Greek Islands 2

After Steph left to return home, I flew to Rome to catch cruise #2. Nothing to report on Rome, because if you go directly from the airport to the port (which is some distance away), you bypass the city of Rome altogether. The first stop on this cruise was the city of Messina, on the Italian island of Sicily. It's just off the toe of Italy's boot shape.

I walked in to the city just a ways, savoring the feel of an Italian city.

I didn't really get what this sculpture was about, but it was pretty interesting ...

... as were these gigantic horses and riders. Strange, but maybe there's a good story behind it.

After a day at sea, our next stop was the ruins of Ephesus, on the coast of Turkey. Ephesus was first an ancient Greek city, and later the 2nd largest city in the Roman empire (well, actually the world, in the first century AD). Our first stop before going to the ruins was to a house where Mary is believed to have lived at one point.

There is a spring next to the house, and so it is believed that Mary would have drank out of it; therefore, it is now considered holy water. We were given small clay pots in order to be able to take a small amount of this holy water home with us.

The ruins of Ephesus

The large building on the left is the Library of Celcus.

Sorry to be adolescent, but I thought these public "toilets" were amusing. Glad I didn't live in those times!

I love love love funny signs, and I thought this one was pretty amusing.

The following day we arrived in Athens. The last time I was here (2002), I thought it was just a big, dirty city with a few amazing ruins. I guess because of the Olympic games held in the meantime, they put a lot of effort into cleaning up the city. It looked a lot better. Here I am at the Olympic stadium. This is basically a rebuild of the original structure, using the same location, size and materials. The whole thing was barricaded so you couldn't actually go into it.

Going to the Acropolis ... what can I say except that there were an amazing number of people with the same plan, and the site isn't exactly set up to accommodate the crowds. It's not bad once you get to the top, but getting there is a bit of a trial.

It's amazing that it has withstood so much ... time, earthquakes, war.

The ruins are surrounded on all sides by the modern city of Athens.

We also stopped at Crete on this cruise, but I didn't bother taking pictures since we had just been there a few days before. :-)

A special treat that I had on this cruise was an invitation to dine with the Captain of the ship ...

... and to have a tour of the bridge. It's amazing what goes into driving a big boat!