Mediterranean Cruise Part 2

Greek Isles
We stopped in Santorini, then Mykanos, then Corfu, and I have to say the Greek Isles were a lot dryer and more brown than I thought they would be. Matt said if you took away the ocean and the cute white and blue houses it would pretty much look like Nevada. Santorini is on top of a huge cliff so we rode donkeys to get there because there are no roads. They have a cable car that some people took, but riding the donkey was really cool.  Is it weird that it wasn't my first time riding a donkey? We rode them in Petra, Jordan too.  I got the smallest donkey and half way up he pretty much stopped.  But don't worry, he just had to pee, then he went up the rest of the hill great. And don't worry, I lifted up my feet just in case! Ewww. Corfu by far had the best beaches, and it was actually pretty green and the water was beautiful.

Athens and Olympia
I didn't realize how high the Acropolis is above the city of Athens. It is pretty cool looking. I can't believe the Parthenon was in tact until WWII when it was used to house ammunitions and got blown up, how sad! It had a complete roof and everything. We went to the Agora, which is their ancient forum and the whole area is really cool.

One of the best things about Greece is the amazing food. We had an epic lunch in Athens, shish kabobs, amazing yogurt sauce, fried zucchini, it was so good.  I have to say that I really don't like Italian food in Italy.  The portions are small, it’s expensive, the pizza crust is very thin, they put next to no sauce and less cheese.  The panini's are good, but the only ones I liked were tomato and mozzarella, and you can only eat those so much. The other ones were mostly made with prosciutto, which I hate. I tried a Chicken artichoke dish and it looked liked mashed up green stuff on weird chicken, it was gross. The saving grace was the amazing Gelato. I really had just Gelato for two lunches. Matt and I think that besides French food and Greek food, America takes any food and makes it better.  Olympia was pretty cool, but I thought there would be a little more to the ruins.  The place where they had the stadium was kind of cool , but it was a dirt field with hills on the side, when I was imagining a theater-like building.  I think most of us know that the Olympians competed in the nude, but what you may not know is that the crowd watching also was in the nude.  Apparently only men could watch the other man Olympians competing, but they one of the Mothers of the competitor snuck in so they made a rule that the crowd have to be naked.

Turkey - Ephesus
Ephesus was really cool.  It was so cool to stand where Paul would have preached in the stadium and walk the streets of the center of Christianity after Christ. We were also able to go to the cave of Saint Paul which is above Ephesus where there are frescos of Paul dating to the 1st century.  It isn't open to the public, but our guide hooked us up so it was pretty cool. The temple of Artemus was really cool too and very well preserved.

Turkey - Cappadocia
This was probably the most interesting stop on the trip. It is an area where there is sandstone rock, but it is capped with basalt so the top stays in tact and the sandstone can be carved into caves.  It is where some of the early Christians hid from persecutors and people later hid from invasions. They not only have caves, but complete underground systems with different connected caverns, ventilation and wells for water.  The tunnels between the little rooms are only about three and a half feet tall so that big stones could be rolled to block the passages from intruders.  It was a really cool area.  There are so many caves that now they have been turned into businesses and hotels.  Matt and I stayed in a cave hotel room, which was pretty cool, but the air was a little stale in the middle of the night even with the window in the front room open.

Turkey - Istanbul
Istanbul is really cool because it has European influence and also Middle Eastern influence. Some parts look European, but then there are tons of mosques throughout the city and women wearing burkas. We went to the Topkapi Palace, which has Arabic writing, intricate tile work, a harem, and just really cool designs.  It was nice to see a palace that wasn't European Baroque style. We also saw the Dolmabache Palace, which was the biggest palace I had ever seen and it was so expensively decorated, even though the country had to borrow the money to fund it. They had an entire staircase where each banister was made of crystal, 2 ton crystal chandeliers, and a huge dome room, it looked like a cathedral. Can you imagine borrowing money to build a crazy ornate palace when your country wasn't even that rich? The sultans were jerks, for more than that reason.  I about gagged when you heard that the Ottoman Sultans were all huge, over 300-350 pounds with a harem of hundreds of women. Gross! We toured their huge beds and it was sick. Matt was appalled himself, but also kind of laughing at how disgusted I was.

The Hagia Sophia Mosque is really cool. I love how it is dark and parts of it are peeling, then it has Arabic writing, I just like seeing architecture and designs that don't look European and all the same. It is crazy how far the European style went if you think about America, St. Petersburg, Istanbul. I am grouping European as Romanesque, Renaissance and Baroque, but you know what I mean. They said the Hagia Sophia was early Byzantine architecture so it is European, and I save seen Byzantine stuff before, but I guess it was more how the interior had dark colors and a middle eastern feel that was cool.

I have to say that Turkish people were a little rude. They were pushing and always butting in line, even if it wasn't a crowded line. Taxi drivers were always trying to screw us over and we had to sit in a taxi for ten minutes arguing with one guy because he said we gave him a 50 when we gave him a 100.  He finally gave us the right change. The other cool thing was the Grand Bazaar.  It is enormous, I swear you could get lost. I really want to come back and buy a sick Turkish rug, they were pretty amazing.

All in all it was a really good trip.  There are pros and cons to a cruise cause I get motion sick, cruises are hokey, and you don't get to spend time in the cities at night and eat dinners, or sit and watch the sun go down, but then you don't have to spend time traveling and hauling bags and checking into hotels.  It is a good way to see a lot of places to know where you want to go back and spend some real time.