May « 2010 « Kenny Smith | A few words …

May, 2010

Monday / honeymoon — Comments Off
31
May 10

At sea

Slept in.

Ate too much.

Read. Took a nap.

The Yankee spent some time in the spa. I watched a movie. I took in part of the hot glass show. (I love watching glass blowers.)

I stopped by the library. I’d picked up Judge Buck Compton‘s autobiography early in the cruise and read it quickly. Nice book, good man, told in that traditionally paced non-professional style. It was interesting, though, to see how his telling of his story was different than what you saw of him on HBO. It is incredible to think all of this happened in one lifetime. Sen. John McCain wrote the forward. Actor Neal McDonough, who portrayed Compton, wrote the epilogue. I believe it was McDonough who observed that Compton’s life, for many, would have been the modern American dream — actor, baseball player, Rose Bowl, war hero, policeman, lawyer, judge, family man … what else could there be?

I say this as I haven’t done anything more strenuous than walk around and take pictures for the last week. I’m proud of myself though: I’ve had a few days go by where I haven’t thought of work or school or … darn, that streak is broken.

Also, I’ve eaten too much today. This, too, happens on the cruise ship. I was warned.

Roy, our waiter, is quick to bring extra food. The Yankee ordered a cheesecake dessert, for example, and I said “Two. I mean I don’t want two, I mean I’d like one also.”

Roy brought three pieces. And, since it was cheesecake it had to be eaten …

Tomorrow: Athens, Greece.

honeymoon / photo / weekend — Comments Off
30
May 10

Kusadasi (Ephesus), Turkey

Mustafa, our guide to Ephesus

After we got off the ship in Kusadasi we met Mustafa (our second one of the voyage) who was going to spend the day teaching us about the Ephesians. It turns out our bus was no good, so he found us a new one, which required a walk.

Mustafa walks fast, with a determined, angry stride. Maybe, I thought, he doesn’t want to be here.

It turned out to be a very nice guy. He told us about the five different locations of Ephesus, explained our day to us and said he didn’t know where we’d go first. He wanted, he said, to avoid the crowds.

So he had the driver take us to the Ephesus Archeological Museum.

Marcus Aurelius

They had a few nice pieces, but many of the busts and statues were damaged. After spending a day in the Vatican’s museums (and after seeing the excellent traveling Pompeii exhibit in Birmingham a few years ago) this little museum was a bit underwhelming. Mustafa, though, was hard at work, though, pointing out the symbols and meanings and words and telling jokes. He used to be a history teacher, he said, and he had that bearing. He’d start a sentence and before he got to the key point he’d stop for half a beat, as if waiting for the class to fill in the blank.

Stopping at the museum first was a good choice. We were one of two buses there when we started. As we left there were more than a dozen buses parked there.

After the museum Mustafa had us taken over to the site of St. John’s Basilica. The church ruins were built in the 6th Century by the Emperor Justinian who believed John — the apostle or the saint or the evangelist — was buried there. There was some agreement that John lived out his last days in that part of the world, and was buried there.

A smaller church had been standing there for some time, but Justinian’s church was massive. If it were reconstructed today it would be the sixth largest cathedral in the world. By the 12th Century the church was in bad shape. It was overrun by the Turks in the 13th Century. A massive earthquake a few decades later, and then Timur’s Mongol army, completely destroyed the church.

The tomb of John.

I made a panorama of the church’s ruins. Click and magnify to get a small sense of the place.

From here you can see almost the entire valley. Mustafa pointed out, by site and by map, the location of all five of the Ephesus locations. The city was moved as the shoreline changed, and as the people tried to avoid disease.

The prayer wall at Mary's house.

Mustafa then took us to the house of Jesus’ mother. This is believed, by some, to be where she lived her final years. John was said to have had the house built here because he was preaching in the area and this was one of the safer non-Christian cities available to them. (Others disagree and believe Mary lived and died in Jerusalem.)

So the story goes that a 19th Century nun had a vision of a location of the house. Her description led a researcher to this spot, but his discovery didn’t gain much attention. The place was subsequently re-discovered a decade later, ruins were uncovered and, in the 1950s, the modern house was built there. A red line on the structure is meant to demonstrate the original building and the new structure.

Since then it has become an important pilgrimage for many. Muslims and Christians alike come here, viewing the place as an important religious destination. There’s a stream running under the house, from which you can drink of the sacred waters. The picture above is a prayer wall just off the spring’s taps.

No pictures are allowed in the house, and my exterior shots were uninspired.

Curetes Street in Ephesus III.

Our next stop was Ephesus III, the most famous of the old cities, and the one best excavated. It starts out a little slow — you see the gymnasium, a few houses, some of the plumbing, a few shops, the hospital and pharmacy ruins — but you go down a hill on Curetes Street and make a little turn and the view above opens up in front of you.

Mustafa, once again, had chosen wisely. There were no other tours there when we began, and we only bumped into one other group during our visit. This from an area that sees thousands of visitors a day.

See that building in the left background? That’s a multi-million dollar structure where the archeologists work. See that building in the center background? You need a closer view.

Celsus Library, one of the great libraries of the ancient world.

This place held 12,000 scrolls. It was built as a monumental tomb for Tiberius Julius Celsus Polemaeanus. He was a consul in Rome, and was in charge of all public buildings. Between 105-107 A.D. he was the proconsul (think governor) of the Asian province, the capital of which was Ephesus.

Mustafa tells the story of how all the great learned men would go to the library. At the time literacy rates were very low and the great learned men were the readers. “Look, there he goes to read another scroll!” People might say.

When they excavated Ephesus III archeologists discovered an underground passage to the brothel that was across the street.

The ampitheater at Ephesus.

The theater sat 25,000 people. Scholars believe the town’s population was 10 times that.

We saw a recreation of a day in Ephesus by some of the locals. The Yankee took my picture with a beautiful Turkish dancer who did not understand the first word I said. Some guys at the little shop next to the ruins tried desperately to sell us things. By then, though, we were hungry. Mustafa’s plan made us late for lunch, but that’s better than fighting crowds.

Crunch.

Our bus driver had an accident. Fortunately no one was hurt, but there we were standing on the side of the road in Turkey, building up this great story about how we had a wreck on our honeymoon. The nearby hotel had a party going on at the time and the guy announcing over the PA system was yelling out something very emphatically. Everyone on our bus, now standing on the side of the road, was left to make up our own translations.

Another bus was sent for us, but not before …

The Yankee hitchhikes her way through Turkey.

When the new bus finally did arrive we were taken to lunch in a Mercedes. We’re moving up in the world.

Lunch was buffet style at a resort hotel where we had both Turkish foods and more generic tastes. Turkish fries, for instance, are not that different than ours. Different oil, less salt, but otherwise the same. Turkish food, meanwhile, is delicious. And the desserts are rich and ridiculous.

Mustafa took us to a rug shop at the end of our tour. We had another great showing of beautiful works.

Another beautiful handmade rug from Turkey.

We also got a mini-demonstration of the technique. It is an incredibly beautiful art form. One, Mustafa said, that is disappearing. We’ve heard that twice now. These rugs were less expensive than the ones we found in Istanbul, but still more than we could afford. The demonstrations, though, are very impressive.

We shopped in the local bazaar, picking up a few more gifts for folks back home. I bought The Yankee something pretty. We had a terrific day. This was a great excursion that exceeded our expectations. I don’t want to oversell it with words, but there are plenty more pictures in the new Ephesus gallery in addition to the ones seen here and that panorama above.

At some point I’ll have some video as well.

Tomorrow: We’re back at sea. Then we’ll visit Athens, Naples and Pompeii. Nice trip, no?

weekend — Comments Off
29
May 10

Another day at Istanbul

On the left, Europe. On the right, Asia.

We left Istanbul this afternoon. We didn’t even get off the Equinox. Istanbul was the stop in which we were the least interested. I blame our traditional western educations. Everything we know about Turkey is about the Ottomans, which stuck around forever and always seemed to be on the periphery of our history classes.

The people were nice, but a little aggressive and I am a tad bit less wary of pickpockets on the ship. So we stayed on board and were both pleased with that decision. We slept in, read, dozed off, had a nice lunch and a generally restive day.

Which makes me think, I should buy an old retired cruise ship and just offer sea days. I do believe they’d be a big hit. No ports, no excursions, just three or four days sailing in a big circle while the passengers do little of nothing. Big hit.

Anyway. We were invited out to the helicopter pad at the bow of the ship. This is an unusual treat, there are signs that emphatically state no passengers allowed, and from there we watched our departure from Istanbul. This is in the Marmara Sea. Istanbul sits on the isthmus that separates the Aegean Sea and the Black Sea, connecting Europe and Asia. This is, has always been and likely always be a strategic part of the world.

Constantinople, the Ottomans, now the Turks (the first member of NATO) and everyone else in Europe or Asia that’s ever invaded the other have all considered this little part of the world. The land isn’t the only key, this has been a strategic area for submarines for almost a century. But even in ancient times, we were told, there are heady days of SCUBA-type, underwater sniper ninjas with blow guns ready to pick off the invaders, should they come.

If anyone knows of a good, comprehensive popular history of the area, let me know. Having seen the layout it becomes far more interesting.

Roy, our waiter.

Roy is our waiter on the ship. He’s a very nice guy from Jamaica. He brings us too much food. If you express the slightest interest in a second dish it magically appears on your table. You learn to keep this information to yourself or you’re going to float home. Tonight he started showing us tricks.

We will amaze and amuse our friends when we get home.

Tomorrow: Kusadasi, Turkey.

Friday / honeymoon / photo — Comments Off
28
May 10

Istanbul, Turkey

The Blue Mosque

I wake up to the sound of this rhythmic thumping. It is so precise, so insistent and inoffensive that my sleepy mind thinks there is a tugboat alongside and he’s having engine problems. So you know your brain has adjusted to shipboard life: Your non-waking brain is rationalizing input in a nautical context and it almost makes sense.

Only I’m not sure anyone would dream of bringing a tugboat alongside the Equinox. They have stabilizing propeller equipment that emerges from the side of the vessel, so it can apparently travel on a 90-degree axis. Why would you need a tugboat for that?

So I go look out to the stateroom’s balcony to see, “Hey, Turkey.” It is a hazy day, but still so incredibly bright as to offend the eyes. The drumming is from a band, decked out in some type of red traditional apparel, welcoming you into the city from the ship. Not too long after I notice them they stop playing and climb onto a van to leave.

So we have breakfast and we leave. We go through the security control of customs, where a hulking man with a submachine gone is waving people through a metal detector even if they set the thing off. We climb onto a bus, where the local tourism official says “This is Istanbul’s busiest weekend of the year.”

Istanbul is a city of 17 million people.

“Formula One is in town this weekend. An international medical conference is taking place. There are several other conventions going on. What should be a 30 minute drive to the drop-off point could take up to 90 minutes.”

It did not take that long, but it was an adventurous drive. You think traffic is bad in Wherever, USA? Visit Istanbul. The roads are overtaxed, the drivers are full of derring do.

So they drop us off next to a jewelry store. Celebrity has partnered with several local, preferred merchants so you can be assured quality and premium mark ups. They drop you off at the jewelry store, tell you “The mosque and museum are is this way, the bazaar is that way. Have fun. Watch out for pickpockets.”

Umm. OK.

We get off the bus and head away from the bazaar. It has more than 4,000 shops and is packed and pushy. I’ve decided to limit my exposure to large crowds like that as much as possible in life, so I’m not missing anything there.

Instead we turn toward the museums. We walk through Gulhane Park, around Topkapi Palace, which was the home of the sultans. Nearby are the Archaeological Museum, the Museum of the Ancient Orient and the Museum of Islamic Art.

We found a bunny that would tell your future. We met a man who said he used to be a philosophy teacher, but who is now selling rugs and leather jackets. And won’t you buy a leather jacket? Pay no attention to it being in the 90s today. He showed us his store and a few nice rugs and tapestries, but he didn’t talk price so we didn’t talk money and excused ourselves to leave.

We headed up to visit the Blue Mosque, above, built in just seven years during the early 17th Century by Ahmed I. It sits on the site of the former Byzantine palace’s ruins. It is an imposing building, with a few more minarets than you normally see. We met a guy who offered to take us into the mosque, which is open for tourists when not in prayers.

Mustafa, our unofficial Istanbul guide.

Mustafa said his son was studying in the U.S., but everyone here says that as they try to build rapport with touring customers. “He is at Yellowstone, is that beautiful?”

Mustafa is not a tour guide, but he offered to walk us through the mosque if we’d only come see his store when we were done. This is a small price to pay, especially when considering the entire line of mosque visitors he skipped. He walked straight up to the door, “My cousin works here. We go right in.” He gives us baggies for our shoes and we go inside.

It is a little dark, but ornate and beautiful. Mustafa tells us about the construction, how the prayer schedule works in this mosque, where the sultan prayed, where the women prayed and about the recent renovations. He brags about some of the recent work and then clucks at other parts. He explains the color scheme. We learned a great deal.

He told us that he sometimes comes here to pray, but he also goes to other mosques. In Turkey, it seems, you don’t belong to a particular mosque. It can be an issue of convenience, or of who’s prayers start faster or run the longest. Some things are the same all over, I suppose.

The 20th Century was one of political, social and religious change in Turkey. During the mid-century reformation a lot of the religious practices were questioned or relaxed. Now, Mustafa says, practicing Muslims are only a percentage of the population. In the second half of the 20th Century there was another re-examination of religion in Turkey and there was a revival of religion within the culture.

Secularist and religious debate continues a very lively debate even today. What we do not talk about with Mustafa is how these movements are beginning to appear in Turkey’s international politics. It would seem … impolite.

The people of Turkey are renowned for their politeness. They are also all salesmen. You can’t walk down the street without being invited into a store to buy … something. After we hear all sorts of neat little trivia about the mosque and surrounding neighborhood — some which may be true and some which is surely just made up to be a good story — we do as promised and visit Mustafa’s store. He drops us off with his “cousin” and disappears, probably to find more Americans.

So we sit in the show room of a traditional Turkish rug store. The walls are covered with hanging rugs. There are benches surrounding the walls, with the big empty space in the middle where the show takes place. A salt-and-pepper gentleman with an easy smile sits down and offers us a beverage. This is the show of Turkish hospitality, the offering of tea or coffee, and to turn them down is an insult. So we accept a tea.

He asks where we are from, asks if country music still exists. He says he likes country music. He is the most polished foreigner I’ve ever seen when it comes to relating to and imitating Americans. I suspect he was educated on the east coast. He later said he had family in the Carolinas and Virginia.

He promises a no-hassle presentation and he delivers. Two of his employees beginning rolling out rugs. They are beautiful work, done in various wools and up to silk. They are hand-made, we learn. Usually by a woman. “Because men usually don’t have the patience for this.” And always by one person because the tying of knots is key to the symmetry of design and if two people tugged differently at the material it would ruin the appearance.

We learn it takes up to 18 months to make one rug. He shows us the famous flying rugs of Turkey. This one started out blue with red and white accents. He picks up a silk rug the size of your coffee table and flips it in the air with one smooth motion. When it lands it has rotated 180 degrees and is now white with blue and red accents. I could watch him do that all day.

The handmade, silk rugs that change color and are the size of your coffee table, he says, contain one million knots per inch. That’s what he said.

Who counts those? I ask.

“We do,” he says.

That same rug starts at $6,000. That includes customs, taxes and shipping. You buy it, it will show up at your door at home.

Now, nothing in Turkey costs what they say it does. We’ve been told that you can typically get everything down to about half the asking price. Even still, we can’t buy a $3,000 rug.

But they were beautiful.

The lower end of the wool rugs start around $600. They are very handsome, but after you’ve seen the silk ones you aren’t really interested in the wool anymore.

We learn more about the rugs. The art is dying, he says. It sounds like the industrial revolution. The rural women who make the rugs are being replaced by younger women who’d rather be in the cities and not making one rug for more than a year “for peanuts.” Which was the only part of the polished presentation that was in error. As soon as he says she makes nothing and you tell me the price I begin to think of the mark-ups.

So after we visit for a while we thank them for the show and the tea (something like a warm apple cider which actually works on a hot summer day) and leave, without having purchased a rug.

We make our way back to the jewelry store which is the cruise ship’s pick up point and decide to look at jewelry. Only this is a real jewelry store and not some place that sells a few pieces among the art and kitsch. The Yankee is picking out several things of interest and the jewelry store people are very happy with her. She has no idea of the price. And then she says “I like sapphires.”

So we go to the sapphire room.

On the way a guy that worked there asked me if I was from Birmingham.

How did you know?

I was wearing an interlocking AU shirt.

“You have on a UA, University of Alabama.”

Close, I said, explaining the AU and UA difference.

“Oh, Auburn. Go Tigers!”

I’m counting it as our third Auburn experience during the trip. (In addition to meeting a lady in Rome, someone on our ship has an old co-worker who graduated in the 1940s who “talks about Auburn all the time.”) That guy should watch less Sportscenter.

Meanwhile, the person who thinks she’s about to make her next four car payments on whatever she’s selling to The Yankee finally starts talking about price. These things aren’t in our budget, but bless ‘em, they tried to find something she could buy.

Kentucky Fried in Turkey

On our way back to the ship in the bus we almost lost our lives a minimum of three times. We almost rear-ended a cab at speed and played chicken with three other taxis. We almost ran over an elderly couple. We passed many people selling their wares in the road at red lights. People would be arrested in the U.S. for doing things we’ve done here today. How people don’t die on these roads every day is a mystery.

In Rome, traffic signs and lights are a suggestion. In Turkey these things are decoration.

But we made it back safely, somehow. We had dinner. The ship is staying overnight in Istanbul, so we went up to the top deck of the ship and made nighttime pictures of the skyline. You can find the pictures from the day here and the nighttime photographs are in the growing cruise ship collection.

To see Rome look here, here and here. Also, be sure to check out Santorini and Mykonos. We still have more days on the high seas, another day of Istanbul and Athens to go!

Thursday / honeymoon / photo — Comments Off
27
May 10

Mykonos, Greece

The Yankee in Mykonos, Greece.

We were in Mykonos, Greece today. The cruise ship arrived this morning and departed mid-afternoon. This is another place you’d like to visit a little bit longer.

There are just under 10,000 people in the island’s main town. The economy is centered on tourism. It is beautiful. Everything is bright white with blue or red trim. The streets are all old stone, maybe ship ballast, or dug from an offending hillside somewhere nearby. They are narrow, curvy and confusing. They were designed to throw off pirates.

The windmills of Mykonos.

The windmills are the famous image for this area. There are a handful left, they were once used to grind up wheat for the locals, though they are no longer operational.

We are here to shop. That, I think after only my second cruise stop, is the entire purpose of the enterprise. The cruise company is in collusion with the port towns and villages to get you there for shopping under the guise of sailing in luxury.

Not that anyone minds, clearly.

So we started working toward crossing everyone off the souvenir list. I picked up something for my mother. We got a few tiny things for others. We walked through the town, stopped in the chapels, looked at the restaurant offering today’s special: sun-dried octopus.

Right out front they had them hanging on a rope on a boat, fresh as a squid, drying in the sun, can be.

We demurred.

We checked out the windmills, watched the tide come in and walked around. We decided to retire here.

If, you know, Greece is still here by then.

Greece is in a great deal of financial difficulty just now (See that, rest of the world? Any of us could be next.) Germany and others in the European Union have bailed them out for a time. This happened just before our trip, incidentally. We’ve visited parts of three countries in the EU since then and have watched the Euro fall each day.

So if Greece is still here in 30 or 40 years, this place is a candidate. Athens may feel different, we’ll be there in a few days, but Mykonos is as isolated, idyllic and unaffected as you can imagine. Or at least that’s the impression you get from walking around in a place for six hours amongst people determined to find just the right thing for the aunt they really don’t want to visit when they get back home. That’s the impression you get while watching octopus skin glisten, wondering Just how long does it take to one of those things sun-dry?

We walked along the beaches, picking up sea glass. The Yankee and her mother collect it. She found some blue pieces which, I’m told, are especially tough to find. The locals just looked on and laughed.

“Silly Americans. Cleaning our beaches.”

I also picked up a few rocks. I’m going to put them on a potted plant’s soil one day, maybe a jade tree. Those, I’ll say, are my little piece of Greece.

Here are a few more pieces, in the form of today’s pictures. Just 17 in that gallery, but that puts us well over 200 published photos for the trip. Here we are at sea. We spent a few days in Rome, you can see those here, here and here.

There are a few videos below, and cross-posted to the A/V page. I have one planned for yesterday and one for today, but it’ll be a few days before I produce them. There’s a panorama of Rome and also a panorama of Santorini.

Not too bad, so far as content goes. Tomorrow we’re in Istanbul. I’ll try to come up with something in the day’s adventures for you to enjoy. We’re enjoying it. This is a great trip. Take it if you can. Or, just send us again.