributions) and it re-opened in 2005.
It is a wonderful museum, designed to lead the visitor from the simple days in the early 1900’s when Jews lived in Poland, Germany, France and Russia… and room by room you are led through the history of the coming of the Nazis, the destruction of Jewish settlements in all European countries, the pogroms, the ghettos , the death camps and the end of the war. It is a slow sad progression with each room having a combination of pictures, artifacts, video and oral testimonials from survivors. It is an emotionally draining experience that cannot leave anyone untouched, but what amazed Bob and myself, based on comments overheard, is how ignorant people were of the details. Not that everyone needs to be aware, as a Jew, of every event in this sad period of history, but anyone should know the basic history of World War II and the events surrounding the holocaust and the Nuremburg trials.
What strikes me every time I go to another of these museums is why did my parents wait so long. As early as 1930 – soon after daddy returned from his trip – there were gradual and steady diminution of rights and privileges for Jews in Germany as Hitler took control. Could they really think they could stave off each new law and declaration which reduced their privilege and status? I will never be able to ask anyone since they’re all dead, but it makes me wonder if I would react similarly were I in their shoes. I hope I never need to know.
The last room is the hall of remembrance where one can find the records of every person killed in the holocaust. I searched for my grandmother and great grandmother. Could find neither, so I took a copy of the forms and will complete them and send them back so they too are recorded. There were three other main monuments: the trees grown for the “Righteous Gentiles”(those non-Jews who helped to save people), a tall column honoring all partisans and fighters against the Nazis and lastly a subterranean monument to the million plus children killed.
After four hours we left, a quieter group …and had lunch at a local hotel where a buffet was available to us. Then we were off to walk through the Jewish section of the old city behind the walls. Since I was last here there has been much construction done, but it has also been made so ‘touristy’ that one doesn’t get much ‘sense of place’. By the time we got to the West (Wailing) Wall it was dark. The Temple Mount and the Muslim temple were lit, the wall was spot lit and as always there were thousands of people praying, dancing, or simply watching the activity in this huge open area. Since my last visit security has been beefed up and one had to go through security check points, and everywhere there were soldiers with machine guns. And whereas in the past one could go through the Arab sections of the old town, now it is off limits completely.
It was a long emotional day which became even longer when we found that two members of our group had gone astray. They had found the walking too grueling and had been told where to meet us. But of course, it had gotten dark and they weren’t there. The poor bus driver and Selwyn spent an hour calling the ship to see if they’d come back on their own, calling other buses to see if they’d boarded the wrong one. Ultimately we were given permission to return to the ship without them. Poor Selwyn was devastated. In twenty-five years of being a tour guide he had never lost anyone. Finally after twelve hours we were back at the ship, had a drink, dinner and crashed.
November 17 - Tuesday – Ashdod
A day of sleeping late, doing laundry, catching up with the blog and other housekeeping chores. We felt no need to see more. For some reason Israel has disappointed us. For all their knowledge, high tech aura and seeming invincibility, we found the country visibly no different from other third world countries, and far less attractive in some ways. Perhaps expectations were too heightened, but I think it will be awhile before we come back.
We ended our Israeli stay by having an elegant meal in Toscana the Italian restaurant where, for no additional expense, we could enjoy a smaller more intimate dining experience. Bob’s Swordfish Carpaccio appetizer was so thin you could see the china plate beneath , while I had a wonderful penne pasta with chicken liver and chick peas. Our main course was veal scaloppini with lemon or marsala. Too stuffed for dessert we had a cappuccino, and retired.
Tomorrow begins the journey which replicates Daddy’s journey. I have to pretend that we have just sailed from Venice and are landing in Alexandria. I’m very excited and plan to take pictures identical to those taken in 1927.
No tours today. Bob and I feel very comfortable running around a Greek town without assistance, and since I’d been to the ruins in Lindos and Rhodes (neither of which overwhelmed me), we decided to mosey in the town with the million other tourists who had gotten off of cruise ships. There were at least four large cruise ships in addition to us…so the local merchants, selling all manner of junk, saw nothing but euro spenders walking through the main streets in their shorts, jeans and skirts.
Since absolutely nothing appealed (having spent our entire budget on a lovely Turkish rug), we walked along the waterfront to the furthest old city entry gate, and then meandered back to the first entry gate browsing at shop windows, stopping for a wonderful and simple lunch of fried calamari and a salata horiatiki with some Mythos beers. Then back to the ship for a dinner in the ship’s formal dining room.
On our Azamara journey last year (an identical ship owned by a different cruise line) we were underwhelmed by the main dining room and avoided it. But Oceania is a totally different and more delightful experience. The food selection is much better, and sitting at a table for two between two other couples, we could strike up nice conversations but it wasn’t compulsory as it seems to be when you sit at a table for six or eight. Everyone with whom we have chatted has a long cruise history and a seemingly interesting life before retirement. (But then we’re only to tier one after one week on the ship). Tonight we met Henrietta and Paul who are originally from Holland, but who now live in Melbourne, having retired with Shell Petroleum. With Diana our charming Russian waitress we enjoyed good food, good service and good conversation.
November 14 – Saturday - Limassol Cyprus
An early start to our day as we head into a totally new country – our first on this trip. Our local guide on the tour showed strong partisanship for the Greek portion of Cyprus where we were docked and where we’d be touring. When she spoke of the ‘northern part’ of Cyprus she said it was ‘under the control of the Turkish Army ‘and not that it was a self contained country. We learned about the primary sources of Cypriot revenue are tourism ,followed by olive oil and grapes. Otherwise for the most part they imported everything else.
Our first stop was Kourion, an archaeological dig which has uncovered a very large civilization of first Greeks ,and then Romans. The site is something of which Cyprus is very proud and so the infrastructure supporting the site was magnificent and orderly. Every walkway, diagram, visual affect was carefully laid out and described in multiple languages. We walked through the ‘house’ of a Roman citizen with its own private bathes structured similarly to the Roman bathes we had seen at Miletus a few days earlier. The key difference being that these baths were not public but rather private and the tile work and mosaics identified the man whose house it was. We then proceeded to the theater at Kourion, which , like many ancient theaters, is still in current use. After all, if your predecessors 2000 years ago have built a perfectly designed, acoustically correct theater, why not take advantage if it and simply improve the seating for 20th century butts. One can still see remnants of the original structure in all the little nooks and crannies at the edges of the structure just to remind you that this is truly antique. At this particular theater, which was Roman, we learned that not only did they have theater productions, but in addition they enjoyed the ‘sport’ of pitting man against beast. They would provide lions and tigers which had been left without food for three to four days and let them loose on the slaves for a ‘fight’. This event, similar to that performed at the Coliseum in Rome, seemed almost as much ‘fun’ as watching modern day boxing matches, or wrestling, or bull fighting. The small difference being that no one loses their life in our civilized 20th century ‘sports’.
From here we hopped back on the bus to drive to another part of the Kourian site - the Greek Sanctuary of Apollo. Like other sanctuaries we’ve seen in Greece, this one consisted of the ‘undressing’ rooms for the visiting supplicants, the baths, the sauna, the sacred way to the main temple, and the temple itself which had two columns re-erected so one could get a ‘sense of place’. I always enjoy visiting Greek or Roman ruins , particularly since every time I see another site, I can make comparisons between them, but more importantly each new site adds another new piece of data to my collected wisdom.
The whole site of Kourion, which includes the sanctuary, is large and for the most part not yet excavated. Here the primary responsibility for the dig is with the University of Pennsylvania and it is only money that stands in the way of their ability to open up more of the site.
The last stop of the day was almost a bust. It was advertised as a drive into the mountains of Cyprus to visit a ‘quaint’ village named Omodhos. Unfortunately its quaintness is primarily for the tourists and so as we arrived, all the little vendors were out selling lace, worry beads, honey or statuettes. There were old people sitting outside their homes to greet us, and in the main square the men were sipping their coffee and smoking like fiends as they watched the tourists and commented on them. The main purpose of the tour was to show the village, and its ancient church which was at one time a monastery, dating back to the 1500’s. Bob and I chose to amble on our own and as a result found a very small but poignant exhibit tucked away within the monastery. Here in one small room, under the ‘eaves’ of a portico, was a tiny memorial to the brave youth of the area who had given their lives fighting guerilla warfare against the British in 1955 – 1959. There was a description of each individual’s short life along with his photograph, some of his clothing and other items such as their schoolbooks or knapsacks. Each description was written in Greek, German, English and French. Who ever had funded this effort definitely wanted people to understand what had gone on. We were stunned, not only by the age of these young people, but more that we were so totally unaware that there had been such deadly skirmishes at that time. Research to understand this period of time is definitely required at some point in the future.
After a stop at a wonderful local bakery, we met up with the rest of our tour group and headed back to the ship for another dinner in the main dining room before crashing. Tomorrow is a long day in Isreal, with a very early departure.
November 15 –Sunday - Haifa Israel.
Israel having been attacked entirely too many times, and having far too many enemies, takes its security very seriously. Every passenger had to meet in the Nautica Lounge at 6:30 a.m. to claim our passports and landing cards, but more importantly to have a face-to-face meeting with a series of Israeli security personnel. Only then were we officially allowed to step foot on land -which we did after some breakfast.
We met up with bus # 11 and our guide for the day, Selwyn Rose, an impish man with graying beard and growing paunch. Selwyn was born in England but came to Israel in 1969 – two years after the six day war. He proved to be a very articulate, knowledgeable tour guide whose only issue was his inability to herd his tour group in any meaningful way. Our first stop of the day was at a town called Safed, which had a series of synagogues going back to the 1500’s. In 1948 at the departure of the British, the town was 10% Jewish and 90% Arabic. The Jews bravely fended off the Arab population through the trickery of a very large and noisy gun – The Davidka –rather than superior forces, and took control of the town. Since then this town has become a place for Jewish Scholarship where the ancient synagogues draw scholars to the town. In addition an arts community has grown up in the narrow winding streets and thus it is quite a tourist haven. We visited one Ashkenazi synagogue built originally by Sephardic Jews from Greece. Rabbi Yitzhak Luria came here and founded a sect known as the Luriaric Kaballah in 1500. One entered through a small doorway with a beautifully wrought modern steel door. Inside, a most holy Jewish scholar guarded this synagogue with great care and asked for donations. At one point during Selwyn’s talk there broke out a most boisterous ‘discussion’ between Selwyn and this Jewish scholar. The discussion was based on the place of women in the synagogue: were they historically separated from the men, or were they not. The Jewish Scholar took umbrage at Selwyn’s historical description and the ‘discussion’ ensued. As Selwyn described it, many of the traditions which have come down over time are not necessarily in the Torah, but are rather interpretations which hold no credence and are not obligatory. The scholar thought otherwise. One man was basing his wisdom on history and l the other on religion. The two men could not agree and neither was going to cede ground to the other. If we thought that Israel had problems with its geographic neighbors, it seemed that they have almost as difficult a time getting along amid the various tribes of Israel.
From here we came to another synagogue where the bema was painted in brilliant blue, the dome was painted in a variety of colors, and the walls were covered in different pictures and tablets. Even the place of the ark was wonderfully colored. It was very old, but had the look of a children’s schoolroom where your eye was caught by something colorful and interesting in every corner.
Having had our religious education for the day, we boarded our bus after a bit of retail therapy in the narrow streets of Safed, and continued on to a kibbutz high up on the Golan Heights. The ride took us around the northern end of the Sea of Galilee. We were right near the Jordanian and Syrian borders and we were aware of barbed wire, siren towers, and bunkers everywhere. It is one thing to read about this part of the Middle East, it’s another to be in the middle of it. In some ways the countryside reminds you of any rugged Mediterranean landscape – dry scrubby hills, cultivated fields fed by irrigation, rocky out croppings, and plenty of olive trees clinging to the sides of hills. But then you see a sentry with a machine gun, or the remains of an old tank and you realize you are in the midst of what was recently a war zone.
It was very eerie. We were seeing places which we’ve read about either n the Bible or more recently in Newsweek – all this within a very small geographic space.
The Kibbutz – Kfar Haruv (translated place of the carob) was started after Israeli won back the Heights in the ’67 war. Somehow we had in our imagination that we’d find a rustic enclave with healthy young people eating under lean to shelters. What we found instead were a series of factory buildings (this Kibbutz makes air valves for irrigation pipes), farm plots and sandstone buildings all looking fairly modern. Of course amidst this agricultural scene were bunkers, lookout towers and large siren/ speaker horns mounted everywhere to give out alerts. But otherwise it was a lovely ‘suburb’ in the hills. We ate in the main dining hall where we had a simple but tasty meal along with Kibbutz members coming in to grab their lunch before returning to their work. Once we had bussed our own dishes, we were met by a member of the Kibbutz who guided us around (with the help of her black dogs) for the next two hours talking about the life of members of the Kibbutz.
The original concept was that when one joined a Kibbutz you were there for life. Everything you owned was communal, all work was parceled out based on what was required, not necessarily on what your particular skills were, and all people were paid the same amount of money. All decisions were made communally by members and children were raised communally as well. Even living quarters were shared with many families in a common building. But as time and human nature prevailed, things have changed. That pioneer spirit and dedication to building a new country is still a part of a Kibbutz but now people are assigned work based as much as possible on their skills; they are paid according to the skill level of their job and children are now in a common area only during working hours and school but return to their families at the end of each day. Many of the children born at the Kibbutz chose to stay on after their military service, but this one had a specific membership size of 100, and so everyone else who lives there is not a voting member, including the returning children.
When asked what would happen when a member of the original 100 died, our guide admitted that when this Kibbutz had started they hadn’t thought about old age and the potential of death, and thus there had been no procedures set up. I’m sure that this too will be decided communally at some point. (Bob said the whole concept reminded him of a condominium association where there are identical rules about how one paints one’s home, designs one’s garden, landscapes one’s area and everything must be decided by the members).
One wonders how long the Kibbutz concept will continue to be viable. As Israel becomes a high tech country with 21st century technology in medicine, defense and agriculture will young Israelis continue to chose to be in a communal kibbutz environment or will the entrepreneurial spirit move them in new directions. I need to do more reading about this. Everyone on the tour was interested and kept asking question after question and this lovely woman, born in Morocco and married to a man from Rhodesia , quietly answered all questions as best she could.
At last we boarded our bus and started back down off the Heights, driving along the Jordanian border where we could look across a small ravine to villages in the other country. Selwyn pointed out various points of biblical interest, and our last stop was at a point on the Jordan River where John the Baptist was said to have baptized Jesus Christ. It is a combination holy site and tourist trap, and Bob and I chose to sit in the bus since our legs were sore. The report from those who went was mixed: some felt it was a religious experience, others thought it just a rip off place for people to sell trinkets. It is always a problem with places that purport to be ‘the spot’ where something happened. Who knows how accurate these are.
We were too tired to have a formal dinner so we ate in the buffet on the 9th floor before falling into bed. It was a most worthwhile day between learning ancient history, seeing the countryside and learning about Kibbutz life. Tomorrow will be a more intense city experience.
November 16 – Monday – Jerusalem
Our ship sailed a short distance to the port of Ashdod – the port where we’ll stay for two day, s so people can enjoy Bethlehem, Jerusalem, Masada and the Dead Sea. Bob and I had chosen a tour which focused old Jerusalem and on Yad Vashem – the newly built holocaust museum of Israel.
It was another early morning departure, and once more we had Selwyn as a guide. Our fellow travelers on this tour were for the most part what I would call New York Jews who probably gave lots of money through Hadassah to this city and felt a strong connection. As we drove through morning traffic on new highways into the city, we could look out and see that Jerusalem like much of Israel is in a permanent state of construction. Old buildings from the British period are either being renovated or torn down , and whole communities are being re-created. Our first stop was Yad Vashem where I had been with Gay and my cousin Bebe fifteen years ago. Since then then museum has been totally rebuilt, on a new site (thanks to American contributions) and it re-opened in 2005.
It is a wonderful museum, designed to lead the visitor from the simple days in the early 1900’s when Jews lived in Poland, Germany, France and Russia… and room by room you are led through the history of the coming of the Nazis, the destruction of Jewish settlements in all European countries, the pogroms, the ghettos , the death camps and the end of the war. It is a slow sad progression with each room having a combination of pictures, artifacts, video and oral testimonials from survivors. It is an emotionally draining experience that cannot leave anyone untouched, but what amazed Bob and myself, based on comments overheard, is how ignorant people were of the details. Not that everyone needs to be aware, as a Jew, of every event in this sad period of history, but anyone should know the basic history of World War II and the events surrounding the holocaust and the Nuremburg trials.
What strikes me every time I go to another of these museums is why did my parents wait so long. As early as 1930 – soon after daddy returned from his trip – there were gradual and steady diminution of rights and privileges for Jews in Germany as Hitler took control. Could they really think they could stave off each new law and declaration which reduced their privilege and status? I will never be able to ask anyone since they’re all dead, but it makes me wonder if I would react similarly were I in their shoes. I hope I never need to know.
The last room is the hall of remembrance where one can find the records of every person killed in the holocaust. I searched for my grandmother and great grandmother. Could find neither, so I took a copy of the forms and will complete them and send them back so they too are recorded. There were three other main monuments: the trees grown for the “Righteous Gentiles”(those non-Jews who helped to save people), a tall column honoring all partisans and fighters against the Nazis and lastly a subterranean monument to the million plus children killed.
After four hours we left, a quieter group …and had lunch at a local hotel where a buffet was available to us. Then we were off to walk through the Jewish section of the old city behind the walls. Since I was last here there has been much construction done, but it has also been made so ‘touristy’ that one doesn’t get much ‘sense of place’. By the time we got to the West (Wailing) Wall it was dark. The Temple Mount and the Muslim temple were lit, the wall was spot lit and as always there were thousands of people praying, dancing, or simply watching the activity in this huge open area. Since my last visit security has been beefed up and one had to go through security check points, and everywhere there were soldiers with machine guns. And whereas in the past one could go through the Arab sections of the old town, now it is off limits completely.
It was a long emotional day which became even longer when we found that two members of our group had gone astray. They had found the walking too grueling and had been told where to meet us. But of course, it had gotten dark and they weren’t there. The poor bus driver and Selwyn spent an hour calling the ship to see if they’d come back on their own, calling other buses to see if they’d boarded the wrong one. Ultimately we were given permission to return to the ship without them. Poor Selwyn was devastated. In twenty-five years of being a tour guide he had never lost anyone. Finally after twelve hours we were back at the ship, had a drink, dinner and crashed.
November 17 - Tuesday – Ashdod
A day of sleeping late, doing laundry, catching up with the blog and other housekeeping chores. We felt no need to see more. For some reason Israel has disappointed us. For all their knowledge, high tech aura and seeming invincibility, we found the country visibly no different from other third world countries, and far less attractive in some ways. Perhaps expectations were too heightened, but I think it will be awhile before we come back.
We ended our Israeli stay by having an elegant meal in Toscana the Italian restaurant where, for no additional expense, we could enjoy a smaller more intimate dining experience. Bob’s Swordfish Carpaccio appetizer was so thin you could see the china plate beneath , while I had a wonderful penne pasta with chicken liver and chick peas. Our main course was veal scaloppini with lemon or marsala. Too stuffed for dessert we had a cappuccino, and retired.
Tomorrow begins the journey which replicates Daddy’s journey. I have to pretend that we have just sailed from Venice and are landing in Alexandria. I’m very excited and plan to take pictures identical to those taken in 1927.
Thursday, November 12, 2009
Shipboard Arrival and Kusadasi
November 10/11 – Tuesday/Wednesday
At the beginning of any cruise, there seem to be a series of dance steps which everyone is obliged to repeat – no matter how familiar one is with the concept of cruising, the dance remains the same and our dance on Tuesday followed all the appropriate steps:
· The nervous trip to the cruise terminal step: will we be left off at the right one? Will our luggage need to be put in a pile somewhere and possibly mishandled, or broken into? Has the luggage got the right tags on it so it will eventually arrive at our stateroom and not be left on the pier?
· The check in step: which documents do we need to show? Will they have our reservation? Do we need to go through security? How realistic will our ship photograph/ID card be? (do we look harried? Are we wearing sunglasses?); who has which documents? Which credit card will we register?
· The first entry onto the ship step: will be offered fresh juice by smiling obsequious staff? Will our room be ready? Or if not where are we going to be asked to wait? What do our fellow shipmates look like? Will be stuck with yahoos for the next 40 days, or soignée knowledgeable sailors?
· The first entry to our stateroom step: on what side of the ship are we located? How do the entry keycards work? Who delivered us the champagne, or flowers, or whatever is arrayed in our room? Is the bed facing fore or aft? Where are the bathrobes? Does the room seem claustrophobic? What’s the view from our balcony?
· The unpacking step which is the most delicate dance step of all: how will space be fairly divided? Followed by how the hell are we to get all this stuff into these cabinets, cupboards, under the bed or into the bathroom? Is the electric outlet going to be able to manage our array of toys (computers, iPods, Kindles, battery chargers, razors, cell phone chargers , etc)?
· The finale of the dance: when everything has been stowed into its new home, and the empty luggage has been tucked away under the bed. It is now time to explore the ship, get ones bearings and find out where that first meal will take place. We are now officially on-board and ready to enjoy the cruise.
Bob and I have almost perfected these carefully choreographed steps , though there are always a few missteps in the process. Our first meal was in the Terrace Café aft where a buffet awaited us, as well as two beers. We sat with the first of many couples (Tom and Marj) and everyone told their ‘tier one’ story. This is always where it starts: this is our nth cruise; we’ve been on this line before; we come from…; we’ve already been to the following places; we live in…; we used to do…; our children are….? Etc. Tier One Tales are always glowing, happy reports with the appropriate spouse or partner smiling, nodding and adding a few salient points. With a 40 day cruise there will be plenty of time to get to the tier two and three tales to learn about the ‘real’ story behind each individual. In this case Tom worked for the railroads all his life; has been on many cruises much longer than this; he retired; he’s cruising a lot; his children are in the bay area and he and Marj have been to many of the same ports of call. There is an assumption that anyone able to disappear from their normal world for this length of time is probably either incredibly young and rich; or more likely older and retired with time to spend. It’s never a question of wherewithal (though that plays a role) it’s more a question of the availability of time – the most precious commodity we have.
Bob attended the Cruise Critic meeting – a group of people who have been emailing each other for the last months thru the vehicle of the internet and the specific site Cruise Critic which is a wealth of information on cruising in general and specific ships in particular. I finished my unpacking, we dined, and we fell into bed. Of course Bob had to watch the ‘sail away’ just in case the captain needed his assistance. Tomorrow is a ‘sea day’, so we’ll have plenty of time to get to know our new home away from home.
Today, Wednesday, after a fabulous night of being lulled into dreamland by the lapping of the waves, we slept a wee bit late and raced through breakfast before heading to our muster stations for emergency boat drill. For the rest of this leisurely day we explored the ship’s nooks and crannies, sitting in some of these to read with our new Kindles, which are obviously THE reading approach for cruising folk since I’ve seen seven other users already.
At just past “…the eleventh hour, of the eleventh day, of the eleventh month…”, the ship slowed to a crawl just off the beaches at Gallipoli…to mark the anniversary of the end of World War One. Today is Armistice Day…Remembrance Day in Britain, Australia, and New Zealand … and we looked out at the stark modern monument built by the Turks, and the simpler white pillar on a distant hill erected by the British. Very moving.
In the afternoon we attended an interesting lecture on the history and politics surrounding the building of the Suez Canal, and after “high tea” in the Panoramic lounge, retired to our stateroom to rest before dinner.
November 12 – Thursday at Kusadasi, Turkey
How to organize the damn blog – it publishes on the day you put it out in the ether so it is the most current…but what to do when you’re combining that day with two older days…. Ah. The problems of the blogger.
Today was an early start – out the door and off the ship by 8:00 a.m. Having been to Ephesus at least two times, we decided to skip it and visit smaller, more intimate sites. Ten of us boarded a bus and with John ,our tour guide, headed for Miletus and Didyma. John had trained at the American school in Turkey and spoke flawless, idiomatic English. He had wit and knowledge in equal portions. Starting out in the rain he told us general information about Kusadasi (large tourist site, which since 1994 is learning how to take advantage of the cruise ship mercantile opportunities), the industries in the area of Smyrna which surrounds the town (figs, fruit, olives, cotton and silk, still fairly rustic), and the tidbits of Turkish history.
We passed over the Meander River and within an hour were at Miletus – an inland ruin which was once a harbor before the area was totally silted in by the ‘meandering’ river. The site itself is very simple and since it was the end of the season for tourists, you could tell that the small set of vendors , in their simple stalls, were hoping for one last gasp of money before packing it in for the next four months. John led us through the mud to the Greco/Roman theater, which once held about 15,000 people. By the size of the theater one could extrapolate the size of the town which was probably over 150,000 citizens and another 30,000 slaves which for that time was a good sized city. It made me wonder what would be found and dug up in the future when money was made available for high tech digs. It would appear that Ephesus receives the lion’s share of the money for excavation currently, but perhaps at some point , maybe when Jessica is an old woman, some ambitious young archaeologist scraping in the dirt around this theater ,or in the village behind it, will dig up some wonderful statuary from Miletus and the focus may turn to this very interesting, but unassuming site.
Accompanied by two mangy dogs we climbed to the top of the theater and looked at the remains of the village behind with its two agorae – one for the politicians and one for the markets. We examined the Roman bathes and were told the four rooms that would be part of any bath leading from warm to hot with heating being provided by underground cisterns and heated walls – all quite advanced for a ruin that goes back about 1900+ years. While standing amidst these ruins we got the fastest explanation of Turkish history that I have ever heard. In a mere 10 minutes we went from the Hittites to Attaturk , and at the time it was perfectly clear. But now as I type the blog, it is somewhat of a blur. But in this Cliff Notes version of history we learned the roles played by the Greeks, the Romans, Alexander the Great, Constantine, and the Ottomans. It is a long and proud history where once the world was ruled from Constantinople, then Istanbul , and then how it dwindled to being a small country fighting to become part of the EU.
Geography and history were never my forte in high school or college… perhaps because memorization and huge time-lines were not easily absorbed. But with each new place that is visited and with each tour guide or guidebook , another piece of the puzzle fits into place and makes sense to me. Eventually organizing all the bits of information on who fought whom, who conquered whom and who influenced whom together into a logical sequence I begin to get an inkling of how it all fits together. This to me is the major benefit of travel. I truly think I’m learning every day.
Next stop was Didyma – a sanctuary to Apollo, not unlike the one at Delphi. In fact, this temple to Apollo is larger than that of Delphi. The reason it seems smaller is that at Delphi the entire sanctuary being set against the hill gives one more of a sense of grandeur as one walks gradually up the hill passing the treasuries of different city states before arriving at the temple and then continuing past the temple to the theater and the stadium. Here the poor temple stood alone on flat ground. Here too the oracle who was working under the influence of drugs, gave out wisdom and predictions. New piece of data: only when the columns of the temple were completed and the individual pieces had been lifted into place, were they carved – from the top down! Who knew! I always thought they were carved first and then hoisted into place, but this makes more sense. Afterall, how could you line up all the striations for each column correctly when each segment of the column weighed a ton or more.
Filled with new knowledge, we headed back into Kusadasi where Bob and I bought another new rug for the house in Peacham. It is the end of the season, even for rug merchants who close their shops for 2-3 months, so culling the unsold inventory is a goal. Who knows how much of a ‘bargain’ we got. My only goal is that at the end of the haggling, and the back and forth proposals, both we and the merchant are happy. We got a rug we love at a price we’re pleased with, and the merchant, who like a car salesman has to keep going back to the manager to see if he can make a better price, walks away thinking we were fools. It’s a win-win all around. We signed our name on the back of the rug so we know it’s our when it arrives, and walked out for a celebratory lunch of kebabs, tzaziki, and an Efes beer.
At the beginning of any cruise, there seem to be a series of dance steps which everyone is obliged to repeat – no matter how familiar one is with the concept of cruising, the dance remains the same and our dance on Tuesday followed all the appropriate steps:
· The nervous trip to the cruise terminal step: will we be left off at the right one? Will our luggage need to be put in a pile somewhere and possibly mishandled, or broken into? Has the luggage got the right tags on it so it will eventually arrive at our stateroom and not be left on the pier?
· The check in step: which documents do we need to show? Will they have our reservation? Do we need to go through security? How realistic will our ship photograph/ID card be? (do we look harried? Are we wearing sunglasses?); who has which documents? Which credit card will we register?
· The first entry onto the ship step: will be offered fresh juice by smiling obsequious staff? Will our room be ready? Or if not where are we going to be asked to wait? What do our fellow shipmates look like? Will be stuck with yahoos for the next 40 days, or soignée knowledgeable sailors?
· The first entry to our stateroom step: on what side of the ship are we located? How do the entry keycards work? Who delivered us the champagne, or flowers, or whatever is arrayed in our room? Is the bed facing fore or aft? Where are the bathrobes? Does the room seem claustrophobic? What’s the view from our balcony?
· The unpacking step which is the most delicate dance step of all: how will space be fairly divided? Followed by how the hell are we to get all this stuff into these cabinets, cupboards, under the bed or into the bathroom? Is the electric outlet going to be able to manage our array of toys (computers, iPods, Kindles, battery chargers, razors, cell phone chargers , etc)?
· The finale of the dance: when everything has been stowed into its new home, and the empty luggage has been tucked away under the bed. It is now time to explore the ship, get ones bearings and find out where that first meal will take place. We are now officially on-board and ready to enjoy the cruise.
Bob and I have almost perfected these carefully choreographed steps , though there are always a few missteps in the process. Our first meal was in the Terrace Café aft where a buffet awaited us, as well as two beers. We sat with the first of many couples (Tom and Marj) and everyone told their ‘tier one’ story. This is always where it starts: this is our nth cruise; we’ve been on this line before; we come from…; we’ve already been to the following places; we live in…; we used to do…; our children are….? Etc. Tier One Tales are always glowing, happy reports with the appropriate spouse or partner smiling, nodding and adding a few salient points. With a 40 day cruise there will be plenty of time to get to the tier two and three tales to learn about the ‘real’ story behind each individual. In this case Tom worked for the railroads all his life; has been on many cruises much longer than this; he retired; he’s cruising a lot; his children are in the bay area and he and Marj have been to many of the same ports of call. There is an assumption that anyone able to disappear from their normal world for this length of time is probably either incredibly young and rich; or more likely older and retired with time to spend. It’s never a question of wherewithal (though that plays a role) it’s more a question of the availability of time – the most precious commodity we have.
Bob attended the Cruise Critic meeting – a group of people who have been emailing each other for the last months thru the vehicle of the internet and the specific site Cruise Critic which is a wealth of information on cruising in general and specific ships in particular. I finished my unpacking, we dined, and we fell into bed. Of course Bob had to watch the ‘sail away’ just in case the captain needed his assistance. Tomorrow is a ‘sea day’, so we’ll have plenty of time to get to know our new home away from home.
Today, Wednesday, after a fabulous night of being lulled into dreamland by the lapping of the waves, we slept a wee bit late and raced through breakfast before heading to our muster stations for emergency boat drill. For the rest of this leisurely day we explored the ship’s nooks and crannies, sitting in some of these to read with our new Kindles, which are obviously THE reading approach for cruising folk since I’ve seen seven other users already.
At just past “…the eleventh hour, of the eleventh day, of the eleventh month…”, the ship slowed to a crawl just off the beaches at Gallipoli…to mark the anniversary of the end of World War One. Today is Armistice Day…Remembrance Day in Britain, Australia, and New Zealand … and we looked out at the stark modern monument built by the Turks, and the simpler white pillar on a distant hill erected by the British. Very moving.
In the afternoon we attended an interesting lecture on the history and politics surrounding the building of the Suez Canal, and after “high tea” in the Panoramic lounge, retired to our stateroom to rest before dinner.
November 12 – Thursday at Kusadasi, Turkey
How to organize the damn blog – it publishes on the day you put it out in the ether so it is the most current…but what to do when you’re combining that day with two older days…. Ah. The problems of the blogger.
Today was an early start – out the door and off the ship by 8:00 a.m. Having been to Ephesus at least two times, we decided to skip it and visit smaller, more intimate sites. Ten of us boarded a bus and with John ,our tour guide, headed for Miletus and Didyma. John had trained at the American school in Turkey and spoke flawless, idiomatic English. He had wit and knowledge in equal portions. Starting out in the rain he told us general information about Kusadasi (large tourist site, which since 1994 is learning how to take advantage of the cruise ship mercantile opportunities), the industries in the area of Smyrna which surrounds the town (figs, fruit, olives, cotton and silk, still fairly rustic), and the tidbits of Turkish history.
We passed over the Meander River and within an hour were at Miletus – an inland ruin which was once a harbor before the area was totally silted in by the ‘meandering’ river. The site itself is very simple and since it was the end of the season for tourists, you could tell that the small set of vendors , in their simple stalls, were hoping for one last gasp of money before packing it in for the next four months. John led us through the mud to the Greco/Roman theater, which once held about 15,000 people. By the size of the theater one could extrapolate the size of the town which was probably over 150,000 citizens and another 30,000 slaves which for that time was a good sized city. It made me wonder what would be found and dug up in the future when money was made available for high tech digs. It would appear that Ephesus receives the lion’s share of the money for excavation currently, but perhaps at some point , maybe when Jessica is an old woman, some ambitious young archaeologist scraping in the dirt around this theater ,or in the village behind it, will dig up some wonderful statuary from Miletus and the focus may turn to this very interesting, but unassuming site.
Accompanied by two mangy dogs we climbed to the top of the theater and looked at the remains of the village behind with its two agorae – one for the politicians and one for the markets. We examined the Roman bathes and were told the four rooms that would be part of any bath leading from warm to hot with heating being provided by underground cisterns and heated walls – all quite advanced for a ruin that goes back about 1900+ years. While standing amidst these ruins we got the fastest explanation of Turkish history that I have ever heard. In a mere 10 minutes we went from the Hittites to Attaturk , and at the time it was perfectly clear. But now as I type the blog, it is somewhat of a blur. But in this Cliff Notes version of history we learned the roles played by the Greeks, the Romans, Alexander the Great, Constantine, and the Ottomans. It is a long and proud history where once the world was ruled from Constantinople, then Istanbul , and then how it dwindled to being a small country fighting to become part of the EU.
Geography and history were never my forte in high school or college… perhaps because memorization and huge time-lines were not easily absorbed. But with each new place that is visited and with each tour guide or guidebook , another piece of the puzzle fits into place and makes sense to me. Eventually organizing all the bits of information on who fought whom, who conquered whom and who influenced whom together into a logical sequence I begin to get an inkling of how it all fits together. This to me is the major benefit of travel. I truly think I’m learning every day.
Next stop was Didyma – a sanctuary to Apollo, not unlike the one at Delphi. In fact, this temple to Apollo is larger than that of Delphi. The reason it seems smaller is that at Delphi the entire sanctuary being set against the hill gives one more of a sense of grandeur as one walks gradually up the hill passing the treasuries of different city states before arriving at the temple and then continuing past the temple to the theater and the stadium. Here the poor temple stood alone on flat ground. Here too the oracle who was working under the influence of drugs, gave out wisdom and predictions. New piece of data: only when the columns of the temple were completed and the individual pieces had been lifted into place, were they carved – from the top down! Who knew! I always thought they were carved first and then hoisted into place, but this makes more sense. Afterall, how could you line up all the striations for each column correctly when each segment of the column weighed a ton or more.
Filled with new knowledge, we headed back into Kusadasi where Bob and I bought another new rug for the house in Peacham. It is the end of the season, even for rug merchants who close their shops for 2-3 months, so culling the unsold inventory is a goal. Who knows how much of a ‘bargain’ we got. My only goal is that at the end of the haggling, and the back and forth proposals, both we and the merchant are happy. We got a rug we love at a price we’re pleased with, and the merchant, who like a car salesman has to keep going back to the manager to see if he can make a better price, walks away thinking we were fools. It’s a win-win all around. We signed our name on the back of the rug so we know it’s our when it arrives, and walked out for a celebratory lunch of kebabs, tzaziki, and an Efes beer.
Monday, November 9, 2009
Dunnett and Istanbul
Monday, November 09
Dorothy Dunnett (author of the Lymond series) would be proud of me. Over the last two days I’ve been living with Philippa and Lymond as they moved through the Topkapi Palace, the cisterns and the back streets of Istanbul – only 500 years separate us since they were here in the 1400’s when Suleyman the Magnificent was living with his harem, the eunuchs and the janissaries . I finished reading Pawn in Frankincense just before leaving on the trip, and every bit of the intrigue and tragedy of the novel made my current tourist activities that much more meaningful. The other book which has guided me is Orhan Pamuk’s book Istanbul, an evocative reflection of Pamuk’s childhood in the changing world of Istanbul where Western behavior and culture were rapidly replacing the Ottoman tradition.
Yesterday, being Sunday with some things closed, we spent the major part of our day wandering through the archaeological museum and the tile museum. The archaeological museum was amazingly empty, which was delightful for us since we could wander leisurely through rooms without having to duck past tour groups. The most amazing finds were the sarcophagi found in Sidon (then part of the Ottoman Empire, but now in Lebanon), in the late 1700’s by Osman Hamdi who then started the museum in which these ruins are now situated. It took him (and his crew) less than four months to discover and excavate these absolutely intact structures from a large royal necropolis, and to have them transported to Istanbul by ship. What was astounding was that since they had lain undiscovered for over 1900 years, every bit of stonework and carving was complete. Having been through too many Greek museums where heads, arms, noses or feet are missing, it was pure pleasure to see a totally intact un-cracked structure. The only things missing were the silver swords originally held by various warriors. Even some of the color of the original was visible, and the museum had made a small replica of one portion of the sarcophagus in its most vivid colors so that one could imagine the full structure in its full gaudy colors. I was so delighted that I kept commenting on how perfect it all was. The other important sarcophagus found at the same site is that of the Mourning Women which was equally beautiful and complete with the women’s poses very similar to the many stellae seen in the Athens museum. What was wonderful to learn was that Hamdi who is considered the father of Turkish Museums ensured that no artifacts could be taken out of the country… ensuring that their collections would not land up in the British Museum for future generations to fight over.
Another exhibit in the museum which caught our attention was an exhibit demonstrating the archaeological findings which have come to light with the construction of the new underground train system. Just feet below the modern day streets of Istanbul lay the remains of over 2000 years of history. It, of course, leaves modern day Turkey with the issue of how much should be dug up and retained for historical purposes, and how much displacement of 21st century Istanbul should be sacrificed to this history. The exhibit showed artifacts from these digs, and had them grouped by city districts so that a modern Istanbulli can associate his community with that of ancient times.
The last series of rooms in which we wandered were primarily sculptures from other parts of Anatolia including Halicarnassus, Ephesus and Miletus – many of the archaeological sites we’ll be seeing on the upcoming cruise.
Thoroughly foot sore, we whipped through the Tile Museum which while beautiful did not catch our fancy, so we left and headed for the Cistern of the Basilica. To call it a rip-off tourist site would be perhaps too offensive, but it really wasn’t worth it. However, the cisterns of Istanbul played a huge role in my Dunnett book, so we had to see at least one cistern. This one built of a series of Corinthian and Doric columns was the size of two football fields, had just enough water to allow fish to be flitting by in the subterranean, eerily lit area. The cisterns were meant to hold water for the city in time of siege, and this one now serves to demonstrate what the others must have been like. I’m glad we went, but it doesn’t need to be repeated – unlike the museum which we could visit again and again.
Parched and in need of a beer, we went to a sister hotel of the one in which we’re staying - the Orient Express Hotel (not associated with the true Orient Express except in having stolen the name and the theme). Here on their well-advertised roof top we had a beer and a snack while looking at the endless stream of ship traffic on the Bosphorus, and Golden Horn. The view of water is always wonderful, but the streets between the hotel and the water had little to recommend them in the way of view. We wandered back to our hotel, past Sunday strolling tourists & locals, and put our feet up before dinner.
What is interesting is that this is distinctly a Muslim-centered city. Beer cannot be served in many of the lovely open areas because they are too close to mosques; women in the town seem to be dressed in one of three manners – completely clothed from scarf to toe so that only faces are showing; modern dress or pants with only headscarves to demonstrate their faith; or completely modern as we would see any woman in a western culture.
Today, Monday, we had one goal only – Topkapi Palace. The guidebooks said to give it at least two hours, we gave it easily double that time. With the self-guided audio tour, we were able to wander in and out of the various structures, sitting in the warm sunny gardens when we needed a brief rest to absorb what we had just seen, or to re-listen to what we had just heard a minute ago. From 1465 – 1856 this was the heart of the Ottoman Empire where the Sultans reigned as son followed father for over 400 years. It is a conglomeration of buildings, each in its own style, as each succeeding sultan put his mark on the palace. The opulence is overwhelming, be it the tile work, the sculpture or the tapestry. In the Treasury Buildings were some of the most luxurious of the various remnants of this period : the famous Topkapi dagger, made famous in the movie Topkapi, the 200 pound gold candle holders, the spoonmaker diamond; the gold-threaded garments. Going through these rooms reminded me of going through the Tower of London and seeing the crowned jewels. Perhaps the most interesting area for me was the series of rooms holding relics of the Muslim faith. Here one saw a footprint of Mohammed, the arm of Mohammed (coated in silver), a gold case holding the cape of Mohammed, and in one small area an Imam who reads from the Koran 24 hours a day for over 400 years. Now a microphone carries his voice, but to think that this goes on hour after hour, year after year was fairly astounding. (Who keeps him and his colleagues company when the museum closes for the night?).
We enjoyed every minute of our tour and never even got to the china collection, the kitchens, the stables, or the Harem. It just means we have to come back another time. This like many other cities is being added to the places where we need to return. The only question is – when?
From one of the many vista points in Topkapi we caught sight of our ship waiting across the water for us to join it. Tomorrow we go on board and begin the next new adventure. 40 nights sleeping on some body of water makes us both very happy as we contemplate our voyage of discovery.
Best sign of the evening – a sign in the hotel elevator advertising one of the restaurants : “Take an exotic journey around Anatolia’s Flouvers” . We think they meant flavors, but who knows.,
Dorothy Dunnett (author of the Lymond series) would be proud of me. Over the last two days I’ve been living with Philippa and Lymond as they moved through the Topkapi Palace, the cisterns and the back streets of Istanbul – only 500 years separate us since they were here in the 1400’s when Suleyman the Magnificent was living with his harem, the eunuchs and the janissaries . I finished reading Pawn in Frankincense just before leaving on the trip, and every bit of the intrigue and tragedy of the novel made my current tourist activities that much more meaningful. The other book which has guided me is Orhan Pamuk’s book Istanbul, an evocative reflection of Pamuk’s childhood in the changing world of Istanbul where Western behavior and culture were rapidly replacing the Ottoman tradition.
Yesterday, being Sunday with some things closed, we spent the major part of our day wandering through the archaeological museum and the tile museum. The archaeological museum was amazingly empty, which was delightful for us since we could wander leisurely through rooms without having to duck past tour groups. The most amazing finds were the sarcophagi found in Sidon (then part of the Ottoman Empire, but now in Lebanon), in the late 1700’s by Osman Hamdi who then started the museum in which these ruins are now situated. It took him (and his crew) less than four months to discover and excavate these absolutely intact structures from a large royal necropolis, and to have them transported to Istanbul by ship. What was astounding was that since they had lain undiscovered for over 1900 years, every bit of stonework and carving was complete. Having been through too many Greek museums where heads, arms, noses or feet are missing, it was pure pleasure to see a totally intact un-cracked structure. The only things missing were the silver swords originally held by various warriors. Even some of the color of the original was visible, and the museum had made a small replica of one portion of the sarcophagus in its most vivid colors so that one could imagine the full structure in its full gaudy colors. I was so delighted that I kept commenting on how perfect it all was. The other important sarcophagus found at the same site is that of the Mourning Women which was equally beautiful and complete with the women’s poses very similar to the many stellae seen in the Athens museum. What was wonderful to learn was that Hamdi who is considered the father of Turkish Museums ensured that no artifacts could be taken out of the country… ensuring that their collections would not land up in the British Museum for future generations to fight over.
Another exhibit in the museum which caught our attention was an exhibit demonstrating the archaeological findings which have come to light with the construction of the new underground train system. Just feet below the modern day streets of Istanbul lay the remains of over 2000 years of history. It, of course, leaves modern day Turkey with the issue of how much should be dug up and retained for historical purposes, and how much displacement of 21st century Istanbul should be sacrificed to this history. The exhibit showed artifacts from these digs, and had them grouped by city districts so that a modern Istanbulli can associate his community with that of ancient times.
The last series of rooms in which we wandered were primarily sculptures from other parts of Anatolia including Halicarnassus, Ephesus and Miletus – many of the archaeological sites we’ll be seeing on the upcoming cruise.
Thoroughly foot sore, we whipped through the Tile Museum which while beautiful did not catch our fancy, so we left and headed for the Cistern of the Basilica. To call it a rip-off tourist site would be perhaps too offensive, but it really wasn’t worth it. However, the cisterns of Istanbul played a huge role in my Dunnett book, so we had to see at least one cistern. This one built of a series of Corinthian and Doric columns was the size of two football fields, had just enough water to allow fish to be flitting by in the subterranean, eerily lit area. The cisterns were meant to hold water for the city in time of siege, and this one now serves to demonstrate what the others must have been like. I’m glad we went, but it doesn’t need to be repeated – unlike the museum which we could visit again and again.
Parched and in need of a beer, we went to a sister hotel of the one in which we’re staying - the Orient Express Hotel (not associated with the true Orient Express except in having stolen the name and the theme). Here on their well-advertised roof top we had a beer and a snack while looking at the endless stream of ship traffic on the Bosphorus, and Golden Horn. The view of water is always wonderful, but the streets between the hotel and the water had little to recommend them in the way of view. We wandered back to our hotel, past Sunday strolling tourists & locals, and put our feet up before dinner.
What is interesting is that this is distinctly a Muslim-centered city. Beer cannot be served in many of the lovely open areas because they are too close to mosques; women in the town seem to be dressed in one of three manners – completely clothed from scarf to toe so that only faces are showing; modern dress or pants with only headscarves to demonstrate their faith; or completely modern as we would see any woman in a western culture.
Today, Monday, we had one goal only – Topkapi Palace. The guidebooks said to give it at least two hours, we gave it easily double that time. With the self-guided audio tour, we were able to wander in and out of the various structures, sitting in the warm sunny gardens when we needed a brief rest to absorb what we had just seen, or to re-listen to what we had just heard a minute ago. From 1465 – 1856 this was the heart of the Ottoman Empire where the Sultans reigned as son followed father for over 400 years. It is a conglomeration of buildings, each in its own style, as each succeeding sultan put his mark on the palace. The opulence is overwhelming, be it the tile work, the sculpture or the tapestry. In the Treasury Buildings were some of the most luxurious of the various remnants of this period : the famous Topkapi dagger, made famous in the movie Topkapi, the 200 pound gold candle holders, the spoonmaker diamond; the gold-threaded garments. Going through these rooms reminded me of going through the Tower of London and seeing the crowned jewels. Perhaps the most interesting area for me was the series of rooms holding relics of the Muslim faith. Here one saw a footprint of Mohammed, the arm of Mohammed (coated in silver), a gold case holding the cape of Mohammed, and in one small area an Imam who reads from the Koran 24 hours a day for over 400 years. Now a microphone carries his voice, but to think that this goes on hour after hour, year after year was fairly astounding. (Who keeps him and his colleagues company when the museum closes for the night?).
We enjoyed every minute of our tour and never even got to the china collection, the kitchens, the stables, or the Harem. It just means we have to come back another time. This like many other cities is being added to the places where we need to return. The only question is – when?
From one of the many vista points in Topkapi we caught sight of our ship waiting across the water for us to join it. Tomorrow we go on board and begin the next new adventure. 40 nights sleeping on some body of water makes us both very happy as we contemplate our voyage of discovery.
Best sign of the evening – a sign in the hotel elevator advertising one of the restaurants : “Take an exotic journey around Anatolia’s Flouvers” . We think they meant flavors, but who knows.,
Saturday, November 7, 2009
Journey to Istanbul
Friday, November 06, 2009
The journey has begun. It started out with a set of near misses: we missed seeing the grandchildren in Darien because in our fear of attracting and becoming a carrier for whatever flu bug was running through the family, we chose to stay at the Marriott; we nearly missed our limousine to the airport, when after our very affable and efficient bellhop had loaded all our luggage into a large stretch limousine, waved us off and sent us packing we discovered that we were in the wrong limousine. The driver thought he had the Harris party heading to LGA, until I happened to mention that we were on a Delta departing from JFK. A quick return to the hotel where OUR driver awaited us, and Mr. & Mrs. Harris were probably a wee bit perturbed …and off we went - again. Whew.
The rest of the journey was uneventful but dehumanizing as we went through the usual chaos of check-in and security strip searches before the interminable (and antsy) wait until we were able to board. While we had prepared for a 10 hour flight to Istanbul, between tailwinds and a very efficient pilot we arrived after 8 ½ hours having dined on some hideous thing called lunch and an even sadder thing called breakfast.
The first indications that we were in foreign climes, and definitely out of our comfort zone and onto something new, was the sound of the Turkish Language being spoken by the attendants and on the signs on the monitors announcing our altitude, speed, mileage, and time of arrival. For all my smattering of language skills, there was absolutely nothing I could decipher. It is always a mixture of slight anxiety when I realize I cannot follow signs or make myself understood combined with that wonderful puzzle problem when I listen for clues and wonder if that word spelled ‘seat’ could mean this or that thing, only to discover that in Turkish it means something like ‘time’.
As we flew into Istanbul over the Sea of Marmara the hazy morning light greeted us and we blearily deplaned, wended our way through customs, found our luggage, and were piled into the hotel van which took us to the Hotel Sirkeci Konak.
First impressions in our 20 minute trip: construction cranes in all directions; road construction everywhere; beautiful ancient relics of walls and buildings left to rot with new structures using the skeletons of the old to create something new; old wooden houses with their tiered fronts which remind one of early 19th century drawings being covered over by slap-dash cement into an unappealing but efficient new apartment complex; and stone ramparts facing the sea obviously once meant for protection, now serving as billboard fronts for McDonalds and Saab. You can quickly see that Istanbul is a very old town but it is quickly becoming an unappealing setting for a growing population here to take advantage of growing tourism. The last five minutes of our ride to the hotel took us off the efficiently paved roads into a meandering maze of narrow cobblestone streets where old and new blended and tourists were walking in all directions. The hotel is literally facing the walls of the Topkapi Palace and our deluxe room with veranda overlooks the gardens of the palace.
We might have enjoyed all this more were we not exhausted and starved. So we had breakfast (yogurts, cheeses, all manner of fruits, cereals and fresh breads) and fell into bed. Nothing woke us but the intermittent haunting sounds of the electronically enhanced Muezzins calling the faithful to one of the five-a-day prayers . The sounds ripple through the town as different clocks cause different voices to start chanting until this plaintive wail is coating the entire town reminding the faithful of their need to stop their work and pray to Allah. We are definitely not in Kansas anymore.
We slept till dusk, had a delicious Turkish dinner at the hotel , and then back to bed for a sound night’s sleep.
Saturday, November 7 – 1st full day in Istanbul
A good night’s sleep does wonders for the equilibrium. A late breakfast and we were off to wander through streets filled with local Istanbullus who, like us, were enjoying a beautiful blue sky Saturday. We took the Hop On Hop Off (HOHO) bus tour, as we always do on our first day in a new place. It provided a wonderful introduction to the layout of the city and told us through a multi-language electronic system all the critical dates and buildings which were important to the city. I don’t find Istanbul a pretty city, and the modern buildings are incredibly boring, but in between one caught glimpses of narrow streets with old homes, views of the Golden Horn, the Bosphorus, or the Sea of Marmara; and surrounding it all, the remains of the town walls that go on for 22 kilometers to surround the city and protect it from invaders. In some places the walls provided space for residents to grow vegetables, in others it was a source for trash and garbage disposal. At each major gate we were informed by the narrator about the importance of that particular gate and the community behind it. After two hours we landed back at our starting point thirsty for a beer. We found a roof top garden (most hotels and restaurants advertise such terraced spots) where we enjoyed our EFES beer with eggplant puree and a piece of grilled calamari larger than any we have ever seen before. Next to us were sitting a young Eastern European couple with their very adorable six year old child who decided with his very abbreviated English to engage us in dialogue. (“hello; how are you; I love you:” etc). We savored the sunset, the Blue Mosque being lit with spotlights, and the many boats, ships, ferries and caiques continuing to move through the Bosphorus …being guided away from the shore by the same lighthouse which we had just seen, at home, in the movie Topkapi. After another wailing round of prayers we headed back to our hotel ,in the dark ,for a rest before heading out for dinner.
Key impression of the day: Istanbul reminds me of Athens… with similar faces, foods, handicrafts, worry beads and insistent storekeepers and restaurant owners calling us in to see their special wares. Only the language and religion (not to mention hatred) separates these two cultures - no surprise given the history of the Byzantine and Ottoman empires.
Dinner at the fish restaurant associated with our hotel. Wonderful fresh fish, brought to your table, whole and uncooked, so you can choose which type appeals to you. It caused one couple to leave the restaurant – I guess it was toooo local for them. Bob had a grilled sea bass, I had fresh giant prawns. Yumm was the operative word. And so to bed.
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