Before our Greek cruise, we had never read or heard about ‘Sea Diamond’s sinking in the Santorini caldera. Every day we read the English newspaper, watch TV news and generally keep ourselves informed about happenings around the globe. So, I still do not know how we could have missed this news or maybe we just forgot it because it did not hold any significance for us that time. So, when the guide pointed out the area marked by buoys in the Santorini caldera and told us that, that is where Sea Diamond sank, we still had no inkling what she was [View Full Entry]

---

---

Every Aegean island is beautiful but I believe Santorini is the most scenic of them all. All the Aegean islands are prone to earthquakes and related volcanic activity, but Santorini is especially so because it is at the center of South Aegean Volcanic Arc. The Santorini volcano erupts periodically (here I am speaking in geologic terms and ‘periodically’ means millions of years.) and changes the surrounding landscape/seascape totally. Thus, Santorini was a round island once upon a time. It became a ring of land filled with sea, looking rather like an atoll after one volcan [View Full Entry]

---

---

We had ‘compulsory reading’ of John Keats’ poem ‘Isabella’ a.k.a ‘A Pot of Basil’ in college. When young girls and boys go to the college in India, generally speaking, they are facing co-education for the first time because before that, they have been strictly segregated. Perhaps, they start having romantic thoughts about the opposite sex. Our college authorities had come up with an excellent plan to nip all such fancies in bud. The poem ‘A Pot of Basil’ is enough to turn your stomach and bury all romantic notions that the girls a [View Full Entry]

---

---

There is nothing much common between me and one of the ‘Seven Wonders of the ancient world’ namely the Colossus of Rhodes, a statue which was 107 feet tall, made with bronze framework supported by masonry inside and covered by brass plate; which stood on the Island of Rhodes. It possibly served as a lighthouse. However, there IS one thing common between us - weak knees. When an earthquake hit Rhodes, the Colossus broke at the knees and collapsed. I collapse even without an earthquake when I have to walk uphill, because my knees too give way. {Avi has suggested one [View Full Entry]

---

---

Patmos has been continuously inhabited for at least 2000 years since ‘The Book of Revelations’ was written on this island by John the Apostle or his pupil. We had booked the evening shore-excursion to Patmos because that day we had given a miss to the morning excursion to Ephesus. We had already visited Ephesus on our Turkish tour. It is so fabulous that I do not think a short 2-hour visit from the cruise-ship can do justice to it. Especially, if it rains during the visit, the whole excursion becomes an exercise in futility, since there is no shelter anywhere on [View Full Entry]

---

---

The Aegean Sea is dotted with hundreds of islands, of which some are uninhabited. Some of the islands were important cultural centers in the past but are deserted now, but for tourists who visit it during the day-time. Delos is one such island, to which Mykonos played the second fiddle in the past. Just 2 Kms separate the two islands. Mykonos was never the cultural center in the past but it is now a sort of cultural crater-- the center of pop-culture, the Mecca of the jet-set, the island of the night-clubs. To the tourists on shore-excursions from the cruise-ships, this [View Full Entry]

---

---

In the ‘brave days of the old’ the Greek hero Odysseus sailed the Mediterranean for ten years trying to reach his home, Ithaca. (For ten years before that, he was fighting at Troy.) What do people like us do in these ‘coward days of new’ if they want to sail the Mediterranean and do not have 10 years to spare? They take a 4-nights-five-days Aegean cruise. Being cowards, they do not even take a chance of ferries getting cancelled between islands and consequently, getting stranded on one island. That is exactly what we did. After our successful Japan trip [View Full Entry]

---

---

What can you write about a city that has been written about by thousands of people for thousands of years? Greece has been called ‘the cradle of Western Civilization’ and Athens was axis on which this cradle moved back and forth. If Sparta was the brawn of Greece, the Athens was the brain. The flowering of Philosophy, Science, Arts, Literature, even sports that took place in Athens bore fruit in European civilization. Athens seeded all the intellectual progress of the Europe. The Greek prominence was challenged by powerful enemies - Persians namely. The famous battles, bot [View Full Entry]

---

---

Last Day - 11 May 2009 In the last 4-5 days I had visited the Red Square a number of times but somehow, had not yet stepped inside the GUM. On our last day n Moscow, we decided to visit the GUM and also the old haunts of Avi, namely Detskii Mir and the Bolshoi Theater. ‘Detskii Mir’ was to Russian children what the ‘Toys R Us’ to American kids. It is always a source of wonderment to me how fast children learn to recognize the ‘Toys R Us’ stores. My granddaughter Mitali used to point to ‘Toys R Us’ and [View Full Entry]

---

---

I pursuaded Avi to write about his Moscow Days in 1972. Here it is in his own words: ****************************************************************** The scene is set in late 1972. I was in seventh heaven. Not just because the airplane was at a height of 33000 ft. but all my dreams had come true. I was among the select group to be trained abroad and I was actually heading for Moscow. I was also the proud father of a cute baby, 4 months old. Everything seemed to be going right for me. Moscow’s first sight was not exactly heartwarming. Everything looked dark and gloomy with [View Full Entry]

---

---