Bozcaada (Troy), Istanbul,  Myrina (Limnos)

April 29, 30, May 1

Saturday, April 29:  Bozcaada, Turkey  (Troy)

Our first stop in Turkey: Bozcaada

Bozcaada is a small town on the island of Tenedos, on the coast of Turkey.  Somewhat like Kusadasi and Ephesus, the main reason for visiting Bozcaada is that it is sort of an entry point for the historic Troy.  We will talk about Troy much more soon, but first we have to get there.

The Encore was anchored a short distance off the island and we tendered ashore and were formed into groups of about 20 people each.  I assumed we would board some busses which were close by, but “not quite”.

There was an interesting looking fort at the port and and some busses.

We waited with our group, milling around a bit, waiting for something to happem when we finally noticed a speck on the water slowly getting larger.  As it approached, we could tell that a medium sized ferry was heading into the harbor.

The ferry as it approached our dock.

The ferry landed and both people and vehicles came pouring off, and we soon started loading onto it.  There were no ticket sales, taking, or checking, so apparently this would be a “free ride”.  The Greek inter-island ferries are subsidized by the government, but this one is apparently completely paid for.  The only seating on board was simple wooden benches in the open air, and the air was pretty cool, especially in the breeze, but we found a spot mostly out of the wind.  It was about 40 minutes to get to the mainland of Turkey, to the small port of Geyikli, where we did load up into busses.  Now we had about an hour bus ride to get to the ancient city of Troy.

Let’s take a moment to get something out of the way….  Is Troy real?  Did the Trojan war really happen and was the Trojan horse real?   The answers are: apparently so, probably yes, and almost certainly no.  Homer wrote of the Trojan war and incorporated into the story many of the myths, legends, gods and goddesses from Greek lore.  Some of these most likely have a basis in fact: the ruins of a city in the correct location, arrowheads, and other weapons suggest a conflict of some kind and some of Homer’s characters came directly from Greek mythology.  But, like most legends, the story is probably much more entertaining than the truth.  It does appear that the ancient city of Troy was real, and that is what we are about to explore.

Trojan Horse: a reconstruction of someone’s guess what it might have looked like, if it was real.

On the way to Troy, our guide went through much of the mythology of how the Trojan war came about and the characters involved in it.  After about 20 minutes, my head was spinning with all the names and I had mostly lost track of who was who and what they had done to someone else.  There were about three other busloads of people from the Encore going on the same tour and when we got to the entrance to the grounds, I think we must have saturated the infrastructure:  There was some apparent confusion and milling around for a while before we finally filed in and started the tour.

The first thing we saw was the “Trojan Horse” (pictured above) being reconstructed after it had suffered a major fire.  This is, of course, not the real “Trojan Horse”, if there ever was one, but what some modern designer thought it might have looked like.  As we started a tour of the grounds, our guide explained the main reason the site looked like it does.

The first of the Troy ruins we see

The Troy site has not been excavated by careful archologist and thoughtfully preserved.  Instead, it was excavated starting in 1871 by two men who were looking for treasures, rather than history.  After several years of somewhat careless digging, they found the treasure they were after and left.  With only a couple of exceptions, the site is essentially still as they left it.  A couple of the buildings or temples have been cleaned up and somewhat protected, but nothing like the work and care of either Kossos or Ehhesus.  Turkey has been a country in turmoil for many years and careful excavation is an expensive undertaking.

The city that has been unearthed so far was apparently inhabited for about 4000 years, starting about 3000 BC.  During that time, it was destroyed (earthquake, fire, attacking people) nine times and rebuilt nine times, mostly with the new city being built as a new layer on top of the previous city layer. 

You can see a couple of the layers marked here.

At a couple of places in the site, the various layers have been marked and you can see 3 or 4 different layers in one place.  Somewhat like Ephesus, Troy used to be much closer to the Agean sea than it is now and there was a paved road running through the city and on to the sea.

Part of the paved road through Troy to the sea

I was not surprised to see that one of the more completely excavated areas was that of the sacrificial alters.  It is generally agreed that most, if not all, sacrifices were of animals, but some believe that some defeated warriors may have come to their end here also.

Several sacrificial alters

A major temple, very slightly excavated, is the Temple of Athene.  It was built in the eighth layer (roughly 700 BC – 85 BC) and is a very large structure which is still mostly underground.  Probably the most completely excavated structure is also one of the most recent.

Every Greek city seemed to have a theater.

The Theater was built in the final period, the ninth, from 85BC to 500 AD when Troy was destroyed by a major earthquake.  Overall, I was impressed by the size of the city, but also disappointed at the lack of attention it has received: it could be so much more.

As we reboarded the bus, there were “bag lunches” on the seats, with some salad, fruit, sandwich (sort of) and a fruit drink.  It was one of those meals that is long on quantity, but short on quality.  We retraced our steps back to the ferry but could only find rather exposed seats, so we were somewhat chilled by the time we got back to Bozcaada and then to the Encore.

For the most part, this was a normal evening on the ship, except, about 9:00 we went under a somewhat special bridge over the Dardanelles. 

The “1915 Çanakkale Bridge” over the Dardanelles

This bridge, completed in 2022, is now the longest suspension bridge in the world, with suspension length of slightly over 2 km (or 1.25 miles).  This video of the ship going under the bridge may give you a better feel for the size of it.

Sunday, April 30:  Istanbul, Turkey

Istanbul is an interesting city in many ways, not the least of which is the fact that it actually lies in two continents: Europe and Asia.   The city was formally called Constantinople and used to be the heart of the Byzantine Empire. and later, the Ottoman Empire  The waterway dividing the city into two continents, the Bosporus, connects the Black Sea to the Aegean Sea and seems to play a major part in the daily life in Istanbul.  Take a look just where Istanbul is located.

A couple of days before arriving in Istanbul, the captain and cruise director (Aimee) announced that all the shore excursions in Istanbul had been cancelled.  We, of course, immediately assumed that some kind of political event was causing problems or perhaps there had been another major earthquake in the area.  Thankfully, it was nothing like that.  It was a marathon race!  The course of the race wound around all over the city and all the roads that it crossed would be closed until about 1:00 or 2:00 PM.  By the evening before our stop in Istanbul, new excursions had been designed that would avoid the marathon course, and we signed up for one of them.

When we got up and looked out our balcony, we were docked in a very busy waterway.  There were many small fishing boats moving around, lots of ferrys plying back and forth, and even a new Turkish Navy assault ship docked nearby.

Part of our view of Istanbul from our bakcony

When we looked down into the water next to the ship, there were hundreds of some kind of jelly fish floating around: perhaps that is what the fishing boats were after.

After breakfast we headed out to our excursion with instructions to meet in the port’s terminal building.  The directions were not the best, but it is a very new and very nice terminal facility, although currently rather underutilized.  We did find our bus and tour guide and waited a few minutes for the rest of the passengers.  There was also a Viking ocean cruise ship docked adjacent to the Encore and we may have had a few passengers from that ship also.

On the bus, we got a short driving tour of part of the city, including crossing over the primary bridge over the Bosprous.  The cruise terminal is on the north side of the Bosprous, so we had crossed over to the south side, from Europe to Asia.  We soon stopped and unloaded at a small but pretty park along the waterfront for a look around and more information from our guide.

Bosprous bridge from the park: looking from Asia toward Europe.

There was a lot of boat traffic on the Bosprous, from small fishing boats, through tour boats, to large ocean-going freighters heading to or from the Black Sea.  There, apparently, were also lots of fish.  There were a number of fishermen with long, relatively heavy, rods rigged with multiple small hooks in a row and each hook had some kind of artificial shiny “lure”.  The fishermen would cast the line and hooks well out into the Bosprous, wait a while, and reel it back in.  Some of the hooks would have small fish on them, I believe Anchovies.  Although they were catching a lot of fish, it would take a lot of these to make a meal.

Out guide explained some of the history of Istanbul and the importance of the Bosporus, both in its history and the importance to current life in the city.

The Bosprous, looking toward the Black Sea

From the park we walked a short distance to another park-like area along the waterfront where we would visit the Sultan’s Palace.  Actually, this is one of several Sultan’s Palaces and is properly called the Beylerbeyi Palace but is frequently referred to as the “Small Palace” since it is one of the smaller palaces.  The grounds were well maintained as beautiful gardens with many colorful flowers in full bloom.  And, of course……

Yes, there were cats here also

This may have been a small palace to the Sultans, but it was certainly large enough to me and the setting was beautiful, alongside the Bosprous which seems to almost define Istanbul.  Our guide led us through the palace explaining the many rooms along with some history as we went.  No photos were allowed inside the palace, so an exterior shot will have to suffice.

The Sultan’s (small) Palace (It is bigger than it looks in this view.)

After the tour, our bus picked us back up and we went on a little bus tour along the southern edge os the Bosprous.  This was a Sunday, a three day holiday weekend (thus the marathon) celebrating “Labor and Solidarity Day”, and the weather was beautiful, so there were many people out and about.  As we rode along, I recognized a small structure well out in the Bosprous that I learned is called the “Maiden’s Tower”. 

The Maiden’s Tower in the Bosprous

Although I had never been to Istanbul previously, I recognized the tower because it played a significant role in the James Bond movie “The World Is Not Enough”.  I leave it to the reader to investigate this relationship further.  Several sequences in that movie were filmed in other areas of the city and Turkey. 

After our bus tour of the waterfront, the bus headed back across the bridge to the northern (Europe) side of Istanbul where we would have lunch at the Conrad Hilton hotel.  Although the Hilton is very nice, of course, this is one of the times that I wish we could have had a chance to taste more local flavor, both literally and figuratively.   Apparently, the traffic was actually lighter than expected and we arrived at the Hilton about 30 minutes earlier than they were expecting us.  We relaxed in their busy lobby for a while and were finally taken to a restaurant apparently set up for only our group.  We had a nice view through floor to ceiling glass walls over part of the city and Bosprous and the meal was very good, if not highly “local”. 

The view from the restaurant out over the city   (Look closely, you may be able to find the Encore.)

After lunch, it was back into the bus and a ride westward, along the northern shoreline of the Bosprous to arrive at the Blue Mosque.  On the way, our guide explained to us that you can estimate the importance and cost of a mosque by how many minarets it has:  A small city or a family or a group of people may build a mosque with two minarets, a large city or wealthy person my build a mosque with four minarets, and a very large city (like Istanbul), a very wealthy person or company, or a major political ruler might build a mosque with six minarets.  The Blue Mosque has six minarets and is considered the most beautiful of the many mosques in Istanbul, and, although it may not be the largest, it is the most visited.

The blue Mosque from the back side of it

We got off the bus and walked around to the entrance, and it was the entrance for everyone… a LOT of people.  There is no cost to visit the Blue Mosque, so a lot of people were taking advantage of the holiday Sunday to look at it.  The crowd had to funnel through an arched gateway and the people leaving the mosque also had to come out through the same gate, so it was rather crowded.

Approaching the entrance gate, with a lot of other people

I noticed that many of the people have a different approach to lining up to get through a queue: they did not wait their turn, but rather just stepped around and in front of other people.  We got through the gate and up some steps into sort of a open courtyard where we gathered the people on our tour together.

A lot of people in the courtyard also

There had been several signs explaining the dress requirements to enter the mosque, ladies’ heads much be covered, no shorts, etc. and there was a man at the entrance attempting to enforce the rules, not always with success.  Our group entered the mosque, staying close to our guide, and it was an impressive sight.  The mosque was built in 1609 – 1614 and I was, once again, amazed at the ability of people of that time to build a structure such as this. 

Part of the interior of the Blue Mosque

Our guide explained many of the details of the mosque but I was so busy taking in the sight, that I don’t remember much.  Perhaps this composite video of the interior will give you a better idea of the beauty of the Blue Mosque.  After looking at the interior for a while, we made our way out of the mosque and over to an area almost adjacent to the mosque, the Hippodrome (more properly, the Sultanahmet Square).  It was initially built in 203AD when the city was known as Byzantium and the Hippodrome was used primarily as a place for chariot races.  Over time it was enlarged and features added and the viewing stands were capable of accommodating 100,000 people for the races. Most of these features are gone now, but a few still exist. 

Looking down the Hippodrome at the Egyptian Obelisk

The Obelisk of Thutmose (or, more commonly, the Egyptian Obelisk) was brought from Luxor, Egypt in 1490 and today the part that remains in the Hippodrome is only about one third of the original obelisk.

 The Egyptian Obelisk, or what is left of it

After looking at some other features of the Hippodrome, we loaded back into our bus and headed back to the cruise terminal and the Encore.  Now that we had some background on the city, we could better appreciate what we could see from our balcony.  The Blue Mosque is barely visible in this video, but it is not one of the more obvious ones.

No, this is not the Blue Mosque, but it does have six minarets.

About a third of the passengers had left the Encore during the day and a like number of new passengers had replaced them, so there was a welcome reception in the evening with more champagne, then a fairly quiet evening: dinner in the main restaurant but we changed our routine and enjoyed our cognac in the Grill lounge, listening to Deborah.

Deborah at the keyboard and microphone

Monday, May 1:  Myrina (Limnos) Greece

Let’s see, where are we today?

Limnos is an island in the upper Aegean Sea and Myrina is the small port city where we would be landing.  The weather was nicer today than several previous days, and the wind was down, so the sea was nicely calm.

Looking into the harbor of Myrina, Limnos from the Encore

We were signed up for an excursion to see much of the island and do a wine tasting.  This seemed like a reasonable plan since wine is one of the island’s major exports.  We had a smooth tender ride into the harbor and took a quick walk around the harbor.

 Almost all the boats in the harbor were fishing boats.

We climbed into our bus and headed to our first stop, enjoying the lush landscape as we went.  I am not sure what other crops they were growing, besides wine grapes, but there were many well-tended fields in the gently rolling hills.  We pulled up to a small bay where we got out of the bus to walk up to a small church.

 Not sure what these flowers are, but we saw them several places.  (Memorial and church in distance.)

 It was not your typical church because it was actually built on the site of what had originally been a fortress.  In front of the church, overlooking the bay, part of the sea, and much of the local landscape, there was a memorial statue of Maroula.  Female warriors seem to be popular in Greece, because Maroula is honored because she was the “female amazon” who defended the town of Kotsinas against the attack of the Turkish / Ottoman Empire in 1478.  After seeing her father killed in battle, she took up his weapons and successfully led the Greek defenders to victory.

Memorial to Maroula

After hearing the story and enjoying the view, we climbed back down to the bus to continue our tour.  Our next stop was a bit unexpected, but actually had a bit of a connection for Susan and I: the East Mudros Military Cemetery.  The men buried here were casualties of the WW-1 allied attempt to take control of Gallipoli from the Turkish army.

There are several memorials within the cemetery, even including a plaque from Russia.

The allied soldiers were primarily from England, Australia, and New Zealand.  The Australian and New Zealand soldiers were the “Australian New Zealand Army Corps”, or ANZAC.  When we were in Australia and New Zealand we noticed monuments and other things honoring the men of ANZAC all over those countries: they appeared to be well remembered.  In the capitol of New Zealand, Wellington, we went to a museum that had an impressive and very detailed section describing the Gallipoli campaign and the ANZAC involvement.  The allies built a hospital on Limnos as it was about the closest available island to Gallipoli: when the soldiers brought to the hospital died, they were buried in this cemetery.

This section had a mixture of English, Australian, and New Zealand markers.

 The Allied attempt to take Gallipoli was ultimately unsuccessful.  The realization that all these soldiers (and many on the Turkish side) died for no real purpose or advantage tended to put a bit of a damper on the mood in the bus for a while.

We then went on a bit of a sightseeing drive, passing through the other major town on the island, Mudros.  There was a nice clean little harbor with a few shops and restaurants lining the waterfront.  There is a large bay in front of Mudros and it was so calm that it looked like a lake.  Adding to this effect was the fact that, to exit the bay to the sea, you had to wind around a channel a bit so, from the shore: you could not see the opening to the sea.

The bay that looked more like a lake

Our next stop was at the winery where we first got a nice tour of the wine making process and their facilities.  Greek wines may not be well known, but they appeared to have very modern equipment at this winery, including some large stainless steel fermentation tanks.

Fermentation tanks

After a look around, we filed into the tasting room where the tables were set with glasses, and bowls of cheese and crackers, all very nicely done for a tasting.

The tables were nicely set for a pleasant tasting

We tasted five wines: a bubbly white, a rose, a still white, a still red, and a sweet (dessert type) white.  While I suspect they would not score high on a Wine Spectator tasting, they were all pleasant and enjoyable.  We would have purchased some if they had been able to ship to the US: the prices were very reasonable.

The wines that we tasted, lined up

We loaded back into the bus and headed back to Myrina.  It was still fairly early when we got there, and we had not had much exercise, so Susan and I took a bit of a hike around town.  The main street through the shopping area was quiet with only a few people strolling along or sitting on benches.

The main shopping street: very quiet and picturesque

And, of course, you know I had to include this:

 Yes, there were cats here.

We finally headed back to the Encore for a slightly late lunch and relaxed for the rest of the day, including a glass of wine on our veranda.  Tonight we again had reservations at the Keller Grill and this time we made the servers work a little.  We ordered the Caesar salad, which they prepare table-side and also the NY Strip Steak, which they slice and serve table-side.  In keeping with the rest of the meal (salad for two, steak for two), for dessert we we had the coconut cake for two.

Since we did a wine tasting today, it seems only fitting that I include a photo of one of the wine racks at the Keller Grill. 

One of several displays of (expensive) wine in the Keller Grill

The main entertainment for tonight was a collection of songs, the lyrics of which were written by Tim Rice.  The songs were performed by the Encore band and singers.  You may not recognize the name “Tom Rice”, but you would recognize many of the songs, such as Hakuna Matata (The Lion King), Can You Feel the Love Tonight, Don’t Cry for Me Argentina (Evita), and songs for many movies and Broadway shows.  It was narrated by Tim Rice (recorded) but the music was live and some of the songs are not easy ones to sing.

End of Chapter 3:

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