With 6 days to explore Alsace, and only a couple of definites on my list of things to do, I found myself with a bit of indecision this morning. Combined with general laziness, I didn’t get going today until after midday. In the end, I decided to drive a bit of the Routes des Vins (Road of Wine) and visit the castle of Haut-Koenigsbourg which overlooks many of the vineyards. My first stop was a village near my hotel, Dambach-la-Ville, to get some petrol. It was only the first time I had filled up the car since the first day on the way to Würzburg. So I’m pretty happy with the fuel economy of the C4! Filling up wasn’t as easy as it could have been because the petrol station was pay-at-the-pump which was in French. ... read more

My main goal on this trip was to immerse myself in Roman and Gallic ruins, sites and museums because I am trying to write a novel based on Caesar’s Gallic wars. One of the first places I wanted to visit was Mainz because: a) It is close to Frankfurt, and I was going to fly into Frankfurt; and b) Mainz was the site of a permanent Roman military base that was responsible for the manufacture of so many Roman swords (gladii) that its name is used as one of the major classifications of Roman infantry swords. However, on Saturday morning I went online to look up the opening times for the Mainz museum with lots of great Roman stuff and found that I was running late. About 6 months late, because that was when the museum ... read more

Early on Friday morning we anchored off the Greek mainland at the port of Gythion. From the ship it had quite an Italian look to it. The town seemed quite small and the buildings are mostly huddled against the water. A few were built on the hills that came nearly to the water. We had a choice of two tours from here and naturally I chose the one that took us to Sparta. Not that the tour was to Sparta, for there is essentially nothing of the ancient city left. The Spartans didn’t build city walls, fancy temples or monuments. But we passed through the modern city of Sparta on our way to the last Byzantine stronghold of Mystras. The fortress was built by Franks in 1249 but after being conquered by the Byzantines it was ... read more

As I mentioned in my previous entry, the seas were a bit rough during the journey from Rhodes to Crete. I was okay though I did feel the slightest bit queasy at times. More of an issue for me was a problem with uploading photos to the blog. It took forever and I didn’t finish until well after midnight. So on Tuesday morning I wasn’t looking forward to an early start. However, we were arriving at the port of Heraklion on the island of Crete so there was no way I was going to miss it. Crete was not originally on the itinerary for the Aegean Odyssey but it was added when they decided not to visit Turkey. The addition of Crete softened that blow for me because I had found out about the Minoan civilisation ... read more

The first day at sea after leaving Aqaba was pretty uneventful. I basically spent the day working on my photos from Jordan and writing the previous blog entry. We had to sail back down the Gulf of Aqaba and around the Sinai Peninsula into the Gulf of Suez. We reached the coast off Suez at about 4:30pm and set anchor. At that point it was just a matter of waiting until the next morning when we would join a convoy entering the Suez Canal. Most of the passengers on board the Aegean Odyssey were pretty excited about going through the canal, including myself. It is a pretty amazing feat of human engineering and political will, really. The facts you can look up for yourself if you’re interested, but one tidbit we were told was that passage ... read more