Ancient Wonders Cruise Ends

A while since we last heard about the cruise, so it's time to finish things off properly and bring the cruise holiday to an end.

We had spent Sunday 27 May in Mykonos, Greece and that night saw us once more in the Horizons Bar onboard the Thomson Celebration for our last chance to hear Tomas and Maris singing.

In fact it was Maris's comeback night - she had been stricken with laryngitis and had totally lost her voice earlier in the week being ordered by the doctor to keep to her cabin and not sing, not speak for three days. She had been devastated by this - it's something that affects most singers at some point and is worrying to say the least. But she had been very good. We joined them for their evening meal most nights and she was doing her best to keep quiet, only whispering. All those good looks and silent too - an ideal woman, hee hee! Sorry Maris! Tomas had done a magnificent job on his own but it was great to have 2 Intense back together again for our last night.

And Maris was sensational that night. We spent some time chatting with them afterwards and I'm sure will see them again before too long.

Monday 28 May came along and we awoke back in Marmaris, Turkey where we had to say goodbye to the ship and travel back to England.

Dalaman Airport was its usual crowded and chaotic self. We were told to join a queue only to see lots of later arrivals bypassing us and after a while we bailed out to join the less formal crush. You go through security with your bags on entering then go to check-in where your bags are taken as usual, then you go through another security check and then through passport control. I beeped going through the first security, was ignored, retrieved the bags and then got an apologetic tap on the shoulder and was frisked.

Then six or seven hours later we were home. The sun had been cracking the flags whilst we were away and we enjoyed the last evening of that before the rain started again the following day...

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Meandering in Mykonos

27 May 2012 and the Thomson Celebration came into port at Mykonos town on Mykonos Island in Greece.

First impressions were very favourable - there was a topless girl on the beach not far from where we got off the shuttle bus from the ship... With my usual luck, she was lying face down... "There's a mosquito on your back!" shouted an old chap behind me hopefully. How childish, I thought, as Fran nudged me as a warning not to join in...

I suspect there's a healthy nightlife on the island. At 10:00am of a morning there's hardly anyone about at all apart from a few shop owners setting stalls and display stands out and a few old men sitting on the harbour wall energetically discussing something with much waving of arms. In other words... absolutely perfect!

Some of the streets are narrow to say the least. You'd think that you could walk willy-nilly but you still need to keep an ear cocked for the occasional moped or scooter!

This area with rooms of the buildings at least partially suspended above the sea is known as Little Venice.

Zorbas Bar is perfectly named to draw in the punters! Don't mind if I do, thanks...

The windmills are a major landmark for the town and if you have ever been or seen postcards or photos then this will be a familar sight. The windmills date back as far as the 15th century and the distinctive thatch thus pre-date The Beatles' mop-tops!

We watched with rising concern as an approaching car caused a van to swerve on a collision course with a line of bollards but with a series of soft THWACK! sounds as he hit them, they folded under the van's body and popped up again once he was past. They were made of rubber!

We suddenly came out onto a path on the edge of a low cliff and the scene was just idyllic. Just look at the colours of the sea. Why don't I live there?!?

The 1989 film Shirley Valentine was filmed here. The only thing we were disappointed at was that we didn't see the pelican that everyone had told us we would see. Called Perseus, it has been another staple sight of Mykonos for many years. Perhaps he was on holiday that day...

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A Day in Piraeus

26 May 2012. The Thomson Celebration docks in Piraeus, affording those who wish to go, a chance to visit Athens and the Acropolis.

We visited the Acropolis in 2009 and planned to wander around the dock area for a couple of hours and then spend the afternoon on the ship, relaxing and reading.

Having set off walking and successfully dodging the taxi drivers who watched us refuse their ten predecessors but who clearly thought that was because we were holding out until we reached their cab, we then came across a road train. It was almost full of passengers already so we took one of the few remaining seats and off it trundled.

Road trains are uncomfortable and they are the bane of motorists, but for the tourist they offer a chance to see the sights at a slow enough pace to take them in.

It made a couple of stops at the marina and the museum and then in around half an hour we were back at the place we got on.

The tiny little church was one of the sights on the tour. We carried on walking around the docks area as far as we could get which was another 45 minute's walk and then turned to come back.

Piraeus is one of the many places that use modern trolley buses. When you look at the years of construction and disruption there has been in places like Edinburgh, you have to wonder why we seem to be bringing back tramlines to our cities in the UK instead of using electric power in this way. It doesn't need as much power to move a tram on rails as it does a bus on tyres but all the faff in getting there and the cost of laying rails I suspect leads to a very long payback period!

Once back almost to our ship, we stop for a moment to admire the Star Clipper whose crew are throwing rubbish off into a skip on the dockside.

We have just one day and one port of call left on our holiday. For fans of Shirley Valentine, it's Mykonos.

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The Oracle and Temple to Apollo, Didyma

25 May 2012. After we left Miletus we motored for a short while admiring the rain before arriving at Didyma. Here are the remains of a massive Temple to Apollo which, although never fully completed, would have rivalled that of Artemis, not too far away that was one of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World.

The original temple was run by the Branchidae family claiming descent from Branchos, a youth loved by Apollo. The wooden steps were quite slippery from their soaking and Fran was not best pleased I stopped her and expected her to turn round for a photo! In ancient times, once at the temple, a High Priestess answered questions in an unknown tongue which was translated by the Branchidae family members. This gave the family a certain degree (i.e. total) of opportunity to influence the advice given by the oracle!

It was the main temple of Miletus and was reached from there via a 17km Sacred Way, which had ritual waystations and statues of the Branchidae family including their animals. They were making sure of their franchise...

The marble has been badly marked by fire - hence the blackened state of the remains. The Persians under Darius invaded in 493 BC and presumably having had unpalatable advice offered by the Oracle promptly threw a wobbly and kicked out the Branchidae family and set fire to the place saying things like "Stuff your Oracle!" and "From now on we'll go to Delphi...!"

Once a visitor had climbed the steps and puffed themselves out, they then found themselves breathing in the heady fumes of incense mixed with certain other additives that left them feeling, shall we say, a touch light-headed...

On a high they were then directed down a narrow steeply sloping passage that was not only dark but narrow, the steep marble flooring requiring them in their befuddled state to reach out to touch both walls in the dark to keep their balance.

Arriving here in an enclosed temple space, but open to the sky, they then had to climb back up the steps shown at the far end.

If they were breathing heavily before, by now they were positively gasping and therefore drawing in yet more of the intoxicating fumes. At the top of these steps they found the room of the Oracle. A High Priestess, also somewhat off her head, wailed and garbled whilst members of the ever accomodating Branchidae family ("An offering? How kind!") translated the utterances of the Oracle out of the goodness of their hearts and to the growth of their purse.

Alexander the Great captured Miletus in 334 BC and began a restoration of the temple and started the tradition of the Oracle again. It was said that the sacred spring which had dried up a couple of hundred years before the Persians burnt the place, started to flow again once Alexander had visited. He probably made sure of it by digging...

There was by now a 160 year gap in the Oracle's tradition. Luckily someone was found who knew how to wail incoherently and someone learned to interpret this. Just over 600 years later, Rome was leaning heavily on the Christians and in 302 AD Galerius urged Diocletian to step it up somewhat.

Uncertain, Diocletian asked the Oracle for guidance. At Didyma the Oracle's utterings were given in written form. At Delphi they were merely spoken. The record shows that the response was interpreted as in favour of the persecution, marking the beginning of what has become known as the Great Persecution of 303, lasting for ten years.

You may get slightly biassed guidance from a High Priestess of one religion if wondering whether to persecute another... A few people from our party climbed the steps expecting to find themselves able to simply walk down the steps of the temple on the other side. And as the Oracle's rooms are no more they would have been able to do that had they been willing to jump the 12 feet or so to the floor of the first platform.

Instead we had to climb up the steep passage again. I've brightened the photo considerably, it was very dim in there. Miss Franny blinked at the wrong moment - it wasn't so dim that she could see just as well with her eyes shut...

A couple of gorgons' heads sculptures are displayed here but most of the sculpture including some statues from the Sacred Way have been removed to the museum. A few of the Sacred Way statues are apparently to be found in the British Museum in London. By the way, although we were told they were Gorgons' heads, I think they just had wavy hair - those are not snakes...

Once back at the ticket office, the current High Priest came looking for an offering...

We say goodbye to Didyma and Apollo and head back to the ship which is next to Princess Danae and a Saga Cruises ship.

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Kusadasi and Miletus

25 May 2012. We arrived in Kusadasi in Turkey. A place we have visited a number of times already and we looked for a tour that we hadn't done before.

It seemed that we had left the rain of Lesbos behind us, but after this brilliant start the weather turned a little dull through the morning. Not yet though so we can remain optimistic for the moment until we join our bus and the guide says "We had thunder and rain last night - as much rain during the night as we expected all summer..."

Hey, we're British! We can handle rain...

We are to visit a couple of ancient sites, first the trading city of Miletus and then its temple at Didyma which was both temple and oracle - a famous oracle rivalling that of Delphi. Arriving at Miletus we found the ticket office looking rather like a border post. We still had blue skies but the darker clouds are starting to form now!

Miletus Theatre. Whilst Ephesus is the best known ancient city in this part of Turkey, the city of Miletus was the main trade centre. This was where goods from Asia were bought and from where the great caravans set out south and west across the Holy Land and Greece then west to Italy and Western Europe.

The theatre is not as large as that of Ephesus. This one seats only 15,000 to the Ephesian theatre's 25,000. The four columns would have supported a canopy for the rich folks to keep dry and be sheltered from the sun and flying limbs from defeated gladiators.

The curvature of the surface of the seats that faces the stage creates the perfect sound acoustics. Someone speaking softly from the arena can be heard anywhere in the theatre. They should have been more careful about what they talked about really, but I'd have tried a squirt of WD40 myself...

Given that gladiatorial contests were staged here, the excellent acoustics must have meant the eager audience could hear every squelch...

The harbour would have been to the left. The area had already been swamped by the Aegean but after it rose to become Miletus, trade was affected by the silting up of the river and retreat of the sea.

Leaving the area of the theatre and trading centre we approach the bath house. Here are the cubicles where people would be oiled and massaged and have the dirt of the day sweated out and scraped off by their personal body slave or one of the baths attendants.

I could just have done with a bit of that, but they seem to have let things slide a little...

Earthquakes, centuries of neglect and the taking of dressed stone for new building projects have left the city in a sorry state. The theatre was good though and the bath house had enough left to show us to make the visit worthwhile. The scenery around the site, with grasses and trees with bright red poppies peeping out also contributed to the day.

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