We arrived early in the morning in the commercial Port city of Asdod, Israel. The Israeli's customs had already boarded the ship the day before to do face to face interviews (ours lasted 20 seconds I would guess) with each visitor and give us our visa (they didn't stamp our passport). They double checked our passport again as we left the ship, we were one of the first to disembark to meet our tour guide Gideon in his mini-van that barely fit the six of us. After a few wrong turns in the port area and through security again we were [View Full Entry]

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Ephesus, once a Greek port town on the Aegean sea now lies several kilometers inland so our tour started at the port city of Kusadasi (Bird Island). Kusadasi 25 years ago we were told was a small fishing village but with the number of tourist the city is much larger and busier. This was our second of two tours with the group of twenty. After another day at sea our tour guide Levent was originally scheduled to fly and meet us but due to a situation another guide and and his assistant met us for our tour, I can't remember his [View Full Entry]

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Istanbul is big, much bigger than I imagined. I should have figured a city that was once the eastern capital of the Roman Empire, a city that is in both Asia and Europe would be big but the part we toured was only the Old City where everything was surprisingly compact and if we had been on our own would have easily walked to all the places we went. On this trip (and the next, Ephesus) our group joined a group of fourteen for a total of twenty. Once named Constantinople the modern name of Istanbul was given to the city [View Full Entry]

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The Russian resort town of Sochi with it's year round mild temperatures, where it almost never snows and site of the 2014 Winter Olympics was our next stop after a +1 hour time difference. On a side note, Sochi is the longest city in Europe, over 140 km long but very narrow. The second and last port where we would be tendered we were a little smarter and managed our way of early with the large ship sponsored tour groups instead of waiting until they had all departed as we knew they weren't going out full the previous day and they [View Full Entry]

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The rumor I heard were the Ukrainian authorities were trying to get more money from Holland America before we could disembark. Whether true or not we were about 90 minutes late before the six of us could board a tender after waiting for those who booked with the ship operated tours. While waiting aboard the ship for our turn for a tender we could hear the announcements for ship operated tours and found it a little amusing to hear the call for the tour to Balaklava pronounced Baklava, sounds like a tasty place to go! As each boat docked a small [View Full Entry]

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We arrived early in the morning for our fist port of call, Varna, a seaside resort town on the coast of Bulgaria. After booking our cruise I checked out the cruisecritic.com website and was fortunate enough after a few e-mails to have a private tour at every port of call with a group of 6 for five of our stops and along with those same 6 part of a group of twenty for two other stops. Oscar (along with Debbie) organized all our stops along with Keith and Debra (from Canada). Oscar and Debbie (both retired) travel every 6 months and [View Full Entry]

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Our first day at sea aboard the Holland America ms Rotterdam we passed from the Aegean Sea to the Black Sea through the Turkish Straights (the Dardanelles and the Bosporus) with the Sea of Marmara in between. We went through the Dardanelles early in the morning with Europe on our left and Asia on our right with scattered cities and castles along the shores. The staff member, I think his name is Chris, was giving us information on the area as well as the history over the speakers on the outside desk. Before lunch we did a meet and greet with [View Full Entry]

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The bed I found so great compared to a coach seat on Delta wasn't as great as I remembered. The highlight of the night was Kelly coming out of the bathroom with the lights off thinking her reflection in the full length mirror was an intruder and screamed. In the dead of the night that had my heart racing for a while. Luckily we have internal clocks that wake us up early (we don't use alarm clocks at home) and we relied on those to get us out of the hotel room by 11am. Yikes, felt like the whole day was [View Full Entry]

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Athens was the start and stop for our trip. We departed from Atlanta on Aug 31st on a direct flight overnight to Athens, an 11 hour flight. The airport was easy to navigate and we soon caught caught the Metro (Blue Line) for €6 each to Syntagma Square where we walked to our hotel only a few blocks away. The ride was probably close to 45 minutes, the last 15 minutes the bus was filled with people shoving to get off an on and we were separated from our luggage (in the storage area) by a wall of people. Luckily almost [View Full Entry]

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Taking the overnight from Atlanta to Athens. [View Full Entry]

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