Loves' 2023 World Cruise

April 23 (Sunday), 2023 Sunny, High 67 deg F Our ship docked at the Port of Piraeus which is about 8 miles from Athens City Center.   It is the largest passenger port in Europe.   Piraeus has three distinct harbors that each serve different purposes.   Looking at the geography of the port and its location on the Mediterranean one can see why Athens has been such a strategically important city throughout history.   It seems like everyone wanted to own Athens including the Persians, Egyptians, Turks and Romans.   Athens changed rulers several times over its long history. Athens has a recorded history of more than 3,400 years and there is evidence that humans lived there since at least 7,000 years BC.     One of our lecturers pointed out that the society in Athens established the first government that focused on the rights of the individual.   In other established civilizations like that of the Egyptians during the rule of the pharaohs, the focus wa...

  April 20, 21 (Thursday, Friday), 2023 Partly cloudy, high 65 deg F.    Our trip both in and out of Istanbul is through a somewhat controlled waterway, the Dardanelles Strait, which has at least one narrow point.   Here, we could see Turkey on one side and Greece on the other.   We got a feel for just how much commerce goes through Istanbul to and from the Black Sea via the Bosphorus Strait. Istanbul is one big and interesting city.   It straddles the Bosphorus Strait with one foot in Asia and one foot in Europe.   The Strait connects the Mediterranean with the Black Sea, so it is a critical trade alley.   Formerly named Constantinople, Istanbul has a very rich history.   Constantine I, for whom the city was named, organized the first Christian Ecumenical Council in 325 AD that formed the Christian doctrine and assembled the writings that ultimately became the New Testament.   In 1483 the Ottoman Empire conquered the city and made it in...

April 19, 2023 Sunny, high 65 deg F We parked in the port of Kusadasi, a resort city in Turkey and took a bus tour about 15 miles to the excavated city of Ephesus.   Ephesus is an ancient city originally founded in the 10th century BC at the mouth of the river Kucuk Menderes. (Our guide called it the “Meander” River).    Ephesus became an important city in Roman times with a population that grew to at least 100,000 making it one of the largest cities in the Roman Empire.   As the river silted up the bay, the port became inoperable for shipping and the city started its decline around 350 AD.   Wars and earthquakes contributed to its decline and it was completely abandoned in the 15th century.   Father Time began covering the city until none of the prominent structures including the Library and Coliseum were visible.   Excavation began in the late 1880s and continues to this day.     The ruins are amazing to see.   We took a ton of photos,...

April 18, 2023 Mostly sunny; high around 68 deg F. Rhodes is a beautiful resort destination Greek island in the Aegean Sea.   It is only 12 miles from Turkey and 250 miles to Greece.   Like so many places we have visited it has a rich history, having been conquered by the Romans, Persians and Egyptians.   The old town is surrounded by a massive rock wall and a deep moat (dry now).   In one famous battle a large Macedonian force failed to breech the wall, and to celebrate, the Rhodesians built a massive statue at the entrance of the harbor, called the Colossus of Rhodes.   It was a statute of the sun god and stood 108 feet tall.   An earthquake knocked it down in 220 BC and the Rhodesians decided to leave it be.   We had visited Rhodes in 2012 and decided to just explore on our own.   We took a Hop On-Hop Off bus around the Island and then stopped at a Greek restaurant to try their Gyros for lunch.   Excellent!    To work off the cal...