Ottoman Treasures Cruise 16-23 August 2010

Highlights of a week cruising the Aegean Sea on the Thomson Celebration cruise ship. The itinerary is Marmaris, Turkey > Day at Sea > Istanbul, Turkey > The Dardanelle Straits > Kusadasi, Turkey > Rhodes, Greece. Excursions include the Blue Mosque, Hagia Sophia and the Basilica Cistern in Istanbul; the Basilica and tomb of the Apostle, St John and the village of Sirince in Turkey, and an independent wander around Rhodes town.

Each place of interest is shown on its own separate article, reached by clicking/tapping the photos below. A link on each page will bring you back here.

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Bosphorus River Cruise

Wednesday 23 May 2012. We have crossed the Golden Horn into the old part of Istanbul where we board - by means of some ricketty steps - a river boat that will take us for a cruise on the Bosphorus.

Miss Franny getting settled on the hard wooden bench that was our seating - not a single cushion in sight! Are we daunted? Yes we are a little...

I had to presume that the skipper was well used to taking his boat under the Galata Bridge across the Golden Horn as the bridge structure missed the deck mast and string of lights by mere inches! Here a couple of passengers look round back at the bridge as if to say "How on earth did we miss?!?"

We pass the Thomson Celebration moored at the dock and marvel at its ability to remain motionless on water. Our little tour boat is weaving figures of eight. As the drink leaves the glass of the chap near the front of the boat, it is drunk by a woman at the back as she passes beneath its arc...

This is one of several palaces built by Sultans in the past. They are all pretty spectacular and they all had room for a few of his harem - hey but where's the harem in that I ask?

A closer look at this spectacular bijou little home from home...

The Ciragan Palace is another case in point. The Sultan had four palaces, one for each season and a girl for each hair on his head. Now I am almost totally bald, but even so... All I can think is that there must have been some pretty bored girls, or a lot more hanky-panky making the eunuchs rich from bribery than the Sultan would have liked!

We reach the first bridge that crosses the Bosphorus from Europe to Asia. This is the Bosphorus Bridge, built in the 1970s and the first bridge to cross between Europe and Asia since a pontoon bridge, made by parking boats side by side, allowed Xerxes I of Persia to march his army across the Dardanelles in 480 BC. Sitting almost underneath the bridge is a weather-boarded house under restoration.

As we approach the next bridge where we will turn round to come back, we come to Rumeli Castle on the European side, built by the invading Ottoman Sultan Mehmed II (1432–1481) in just four months from 1451-1452 to prevent the besieged Constantinople (as the city was then called) from receiving aid from the Black Sea.

The skipper takes the opportunity to do a U-turn in the river at this point. Right under the nose of the impressively large Minerva Astra which sounded a warning horn at us. Though we were across before there was any danger of collision, the sight of this huge ship bearing down on us made me wonder how much of the tour boat would be left had his engines stalled at that moment...

Which then prompted me to remember that this river was the site of the legend of the clashing rocks which made it impassable to ships until Jason and his Argonauts managed to pass between them, upon which they ceased to clash and became rooted in a fixed position.

I looked again at my glass. What was this stuff...?

So now we are on the Asian bank of the river and heading back towards the Golden Horn. There are some very impressive buildings along this bank. We were told that many millionaires live in this area.

Opposite the Kumeli Castle is the Anatolian Castle on the Asian side. Built between 1393 and 1394 by Sultan Bayezid I.

The Kuleli Military School has now dropped the "military" part of its name. It was converted to a hospital during several wars before the students were allowed back in and we were told that Florence Nightingale carried her lamp up and down it during the Crimean War. I haven't been able to find evidence to back this up, however. If anyone knows for sure, leave a comment.

We arrive back at our starting point and one chap is moved to wave to the lucky people on Thomson Celebration whose bums are not a series of parallel indented lines...

We take our leave of the ship by the same ricketty stairs and the bus takes us back to our cruise ship. On the way we pass a bus station, quite crowded and with buses of every colour. I chose a blue one to show you!

As we came back over the Galata Bridge I noticed that for the whole of its length the parapet was home to fishermen. Whether for pleasure or for dinner I'm not sure!

And to finish with, a shot of a tram heading back towards Galata Bridge after we had crossed it.

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Ancient Wonders Cruise

We're back now, did you miss us? It's been a rare old busy time of late. I've been approaching the deadline for the book on Blackpool and we had a holiday booked which meant I had to buckle down and get it finished before we could go off enjoying ourselves!

I'm glad to say the book, a look at the Blackpool of the Victorians and Edwardians through their postcards, compared with modern views of Blackpool taken by yours truly from as close to the original viewpoint as I could manage has been written and photographed and packaged off to the publishers. More news as and when, but the book to be called "Blackpool: Then and Now" and written by John D Burke (to differentiate myself from the chap who wrote so many excellent TV and film scripts and spin-off books) is due to be in the shops for Christmas. Let me be the first to wish you a merry one...!

So with the book contents finished I could settle back to enjoy the holiday - a cruise on the Thomson Celebration starting in Marmaris, Turkey and taking in Istanbul, Lesbos, Kusadasi, Piraes for Athens, Mykonos and back to Marmaris again. The tour was called Ancient Wonders, hopefully not in honour of us, but describing the places we were to see...

And to make it even more special, our friends Tomas and Maris were aboard, performing as 2Intense in the Horizons bar above the bridge of the ship. We've kept in touch with them since we first met on the ship a few years ago and had been eagerly anticipating meeting up with them again.

The flights to Dalaman and transfer to the ship were negotiated without any mishap and we spent our first full day at sea, getting used to a life revolving around food and drink... bliss...

On 23 May we arrived in Istanbul, a rather overcast but warm Istanbul.

At one side of the ship the Bosphorus was a source of entertainment as the many small tour boats and ferries dodge around some very large cruise ships and cargo ships.

Some were rocking about quite merrily, making us exchange early morning glances as we had booked a tour along the river on one of these small craft! We decided to prepare for it and headed into the self-service restaurant for fruit followed by bacon, eggs, beans, croissants, washed down by a couple of mugs of coffee.

The view from the other side of the ship was of the more modern city. So, here we were in a crowded street with passengers from three other cruise ships coming out the same port authority door and waiting for excursion coaches. Our coach arrived to take us across the river to our excursion boat.

On the river the cormorants are gathering to watch our antics so keep tuned and the next entry will tell the tale of the river cruise. No whitewash...

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An Evening in Istanbul

Thursday, 19 August 2010. We are back on board the Thomson Celebration and looking over the side of the ship as dusk approaches.

This gives us our final view of the Hagia Sophia and Blue Mosque on the hill opposite the ship. It clearly shows the six minarets of the Blue Mosque. There is a story that when built, this was as many as the mosque at Mecca itself and that to avoid criticism the Sultan had a seventh minaret built in Mecca. Nice story but untrue - there was already a seventh minaret in Mecca at the time.

Another story, perhaps not so nice, concerns this tower, the Galata Tower. In circa 1630-1632, Hezarfen Ahmet Çelebi strapped on some sort of false wings and flew or glided from this tower over the Bosphorus to the other side, nearly six kilometers (four miles) away. The story goes that the Sultan, far from being pleased that his country should be so advanced in scientific thought and example, was miffed at the thought that Çelebi was trying to be more important than himself and had him killed... The wings were thrown into the Bosphorus and it would be another few hundred years before anyone managed to do the same.

We went into the Horizons bar to listen to the superb sounds of entertainers Tomas and Maris. We managed to sit close by the stage this night and introduced ourselves and got to know them a little. Lovely people and a great sound. I knew I was going to come home to a weekend of 3 gigs with the band and joked to Tomas that I needed to borrow his guitar to keep my fingers hard - you can tell a guitarist by the layers of corn on the finger tips of the hand that fingers the neck and strings. He immediately grabbed my hand to look for the evidence and from that moment we were firm friends!

The ship was in port until 5:00am tomorrow so on leaving the Horizons bar about 11:00pm I collected the camera again and took a few more shots over the side. The Thomson Celebration (and its sister ship the Spirit) has a steady vibration that can be felt all over the ship - something to do with twin generators being out of synch with each other so we were told once. Anyway, it does make it almost impossible to take a long exposure photo and of a dozen or so, I only managed to get a few that are worth keeping.

Above is the bridge over the Bosphorus. It links the continents of Europe and Asia. Despite the hour it is still very warm and people are still sitting out on the rear decks. In fact on several nights we made the lower pool deck our final call before going to bed as we could sit there with a last mug of coffee and talk over the day or plan the next day. Very relaxing!

Just at the side of the ship over the roof of the port buildings was this mosque. I've no idea of its name or whether it is in any way important, but at night it looked spectacular with the floodlighting and the lights on the minarets.

Tomorrow, standing on deck I, along with many other passengers, will shed tears. But for now all is peace.

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Istanbul's Basilica Cistern

Thursday, 19 August 2010. We are back in James Bond territory again.

In From Russia With Love our intrepid hero is taken by Kerim Bey, Head of Station T for Turkey, down into this huge underground water reservoir to spy on the Russian embassy via a submarine periscope hidden behind a mousehole.

In real life the periscope would have to be a very sophisticated version because the Russian embassy is nowhere near this place...

Since 1963 when the film was made the water level has been reduced to a few feet only and a huge amount of silt removed to make the apparent size even more impressive. A walkway has been constructed so that visitors can walk about the vast area without the need to ferry them about in boats as was necessary before.

With the removal of 50,000 tons of silt and mud between 1985 and 1987 two fabulous Roman Medusa head carvings were found to have been used as bases for pillars. The one shown is placed upside down and the other is on its side. There are two possible reasons for this. It was one way of stopping the image of Medusa from turning people into stone. Or placed this way they were just the right height needed to support the pillars...

So here are a few facts from the excellent, if quaintly worded, information pamphlet, seemingly translated from Turkish into English by someone who had little experience of either language, (but probably just showing how lucky I am to have been brought up to speak English instead of having to learn it later). In fact why is everybody else so much better at learning foreign languages than us Brits? Because they have to learn the most complicated language where the same letters have lots of different sounds - ough... ie though, through, bough, enough, cough...

The cistern was built between 527 and 565 AD. Not long after the period in which King Arthur was supposed to be chasing Saxons out of Britain and five centuries before the Normans arrived to show their descendants what it felt like to be invaded. It is 140m long by 70m wide with the roof supported by 336 columns of 9m height arranged in 12 rows of 28 columns. It held 100,000 tonnes of water.

There are some (bloody big!) fish swimming about down there...

In fact, let's finish with my favourite bit from the official information pamphlet and I salute the translator who decided this slightly sinister phrase would tempt us down the 55 steps from street level to see the undoubtedly wondrous place where all those (thankfully absent) rats chased James Bond after he blows up the Russian Embassy. It reads...

"The visitors melt into disappearance when they are here in the cistern to see the Medusa head, in accompany of fish and a smoothing music."

Fantastic!

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The Blue Mosque of Istanbul

Thursday, 19 August 2010. Following a day at sea, the Thomson Celebration sails into the Bosphorus and moors up opposite the Blue Mosque and Hagia Sophia just into the Golden Horn. We are booked on an excursion called Taste of Istanbul. We board a coach which drives over the bridge on the Golden Horn with some fabulous views to either side.

First stop is the Blue Mosque. Built between 1609-1616 by Sultan Ahmed I, the first thing you notice is that it's not blue... It was named for the blue tiles inside...which are set amongst a lot of red tiles too, though there is a bluish tinge inside!

Whilst a huge visitor attraction, it is still in use as a mosque and visitors must take off their shoes to enter. This is the queue to do that. People on the balcony to the left are taking off shoes and placing them in polythene bags that are provided so you can carry them about. Some twit of an American behind us can't wait and shouts up for some bags to be dropped down. A bag floats down and he calls up "No... a roll, a roll!"

"You want a full roll?" comes an incredulous voice from above. "Yes!" A huge roll, about two metres long and half a meter in diameter with probably over a thousand bags crashes spectacularly to the ground. The American has a near heart attack. "No! Not a full roll! Just a few bags!" He actually wants to throw the heavy roll back up! But the bloke at the top is not about to try to catch it.

"Piss off!" comes an indignant comment. "You got what you asked for!" Ah... Britain can still be Great sometimes!

Inside the decoration is wonderful. It's a bit dark inside. Windows, although small, are full of stained glass and ceilings are tiled with patterns and calligraphy.

The price to be paid for the tiles was decreed by the Sultan. As the years of building went by and the price of tiles increased with inflation, the Sultan would not be moved to increase the budget. This meant that the higher they built, the poorer the quality of tile was all that could be afforded. Therefore reds have become brown and other colours have faded accordingly.

The prayer area, the vast clear floorspace is lit by a huge chandelier hung from the ceiling. The glass light holders were once richly hung with gold and jewels and ostrich eggs. The latter were there to repel spiders and thus keep the chandelier free of webs. The carpet was new and is regularly replaced as carpets become worn. It had darker stripes woven into it to enable those praying to form neat lines facing Mecca.

We left the Blue Mosque, everyone sitting on the steps of the exit to put their shoes back on. It was only when you stood up and went down into the courtyard and turned for a last glance at this beautiful building that you see the signs written on the facings of the steps... Do not sit on these steps!

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