Ephesus to Marseille Aboard SS Voyager

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Kusadasi, Turkey is the port from which you travel inland several miles to visit the ancient city of Ephesus. Other cruise ships have joined our trek and so the fellow travelers with their buses are with us as be sightsee. This is our second trip to this partially restored Greek city, the first being last year in a driving rain storm. Rain accompanied us this year also but with no wind and better conditions. Wandering about these Greek/Roman remnants of a thriving, rich city is an amazing lesson in early civilizations. The most interesting remnant is the communal toilet with side by side holes in marble seats and running water flushing below (privacy didn’t come to fruition until the Victorians). The partially restored “Terrace Houses” have wonderful artwork in wall paintings and inlaid flooring. The gift shops remind us of their “genuine fake watches”.

Classical Athens, Greece was a powerful city-state and center for the arts, learning and philosophy. We join thousands of tourists at the partially restored Parthenon at the Acropolis in the center of the 5 million inhabitant city and its marvelous new museum preserving the remaining relics. Our drive about the city highlights the modern and ancient construction in this bastion of ancient and modern democracy.

Taormina, Sicily, Italy provides an opportunity to ride our boat’s tenders/lifeboats into the small port and visit this historic town perched on the seaside cliffs. Handling mildly rough seas the crews get us safely in so we can wander through the shop lined narrow streets to see the Greco-Roman Amphitheater, constructed on a hillside to enjoy a sea view. Still used today for concerts and plays we were briefed on the Greek esoteric plays once performed there and the Roman “circus” distractions. We catch the last tender able to make the trip to the ship before the captain calls in all the tenders, buses the remaining 200 passengers and crew across the island to Messina while we cruise around to pick them up from a more secure pier. Then, amidst the band playing and champagne flowing, we sail off to Sorrento for a smoother tendering experience.

Sorrento, Italy is the home of legendary Capri, which we’ve visited before and found to be highly commercialized ala Rodeo Drive. This time we visit the ancient city of Pompeii which was buried by Mt. Vesuvius’s volcanic ash and is still being unearthed in a well maintained archeological dig. It’s fun to see the original “red light district” with its pornographic signage to the legalized (and richly taxed) sex trade plus the Roman baths and temples.

Arriving at the port of Civitavecchia and driving to Rome provides us with a comfortable bus tour of its Roman ruins sandwiched into a vibrant city of fountains and other architectural monuments. It is amazing to be driving along a modern city street and suddenly come upon the Roman Coliseum or “Amphiteatrum Flavium”, Trevi Fountain, etc. We learned from our guide Michelle of Rome’s founding on 21 April 753 BC and its twice annual floods of the Tevere River until dikes were built in 1871. Our free time is spent at the famous Spanish Steps and the surrounding shops.

Villefranche-sur-Mer or Villefranche rises like a natural amphitheater from a beautiful bay on the southeastern French coast. We choose to take a short trip to the St Jean Cap Ferrat Peninsula to visit the Rothschild Foundation villa. Here a Rothchild heir has built a gorgeous mansion overlooking the ocean and the town and filled the many rooms with historic relics (paintings, stone carvings, tapestries) from around the world. Our drive following the visit shows off the quaint town and the neighboring town of Nice, where the Cannes Film Festival is currently occurring.

Marseilles, France is a modern city with wonderful neo-Byzantine churches and many high shuttered houses looming over narrow cobbled streets, stone stairways and tiny squares in the Vieille Ville. Founded by the Phoenicians with the exoticism of the international shipping port it has been for 2600 years, it was vital to the Crusades in the Middle Ages and to Louis XIV as a military port. We get a taste of this history as we drive to Castellet, a small walled city currently filled with shops but once home to farmers being protected from roving pirates. Returning to the port we see the gigantic ferries preparing for their trips to North Africa across the Mediterranean Sea.

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