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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.

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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?

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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!

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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.

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26
May 10

Hiking a volcano, swimming in the Aegean

Santorini, Greece

The Equinox found her way to Santorini this morning. There’s no port here, but tenders — smaller vessels — come out to pick up the cruising crowd.

It was an overcast day, for the most part, which is a shame because this is a beautiful area.

There were a few excursions for those interested in leaving the ship. We chose the most extreme one, mostly, I think, because we’re afraid of thinking of ourselves as wimps.

"This is a serious disembarkation pro-cess."

Before you could leave, though, you must visit the 1115-seat Equinox Theater. Cesar is in control there. You present your excursion tickets, they give you a number and Cesar calls out the number when your tender is here.

He entertains with jokes and tries to get people to sing. He makes sure you have your smile. “They are doing smile inspections on the gangway.”

And then he calls out numbers. “Groups Number 16 and 17, have a nice day.”

He repeats it a few times. And then he pauses. He tells a joke, or works some dialog with someone in the theater. Then he says “If you are in group number 16 or 17 and you are still here you must ask yourself … ‘Why?'”

I instantly decided that will be what I say if anyone ever gets upset with me about their own shortcomings.

So Cesar sends us on our way. We climb aboard the tender and I can show you my first picture of our home on the high seas (which are incredibly calm):

The Celebrity Equinox

I can see our stateroom from here!

So we putter on over to the volcano. Santorini was once a large island. About 3,500 years ago the volcano erupted — believed to be one of the world’s largest — and blew the island into several islands. The ship is sitting in the caldera which was filled with the ensuing tsunami.

This is our first active volcano.

The volcano is still active. It erupted three times in the 20th Century, most recently in 1950. The landscape is rocky and generally barren. There are a few scrub grasses and a few flowers. Rabbits scurry around, though we don’t see any. Lizards are the dominant creatures here, and they are hiding under the rocks.

You hike up the rocky path to the highest point on the island, you pass two volcanic craters to get there. In a few places you can see the sulfur stains on the rocks. In other places this is just a barren landscape. Near the peak there are a few vents accessible to visitors. You can smell the sulfur, see the steam and feel the heat rising out of the earth.

Active volcano.

We also swam in the warm springs trickling into the Aegean Sea. My night ended by adding “Swim off of a Greek isle” to the list of cool experiences.

Our guide suggested that after you swim up to the source of the warm springs that you should rub some of the mud on your skin, “Gentlemen your wives won’t know who you are when you get back on the ship.”

That’s because you’re rubbing sulfur mud on yourself. And you stink, badly. The wetnap “for refreshment” she offered did not help very much.

Here I must point out that the excursion literature said “Swim in the hot springs!” The guide said, twice “And when we go to the hot springs, or I should say, the warm springs … ” And then she tells you the water temperatures. You dive into the cold water, about 55-degrees, and then swim your shivering self to the springs which are about 70-degrees, warm by comparison only.

Shivering, smelling of sulfur and trying to get dry we putter on over to the village of Santorini.

Santorini, Greece

Most of the town, which is driven by tourism, is high up the hillside. There are three ways up: walking the 500-plus steps, cable car or riding a donkey up the 500-plus steps. We’ve already swam on a Greek isle, so here’s another opportunity for an unusual experience. We took the donkeys.

Which are really just wild-eyed, crazed death mammals. There are stirrups, but no reins. You aren’t steering anything. The donkeys know where they are going and they don’t care about the pedestrians that are in their way. The people walking, though, are very displeased with you. You’re holding on for dear life though, and all you can do is look back, toss a hasty “Sorry!” (You realize the futility of explaining pretty quickly) and then turn to re-grip your tenuous hold.

The Yankee and I ascended with three ladies who have never been in a saddle. This was a traumatic experience for them. After the donkey driver started whipping my ride I decided we weren’t riding back down. For entirely different reasons The Yankee had already decided she’d find a new way down. If the return trip was as chaotic as the journey up this would prove a very wise decision.

So we shopped. Found a few things for us, found a few gifts, met a few nice people, including an Australian who found her way to live and work in Greece. How? “My husband.”

We walked around, seeing the sites and wishing we had more time here. The only real schedule on this ship is “Be back before we depart, because we will leave you.” So we have to be aware of the time. Everyone here is, because there are two cruise ships here and we have three ways to get back down to the water.The cable car line, we later learned, was more than an hour wait. (And not for the faint of heart, we heard.) The walk was a good choice.

And they look like this:

There are lots of stairs.

So your ankles and knees hate you. And you realize, about halfway down, the long, irregularly spaced path of switchbacks, that going down 500 steps can take a while.

But we made it. We were the last ones off the island. Or we might have been. Who is to say? You begin to perceive people and time differently in this environment. There is only what is in front of you. It becomes implausible that a person is standing to the side. It is impossible that anyone could exist behind you. This is what it is like when people turn their brains off. You make the meals — and, because it is a cruise ship there is a shameful amount of food available — and that’s about it. The food, in fact, is the only difference between vacationers and a desperate mob heedless of all else happening around it.

Not to sound grim, but food choices are tough, taking up all the mental power any of us packed. (There are many people here mystified by the purpose of the glowing arrows prominently on display at the elevators.)

Have you ever seen a sunset over Greece?

Sunset over Santorini, Greece

The day’s pictures are here. Would you like to see a hasty panorama from Santorini? Try here.

Here we are at sea. And there are lots of pictures from Rome: Day One, Day Two, Day Three. I’ve published almost 200 from this trip already. I’ll have a video from the day at some point, but that will probably take a while.

Tomorrow: Mykonos, Greece.