A Study in Excesses

There are no ports of call today because we're on this long trip from Istanbul to Dubronik, so I have been trying to make the most of being on this floating city. And it seriously is a floating city -- when we were in Istanbul, I looked back towards the port and the ship looked like this giant white mountain against the backdrop of the city. Made the buildings and other ships -- some of them big container ships -- look like children's toys.

I have come to believe that cruising is seriously a study in excesses. There's such an incredible amount of stuff that's going to waste, chiefly amongst them being food. I guess that when you have 4000 guests and over 1500 crew to feed, with two dinner sittings and only 2.5 hours between them, you can't afford to be conservative -- better to have and not need rather than need and not have. But the amount of food that must be getting thrown away is staggering.

Anyhow, there's not much to report today. Have been wandering the ship in search of entertainment. They have a nice gym on board and nice swimming pools. However, the pools (or rather, the decks around them) are completely packed with people trying to get a tan. Some people kind of park themselves on a deck chair and stay there all day. Incredible.

Crossroads of Europe and Asia

We arrived in Istanbul today for a full-day tour of the only city that straddles two continental plates at once. Having read so much about Istanbul before, I had been expecting it to be rich in history and culture at once, while still bustling with modernity. I was a little disappointed by the latter (well, coming from HK, what do you expect, I suppose), but certainly not disappointed otherwise.

For a religious-architecture afficionado like me, Istanbul is absolutely fabulous. I could have spent hours in the Blue Mosque or in the Hagia Sophia Museum just staring at the domed ceiling and wondering how they had the technology to build that thing so many years ago. Or just wandering about the streets and soaking up the atmosphere. It was amazing to walk down a street of seemingly new buildings and all of a sudden come across a centuries-old mosque, or to be watching the metro go by and notice that it was passing next to an old city wall. The downside was our tour guide, who seemed to be on a quest to break the speed record for showing a group around Istanbul. I was tempted to leave our group several times, but then she was so conscientious about making sure that everybody was on the bus, I decided not to go about causing trouble.

One thing that I have noticed about Turkey: the Turks seem to absolutely adore cats. I finally gave up on my usual practice of taking a picture of every cat I see on the street. There are just too many of them hanging around. The nice thing is that all of them seem to be happy and well fed. (Okay, not too surprising, but I just came back from Hubei. Ask Stephen what those kitties look like.)

Ruined City: Ephesus

The first thing that greeted me on Turkish soil was a magnificent orange tabby cat that was strolling nonchalantly around the customs area of the port of Izmir. She was kind of blase about the tourists who were trying to get her attention, but she did stop to let me pet her and give me a good meow. Quite a difference from those cats that we saw in Hubei -- I think that she probably weighed as much as 5 of those Hubei kitties that Stephen and I saw.

Ephesus was much more impressive than Olympia. It's one of the three big Roman ruins -- you have Pompeii, there's one in Jordan whose name eludes me at the moment, and then there's Ephesus. Of course, this being the height of tourist season, the place was positively crawling with people, and it was also an extremely hot day (about 40 degrees), which was suboptimal for sightseeing. But it was impressive nonetheless. I especially liked the theatre/stadium with its rows and rows of seating. Will post my pictures when I finally get back to a reasonable internet connection.

(Note about my pictures: It's incredibly easy to make pictures lie. When you see my photos, you'll get the sense that Ephesus is somewhat deserted and you're free to roam as you like. Not so. You can barely squeeze through some of the narrower passages at times.)

Our guide for today was a retired journalist and somewhat of a philosopher. He shared a lot about what he thought of the Jewish/Christian/Islamic conflict (he didn't even try to be PC at all, which was shocking at times but also a refreshing change), and though he was Muslim, he knew a surprising bit about Christianity and the Bible. As he pointed out where St. Paul supposedly preached in Ephesus, he talked about the Christian martyrs and then he said, "We learn about the basics from our parents, from our mosques, churches and synagogues. However, we never really think about the fact that people have died in order to give us what we believe in." He then went on to talk about the lions that they used to feed the martyrs to.

Some of the Americans in the group weren't too pleased about this, "what a downer", they were saying, but I appreciated the reminder about how we got what we have today.

Greetings from Olympia!

It's been three days on this ship now and it's starting to feel like forever, sort of. Well, okay, not that bad. At least I'm managing to get some good sleep in and get a good rest after the massive whirlwind that was the last three weeks. But this is a huge liner -- almsot 4000 people -- and I have to admit that I suppose I don't really like the floating-city-on-the-sea idea.

One good thing about this ship, though -- it has a chocolate bar! Everything's chocolate -- they even have shot glasses made of chocolate inside which they serve choc-flavored liquor. And the whole place smells like chocolate. It's fast becoming my favorite place on the ship.

Anyway, the ports have been nice so far. Went cycling in Bari yesterday for about two hours -- those of you who have been on the biking trips with me before, it was about 38 degrees Celcius and under the noonday sun, so you can imagine what it was like. But somehow it didn't seem as bad as it would have been in HK -- maybe because it was so dry that your sweat pretty much dried off immediately. I do have a small sunburn and a few bruises from a minor accident to show for it, though :-D

Today was Olympia, place of the ancient Olympic games. And to be honest, it was a little disappointing -- maybe it was the hordes of tourists (note to self: when a 4000 person liner docks, it regurgitates 4000 tourists onto the same small town at once), or maybe it's because I have been spoiled by too many Roman ruins before, but it was somewhat underwhelming. I much preferred the ruins of Leptis Magna in Libya, or those in Jordan -- those had more of a "WOW" factor to them.

Tomorrow will be Ephesus. Will report more then. For the time being, I better get off this expensive Internet connection (0.50 Euros per 30 secs!!!!!)