October 15 - Friday - Batumi, Georgia

We docked in Batumi about 7:00 this morning. Our tour today is in the afternoon, so after breakfast we left the boat and walked through the downtown area for a while.

It seems there main streets are paved, but all the side streets are torn up and difficult to navigate. We watched shopkeepers open their stores, and we saw an elderly woman pulling her cart behind her, crying out something like "packcat." We thought maybe she was selling early morning bread, but it turned out to be brooms.

Woman selling brooms

We met some people coming toward us, and we greeted them and chatted for a few minutes. The woman asked us how we knew they were Americans, and we replied that they looked like they had just gotten off the boat. It was worth a chuckle, but it is amazing that we can spot the tourists without much trouble. I suspect we stand out to others, as well.

Batumi has the makings of a charming city, with lace-balcony apartments above the shops, many colors, and beautiful cobbled sidewalks, where they exist. But in its present state, there are many rough, disheveled, peeling, and dirty places. They have been through some very rough times here.

A street in Batumi

Several blocks from the ship, we turned left and walked several more blocks (parallel to the ship). More and more people were coming out, going to work or going about their business. Traffic began to jam terribly, and the people have no patience for the jams. Many horns honked, many people snaked through the lines of traffic, narrowly being missed by traffic when it moved again. When we turned left again, heading back to port, we saw van after van, many of them plain white, opening their doors when traffic was stopped (often) and letting someone in or out of the vehicle. Vans are apparently Batumi's version of the Philippine jeepney - much less colorful, but probably more comfortable, with real padded van seats.


Vans are public transportation

 We stood on the sidewalk for quite a while and just watched, glad that we're retired and no longer depending on the flow of traffic to get us to our jobs on time. Lots and lots of activity.

As we neared the port and just before we turned left again, we came through the Muslim quarter. Several women, dressed in black with black head coverings, were busy coming in and out of their quarters and places of work.

Like the Philippines and probably many other places in the world, this is a place where you can buy a single cigarette, or a whole pack if you can afford it - but never a carton, from a sidewalk vendor who has set up a small child-size table with his - or perhaps even more likely, her, wares. It's a way to make a living in a place that doesn't have many opportunities at this time. 

Elderly woman selling cigarettes

After lunch, we took a tour called Batumi Highlights and Home Visit, driving through the city ...

Along the shore as we drove through the city

Sights in Batumi

Up on a mountain where we could see the entire city ,..

View of Batumi from high in the mountains

And then to the home of a Batumi family ...

Visit with a Batumi family

And to a surprise treat performance by a group from a local private performing arts school ...

Performance at Batumi home by local private performing arts school children

The performance was the highlight of our day, and perhaps the highlight of our tour up to this point. Wonderful group of young people, each eager to entertain us with his or her talent.

We will remember Batumi for a long time.

As we were preparing to leave the dock, a local band, the children from the performing arts school, the tour guides, and many local residents, came to the dock to bid us goodbye. What a special moment.

Tomorrow, Trabzon, Turkey!

Our flickr Batumi pictures: Batumi

October 14 - Thursday - Sochi, Russia

We docked at about 7:30 this morning, and that's about the time we went for breakfast. Our touring groups were meeting in the auditorium about 8:00, so we needed to be ready quickly today.

Sochi will host the 2014 Olympics, so this little city which has had only moderate attention in the past, except by certain Russian dignitaries, such as Stalin, will be the center of the world's attention before long. As we toured, we could see evidence of beginning preparations - new roads and high-rise freeways (there are no high-rise freeways now), new hotels under construction and others to be renovated, and an excitement from our guides.

Lauren and I took separate tours today. I learned from my guide that there had been only something like 8 cruise ships in port this year. The port is fairly small (and the Prisendam is a small ship), and that may account for the small number.

Lauren's tour was more ambitious than mine - its icon shows three persons walking as opposed to two, as mine did. The number of persons in the little icon beside the tour description gives you an idea of what kind of physical shape you should be in to take the tour.

Lauren's tour was called the Ancient Caucasian Trees and involved walking a path to a viewing platform 400 feet above the sea. It meant a lot of stairs and steep climbs. One of the pictures he brought back confirmed the wisdom of my decision not to take that tour.

I think they're struggling up these steps



Wet, leafy ... iffy for me

The scenery, though, was a reward for everyone's efforts. Some of these plants and ancient boxwood and yew trees are believed to be 2000 years old, or more. The area must be a naturalists' dream. On both of our tours, we could see that the growth of green things can overtake the area in a hurry.



This house will soon be swallowed up with vines



Slick rock-steps to climb

 My tour was the Sochi, Seaside, and Spa tour, which took us to one of the more deluxe spas in Sochi (there are many) ...



Spa waters near the natural springs

where we received a lecture by one of the spa doctors, interpreted by our tour guide ...

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The spa doctor (an MD) in the white coat, our tour guide is the blond on the left

We then went to the Bolshoi Akhun Mountain area where some of us, me included, climbed a stone tower - somewhere between 150 and 200 steps ...


The tower ...

and took in the magnificant view ...



The view

 The Olympics will take place about two hours north of Sochi, in the mountains, in a village of about 4000 people. Sochi itself doesn't receive much snow, if any, in the winter.

Sochi has a year-round population of about 400,000. In the summer, that number may triple, quadruple, or grow even greater.

After Istanbul, it was a low-key day, but a wonderful one. These short stops give you just a taste of a place. You get very little local flavor. We could see, though, that Sochi is a beautiful city, located on the north end of the Black Sea, blessed with an almost Mediterranean climate, and loved by the many who can afford to escape bitter winters to soak up sunshine.

Tomorrow is Batumi, Georgia.

Our flickr pictures of Sochi: Sochi

October 12 - Tuesday - Istanbul

The schedule for Tuesday is a full day tour of Istanbul, taking in the Blue Mosque, Topkapi Palace, Grand Bazaar, and the Hagia Sophia (St Sophie).

Our first sight of the morning was the Queen Victoria, Cunard Line, pulling into port - more or less parallel parking in front of us. It's amazing to watch these big ships manuever as though they were ballet dancers.

Cunard's Queen Victoria

Our tour started early in the morning, and we headed for the old town. If we were to come to Istanbul on our own, we would surely want to stay in the old town. It's absolutely exquisite, with wonderful narrow cobbled streets, beautifully decked out outdoor and indoor restaurants and hotels, cleanliness ... the works. Absolutely exquisite!!!

Our first stop was the Blue Mosque.



Blue Mosque


It used to be that a woman had to cover her head when entering a mosque. All the tourbook literature will tell you that. But that's no longer true in Turkey. However, you do need to remove your shoes - man or woman. The mosque is beautiful. The carpet was interesting - it's woven so that there are obvious parallel rows in which the men walk and then kneel.

Next, we went to a Turkish carpet shop and saw a demonstration of how Turkish carpets are woven. The representative there told us that only Turkish carpets have double knots. I will have to look this up on the internet some time (but not with this slow connection). I thought Persian carpets also had double knots. The most durable carpets are woven with wool over cotton threads.




Beautiful woven double-knotted Turkish carpet

 We watched a woman weaving a silk carpet. To me, a needleworker, the process was
fascinating. I could have watched all day.




Silk carpet weaving (double-knotted) demonstration


Our next stop was at the Grand Bazaar. Grand it is! We have never seen so many shops in one place. The amazing thing was that a high percentage of them were jewelry or gold shops. Wow! Who buys all these pieces of jewelry? Of course, we said the same thing about the carpets. A decent size floor carpet - perhaps 6 x 10 - might cost $3,000 and upwards. We thought no one from a tourist ship would buy them, but we were wrong. Some did!




Grand Bazaar


For lunch, we went to one of those exquisite restaurant hotels (small, very European,
personal) and had a great meal in a glass gazebo. The best of all worlds, outside but
protected from the rain.



Lunch in a glass gazebo - elegant


Then it was time for a visit to the Harem at Topkopi Palace. I think this was the favorite stop for our tour guide as he played Sultan and we played his harem.



The Harem ... and the Sultan

 We spent a lot of time at Topkopi. Not only was the Harem and the other buildings absolutely beautiful, but the grounds were so inviting - grassy, treed. Lovely.

Our last stop for the day was the Hagai Sophia, the St. Sophia church. It was originally a Byzantine cathedral and later turned into a mosque by the Ottoman conquorers. The Ottomans plastered over all the Christian symbols and created their own symbols throughout the mosque. In the 1930s, when the last Sultan died and Turkey became a Republic, the government declared it a museum. A restoration trust fund had the plaster removed, and now the Hagai Sophia is an amazing representation of both Christian and Islamic symbols throughout it's amazing interior and exterior.

Hagia Sophia

Our flickr Istanbul pictures: Istanbul

October 11 - Monday - Istanbul

We left the hotel at 11:40 on Sunday (Oct 10) to board the ship. We had reserved the smallest of the verandah cabins, but because the cruise isn't fully booked, HAL upgraded us free to the next larger size. There are staterooms larger than this one - the deluxe verandah and a penthouse, but we would have been satisfied with the even the smaller one.

Prinsendam

The Prisendam is the smallest of the HAL line, and it's more or less a miniature of other HAL ships. Our stateroom is on the 10th deck (the Verandah deck), one down from where we eat most of the time (the Lido) and two decks above where most of the onboard activities take place, such as the casino, the library, the activities desk, the auditorium, internet cafe, etc.)

The rain promised for Athens, which we were very fortunate to have escaped during our two days there, came as we were leaving. We had two beautiful sunny days in Athens to do our walking and gawking. The ship captain said we could expect to have great weather for Istanbul, but it didn't happen! We had a clear sky on Monday night, but by Tuesday morning, we had a nearly constant drizzle. We toured Istanbul in our raincoats, but that didn't keep us from enjoying our visit.

We have Verizon capabilities on our phones on board. Our phones recognize the Verizon Cruise Ship signal, but I sent a test text message to Lauren a couple days ago, and he has yet to receive it. Who knows? I did receive a few text messages from home, telling us that we had messages on our home voice mail, so we know that the Verizon service works. That was nice, because we can pick up our voice mail via the internet.

The good news is that wireless internet reaches our cabin. The bad news is that it's a slow connection - but, good news again, it's good enough for e-mail. I took the computer to a public area, where the connection was a little faster, but at a maximum of 11 mbps, it's too slow to upload many pictures. I've decided to blog with just a few pictures, instead, and hope for better service in our hotel in Rome so I can upload everything before I forget what the pictures are about.

Sunday night, I was able to spot Jupiter crossing the sky, and early on Monday morning, mighty Orion was there in the sky, just as it would have been at home. I could see the large eye of Taurus, but there were too many city lights for me to make out the remainder I don't think I'll see anything more for the next few days unless we move out of this weather system.

Last night was Istanbul - the spice market ... (the fragrance was heavenly)

Istanbul spice market

and a boat ride on the Bosporus.

Bridge over Bosporus at night

Lauren went with the group to visit the Underground Palace, which is actually one of many ancient cisterns that was in use before Ottoman times. A few of us were leery of wet and slippery stairs descending into the sistern, so we stayed behind. The ancient builders of the cisterns used pillars which had been knocked down in earthquakes in other, distant, places. They took the pillars in sections from their original (or last) locations and reassembled them here, to fortify the roof of the cisterns. Our guide said there were an unknown number of cisterns beneath the city. When they build a new hotel, more than likely they will uncover a new cistern. Some of the pillars are from late B.C. periods.



Underground cistern in Istanbul

 Our flickr Istanbul pictures: Istanbul

October 9 - Saturday - Athens

We were up and off to breakfast this morning (quite a nice American Buffet) and then out to hop the Marriott shuttle to the Hop-on Hop-off City Tour bus by 9:00. Problem was that everyone else wanted to catch the Marriott shuttle, too, and so it filled up and left 15 minutes earlier than scheduled. We weren't going to wait for another hour to hopefully catch it for its next trip, so we had the front-door person call us a cab (from just around the corner, hiding out of sight behind some bushes) to take us to town. The cost was 8 Euros, an amount we found was more than twice what we should have paid when we caught a cab back home in the evening for 3.80 Euros. Hmmmm ... nice little thing these guys at the front door have going. Oh well, you have to earn a living somehow!

All's well that ends well or works well, though, and the day seemed to work well for us. We first rode the Hop-on Hop-off a complete round trip, about 60 to 70 minutes, then we rode a little past our starting point and got off at the Acropolis.

The walk to the entrance area was quite steep, but definitely doable. I wasn't sure I could go the further steps into the main area, but Lauren checked it out and came back to retrieve me. Arm in arm, we made it, and it was definitely worth the effort. (See the flickr photos to see the rest of the view.)

The rumor is, as they tell it here, the gods met in these elaborate buildings (or at least where these buildings are located) and discussed whether or not the creation of human kind was a good thing. Apparently the vote was close, but in favor of the creation, and the deed was done. Here's a Wikipedia article about the Parthenon - interesting.

Looking at Athens from this great height shows us a sea of white houses and buildings in all directions.

The Greeks also claim to be the first to see the divine within human kind, and with that insight came the idea of individual freedoms. With the idea of individual freedoms came the idea (and ideal) of democracy. Western thought has been built ever since on that idea -- either democracy in action or the strife for democracy. The early Greeks changed the world! Even the Romans, who conquored the world after Greece, retained their awe of the Greek way of thinking. Another rumor we heard was that the Roman Emperor Hadrian (around 132 CE) came to Athens to be educated because he felt Roman education was inferior. For more about Hadrian and Hadrian's Arch in Athens, see the Wikipedia article.

We hopped on and off the bus several times throughout the day, enjoying the National Gardens (where we took no pictures) while we admired the beautiful way in which they maintain them. A lot of work must go into these gardens.

Yesterday, we passed a building with a couple guard buildings out front, and we guessed it was the Parliament building. Sure enough, it was. Today, we got a few pictures.



Sue and one of the dogs in front of the guard shack




Lauren and one of the guards

We took the picture of Lauren and one of the guards, first, and then it just seemed a shame not to recognize the ever-present dog in a picture, too. I volunteered to be the dog's admirer. We see dogs like this all over Athens, sleeping in almost the same position. There's an identical dog in front of the other guard here at the Parliament building.

The uniforms are modeled after those worn by warriors when the Greeks fought against the Ottoman occupation in the late 1800s, early 1900s. See Evzones in Wikipedia for some fascinating information. The uniforms are quite beautiful, and their history makes them somewhat romantic.

Tomorrow, we must have our luggage out for pickup at 8:00 a.m., then we must be ready to board the HAL bus for the ship at noon. That will give us time for a leisurely breakfast and showers before our real journey begins, 14 days on the Black Sea!  Choosing to come a couple days early and adjust to the time changes was a good idea. We'll probably never come to Athens again; and although we surely didn't spend a lot of time here, we got to see a little bit of what it has to offer. On our way back from our Black Sea voyage, we'll be stopping at a few Greek Islands, so we're not officially through with Greece yet.

We're expecting to have internet access on the Prisendam, but I'm pretty sure it won't happen until after we leave port. We're scheduled to leave around 5:00 Sunday evening, so I hope we'll be online again sometime Monday.

Here's a link, again, to our Athens pictures on flickr:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/sroesner/sets/72157625074928594/with/5062628816/

October 8 - Friday - Athens - One more picture

From my tiny little Canon SD780 IS, here's a picture of the Acropolis after dark from the rooftop patio of our hotel. I used about a 3.7 optical zoom, automatically exposed 1/8 second, F 5.8, 800 ISO, no flash, no tripod (didn't bring one with us) and nothing good to balance against. Not bad for an inexpensive little camera! And the sight in person is really awesome. Just think about long, long ago ...

October 8 - Friday - Athens

It's always a good feeling when you get off the plane, go to the baggage carousel, and you spot your luggage coming down the line. Whoopie!!! Made it again! It's especially nice when you're beginning a trip, as we are now, and you know that for the next three weeks you will have all the things you planned on having with you - not only clothes, maps, and the necessary things, but also the knitting, reading, and a few art supplies to help make the non-busy times smooth.

We were prepared for rain in Athens, but we found, instead, a lovely day much as it would be in San Diego.

As you can see from the glare in the upper part of the photo, I was looking through the bus window when I took this picture. My mind was somewhere between the airport and Poway, my camera was pointed toward what I could see from the bus window, and the bus was heading to a Marriott in this place called Athens, about half way around the globe from Poway.

Holland America Lines' service getting us from the airport to the Marriott, Marriott's service getting us checked in and physically present in our rooms (at about 10:00 in the morning after an approximately 9:00 a.m. arrival at the airport), and then the hotel's efficiency getting us to their shuttle to take us downtown so we could explore on our own was excellent. Then came the moment we were dropped off by the shuttle driver, and the realization came to us: We're in Athens. We've never been here before. We haven't a clue where to go or what to do. We took a picture of a landmark where the driver dropped us and hoped our brains would catch up later and we'd be able to find our way back. Which we did!

You can see the Acropolis from nearly everywhere in metropolitan Athens. It sits so high above the city, every hotel within miles can advertise a view of the Acropolis, and it wouldn't be false advertising. Although we've seen many, many pictures of it, who would have thought! I wouldn't have.

Today we walked around the part of town known as the Plaka, a mostly pedestrian-only shopping and restaurant area (huge, just huge) and got our bearings. We visited a few churches (you stumble into one around every other corner, just as though someone placed a church there and then promptly forgot it) and one major area of ruins (there are ruins everywhere, too - in fact, every time someone digs in Athens, a new ruin crops up) called the Ancient Agora. The Ancient Agora was once the center of commercial life in ancient Athens - everything was there. As we went, we generally got our bearings. We learned to read the map by finding our current location in our guidebook, moving to another location and then finding that one (backwards from what one might expect, but we find this method effective for us). We even found out that the Marriott shuttle drops us just two short blocks from where the Hop-On-Hop-Off City Tour Bus starts. Finding that location was one of our goals today. Tomorrow we'll hop the shuttle to the Hop-On Bus and hop on up the road to the Acropolis and a few other places of interest to us.

Today, we found an ice cream shop and stopped for a break - that's always a goal for us when we're traveling. We don't eat ice cream at home anymore, so it's really special when we we stumble on a good ice cream shop when we're traveling. We have had more fun accidentally sight-seeing over the years. Guided touring is great, and we've come to prefer it in our older years, but accidental touring adds giggles.

Since our last travels when I was blogging, maybe three years ago, Google's Blogger and Flickr's photos have changed the way they interface, and it seems impossible for me to make them work the way they used to. I haven't figured it out yet. In the meantime, to see all the photos from Athens (those I've posted for today and those I'll post for tomorrow), follow this link:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/sroesner/sets/72157625074928594/with/5062628816/

Here's hoping the link works! I'll putz around with this for a few days, and hopefully, I'll have it running smoothly soon.