TURKEY: [Sinop] [Bodrum] [Istanbul: Basilica Cistern] [Istanbul: Topkapi] [Istanbul: Haigha Sophia]
GREECE: [Limnos] [Meteora] [Thira] [Athens: Acropolis and Plaka] [Acropolis Museum Highlights]
We set out to find and climb the city's old walls. They were not as scenic as the walls in Lucca, but they were nice enough. We even found an open-air bar/cafe at the top of one section! The owner was kind enough to let us wander through his establishment and peer over the crenelations toward the Black Sea.
We then descended again and tried to follow the ruined walls to the castle itself. For some reason, we decided to climb up a slightly creepy section where the steps were completely overgrown with grasses and weeds. (I kept thinking about ticks, and was grateful that I was wearing long pants.) There were no signs welcoming us, but no gates to bar us, so we entered a dark and crumbling building. The floor of the second floor did not inspire confidence and was bedecked with trash and discarded clothing. We kept going (past a sign for a non-existent cafe) and reached the roof where we found a non-functional clock tower. On the way back down, we noticed some additional items that may have been drug paraphernalia.
We decided to try something a little different, and headed back down toward the water. We never did find the promised castle, but we found a Turkish prison. Unfortunately, it was hard to know what we were seeing (beyond the super-obvious) because all the signs were in Turkish.
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| The shipboard accommodations were not all that we expected them to be! |
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| The folks here were recycling long before it was cool! Here, you can see bits of column capitals and cross-sections of the columns themselves set into the wall. |
Where the Roman poet Ovid was banished to Constanţa (and was there immortalized in statuary), the philosopher Diogenes was banished from Sinop.
According to one account, Diogenes was "the son of Tresius, a rich money-changer. It is likely that he was exiled from Sinope for adulterating the coins his father minted with base metals, and made his way to Athens with a slave named Manes, who abandoned him shortly thereafter. He lived as a beggar in the streets of Athens, living semi-naked in a tub by the temple of Cybele, making a virtue of his extreme poverty."
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| Diogenes the Cynic - more fun than a barrel of monkeys! |
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| A sailboat mural |
Each day, my fourteen companions and I split up into smaller groups based on interests and affinities, but we always reunited for Cocktail Hour before dinner. The five kids in our party -- slaves to routine -- typically indulged in strawberry daiquiris poolside in the afternoon, and shirley temples at Cocktail Hour. They insisted on three (3) maraschino cherries with their evening drink. Although the kids ranged from ages 7 to 17, they bonded over Minecraft and other games. Fortunately, they're a far more photogenic bunch than the standard "gamer" stereotype might suggest:
Based on the kids' invariable pattern and practice, you'd think (perhaps) that the kids would all end up consuming a similar number of cherries. Alas, that was not to be! There came a day when Ethan accidentally missed his daily allotment of the surreal candied fruit, and his mom asked for a bowl of them so he wouldn't feel left out. She imagined a bowl the size of a teacup. The crew imagined a bowl the size of a soup tureen. So Ethan ended up with his own private supply, which lasted the entire voyage. Red Dye #40 seems to agree with everyone though, so I'm not worried.
Black Sea Navigation: BULGARIA: [Nesebar] [Varna] ROMANIA: [Constanţa]
TURKEY: [Sinop] [Bodrum] [Istanbul: Basilica Cistern] [Istanbul: Topkapi] [Istanbul: Haigha Sophia]
GREECE: [Limnos] [Meteora] [Thira] [Athens: Acropolis and Plaka] [Acropolis Museum Highlights]
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