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honeymoon

honeymoon / photo / Thursday — Comments Off
3
Jun 10

Naples, Italy

Mt. Vesuvius - Normally the clouds are above me.

Off the boat and into Naples. We’re on a bus. The last time that happened, in Turkey, we had a bus wreck. We are two with locals who are giving us a ride to Mt. Vesuvius and then a tour of Pompeii. One of the guys is aiming for a Beckham look. He’s wearing jeans and a suit coat, with a few loud pieces of gold. He’s driving the bus. The guide is wearing his hair a little long in the back, a near beard, some unfortunate sunglasses, a baseball cap and a jacket.

While it isn’t especially hot — it did make the mid 70s today — it is June. It is an unfortunate choice, this jacket. It is white vinyl.

But he is a nice, soft spoken guy. Very funny. They took us first to a little place in Naples where they make cameos from conch shells. They are handmade, an elegant and traditional Italian piece of jewelry. No one is sure why we’ve stopped there, though, and we’re all ready to get on the road for Vesuvius. We walk around with mild curiosity and then take advantage of the restrooms. We’ve been forewarned that the facilities at Vesuvius are dirty and of poor quality. Europe really has to get it together on this one.

So we move on to Vesuvius. We go up what he calls the Mama Mia Road. It is steep, narrow and full of switchbacks and blind turns. When another bus comes down the mountain toward us he says “Everybody breath in, maybe we’ll make it. Mama mia.”

You drive most of the way up the mountain. At a certain point the bus runs out of road and you’re on your own for the last 200 vertical meters or so. The path winds around the mountain, so the walk is a good one.

Your Vesuvius walking stick.

After you hand over the tickets and make it inside the hiking part of the trip an old couple give you walking sticks. Our handsome, vinyl jacketed friend has stayed behind. He’s made this walk before and knows better, it seems. We picked up a new guide at the top of the mountain. He told us about the last eruption, during World War II. That was just a flow (from the hike up the mountain you can see the remnants of that eruption, it looks like an unfinished road) and no one was injured, but a more serious eruption in 1906 killed 100 people.

Seismologists, he said, expect the next eruption to be a violent one. Three million people live in the shadows of the volcano.

We took a lot of pictures.

We threw her in to appease the volcano.

I have three hastily assembled panoramas. The ascent. The crater rim. The city below. Click each and magnify.

We had to be back down the mountain by a specific time so the bus didn’t leave us behind. I had to run down the mountain to keep up. At the bottom the old couple were collecting their walking sticks. Sitting at an angle you couldn’t see while walking up there was a sign requesting a tip for the walking stick. Because we are honeymooning, and I’ve learned the role society has assigned to me, I had no money on this particular hike. The old Italian man didn’t speak English, and I couldn’t say “My wife has my money,” in his language.

I did understand what he said in reply, though. (My god-parents-in law are Italian.)

So I’m laughing as I make the bottom of the descent. I tell this to The Yankee, who says the old woman tried to get money from her. As The Yankee reached for her cash the old woman hit her camera with the stick. She said “No” and walked away. That’s some restraint; I would have thrown the stick down the side of the mountain.

Our tour guide in Pompeii, nice jacket.

Our guide says they’ve uncovered about 70 percent of Pompeii. They started excavating before the United States was a country. To see it all, he says, would take about 16 hours. In our two-and-a-half hours he gave us the highlights, including this temple. These columns were brick which were intended to be covered. There were no toppled columns or debris found in the excavation, so archeologists says this temple was still being built when Vesuvius erupted.

Life was very much in progress here. Our guide rattled off the food inventory of one of the bakeries we visited. So well preserved was the city that we apparently know how many chickens were inside. Or our guide has an easy, believable yarn.

Vesuvius from Pompeii.

We had another War Eagle Moment. This being, by the numbers, the biggest one I’ve ever had. I was taking pictures in the House of the Faun, the largest private residence in Pompeii, when a few girls said hello. They were traveling Europe. One of them, it turns out, may be one of The Yankee’s students one day. It was pretty cool.

War Eagle, ladies.

I count 18 of them, all in the perfect group pose. And notice the Faun in the bottom of the frame. That is a replica. The original decorated the impluvium, a basin for catching rainwater, is in a local museum alongside many of the other famous pieces of art from the house. The famous mosaic of Alexander the Great on display in the home is also a replica. But they replicated the damage, too, so at least there’s that.

There was an exhibit from Pompeii a few years ago at the Birmingham Museum of Art. People don’t often think of it, but that museum is top notch and was one of only two places the exhibit toured in the United States. So impressive was the exhibit, we saw it two or three times. Even still, Pompeii is an incredible place. It was a bustling hub of travel and trade before the volcano, sat hidden and forgotten for centuries and is now host to more than 2.5 million visitors a year. Today it felt almost peaceful.

Want to see more of Vesuvius and Pompeii? Here’s the gallery.

This is our last night on the ship. After we packed our bags and We sat on the veranda of our stateroom and watched the ocean slide by. In the morning we’ll have breakfast and sadly get off the ship for the last time. It has been an incredible cruise and a near perfect honeymoon (did I mention we had another minor bus wreck on the way down Mama Mia Road today?).

But it isn’t over yet. We still have more fun in Rome!

honeymoon / Wednesday — Comments Off
2
Jun 10

Sea Day

The Yankee came back from a spa program today happily pointing out how lucky we are. There’s one more stop on our cruise and then the ship returns to it’s home port. We’ll all get off, people will start making their way back home or wherever they have to go next. The cruise itself is a 11-day embarrassment of extravagance, but we all know it is coming to an end.

Some people are already thinking about, and dreading, going back to work on Monday.

But we don’t have to. We’ll be traveling home by then, but we won’t be at work.

In a related story, summer breaks are wonderful.

Since we are traveling between Athens and Naples today this is a day of shipboard activities. I went to two glass shows. I like glass shows, always have been mesmerized by them, even as a child. They have a three-person team on board, a full studio on the topside deck, all electric set up, very fancy. They talk about how it takes 10 years just to learn how to do this with any degree of competency. They talk about how you have to enjoy the process rather than the finished product, especially in those early years where you break more than you make.

And then they just whip up something like they were pulling together a few snacks. It is a great show. Over the course of the trip we’ve also seen a musical, there have been other shows, opportunities to learn a half-dozen dances, karaoke, trivia, putting challenges, bocce tournaments, lectures, bingo (they are wild about their bingo for some reason) and a Newlywed game.

We entered, but did not get picked. They call theirs the Newlywed and Not-So-Newlywed Game. They had four couples, one married two weeks, another married two months, one married 29 years and another married 51 years. Oddly enough the newest of the newlyweds won.

There was also a Liar’s Club game, which could have been better, but it made for a low-key evening performance. I mentioned the library and the spa. There’s an impressive weight room, a lawn on the top deck, a computer lab, more restaurants than I can name. There’s a basketball court and a mini soccer goal, too. The ship is ridiculous.

Tonight there was a Jersey Boys show, and a Cirque de Soleil-type performance. I took some pictures, which can be found on the cruise ship page. Breaking up the pictures turned out to be a good idea, no? I’ve so far uploaded 344 pictures — not counting a slideshow and three panoramas — from the trip. We still have another day in Rome to go and our excursion tomorrow as well. We’ll be in Naples and visiting Mt. Vesuvius and Pompeii.

We couldn’t have taken this trip right after we got married last year for a few reasons — mostly because I had to be back in school — but the wait has been well worth it given all that we’ve seen and done.

And, to top it off, we don’t even have to go back to work on Monday!

honeymoon / photo / Tuesday — Comments Off
1
Jun 10

Athens, Greece

Greece has seen better days; the bank is pretty humble, too.

We did not sign on for an excursion for our stop in Athens. Reading the descriptions of the offerings there seemed to be no complete tour that would satisfy. We decided, we’ll go it on our own — the cruise equivalent of roughing it.

So we leave the ship. You take a little shuttle to leave the port. You turn left and walk for about 20 minutes to the train.It gives you a sense of downtown Athens, which feels like it has been covered with a sheen of dust and everyone forgot to clean it 30 years ago. Rome, Athens and Istanbul all give off this vibe, at least in parts. They all feel like places that could have used a facelift in the Nixon era.

Greece is having financial troubles that are shaking the very flimsy foundations of the European Union, but in Athens you’ll find the nicest subway terminals you’ve ever seen. At the other end of our little train ride we exited into a little neighborhood beneath our goal.

After a (long) hike up the hill, and a wrong turn based on some bad advice, we made our way to the front gates of the Acropolis.

We were in a very long line.

There were a lot of people there. It seems our good fortune of missing the crowds had finally caught up with us. But the line moved quickly enough. Within a few minutes were out of the line, in the Acropolis and free to move about as we pleased. Of course everyone starts in the same place, the building that dominates the hill and our imaginations.

The Parthenon, Athens, Greece.

It is a curious thing. You read and study about these people and this place and time in history for forever in school. If you pay even a little attention in your regular comings and goings of life you’ll find references or allusions to the Greek influence on our contemporary world. You’ve tried to imagine what it was like, how they lived and struggled and excelled and loved. And now, suddenly, you’re here.

I’m not especially good at visualizing those things. I’d like to be, but my mind’s eye can only conjure up the ruins, or some anonymous artists’ representation of the ancients. There are many questions and, for me, just as many distressed columns. You can see the great scale and hints of the grandeur. The setting is beautiful in it’s aged austerity, but it is hard to conceive what these buildings were like in their prime.

Instead I wonder how the ancient Greeks could build the thing in nine years, but with all of our technology the current restorations have been ongoing for almost two decades — and repair programs have been carried out here several times over the last two centuries. This could be the problem:

Slow progress, there's only one guy working today.

Across from the Parthenon there is the lesser known Erechtheum, which was built between 421 and 407 BC, as a shrine to the Greek hero Erichthonius.

The Erechtheum is the temple on the northern end of the Acropolis.

We also visited the Roman Agora, which was located where the Greek markets had previously stood. We visited the Temple of Hephaistos, which is perhaps the best preserved Greek temple. We walked through a little museum, bought souvenirs for family, enjoyed a gelato and saw the massive Temple of Zeus.

The Temple of Olympian Zeus, with The Yankee offering perspective.

That’s just a massive place. There were originally 104 columns, 16 of which survived into the 19th Century. A storm knocked one over then and it has been resting in pieces as it fell ever since, which is just a blip for a site where construction started 2,500 years ago.

Notice the entasis design in the columns, there’s a place where you can stand within arm’s reach of one of the fallen columns. If you put your next to the column, stretching your fingers wide, your hand will fit within the convex curve.

There are a few areas where it is obvious that excavation is still being conducted. (When the money is available that is, meaning, perhaps, not for some time in Athens’ future.) Given the size and the history — the Greeks, the Romans, the Turks, all right here — you can only wonder at what else is waiting to be discovered.

We caught the train back, including a terminal switch, which is always an adventure when you can’t read the maps.

We’d watched, with a wary eye, the news about the unrest in Athens this spring. In our daily newsletter on the ship there was a note from the captain about this stop. There were no demonstrations planned, it said, but you never know. He urged caution in crowded spaces, noting that even peaceful crowds can grow agitated. I’ve covered a few strikes and protests, including a crowd or two that have been gassed, but that was when I was younger and more single.

These days, now that I’m more married, I’ve no desire to steer us into any thing that could be a problem. Fortunately the city was calm and restive today. We were typically surrounded by tourists, but the locals all seemed to be in fair spirits. What we saw of Athens — and everything we’ve seen in Greece after three stops — have been worth bragging about. The people generally keep to themselves, but when you meet them they all prove to be very warm.

With all that’s going on here it isn’t unreasonable to think that by your next visit the country may be drastically different, but perhaps not. Any place with this much history is capable of adapting and overcoming the current difficulties. You want things to work out for the Greeks. The changes that will come, economically and perhaps politically, will be tough, but their going to be a bellwether for a lot of countries in the near future.

Tourism will always be a big key here, for obvious and picturesque reasons. So, if you’re planning a trip, this is a nice one to take. And until you make it here yourself, I’ve got pictures and, coming soon, video of the things we’ve seen in Greece. Though I can say this: the better part of three days we’ve enjoyed here aren’t enough.

Tomorrow: We spend the day on the water.

honeymoon / Monday — 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.

He 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?