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Published: February 8th 2016
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The first thing I intended to do with this blog was to write about the last trip my husband and I took just this last fall, September-October 2015. It was a magnificent adventure, a tour that included cruising between Greek Islands in the Aegean Sea, beginning in Athens and winding up in Istanbul. But, things being as they are, it seems like the next adventure is rapidly approaching and it’s hard to look back when looking ahead.
But, looking back, I’d have to say I my best memories were of the archeological sites on this trip. The Island of Delos was my likely my favorite. Delos was populated between from around 3000 BC to 3 AD, eventually under the auspices of ancient Greece then Rome, with raids during Mithridates' wars against the Romans in 88 and 69 BC marking the beginning of the end. Our guide, a member of the team from the French Archeological School of Athens which has exclusive access to this dig, really made the site come alive for us. He described it as a popular tourist destination of the Ancient world, part holy site (the birthplace of Apollo), part port of trade, part Las
Vegas – people expected to have fun when they came to Delos! The narrow streets up the hills between structures were fit only for foot traffic, charming and organic in nature, streets I could imagine better when we next walked similar ones filled with people on Mykonos.
Particularly fascinating to me was plumbing and sewage management at these ancient sites. I was raised to believe that these things are only part of our modern world and unknown before, say, the early 1900s. Yes, that is really what I thought. Much later, reading Samuel Pepys’ diary of 1630s’ London, I learned that couldn’t be true due to his wonderful description of how the plumbing went wrong in one of his homes, resulting in the neighbor’s WC dumping out into Pepys’ basement! Well, plumbing and sewage may well have been more sophisticated in Ancient Greece and Roman provinces than in London of the 1630s. On Delos, we saw the remains of a comprehensive system that included cisterns for storing rain water (There was no other source of water on Delos!) and a sewage system to carry waste to the bay.
Some of the old city has
been somewhat reconstructed, walls uncovered, columns raised, but most of the island is still rubble and what lies beneath remains something of a mystery. Looking at the rubble that predominates the landscape, it was hard not to wish the French archeologists could just hurry up and uncover the rest, but it is slow, tedious going. Later generations will know more about Delos than we can now
As with any ancient Greek site, art was important on Delos. The museum was full of wonderful artifacts that, due to scheduling, we had only minutes to explore. I could have easily spend several days on Delos soaking in the ancient vibe, imagining the port full of ships and the streets full of people, some of whose faces we saw vividly represented in wonderful statuary in the museum. Interestingly, statues at the site were created with removable heads, facilitating changing heads as the prominence of certain individuals waxed and waned.
My next favorite site on this trip was without question, the ancient city of Ephesus. So much of the ancient city has been reconstructed that, if you use a little imagination, you can almost see it as it
was in years gone by. I remembered it as being one of the Apostle Paul's hangouts. Throngs of tourists fill the ancient streets here, perhaps not unlike the city during festivals in ancient times. Particularly interesting are the hill residences that have been excavated and preserved in a covered area off the main street. A little of the grandeur of these apartments remains with charming mosaic floors and the faded remnants of murals on the walls. What really struck me was the similarity of many of the murals in different residences – I swear they are the work of a single artist. I can imagine the first homeowner inviting the neighbors over to see his new murals, the inquiries regarding who did them, and the subsequent word of mouth business enjoyed by the successful artist de jour!
And, again, particularly amazing to me, public toilets, located conveniently across from the library and in front of a bordello. It’s a little hard to tell now if there were stalls or even a division by sex in the arrangement, but as it stands now, it appeared that wasn’t a priority in Ephesus.
Arriving in Istanbul, of
course, we stood right in Sultanahmet Square, by the old German Fountain and the ancient Egyptian obelisk, where 10 German tourists were killed only three months later. At the time, there was an air in Istanbul, a sense of a rise of Islamic conservatism. We saw few women on the street and when we did in the old city, they were often dressed in abayas and burqas following large men who seemed to radiate self importance. And then there was the dress code for women at the Blue Mosque, enacted in 2013. Of course, these are my subjective opinions; others may not have felt the same vibe.
And, there was so much, much more.
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