Blogs from Kusadasi, Aegean, Turkey, Middle East

Hello from Turkey. Today is especially noteworthy because we are not only adding a new country to our list, but this adds a new continent to our world travels as well. Today we have arrived in Asia! Through a peculiarity of geography, even though we are a couple of degrees of longitude west of St Petersburg Russia, back on our Baltic cruise we were still in Europe – never in Asia. Admittedly we are just touching a corner of this huge continent, but today we have officially arrived on our 5thcontinent. It’s too bad we missed out on Africa earlier in the itinerary when they dropped Tunisia. We had an early start this morning. The ship arrived in port about 7:00 and we were to be in the theater at 7:40. We had gone up to ... read more

Arrived in Kusadasi (pronounced Koo-Sha-dars-a) after a cold and wet ferry ride to land in a beautiful hotel (Otel in Turkish). The room we were given was very comfortable. It felt wonderful to have a spacious room with lovely bathroom and a great shower. The showers in all the Greek hotels (except our first one in Athens) were really small and awkward to shower in. Some were over bathtubs that were very high and with my crook knee it was really difficult. I have been so impressed with Turkey so far. The tour guides talk about the Modern Turkey and that is exactly what it is. It has great infrastructure and much better than Greece - solar everywhere ... read more

Had a really restless night; of course it had been a Saturday night & the music went on late into the night. There was a live band up the road – they started off very bluesy but then it became loud & a nuisance, mingling with something else in the town... So, we had a lazy day – discussing what plan we had for Greece, checking cash funds in case of empty ATMs due to their situation & deciding when to cross the border. We have a rough plan which will no doubt firm up as more news breaks on he Beeb. In the afternoon we wandered up the sea front with all the Turks a lot of whom come here for their Sunday from Izmir. We went into an arcade where we had to walk ... read more

Thursday saw the Island Princess docking at the Port of Kusadasi. We had decided that we wouldn't do a tour in Kusadasi as there wasn't too much that we wanted to do, so because we didn't dock until after lunch, we decided to just hit the markets. Well, three of us did anyway. Ginna decided that he would relax on the deck by the pool with a book and watch a bit of ice sculpting. Karen, Dave and I headed out to the 'ship recommended shops' and took a look around. We discovered that the leather in these shops were equally as good as in Italy and the prices were even better. After a fantastic lunch of a shared kebab - unlike anything we had ever seen in New Zealand, we lost another man! Dave headed ... read more

Up early and of course Em wanted a sleep in… never when we want it! Anyway we had a quick breakfast and went straight to our tour bus. The ride to Ephesus was short and pretty soon we were trying to listen to our guide telling us the history while chasing Em around the ruins. Ephesus was the second largest city of the Roman Empire and the capital of Asia Minor housing around 250,000 people. Built on an ancient river 8km from the sea, the port eventually silted up and trade dwindled spelling the end of the city’s importance. Some time later, a large earthquake shook the region and landslides from the surrounding hills buried what was left of the city for centuries. It was finally excavated in the 19th century and several of the structures ... read more