6 months done. Vancouver here I come

Tonight is my last night on the ship. And also the 6th month point from when I signed on.

Tomorrow I am off to the airport and heading back to Vancouver.

Hopefully my way overweight bags can get on the plane with no issues, and no extra fees.

Thank you to everyone who followed my adventures over the last 6 months. I will be back for season 3 on the ships in March.

And check back in February for Vancouver Olympics updates as Canada goes for the gold.

Last good meal on the ship

As I will be going home at then end of this cruise, I decided to have dinner with some friends in the ships main dining room, the Cosmopolitan.

And because it was the last formal night, that means Lobster. And also Baked Alaska. A very good way to spend the evening, and the food was excellent.

After the dinner we decided to see the production show in the theater. I usually don't do to see the shows, and this one I haven't seen before. One of the musical numbers they did was from Titanic. This is a questionable thing to do on a cruise ship at any time. But when we happen to be crossing the Atlantic ocean at the same time, and the ship is rocking back and forth, its definitely a strange song to hear.

There is now just one last day until we reach land again. And its time for me to pack my bags.

Crossing the Mid Atlantic Ridge

There really are not any really interesting points to cross while doing the Atlantic crossing. Not like when I did the Pacific, where I sailed across both the Equator, and the International Date Line.

Today we cross the Mid Atlantic Ridge, a long mountain range that spans the whole length of the ocean. And is the point where the continent of Pangea broke apart from, all those millions of years ago.

Also this is the half way point of our crossing, 2.5 days down, 2.5 to go.

Nothing but Ocean ahead

My ship left its last port, the Canary Islands, last night, and now there is nothing but a long stretch of ocean set out before us.

It will be 5 days before we see any land again.

Then a day after that its across the span of the continent back to home.

Leaving the Med

Last night we passed through the Straits of Gibraltar and now we are sailing along the coast of Africa.

Tomorrow we will dock in Agadir Morocco. Which will be the 3rd continent for me in the last 2 weeks, and my 6th in the last 13 months.

Tomorrow will also be my last port on the mainland before we sail across the Atlantic, with only a stop in the Canary Islands

One Last Cruise

I am on my last cruise before I go home for vacation.

Just 2 weeks to go.

The cruise is a 2 week transatlantic cruise that stops in a few interesting ports that I haven't been to before.

Today we were in Marseille France, our last time in France for the season. It is a nice town, but unfortunately it was raining a bit today.

Tomorrow, we go to our first of five Spanish ports, Palma de Mallorca. We will go to a few more interesting ports, including one in Morocco, before our 5 days at sea crossing back to North America.

Walking the city walls in Dubrovnik

Our last time in Dubrovnik Croatia I wanted to do something interesting.
Dubrovnik's old town is surrounded by tall city walls, and for a small fee you can walk on top of them and around the city.

I still had a lot of the local currency left so I spent some of it on this.
There is some really good views along the walk, which takes about an hour to go all the way around the 2km of walls.
The walls that currently exist were built from the 12th-17th century and were never breached by any attackers during the middle ages. The walls go as high as 25 meters near the city gates, and dip down as they pass the harbour, And include many gates, turrets, and cannons, along various spots along the walk.

During my walk around the walls I passed my camera to a friend to take my picture, but the camera was dropped. I was afraid that the lens would take the brunt of the fall, rendering the camera useless, but it landed on its side. The camera didn't survive unscathed, in fact the lcd screen has a crack in the corner, but it still works, and that is the important thing. It just makes framing my picture a bit harder.

The walk was good exercise as there are a lot of stairs to climb along the way, especially if you want to go to the top of all the defence towers, but the best views are from up there so you have to do it anyways.

It was a really good day to be walking the walls, warm but not hot, but still sunny. Way better then the last time I planned to do it, when I was scheduled to go as a tour escort, and it was pouring down rain all day long. So I bailed on the tour.

Crew tour in Rome

This last week we have had free tours for the crew, as part of the crew appreciation week.

I went on the Rome tour. It was basically just a ride into town and then we had time to do what we wanted.

We were dropped of at the Spanish steps. My plan was to head for Vatican City, see some of the stuff along the way, and Climb up the Basilica dome.

A few of us made a stop at the Trevi Fountain first to, toss the coin, to ensure return to Rome, as this is likely the last time I will be in the city this contract, as we only go once more.

After that we headed to the Pantheon and then had a pizza lunch at plaza Navarro.

Then across the river to Vatican City.

We stopped for some pictures and a drink, then headed for the entrance to the Basilica climb.

I have climbed up to the top of the dome, twice before, once in 2001, and again in 2002. Both times I took the stairs the whole way, which was slightly cheaper, and skips the elevator that takes you up halfway, to top of the church, and then you have to climb the stairs the rest of the way up the dome. But after 4pm they close those stairs so I had to take the elevator.

This doesn't make the climb any less hard, as its still 320 steps to the top. As we were climbing up we noticed through a window that the sun was close to setting, so we took off running up the last 100 stairs to reach the top before the sun was down.We managed to catch it just in time for some pictures.

Also this was a good place to watch as the city got dark and the lights came on.

We headed down and with not much time before our scheduled meeting time at the Spanish steps we started walking back.

We were moving fast and figured that we should make another stop at the Trevi fountain to get some pictures at night. But we had to really move as we were going to cut it to the last minute.We ended up running up the Spanish steps, and just made it for the scheduled time.

Overnight on land, not on the ship

The last overnight in Kusadasi Turkey, I friend of mine, Ali from Vancouver, was visiting his family in Turkey, and they happen to live very close to where our ship docks.

We planned to meet up in Selcuk, a town just outside Ephesus, where his uncle works at the tourism office. Ali had landed in the nearby cities airport just a few hours before, and was picked up by a friend, and we both ended up at the tourism office within a few minutes of each other.

from the balcony of Ali's family's house. 3 Fighter jets in formation in the background

Next we headed to Tire so Ali visit his family. We went to his grandparents house, and visited with his family for a while, then we went for lunch a traditional Turkish place, and I got my haircut for the first time this contract, at a Turkish barber shop. It was interesting trying to communicate how I wanted it cut as he spoke no English, and I no Turkish, but we got Ali's friend to help translate for us.
After that we drove to a nearby town on a beach, where Ali family has a summer place. Even though it was a bit late in the year, the water was still nice and warm, and we went swimming for a while. And had beers on the beach.

We had dinner, and hung around in the house. I enjoyed not being around the ship for a night.

We went for a walk around the town late at night, and in the distance you could see the lights of Kusadasi and my ship. This was the first time I slept on a bed not on the ship since I signed on 4 months ago.

The next morning we went to Selcuk. Ali's friend, who was driving for us the last day, had to go back to work, so Ali's uncle drove us back to Kusadasi.

back to my room on the ship

It was fun to see a friend from home, and a big coincidence that I happened to be in the same place as him, so far from Vancouver. And it was really nice to do something different away from the Ship.

Back to Athens

Even though I have been in Europe for over 4 months, I have only done 1 tour in Athens in all that time. Which was to the Acropolis
One reason for this was that during the summer it had been so hot everywhere, but Athens was among the hottest of places, so I usually didn't go very far from the ship on these days.
But now that it is later in the season, the temperature is not as bad.
The tour I signed up for goes to the same places as the first tour I did, but also gives a few hours of free time to explore on our own. Which is why I picked it.
The tour starts at the Acropolis which I was happy to return to, but this time I didn't stay at the Parthenon as long, and went down to the base of the hill to explore the 2 theaters.
The Theater of Herod Atticus was first built by the Romans in 161 AD, and then rebuilt a few century's later and it is still used for concerts today. The theater holds seating for around 5000 people. They don't normally let people into the seating area so I could only get to the side to get pictures.

The other ruins in the area is the remains of the Theater of Dionysus which was built in 325 BC. It was first built using wood and later redone in marble. The remaining seating area of the theater is much smaller then the other theater, but when it was used it was much bigger, holding up to 17,000 people.
After leaving the Acropolis area, we did a short tour around the city then we were dropped of in the Plaka area, which is an old neighbourhood near the acropolis hill.
Very close by is the New Acropolis Museum, which opened on a few months before, and was built to house remains of previous temples built on the hill. And at the top floor, is a layout of the same dimensions of the Parthenon itself, and is used to show the original frieze which decorated the Parthenon. Which depict the procession to honor the the Goddess Athena.And at each end are the statues which adorned the pediments, one side depicting the birth of the goddess Athena, and the other side depicting the competition between Athena, and Poseidon over which would be the patron of the City. We were not supposted to take pictues inside the museum, but I did take one that shows some of the pediment statues and Frieze, with the Parthenon in the background.

Much of both the Frieze and the pediment statues, are housed in other countries museums, most notably the British Royal Museum, which refuses to return them, originally saying that Greece didn't have a suitable place to house them, but now that a new museum was built for this purpose, the real reason is because of the precedent this would set over much of the works in the British Museum, that were taken over the century's from many countries.

After leaving the museum I did some shopping around the Plaka, found a OK gyro stand and walked towards the ruins of the Temple of Zeus, began in 600 BC it was not finished until around 200 AD by the Roman Emperor Hadrian and was one of the largest temples in Greece when it was completed. But over the years it was used for its marble for other projects in the city over the century's. Only some of the columns still exist.

At the base of the temple ruins is Hadrian's Arch which was our meeting place for the bus to pick us up at the end of the day.

Canucks on TV

Today on the ship Fox Sports is showing a Canucks game.

Its my first chance to watch them play this year, as we don't get very many games, and they unusually don't show Canadian teams.

So its nice to see them play.

Flooding in Venice

The last day we were in Venice it was quite cold, the coldest it had been since we have been in Europe. It was the first time most of us took the sweaters off the hangers.

I was walking into St. Mark’s square and was noticing that it was high tide. The square is the lowest part of the city and during many high tides the whole square floods.

While the whole area was not flooded most of it was, and the tourists were all having to walk across the square on platforms. Or to wait on them to enter the church.

In many areas gondolas were stuck on one side of a bridge as they were too little space to fit under them.

As it gets closer to winter the flooding gets worse and worse.

Our ship went to Mykonos after Istanbul. On the way we went through a big storm with lots of rain and wind, and rough seas.

Mykonos, a Greek island, is the last new place we go to this Europe season.

We arrived at noon, but crew were not able to get off the ship until 2pm as it was a tender port and we had to wait for all the guests to get off first.

Mykonos’s main town is made up a series of confusing winding streets, which were built this way to confuse pirates who might be invading, and allow the locals to escape and ambush the attackers.

One of the landmarks of the island are the windmills which were built by the Venetians in the 16th century. They are no longer used but are still one of the islands most recognized landmarks.

One of the things Mykonos is well known for is its nightlife, which was a shame because we leave early in the evening so we were not able to find out.

We did find a good gyro place, but it was nowhere near as good as Lucky’s in Santorini, but it was nice to have a good Greek gyro again.

Mykonos is a nice island, and it would be fun to spend more time there, we only go there once more, hopefully it wont get too cold as it will be in mid November.

Istanbul Day 2 Part 1

The second day in Istanbul started before the sun was fully up in the sky.

Our driver wanted to get going 15 minutes before the other buses because the first part of our day was to cross the Bosporus bridge to the Asian side of Istanbul.

There are only 2 bridges that cross the Bosporus and the traffic coming into the European side in the morning is very heavy and the line of cars can stretch for many miles, and can take hours to come from the suburbs. Much like people coming across the Port Mann Bridge in Vancouver, only with many times the amount of cars.
We crossed over the bridge, which when it was built it was the 3rd longest suspension bridge in the world. and went to a place on the shore to take a picture of ourselves in Asia. The place we were was the closest on-ramp to the bridge, but even still the traffic was very busy, with many lanes merging together, before they got on the bridge.

After we got back to the Old town, we got off our bus and went to the old roman Hippodrome. The hippodrome is a shadow of its old self, and just the basic outline and a few decorations are all that's left of it.

There are 2 obelisks, one from ancient Egypt, that was put there in 390AD, and it is similar to one that stood in the Circus Maximus in Rome.The other was built in the 10th century and was at the other end of the hippodrome, it was originally covered with gilded bronze plaques, but they were removed when the city was sacked during the 4th crusade. Also 4 bronze statues of horses used to decorate the Hippodrome, but these were also taken by in the 4th crusade and now are on St. Marc's in Venice.

Istanbul Day 2 part 2

After the Hippodrome we walked to Hagia Sophia. This is now the third building built on the location. The current one was built from 532-537AD and had 10,000 people employed as builders, and had materials brought from all over the Roman Empire.

Hagia Sophia was the largest cathedral in the world for over 1000 years, and is still one of the largest in the world. The construction used 4 half domes to create a base to support the main central dome.

After Constantinople was conquered my the Ottoman Empire in 1453, the church was converted to a mosque. The minarets were built then and the building was rebuilt, and modified. Many of the mosaics that had christian pictures were plastered over, which preserved them in very good condition. The building was used as a mosque for another almost 500 years.

In 1935 the building was transformed into a museum, and the old decorations were restored. When we went in there was a large scaffolding that is in the central dome, restoring the mosaics of the ceiling.

The building is definitely showing its age, but considering its near continuous use for almost 1500 years, and its surviving many large earthquakes, it is an amazing structure.

After Hagia Sophia, we went to the Grand Bazaar, stopping first for a carpet demonstration.The carpet demo is something that every tour includes, but it was something that I was looking forward to, so I could get more information on them, as I plan to buy a carpet before the end of my contract.Everyone is given a drink, apple tea being the norm, but also raki, a Turkish alcoholic drink.Then they bring out the carpets, starting with the cheapest, wool on wool, and going up to the most expensive, silk.There were some very nice designs and some of them were ones that I really liked. But I didn't have any plans to but today, so I didn't talk to the sellers much, except to ask a few questions.

After the carpet demo, we had 1.5 hours to look around the Grand Bazaar.
The Grand Bazaar was opened in 1461 and consists of 58 streets and more then 1200 stores. The main area is all covered in domes, and divided into separate sections, like the spice area, the leather area, and jewelry. With many carpet, souvenirs stores and everything else scattered in between.

The Bazaar gets hundreds of thousands of visitors daily. So the people who work at the stores have lots of practice trying different ways to get customers to enter their stores.

I didn't end up buying anything more then just a magnet in the Bazaar, but possibly next time I will be in a buying mood.

After the Bazaar we went for a traditional Turkish lunch at a restaurant just outside the walls of Topkapi Palace.

After that we were back to the ship. A long 2 days of touring but well worth it.

Istanbul Day 1

We arrived in Istanbul the other day and stayed overnight.

Istanbul is the only city in the world that spans 2 continents. Europe and Asia.

The history of the city is many thousands of years long, and it has served as the capital to some great empires. The main 2 were the Eastern Roman Empire, and another thousand years later the Ottoman Empire.

The 2 day tour I was on took us to many of the major sites of he city. Our first day had us go to the 2 main sites of Ottoman Empire.

We docked at 1:00pm the first day, and like usual the tours were dispatched from the theater of the ship. Never before have I seen it so busy for tours. Definitely a majority of the guests were there. And getting the people out of the theater and onto the buses was a big and long operation.

When we finally got going we left the port and went to Topkapi Palace, the Palace of the Ottoman Sultans.

The Palace surrounded by a large wall, and inside there are a series of courtyards and rooms. Which included the Imperial Treasury, the Audience Chamber, the Sultans Library, and the Imperial Harem. As well as mosques kitchens, and other places to house the thousands of people who lived there.



The National Treasury houses many pieces of jewelry and art from the Ottoman Empire. Some of the most impressive are the Topkapi Dagger, the golden candlesticks, made from over 100 pounds of gold, and the spoonmakers diamond, the 3rd largest diamond in the world, at 86 carats.


we were not allowed to take picutres inside, so I am using stock photos.

Another room, the Privy Chamber houses relics from Islam, and include the cloak of Muhammad, and some of his swords, and hair. Also shown was the staff of Moses, and many other relics.
The back of the Palace looks out to the Asian side of Istanbul.

There was a lot of the Palace we didn't have time to see, and it would take many hours to see the majority of the Grounds.

Day 1 in Istanbul continued.

The second part of the tour took us to the Blue Mosque. we were

going to go there first but at the time we were in the area it was closed as it was one of the prayer times.

When we did go it was a short walk from Topkapi Palace.

The Mosque was built in the style of Hagia Sophia, the Byzantine church, which was the largest building for over 1000 years. There is another mosque near where our ship docked that is an exact copy of Hagia Sophia, only smaller, and was built by an Ottoman architect to study how it was made.

Blue Mosque

Hagia Sophia

The Blue Mosque improved on the design in a few ways, but it is still very similar.

Like any mosque we had to remove our shoes before we went in, as the floor is covered in carpets. The originals were removed 30 years ago and are now in a museum, but they were used for 400 years before that, and are still in good shape.

The Blue Mosque is not the actual name of the mosque, its really Sultan Ahmed Mosque. But it is called blue mosque after the blue tiles that line the interior.

The mosque has many large chandeliers hanging from chains attached to the roof. And they kind of make the pictures look odd.

Mosques don't have lots of painting like you would find in a church, as Islam doesn't allow pictures of their holy people, so it is an interesting change from the many churches I have gone to lately, most of which have variations of similar scenes from the bible painted around the walls and ceilings.

After we left the mosque it was back to the ship.

Istanbul at night.

The next part of the tour started early next morning.

Climbing the Duomo in Florence

Last time we were in Florence I was a tour escort on the Taste of Florence tour, which I took because it gives half the day as free time.

The reason I took the tour was to climb the Duomo. There are 463 steps to the top of the cathedral, and as yo get higher you see the curve of the dome, and have to lean top the side as you climb. Ands in many spots you need to squeeze to the side to let others going down to pass by.

Half way up the climb you enter to the inside of the dome, where there is a large painting covering the entire top of the domes ceiling.

At the top you get a commanding view of all of Florence. I have been to the top before, and also climbed the bell tower, right next to the Duomo. But this was a good time of the year to do it as it wasn't too busy at the top, so I could relax on the benches and enjoy my time at the top.