A few days of fun

A few days of Fun:

October 15, 2008
Katakolon, Greece

Nothing too exciting to report here, as Katakolon is not all that exciting of a city. It is within reach of the ruins at Olympia, but I decided to stay near the ship and go to the local beach. The only real way to get to these places without spending an arm and a leg is by doing a tour, and since I am going to be doing at least three full-day tours later on in the voyage, I wanted to spend a couple days relaxing. Unfortunately, the closest beach to the ship in Katakolon was a stony one, and I made the mistake of walking around without my sandals on. Nevertheless, the water was refreshing (albeit a bit cold), and I enjoyed my first time spent in the Aegean.

October 16, 2008
Mykonos, Greece

I debated getting off the ship at al in Mykonos, Greece since we were only going to be there from 7:00am – 1:00pm. Additionally, since we were dropping anchor and using the ship’s tenders, it meant that crew would not be able to get off the ship for at least a couple of hours. Unexpectedly, I ended up waking up around 9:00 and was able to get to shore within an hour. I walked around the port for ten or fifteen minutes before heading in a different direction and found a place to rent a vehicle. For 12 Euro, I was able to rent a small ATV for a couple of hours, and enjoyed exploring part of the island on my own. I know that in all Greek islands, the churches are whitewashed, but in Mykonos, the majority of buildings look like this (even the Starbucks I passed). The only colorful feature these buildings tend to offer is their roof (if they have one that is not flat), their doors, and their windows. Besides looking interesting, this characteristic of the building just screamed out to me “Adam, you are on a Greek Island!”

I decided to head one way from the rental spot and found myself forgetting the directions to the beach that the guy gave me when I rented the ATV, but figured I could not go wrong since I was so close to the water and decided to wander on my own. It was not long before I found a quiet beach and relaxed for a few minutes before getting back on the ATV and headed back towards the ship so that I would not get too lost and miss the last tender back to the ship [I only had about two hours to work with]. Once I got closer to the ship, I kept going past it and ended up on a beautiful coastal road and stopped a couple of times to take some pictures of the beautiful views before getting back on. I kept along the coast until I reached the end of the road, where there happened to be a beautiful sandy beach. I thought it would be a good idea to just wet my feet for a minute or two, but upon making contact with the water, I knew right away that a proper swim was in order. I stayed in the sea for a few minutes before going back along the coastal road and returning the ATV. From the little bit of Mykonos that I actually saw, I can say that it is a beautiful island!
October 18, 2008
Kusadasi, Turkey

In a last minute decision, I decided that since there was nothing at all else to do on Saturday, I would get off the ship in Kusadasi, Turkey and take a tour to Ephesus. Ephesus was an ancient city that dates back to at least 200 B.C. and was, at one point, the third-largest city in the world. Cleopatra spent a year there visiting Marcus Antonius (who was native to the city), and I actually had a chance to walk down the road that they walked down upon her arrival so many years ago. Ephesus was different from all of the other ancient historical sights I had visited, in that most of the buildings were not roped off. You could walk through what was left of most of the buildings, and many of them were extremely well preserved since nothing was ever built on top of the ancient city.

My tour group spent about 45 minutes in the terrace houses at Ephesus, which were essentially the equivalent to the Central Park penthouses of the city. It was obvious that a great deal of effort had been made to preserve what was left here since a fabric roof had been erected above the structure. The terrace houses we visited consisted of six dwellings situated on a moderately sloped hill. There had been a clear-glass floor put in place that formed a path around the dwellings and it was interesting to walk around and see what life was like nearly two millennia ago. The original mosaic flooring in places was still intact, and the paintings on the walls were also still visible.

After leaving the terrace houses, my group headed down to the ancient library, where the four exterior walls were still intact, and then headed to the famous ancient amphitheatre, where artists such as Ray Charles and Elton John have performed. Despite having a seating capacity of approximately 24,000, the acoustics were so good that even after I climbed up to the top of the amphitheatre, I could hear someone saying my name in a talking voice while he was standing on the stage.

We left from the amphitheatre to head back to the bus and from there we went back to the ship. I got some Turkish food and stopped off at the local Starbucks before getting back on board. My first explorations in the continent of Asia were quite exciting, and I look forward to seeing more of it in the future.