Geo: 39.0742, 21.8243We arrived here ready for disembarkation at 8am. It's a nice looking port, at least from the ship. We can see an old castle-like structure up on the hill as well as one in the middle of the port. We take a tender to the town after breakfast. We usually wait a little for the crowd to die down. There's always a group that has to be first into port and then back to the ship before everyone else. While that may be a great plan, it's very difficult to execute unless you get up early for breakfast or skip it and hang out on deck A waiting for the tenders to start boarding. I just know that a schedule like that will never happen so we choose to let the crowd go and ... read more

Geo: 36.8997, 30.6952So this is one of the three ports we got in lieu of Israel. There's nothing here. The port is about 8 miles from the center of town so they have to bus us in. Only two buses so it takes along time. We have breakfast, do a few chores and head down to the cruise terminal. We get on the bus at noon and make the ride into town. We get off and Mom waits under a shade tree because it's hot, maybe 90, while I look for something to see. I take a few shots of some buildings and return to her saying "That's it. Let's go". We go on the next bus available and back to the cruise ship by 1:30pm. Like the cops say, "Move along. Nothing to see here". ... read more

Geo: 36.4395, 28.2156We're not seeing the Colossus but more about that later. Our tour today started out at 9am on a bus from the ship. We took a ride through the town of Rhodes, Greece. We saw the city, went up to the acropolis and returned to a palace and "street of the knights". We learned that Greece was controlled by the Romans, Ottoman, Italians and Germans up until 1948 when they again won their independence. The buildings were nice. The tour was short, only a few hours for the whole thing. The big thing about the palace was the mosaic floors. Mussolini had them installed while he was in power during WWII when the Italians had taken over Greece. They had planned to control Greece for many years but he was defeated along with the ... read more

Geo: 37.4438, 25.353We docked at the Greek island of Mykonos early in the morning, just after sun up. We were up and getting breakfast around 8am when the first tender left the ship heading for town. We decided to let the crowd die down and finished our breakfast before going down to level A at the water line to board the tenders. The water is smooth and we scoot across it to the pier, the town hanging from the hillside above it and draping itself all the way down to the port. The minute we embark from the pier, vendors selling food and trinkets begin their onslaught to the cruise ship passengers, looking to relieve them of their money even before entering Mykonos.From the pier, we walked past many cafes offering all types of food and ... read more

Geo: 41.0245, 28.9881Wow! What a kind day for me!!! Finally the security of the ship to return to and thank God no more lugging that suitcase up and down stairs. I swear, Al has muscles he never had before and now I can climb stairs almost as good as normal people from all the practice. The day started with some real food that I finally recognized. We decided that since we had one more day in Istanbul and kinda new our way around the tram system that we would take the tram to the Grand Bazaar and Egyptian spice market. There is no way to really describe the sites and the smells of this area. Open markets full of 1000's of people haggling over products to buy and the pungent smell of people and spices mixed ... read more