:Literary Incontinence

Once again short on time, so this has to be brief.  I’m in the internet room of the Globetrotter hostel in the suburbs of London after a loooooong day of wandering the city.

I’ll start by saying that I like London a lot.  Already it’s made my list of top-3 European cities (along with Barcelona and Zürich).  Everything here is just so BRITISH.  I can’t really explain it.  Everyone seems laid back and so uptight about everything at the same time.  The sights have been amazing.  Today’s list included The Tower of London, Tower Bridge, London Bridge, The Monument (to the great fire of 1666), Walking by the Eye of London, Parliament House (and Big Ben), Westminster Abbey, St. James Park, Buckingham Palace, Piccadilly Square, and then we finished off the day by seeing the new Harry Potter Movie.  It was pretty cool picking out sights in the London scenes of places we had just walked today.

Tomorrow Meg and I take the Chunnel to Paris.  I’m looking forward to it even though I was just getting used to people speaking English again.

Peace, Love, all that jazz…

djp

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Gotta keep this short - leaving for the airport in 20 min.

Leaving the Silver Cloud was hard, as expected.  I already miss Calling room service for more champagne, trivia at the bar every evening, the food, and of course the wine.

Athens has been wonderful.  We went and explored the Parthenon and the Acropolis yesterday morning.  It was hot, dusty, and steep - but I still enjoyed it a lot.  After dinner we sat on the roof of our hotel, drank Dom Perignon and nice wine, and stared up the hill to the Acropolis, all lit up about a half-mile away.  Breathtaking.

After a night of wandering about the Placa, drinking beer, and hanging out listening to a live Greek band in a concert in a park, and eating gelato (the night was a strange parallel to our last night in Barcelona 2 years ago), we all passed out hard last night.  This morning, we wandered around more of Athens, seeing an art museum and some kind of national park in the middle of the city.

From here, Joe, Evie, Meg and I are leaving the group to catch a British Airways flight to London for a while.  I hope our bags make it.

-djp

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Ok, it’s now the evening of the 12th.  I’ve had a great day wandering around Nafplion, I’m a few glasses of champagne in, I’ve got some complimentary chocolate from the ship and an Ipod:  I’m ready for some serious blogging!

Thessaloniki

Ok, I left off as we were wandering around Thessaloniki.  After seeing the second Agia Sofia, we wandered up one of the major streets to investigate a huge tower.  It turned out to be a temple-turned-mosque, surprise surprise!  Still, very cool.  In the middle of this circular temple was a strange piece of stone in the very center that covered some kind of well or shaft.  When stomped on, it made a loud acoustic thump that you could hear loudly from the whole place.

After some exploring there, it was time to get something to eat.  The closest place was Fagoto’s pizza across the street.  The pizza was good – the time spent cracking jokes about the name of the restaurant was better.

From there, we took a main street that had once connected the temple with the tower (never got the name of it) to the city walls near the harbor.  We followed the coast up a bit to check out the White Tower.  No one is allowed up into the tower anymore, but it’s still impressive from the ground.  A massive, round tower looking over the harbor, it was cool to imagine archers and catapults firing on invading ships out in the water as we circled it on our way back to the ship.

Day at Sea

The next day was a day at sea.  It was a much needed break after wandering around Mediterranean cities all sweaty for a week.  I’ll cover  “cruise” stuff later, for now I’m just trying to get to all the shore excursions.

Bodrum

After a day’s break, it was back to Turkey one more time.  The seaside resort town of Bodrum was nothing like Istabbul, however.  The main attraction here was a huge fortress right off the harbor that had been turned into a museum.  Joe and I had something else very important to accomplish here though… Before we left, we ordered a club sandwich from room service - a turkey club sandwich.  Stuffing it into Joe’s bag, we set out for shore.  After a little bit of wandering around the harbor bazaar (which was MUCH more friendly than the one in Istanbul) and looking for some of the other people in our group, we sat on a park bench and fulfilled one of the most important objectives of the whole trip:  we ate turkey in turkey.  It was fabulous.

Completely satisfied, we decided we might as well check out the fortress museum while we were in town.  It was interesting, but not thrilling.  All the signs advertised an “underwater museum,” but to the disappointment of many, it was not actually underwater, it simply contained artifacts found underwater.  Most were from shipwrecks, and most were amphoras.  I learned a lot about amphoras that day.  More than I ever thought there was to know.  Spell check is trying to tell me now the plural of “amphora” is “amphorae.”  I bet the guy who wrote the spell check dictionary never went to the museum in Bodrum, though, so screw him.

One thing I was totally surprised and that I thought was very cool is that Bodrum is the same city as Halikarnassus, sight of one of the seven wonders of the ancient world.  Apparently though, there’s not much left of the once-famous Mausoleums of Halikarnassus, so I’m glad we didn’t spend the day there.

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Crete

The next day was spent in Agios Nikolaos on the island of Crete.  I was looking forward to seeing the sights on Crete, but it turns out that it’s just too big an island to see in one day.  The little town of Agios Nikolaos is a very pleasant little village with a large freshwater lake right in the middle of it, barely above sea level.  We hiked through the streets to see another Greek Orthodox Church first.  This one was set apart because it claims to have bone fragments from several important saints and religious figures, including John the Baptist.  I saw bone fragments, as to whether they were holy, or even human, is anybody’s guess.  It was cool nonetheless though.

Lunch was at a sidewalk café next to the lake.  I’ve been really enjoying the cuisine in Greece.  It’s very similar to food in Turkey, but just seems to be better all-around.  Lots and lots of fresh vegetables, cheeses, meats, and eggs all piled together in various dishes that are all nearly impossible to pronounce correctly the first time.  The local Greek beer is called Mythos and I liked it a lot as well.  Ouzo, on the other hand, I didn’t care for so much.  I don’t really like anise flavor anyway, and considering how ouzo has an alcohol content somewhere north of 50%, it just didn’t go down smooth for me at all.  I did find a local liquor that looked intriguing – Metaxa.  It’s made from wine distillates and the label says it’s supposed to be very smooth.  I bought a small bottle but haven’t cracked it yet.

After lunch I hit a shop to by Metaxa and a bottle of greek olive oil for a friend, then headed back to the ship.  There wasn’t really a whole lot to do in Agios Nikolaos, but Crete is way up on my list of “places to go back and spend more time at someday.”

Nafplion

As I write this now, the ship is steaming away from Nafplion, Greece.  It was the only destination on this cruise that I had never heard of, and to be honest, it has been my favorite.  Maybe I’m just enjoying things more because I know that tonight is our last aboard the Silver Cloud, but I had a great time ashore today.

The day started out with a bang as we went directly from the harbor to the base of a huge hill overlooking the city and coast.  On top of this hill was a giant fortress, and we climbed 999 steep steps to reach it.  Out of breath once we reached the top, we were all so intrigued by what we found that even burning legs didn’t stop us from spending several hours exploring the fortress.  I decided that the design of this place was part fort, part labyrinth, and part M.C. Escher sketch.  There were stairs, ramparts, tunnels, arches, everywhere, with steep cliffs every time you turned around.  It would have been an incredible place for a game of tag or paintball – except that people would have killed themselves on the sharp rock and unprotected ledges leading to drops of hundreds – and thousands – of feet.  We took a lot of pictures, hopefully they can do this place justice.

The walk down went much quicker, but was just as tiring, so we decided to go to the beach.  Tolo beach was great… but I’m late for dinner so it’ll have to wait.  Too many games of solitaire in between paragraphs I guess.

On to the last supper aboard the Silver Cloud!

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Tonight we had the second formal night aboard the Silver Cloud, followed by a second –unscheduled- karaoke night which the staff set up due to popular demand.  Let’s just say that our group, and yours truly, spent plenty of time with microphone in-hand.  Most of the other kids aboard are either on the dance floor or up in the hot tubs, just like most of the last several nights.  I, however, decided to call it an early night and blog a little before bed.  I know, I’m a loser.  The seas are really rough tonight and the ship is rocking and rolling.  It’ll be nice to get rocked to sleep, but it’s not very conducive to drinking and carousing.

Instead, I’ll try to catch up a little on the sights in Greece:

Mykonos

This was the first of the Greek islands we visited.  I really didn’t have much of an idea what to expect – but if I’d bothered to think about it, this wouldn’t have been it.  Mykonos is a tiny little island, with only one “major” city which consisted of hundreds of whitewashed buildings with blue doors housing touristy shops, gyro restaurants, and gay bars.  Apparently, Mykonos is one of the premiere gay vacation spots in the world.  There’s even a beach down the coast from the town called “super paradise” (it’s right next to a beach just called “paradise” which probably sucks by comparison) which is a very well known gay nude beach.

Mykonos was a fun little town.  We made our way down to a little spit of sand just outside of town (no, not at the gay nude beach.  I know what you’re thinking)  and went for a little swim in the ‘Med.  After that, we climbed up a hill just east of town to check out some old windmills and the view overlooking the cove.  All the white buildings with blue doors and shutters make a very cool, very “Mediterranean” visual effect.  The streets are very narrow and were designed hundreds of years ago to be intentionally confusing in order to throw off invading pirates.  I don’t know if it worked on the pirates, but it did on me.

We stopped at a gyro place Alex knew and I had what I have to say was the best gyro of my life.  After that, we just wandered the streets poking in and out of shops for a while until heading back to the ship.  It was very enjoyable, but unless you are gay and wanted some night-life, there didn’t seem to be a lot to do.

Thessaloniki

The second largest city in Greece, next to Athens, Thessaloniki was kind of a mystery to us.  The only reason the name was familiar to me at all was because of the computer game Civilization. (nerd point!)

Armed with a map provided by the ship’s tourism desk, we set off down the pier to explore this much more “modern” looking city.  Our first stop was yet another church called the Hagia Sophia.  Unlike the one in Istanbul, this one had not been converted into a mosque, and was still being used by the Greek Orthodox Church.  I don’t know what it is about Greek Orthodox churches and their architecture, but they never seem very inviting to me.  Everything is so fancy.  My thoughts aren’t fully formed on this.  Maybe more later.

Actually, I’m getting really tired as I write this, and I’m starting to get a headache.  I think it’s time to pass out.  Tomorrow is our last day on the ship, so I’ll try to do another post tomorrow before internet access becomes questionable again.  I have to say, I’m a little disappointed in the lack of comments being left so far.  I know there’s more people reading this than my parents, Sarah, and Evie’s boyfriend – leave some love people!

Smooches,

djp

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I’ve gotten way behind on posts.  I’m going to try and catch up as best I can today.  I have a few things to wrap up about Turkey still before writing about shipboard life though.

Stray Cats

Several things have been very conspicuous in Istanbul, and one of the first ones we noticed was the huge population of stray cats living in the streets.  In our 5 days in Istanbul, we counted 87 strays between the four of us.  After a while, we even started assigning each cat a “mange factor” score from one to five.  There were a lot of factors that went into calculating the score, including open wounds, missing patches of hair, eating recently killed animals, fighting with other animals, and missing limbs or tails.  It was a great way to kill some time while walking around the streets of this huge city, and it was always great to hear someone interrupt the conversation to exclaim something like “62!  Oh, that one’s got to be at least a 4, it’s filthy and it’s eating cigarette butts!”

Turkish Culture

I’m going to try to be nice in this part, so I don’t come off as sounding like the complete arrogant American, but to be honest, I wasn’t really impressed.  Sure, sure, I know it’s not what I grew up with or what I’m used to and how it’s all very foreign to me.  I also acknowledge the fact that I was only in Istanbul for 5 days and saw relatively little of the city.  However, my opinion on Turkish culture, from what I saw was still not favorable.  Deceit seemed to be a part of everyday life.  Much more so than it is back in the States.  I don’t know if it was a Turkish thing, or a Muslim thing, or if we just got more of it because we were obvious tourists, but people were trying to rip us off left and right.  A few succeeded.  When caught in lies, or more often simple discrepancies in what we were told, no one seemed the least bit apologetic.  Most often they would argue for a little while, then just shrug and give in like it was no big deal.  Some even seemed disappointed that they weren’t able to fool us.

That being said, Turkish culture certainly wasn’t all bad.  Nearly everyone we met was very eager to help us out.  When we asked people at the hostel, on the streets, or in shops or restaurants questions, they would always try their best to understand and to communicate an answer despite the pesky language barrier.  One other thing that I was very impressed with was the Turkish sense of patriotism.  Everyone there is very proud to call themselves Turkish.  There are flags flying everywhere, and most stores and houses have pictures of Ataturk, a former president, hanging up on walls.  I believe Ataturk was the one who converted Turkey from a monarchy into a more democratic system, but to be honest, my knowledge of Turkish politics and modern Turkish history are about equally poor - so who knows.

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A few general updates that I wanted to separate from the long post… I know the attention span some of you guys have.  For the details, read the next post down.

We finally have all our bags.  Lot airlines had also lost one of Sophie’s, but we picked up that one as well as Meg’s bag in Mykonos yesterday.  That’s right, 7 days, 6 airports, and 4 countries later, my sister finally has all her clothes back.

I turned off my phone.  I confirmed with some people that there have been text messages sent that I never received, so if you’ve sent me one and I never replied that’s probably why.  Of course there’s no tower coverage in the middle of the Agean Sea anyway, so I decided to just turn it off.  I’ll probably turn it back on once we get to Athens.

The minihawk has been trimmed up and is rocking.  In keeping with the minihawk tradition, we blew through a few bottles of champagne before trimming it.  It’s still remarkably straight considering.  I blended right in at formal night on the cruise last night.

Much love, missing you all… having a pretty damn good time though!

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It’s been a while since my last real post.  I’m not even sure how long… I’m on vacation.  I’m now sitting in my cabin aboard the Silver Cloud as we steam out of Mynokos.  Tonight is the first formal night aboard the ship, and I don’t have much time to write before I have to start getting ready.  I have to at least do my hair – the minihawk is getting so shaggy it’s almost unrecognizable, so I’m going to retrim the sides.  Until then, though, I’m going to try to catch up as much as I can.

More sights in Istanbul

In the last several days, we got to know our way around Istanbul pretty well.  Despite the huge problem the language barrier presented, we had no problems dealing with locals or figuring things out.  The next thing we saw after I left off in the last post was the Hagia Sophia.

The Hagia Sophia

This is one of the most important churches of the Ancient world.  I’m pretty sure it was originally built by the Orthodox Greeks a loooong time ago and then converted into a Mosque when the Ottomans took the city.  The massive dome is covered inside by what must be millions of mosaic tiles.  Unfortunately, most of the mosaics have been either destroyed or heavily damaged over the years as the city – and the church – have changed possession from culture to culture.  We spent a long time in this church, walking around the upper level looking off the balconies up into the domes almost 200 feet above.

The Bazaar

Any of the other people on this trip can tell you that the Grand Bazaar was not my favorite part of Turkey.  I was hugely disappointed to find that not only was this massive expanse of shops pretty much the same 5 stores repeated over and over, but nothing –and I mean nothing- I found or saw there was worth spending a single lira on.  It was all complete trash.  Most of the wares were obvious, crappy designer ripoffs.  There were purses, t-shirts, watches, sunglasses, perfume, jeans, leather jackets, and pretty much anything else you can imagine to make a fake of.  Some of the other stores sold “authentic” Turkish rugs, costume clothing, and random trinkets.  I wonder how long it took to peel off all those “made in china” stickers.  I bet a long time.

I don’t mind the sale of crap like this so much, but when it was combined with the aggressive nature of EVERY one of the shopkeepers, it got old real quick.  I don’t know if it was the hangover, or the heat or what, but I ended up flipping out on some Turkish assholes at the end.  We had already left the market area and were standing near the train station deciding where we wanted to head next when they started circling like retarded sharks.  I had what had to be the millionth pair of Hugo Boss socks shoved rudely in front of my face as this guy starts yelling “five lira, only five lira, you buy!”

After telling him politely but firmly that I wasn’t interested several times, turning my back to him, and trying to remember what Meg, Evie, and I had been talking about, he was still there, shoving the socks in my face and yelling.  The urge to headbutt him was reaching critical levels, but I managed to control it long enough to push past him, scream and walk away.  I think I screamed “no one wants your made in Taiwan shit!” but it’s kind of blurry.  I kept walking down the street screaming about how he was a parasite and people like him are giving Hugo Boss a bad name while he and his buddies… and Joe… laughed.  Hey, good story, right?

Fourth of July

The night of the 4th of July was pretty strange.  I’m pretty sure it was the first 4th on which I’ve never seen any fireworks.  Instead, it was spent at a streetside bar in Istanbul smoking a hookah, drinking Turkish beer, and watching cats fight.  We found this little bar a few blocks from our Hostel with those Turkish couch things that are at ground level… basically a pile of pillows you sit on with a really short table in front of it.  Hmm, hard to describe but you know what I mean.

The local brew is called Efes.  It’s a light pilsner that’s really not that bad.  The name brought forth the immediate comment from Meg “F this, give me a Bud!”  Meg and Evie chose “strawberry” flavor for our hookah.  The guy setting it up for us snickered at me a little for going along with strawberry, but I felt that I was comfortable enough in my manhood to smoke a strawberry hookah with my sister and cousin, so screw him.

After chilling there for quite a while and wishing anyone who walked by and looked remotely American a happy 4th, we made tracks back to the hostel to spend one last night at the bar on the roof.  We actually had two reasons to celebrate, as this was about the time we got news that we’d be getting our bags back the next day.  We declared July 5th “International Get Our Fucking Bags Back Day” and had a countdown to midnight with some other Americans at the hostel complete with shots of tequila.

Asia

The next morning, we had about half a day to kill before heading to the airport to meet the rest of the clan and retrieve our erstwhile luggage.  None of us had ever been to Asia before, so we decided to take a ferry across the Bosphorus.  I was impressed that a ferry ticket, or “jeton,” cost only 1,3 lira – the same as a metro jeton.  The public transportation in Istanbul was pretty impressive overall really, although it smelled horrible.

Asian Istanbul was pretty much the same, although less “touristy.”  We wandered the streets for a while, poked around a few mosques, and ate some breakfast.  I did get to see a little girl kick a cop in the shin hard enough that he yelled, so the trip was definitely worth it.  On the ferry ride back we noticed the Silver Cloud pulling in to port.  It was a very welcome sight, and a good reminder that after 5 days spent in the same clothes walking around sweaty Istanbul, it was almost time for easy street.

I picked up writing this later, but I have to stop writing and upload it now to go ashore in Thessaloniki.  More on the way as I have time to sit down and write!

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Geeze, I don’t post for like 24 hours and people are jumping all over me… internet is a little hard to come by right now - plus I’m ON VACATION.

Short version: Saw the Aghia Sofia, smoked a hookah and watched stray cats fight on the 4th of July - not as good as fıreworks, went to the Grand Bazaar and wanted to kick every last one of the merchants square in their Turkish nuts (much more on that later), went to Asia just to say I’d been.

Bags: got 5 of 6 back.  Still don’t have Meg’s, which really blows.  Turkish air doesn’t seem to particularly care until we get pissed off at them all over again, it’s become a daily ritual. 

People: 10 of 10 accounted for, safe and sound.  At least the airlines here can do something right.

We board the ship today.  It will be wonderful to get aboard and forget all the stress of travelling.  Not sure what today’s plans are.  I’ll probably go to the “western” mall with Meg so she can buy some clothes for the cruise.  Bathrobes and champaign at 3 in Dave and Joe’s cabin!

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One bag found - it’s Evie’s.  Be happy for her!  The rest of us are still hosed for now.  We all know that this is the sort of thing that we’ll be laughing about later, and everyone’s in surprisingly good spirits about it… but patience is wearing thin.

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Hard to believe that only 16 hours have passed since the last post. I’m now sittıng in te front room of the “Istanbul Hostel” typıng on another Turkısh keyboard witha broken space bar and keys that stick.  Today has has it’s ups and downs.  Still no bags, saw some cool stuff, about to head to bed.  It’s been a wild day.

 We began today’s adventures by setting out from the Hotel Adonis ın search of our hostle.  After a few hours of wandering about the city, and stopping in another hostel which we thought was ours, we finally came to the Istanbul hostel.  We verified our stay tonight, checked out the dıgs, and set out for some sightseeing. 

Our hostel is only 2 blocks from the Blue Mosque, so that seemed like a good place to start.  Just like the last trip, I’m going to skimp on historical details (you guys can look that crap up on your own) and just concentrate on my impressions.  In my travels I’ve seen many impressive curches - the Cathedral on Mallorca, Notre Dame, La Familia Segrada.  The Blue Mosque beat them all out except for La Familia Segrada.  Some of you may know that that particular chuch, designed by Gaudi, is my favorite piece of architechture of all time.  Well now the Blue Mosque is holding firm in second place.  The overlapping domes on the outside are so ordered and geometric, and the massive interior space they provide is breathtaking.  The mosque is named for the large amounts of blue tile used in decorating the interior.  The intricate tilework covers nearly every surface all the way up to the domed celeing many stories above. 

The Blue Mosque is also still used by Muslim worshipers. Many women came and went to pray during the time we were there.  I haven’t quite figured out the whole Muslim thing yet - I know it influences the culture here hugely.  Possibly more on that later.  It’s kinda deep and I’m not sure I want to get into all that.  I do know one thing - It’s too hot here to be Muslim.

There are street vendors everywhere here, selling anything from bottled water to tops to postcards to cups of tea. They are all very aggresive and seem to make up prices as they go depending on the look of their target.  We got caught by one guy dressed in traditional Ottoman garb selling tea.  Meg, Evie, and I each took a glass and we took some pictures with him.  I knew we’d becharged for this, but after handing him 20 Lyra (and expecting some change) he asked for 20 more. 40 Lyra (about 32 dollars) for crappy warm tea and some pictures?  Kiss this American ass.  We walked away laughing at him as he yelled that we still owed him money.  He won out though - he still got our 20.

We decided to save the Hagia Sofıa for tomorrow and head to the Cisterns.  This proved to be a good choice, as these underground waterways were nice and cool in the heat of the day.  Hundreds of columns all in rows support the roof, about 20 feet above and constantly dripping on us.  There were many different types and styles of columns represented - evıdence that they had been stolen from other structures during one of this cities many reoccupations.

Lunch at a streetside cafe was good.  Turkish food is definately growing on us all. The fresh fruits and vegetables are the favorite. 

It’s now the 4th - I’m fishing up this post before I start to forget things.  We’ve stopped by the hostle to take a siesta so I’m going to wrap this post up quick. 

Yesterday we stopped by Topkapi palace but didn’t go all the way in.  Maybe later.

We made  a trıp to the airport to harass Turkish Air some more about out bags - got no bags but they started giving us money (which will eventually bededucted from any insurance claim we may file if our bags never show up)  On the way out of the airport last night we stopped by the duty-free shop and used some of the Turkish Aır payoff cash to buy some wine.  It’s very frustrating to still have no bags - but the wine helped.

We’ve all boght some essentials - underwear, toothbrush, and a spare pair of shorts - things like that.  We ran into a lady from Houston who gave us the name and directions ofa western mall that we’ll hıt up for cruıse clothes if we still don’t have our bags by then.  Fıngers crossed.

I’m going to take a nap.  This evening we’ll be hitting the Grand Bazaar and then hoping to meet up with some Americans to celebrate the 4th of July!

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