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.