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Freedom in the Mediterranean….Anchors Aweigh! Away? A-weigh? Well, We’re Off!

The one with the phone…

Part 9 (Santorini, Greece) – Cruising Venice, The Greek Isles, and the Eastern Mediterranean

October 4, 2016 Rachel Harrington2 Comments

Santorini. The most picturesque of all the Greek Isles, as I had been told over and over again by friends and family that had been there and loved it. I will admit, my expectations were high heading into our third and final tour with The Travel Insiders. We chose a tour called, “The Highlights of Santorini – The Black Pearl of the Aegean.”

This was our only tender port so I did have a little heartburn about getting off the ship and up the cable cars by our tour’s assigned meeting time…I am a little, teensy bit OCD about being on time so I tend to get really crabby when I am late.

We did eventually get off the ship and to our meeting spot and we were about 10 minutes late…this means that I was almost in hives stressing about it, but I tried not to be too crabby!!! (That only worked for part of the day!)

We got our tickets for the ride up the cliffside and hopped on the cable cars. My mother is terrified of these things so I am pretty sure she kept her eyes closed the entire time, but if she hadn’t, she would have seen a pretty steep ride up the side of a volcano.

Okay, it’s a little steep…but a quick 5 minutes and you are up to the top where you now realize that you are standing on the rim of a volcano. From the town of Fira you can really see how the cone of the volcano used to look and you realize that your ship is parked right in the middle. I know a bunch of really smart science and geology people have proven this volcano to be dead, but there is a minute when you look around at the throng of tourists and wonder which one you will toss over the side of the cliff in case an emergency sacrifice becomes necessary.

We met our tour guide and she walked us around Fira showing us some lovely views and giving us the history of the caldera and how the island came to be so popular. We wound through very crowded streets to get to our coach that would take us to Oia.

After a bit of a harrowing ride along sheer cliff walls, we arrived in picturesque Oia. This is what everyone thinks of when they think of Santorini. This is the white washed buildings with the blue domes, this is the endless vistas over the caldera, this is beautiful.

In case you were wondering, yes I did notice the For Sale sign and yes, I do have that number written down!

Once in Oia, we were given plenty of free time to walk around, shop if we wanted and of course take pictures!

You can see how incredibly close to the sheer dropoff these houses were built. I know quite a few Greek nationals and I promise you, many of them are a schosh crazy…seeing how close to death these folks choose to live? I get it a little bit!

This may, in part also explain the abundance of churches for such a small island, between the cliffs and the volcano, I could certainly see wanting to stay on good terms with the Almighty!

After wandering around for a bit, shopping if we wanted, or desperately searching for a bit of shade, we meandered back towards the bus. Our guide promised us a treat on the way back to the bus and she was not wrong! Gelato!!

We stopped at Lolita’s Gelato and it is cute, kitchy, very greek. BUT…and this is the most important part…the gelato is fantastic! i don’t know if I would say it was the best I had on the trip, we did spend several days in Venice, but it was the best we had in Greece. And we tried some in every port. My son was on a mission to find the best gelato so he was certainly well equipped to make a determination. We tried all the fun flavors, Cuban Lover: a blend of coffee and chocolate (my favorite); Zabaione, Stracciatella, and the flavor that they are famous for: Greek Viagra. This is gelato flavored with honey and pistachios and it is fantastic. If you can get past saying the name, it is totally worth it!

We then moved on to Pyrgos. This traditional village is supposedly the least spoiled by tourism and still has many features of the medieval village such as narrow streets, fortified walls and secret passageways.

Many of the houses are still inhabited mostly “as is,” small and built on top of one another.

This village also has the best vantage point of the island. It isn’t “untouched” by accident…the villagers could see an invasion coming for miles. Remember those walls? This is a fantastic example of a fortified city still around for us to see.

Yep, you can see for miles and miles and miles.

That’s Oia…way over there. It took us about 30 minutes to drive here from there in the motor coach.

After some time for picture taking, we headed for a quick stop at the Black Beach of Kamari.

There are cafes and shops and things here that I am sure would make a lovely stop by themselves. However, we were running out of time and really, I had to put my feet in the water so I could say I had been in the Aegean and Ionian Seas.

This is from the beach looking back up the road we had driven on to get here. The sand is indeed black, and I did put my feet in the Aegean. A word of warning…if you go to a black sand beach in the Mediterranean in August, spend some time before hand studying with the fire walkers so you are prepared to withstand your walk from the side walk to the water. Just saying.

Back in the coach to head back to Fira to wait in the incredibly long line to get to the cable cars down the mountain. There is a path to walk, but it is hot and covered in donkey poo and there is no place to rest on the way. I knew mom wouldn’t make it, so I waited the two hours to get to the cable cars. This is likely not as bad when there are fewer ships in port, but still…its better than sitting on a donkey the whole way down!

For me, Santorini was the supermodel of the Greek Isles. Pretty (stunning actually), but kind of superficial. This was also my one disappointment with the tour I had taken, because of the time crunch we did not get to see the Venetsantos Winery, which was one of the main reasons I wanted to be on this tour. Ah well, next time!

Here is the port area where you catch your tender back to your ship hopefully still waiting where you left it, in the middle of a collapsed volcano cone!

And there is the cable car track and the path back up to Fira…yeah, not walking it! Back on board I was devastated to learn that SOMEONE drank all of the Aperol on the entire ship and I (I mean…someone) would now have to find another refreshing beverage to get me through the sea day tomorrow, and then…KINGS LANDING!!! Well, I guess some people call it Dubrovnik.

Part 8 (Kusadasi, Turkey) – Cruising Venice, The Greek Isles, and the Eastern Mediterranean

September 23, 2016 Rachel HarringtonLeave a comment

In the days leading up to this cruise, Turkey had a failed coup attempt. With that in mind, many cruise ships were skipping or replacing stops in Turkey with either a sea day, or another port in the area. Our cruise had made no announcement as to what the plan was at that point, and when asked, the officers stated that they were monitoring the situation and would let us know, but the plan was to stop in Turkey and in fact, Royal Caribbean had collected all non-EU passports per the Turkish governments request (standard procedure even before the coup attempt).

All this to say that until the day before our port stop in Kusadasi, we still had no idea if we were stopping or not. I had reserved a taxi service through Taxi Service for Ephesus to take us from the port up to Ephesus. I was wary of joining a traditional tour because I did not want to get bullied into a “demonstration” that often turns into a hard sell. I had read that most organized tours have a stop either at a carpet weaver or a leather shop included in the tour, and in fact all of the ship sponsored tours had this included stop as well. The carpet weavers in Turkey are some of the best in the world, but lets be honest…who has room in their luggage for carpeting?

So instead I reserved just a taxi to meet us at the port, drop us off at the top gate to Ephesus, and come back a few hours later and pick us up at the bottom gate. I made the reservations via email, the price was agreed upon in advance and Hasan was very responsive and easy to work with. In addition, his English was nearly perfect and I have no reservations recommending this company should you ever find yourself near Kusadasi port.

It is a beautiful port area, hills rising steeply from the ocean with condos/apartments/hotels built all up the hillside. That little tiny island out there? Well that is the namesake, the actual Kusadasi – Bird Island. Here is a better picture:

There are shops and restaurants all along the pier so a very easy port to navigate by foot if all you are looking for is nosh and trinkets. We however, were headed to Ephesus.

We walked out of the port area past armed guards. We were told that we were the first cruise ship to stop at Kusadasi since the failed coup attempt, only 16 days prior. It was very clear that the merchants were happy to have us (tourists) back.

At the taxi stand, we met Hasan and he directed us to our driver for the day. He ensured that we had his number and knew how to reach him if necessary. While Hasan’s English was excellent, our driver’s was not. He tried really hard and he was so nice though that we hardly minded. Ephesus is about 30km from Kusadasi through some lovely countryside. Our driver pointed out some other local attractions along the way and tried to teach us the names of some of the fruits in Turkish!

When we reached the top gate, our driver found a friend that spoke English and we arranged a time to meet at the lower gate for pickup. Our driver assured us that if we happened to be a few minutes late that he would certainly not leave us stranded! We also purchased a guide book and some water…it is HOT in Turkey in July and we would come to find out, not much shade in Ephesus.

So these ruins are a bit different than the ones in Athens or Olympia. These ruins are being actively restored. They are only using the original pieces that they find so different buildings are in different states of, well ruin. The other thing that I love about Ephesus is how accessible everything is. You can walk in, around, and through almost all of the building sites.

We added the Terrace Houses to our admission. These were the houses of the wealthy citizens of Ephesus and are currently being excavated and restored. As we were there on a Sunday, no one was working but evidence of excavation was all around. And the houses themselves were incredible!

The color on the walls and the mosaics on the floors are so remarkably preserved. It was an awesome thing to see and if you are ever in Ephesus, make sure you take the side tour into the Terrace Houses. It is hot and there are a lot of stairs, but it is worth it!

Coming out of the Terrace Houses, you arrive at the restored facade to the Library of Celsus. Its Stunning.

This two story library was home to thousands of scrolls (you know…what books used to be!) making it the third largest library in the world in its day. This building has been restored somewhat. But since they will only use original parts for restoration, it is never going to be fully restored.

Nearby is the Temple of Hadrian…we seem to have seen a lot of stuff dedicated to this guy!

And of course, my favorite…the theaters! There are several in Ephesus from smaller ones used for Senate meetings and such:

I’ve heard that this guy Paul lived here around 50AD for a few years. He gave daily talks to scholars here. Those talks eventually became “Ephesians” in a pretty famous book…that’s impressive stuff!

To the massive ampitheater used for concerts as well as gladiator battles and other community building exercises!!

This one seats approximately 25,000. See that little black dot? That’s my son. He climbed all those stairs!! I did not, in case you were wondering!!

The Commercial Agora is where business got done. You can see in this picture the parts that have been unearthed but not restored to actual buildings.

So after a very warm yet amazing trip through history we made our way out the lower gates to meet our driver. If you EVER make it to Ephesus, take note: start at the top and walk downhill! We passed people going the other way and they really looked like they would welcome death. Remember it is hot…very hot. And there are no trees or shady spots to rest. Add to that an uphill climb and I can totally understand their open arming the grim reaper.

But forwarned is forarmed so we worked with gravity and not against it. And as we made our way out of the historic site, we invariably walked into vendor central. These guys are well aware of the demographics of their clientele and proudly touted their stock of chilled water bottles…or the one that won our hearts (and dollars) air conditioning!

One of the traditions we have as a family is that whatever country we visit, we buy the national team soccer jersey. So we were in the market for a Turkey jersey and as it happened, he had the air conditioning also!!
I find that very often I am faced with the stereotype of a woman not knowing her sports. This was very apparent in Turkey and I was VERY amused proving him wrong!! He took it in stride and in fact gave us a great deal on the jerseys once I proved my knowledge!

So having gotten our fill of history and our quota of Turkish soccer jerseys, we headed back to the port with our driver who was exactly where we said he would be waiting.

Back at the port we stopped to shop a bit and get something to eat. We had some of the best calamari I have ever had and when we stopped the owner to compliment the food, he simply pointed to the the water and said, “Of course it’s good. I caught it right there!”

All in all, this was our favorite port so far and I am so glad we stopped. I would go back for a land vacation without hesitation!

Back on the boat, we visited our favvie post port bar for Aperol Spritzs. Our next port is Santorini.

Could it really be as awesome as everyone said??

Part 7 (Thessaloniki, Greece) – Cruising Venice, The Greek Isles, and the Eastern Mediterranean

September 20, 2016 Rachel HarringtonLeave a comment

Well, I am back from my Disney vacation and I will write more about that later, but let me tell you…I thought the Mediterranean in July was hot, it was NOTHING compared to Orlando in September! But! That’s a story for another day. Onward and upward (or not) to Thessaloniki, Greece.

Thessaloniki is the second largest city in Greece. Having just come from the largest city (Athens) I can tell you that it may indeed be the 2nd largest, but it is as different from Athens as night to day.

I had not planned anything in this port, and hindsight 20/20 I should have. There are many cool things to see, just not super close to the port.

Here is the Rhapsody docked at the port. All those buildings on the dock area are shipping and industrial. No shopping or eating. I needed to find a pharmacy, which shouldn’t have been too difficult. In Europe all of the pharmacies have big green plus signs out front so we walked along this front street for a while. We could see the famous White Tower of Thessaloniki in the distance, but it was certainly not a walkable distance for us (maybe for me, but my family often accuses me of trying to walk them to death!).

Along the way, there were some cafes, most with outdoor seating which already had plenty of locals sitting with their coffee. Also along the way, we were accosted by a man trying to get us to buy his bracelets by striking up a conversation with my son, then just putting the bracelet on his wrist. This was the only time we encountered something like this on this trip. I am used to it in the Caribbean, and in fact this man was Jamaican, but I had not come across it on this trip. However, just like in the Caribbean, a very firm “NO!” sent him on his way.

We passed some very pretty areas:

I loved this tree! We still had not found a pharmacy though. We finally cut through a square and low and behold we found what we were looking for…we also found that we had been passing the really cute shopping district nearly the whole time, we were just two blocks off it. Huh…see why I should have done more research? At any rate, after our quick stop, we decided to head back to the ship, but this time along the populated streets!

See?? Cute stuff. But, it was hot, really hot. And, as you may have guessed from my frantic search for a pharmacy, I was not feeling my best so back to the ship and its glorious air conditioning we went. Plus! We have Chef’s Table dinner tonight!!! My favorite! So I wanted to be well rested!

Here is a picture of the Port Authority building…pretty impressive but it could use some shops!!!

Back on board and looking forward to my favorite meal of the whole trip!! The Chef’s Table!

You may remember that I have done the Chef’s table before on other cruises and have LOVED it both times! I knew from past cruisers that the menu was the same as my meal aboard the Enchantment, but that one was super yummy so I was happy to have it again! Plus, the pairings were really good so I was not concerned at all…until I sat down and looked at the menu.

Yes, the menu was the same, but the wines were totally different. And not in a good way. I am all about trying new wines, in fact I have another blog I write that details my standard selection method of picking wine just by the cool looking label so I am all for trying new things. And I will agree that dry rosès are all the rage right now. But lets all agree that Berringer White Zinfandel is not one of these, can we? Please?

What was fantastic about this particular Chef’s Table was the company. Some times you get a good crowd and some times you do not. We dined with a family from Texas that was absolutely spectacular and I am so happy we got to meet them. The food was still great, the Braised Short Rib Ravioli is still one of the best things I have ever eaten. I will continue to attend Chef’s Table on every cruise I go on, hopefully these wines were a one off!

Up next? Kusadasi, Turkey. Another surprising port…in more ways than one!

Part 6 (Athens, Greece) – Cruising Venice, The Greek Isles, and the Eastern Mediterranean

September 8, 2016 Rachel HarringtonLeave a comment

Ah, Athens. If you are at all interested in history, mythology, government, religion, finance, politics, heck almost any subject can tie back to this ancient city in some way. And no surprise, it has been inhabited for the last 7000 years continuously. And not just inhabited, but a cultural, economical, and social centerpiece of the ancient world. I had been looking forward to this port for FOREVER! This city is in my bucket list top three. Once again, we used The Travel Insiders as our tour and after our amazing experience in Katakolon, I was nearly giddy with anticipation!

The port at Piraeus is very…very busy. In addition to the cruise ships, ferries from all over use Piraeus as their port to bring tourists, students, cars, etc. to Athens from all around the Isles. I was not prepared for that, and it probably threw me off a bit, but since we docked around 6am and did not have to meet our guide until 9am, I had plenty of time to put on my big girl panties and get over it!

We chose the Ultimate Athens Experience which was an 8 hour tour to include the Acropolis, the Olympic Stadium, the changing of the guard at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier and some free time that we could choose to use shopping in Plaka or visiting the amazing Acropolis Museum. Once all of our tour participants arrived, our tour guide decided to head straight to the Acropolis to try and beat the other tour buses there. On our way, we passed though the heart of the city of Athens, you know, the real part where people work and live? It is bustling to say the least, traffic can be challenging so having an experienced driver is an absolute.

We arrived at the Acropolis and I thought it was crazy busy already. We bought some water and got our tickets. The line was about 5 minutes long…compared to when we came out, the place was empty! This was the first of our really challenging ports, mobility wise. Olympia is quite a bit of walking, but flat for the most part. Athens is not. We climbed up, stopping at various sites to hear about different tidbits of history.

I absolutely love ancient amphitheaters! I love how important the Arts were to the people and the communities. I absolutely feel we have gone backwards in that area. But! I got to see so many examples in so many ancient sites on this trip. This one is standing at the Acropolis looking down the hill. You can’t see it, but the Parthanon is behind me, can you imagine watching a show from there? Incredible.

So here is my view when I turn around. Amazing, right? The detail and engineering that had to go in to something like this is mind boggling. There was quite a bit of scaffolding and work going on around the other side. Our guide assured us that there was not any attempt to restore any of these monuments, the repair work was really just to make sure it did not crumble any more. As many tourists that flock there on a daily basis, I can imagine there is a vested interest in keeping it safely intact as it is.

This is a much better picture of the difference between the original stone and the stone that has needed to be reinforced. The white is new.

And of course the most important tree in the world according to the ancient Greeks, the olive tree.

Our next stop took us to the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier, and of course it was timed perfectly with the changing of the guard. According to our guide, the soldiers chosen for this have very exacting standards, down to they have to be a certain height.

We then moved to the new Olympic stadium…since we’d already seen the Original one in Olympia! I am not totally sure that it is an improvement, but it certainly is impressive.

We then headed towards Plaka, the old city. This is where the best shopping and cafes were rumored to be, also the award winning Acropolis Museum was near here. I was interested in seeing that, but I took pity on TJ, who is not a museum (or history) fan and we skipped it this time. Instead we wandered around the old city. We started here:

Hadrian’s Arch. It is believed that this marked the old city from the new…the new being around 131 AD so…

We moved on from here into Plaka which is behind me in this picture, up the hill. This area has been continuously inhabited since antiquity (really just means a long, long time but makes me sound like a smarty pants!).

I did not take any pictures in and around Plaka except of my food…but I can assure you that it is really a cute place to wander around! The shopping was very good and all the merchants were hagglers! I got some really great prices on clothes!! Don’t underestimate the power of learning just a few words in the native language of whatever country you are visiting. I promise you that a simple “Kalimera” will go a long way in Plaka!!

Oh…and the Baklava!!!

Ah-May-Zing!! I need to find a Yia Yia near me for the hook up on some local baklava!! I am headed to the Yiasou Greek Festival today…maybe I can find some there! I am really excited to go to this festival since I have been there so recently. I will tell you all about it in my next post!!

Also next up, we visit Thessoloniki, Greece. And the Chef’s Table dinner on the Rhapsody! It has been my favorite experience on both the Freedom and the Enchantment…How will this one compare??

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