Crete

Sometimes you go to a place which isn't so picturesque but you have terrific food or an interesting experience so it still warrants a post on your blog.
Sometimes you go to a place and you do nothing more than walk around slack-jawed at the beauty that surrounds you.
It's okay to have beauty but no stories providing you consistently remember to keep your camera focused.
If you don't, you have a post with four sentences and 11 usable photos.

Greece

Apparently one can become saturated with visiting ancient ruins, a fact I had suspected but never before had the chance to prove.  After our trip to Athens I now know it to be true.
Is the end result that you are underwhelmed or overwhelmed?  I'm still trying to figure that out.
Here's the deal: all of the structures are old and huge and more or less share the same color tone and one stands before them (or under them) and takes photo after photo and says things like "wow, this is incredible" until it begins to lose it's meaning.  Or maybe I just lack the appropriate level of appreciation for the ancient Hellenistic world. I confess I often have to pause and think carefully to be sure I don't mix up my Roman and Greek mythology (Jupiter always felt so Greek to me and Pluto so Roman) but it's not as if I think history is irrelevant.  On the contrary, there are few things more vital to understanding the world as we know it.  If I could have been assured of securing some sort of paying job in the field, I would have been a history major and studied feudal Japan instead of how to insert a urinary catheter.
But touring Athens made me feel like one of those teenagers who skulks about on field trips and secretly sends texts to her friends that say "this is so lame."
But what is lame?  Lame is standing on the flipping Acropolis and thinking nothing more than "Hmm...it's kind of cold on this hill and that lady bringing her walker up here was a bad idea, she's going to fall."
Someone should have slapped me.
Fortunately Mihai was not behaving like a pathetic teenager, he was suitably excited and got photographs for your enjoyment.

So we went there, saw that and descended the slippery, wind-blasted marble steps.  At this point the nurse in me feels the need to say few words about these precarious, borderline-suicidal stairs:  we are four relatively healthy, young, in-shape (maybe in-shape is stretching the truth a bit) people and the day was sunny and dry and even under those conditions we experienced a bit of trouble making our way down.  I can't imagine what they are like in the rain when a person is either aged or otherwise compromised below the waist (as in feet, knees and ankles). What a nightmare.
One is far better off visiting the Temple of Zeus and Hadrian's Arch which are on flat surfaces.  They appear to have the additional advantage of not appearing as hot spots in any tourist books.  I say that because when we arrived we happily discovered we were four of 12 people there.
But I know, I know, it's just Hadrian's Arch which means it doesn't have that glamorous ring when people ask you how you came to be in a body cast and you get the chance to say "Oh, I was visiting the Acropolis and there are these marble stairs...."

Next stop, the changing of the palace guards and all I have to say about this experience is that I am adding it to my list of "Least Wanted Jobs".  Currently it's above Macy's Day Parade Float Rider though below both Speleologist and Professional Mucous Specimen Collector.
I mean no disrespect at all to these men in uniform and its really not the thought of wearing those shoes, those tights or even those skirts (er...long jackets?) that I find so personally horrifying.  Its the thought of being photographed while doing so.  Photographed by throngs of disrespectfully laughing tourists standing about 2 feet away.  No thank you.  That job plus their debt crisis?  More than anyone should have to endure with such a straight face.
Yet they do.
Bravo, panty-hose wearing Greek men, I salute you (except you can't salute them, it's against the rules and they have a machine-gun wearing camo-outfitted solider on hand just to make sure you don't.  But somehow laughing is okay-go figure).

Did I mention we got a taxi for the day?  I did not.  Well, we got one.
The original plan had been to catch the train into Athens since we'd heard it was easy to do but on the walk from the ship to the train station we were stalked by Niko, The Marvelous Greek Taxi Driving Wizard who wove such a web of persuasion that in the end we could do nothing but compliantly crawl into his yellow-painted Skoda.
(In fact what he said was: "You'll pay 21E each for the train and buses and I'll drive you myself for 22E each which will save you time and confusion."  Magic I tell you, magic.)
Not only did Niko save us time and confusion but he somehow managed to get us everywhere just ahead of the crowds.  I don't know how he did it but he did.  By the way, the Temple of Zeus and Hadrian's Arch were Niko's idea. Magic.
Niko assumed we would want to go to the historic downtown district for some shopping but Turkey had saturated every shopping cell in my being and the only thing we really wanted from Greece was some Ouzo.  Did Niko know of a place where we could buy some good quality Ouzo for a good price?  Niko did.
"I take you where the Greeks shop," he said.  "No tourists."  Through a maze of streets he wove and then had to go with Mihai into the store he chose because no one in there spoke any English. They emerged with bottles of Ouzo in nondescript, modest-looking boxes, twice the amount and half the price of a bottle in the downtown district.  Where the Greeks shop indeed.
By then we were hungry but Niko anticipated our request: a local restaurant, nothing too touristy.  Exactly.
We were the only patrons in the place which is a good thing when what you want is elbow room but isn't necessarily a good sign when what you want is really good food. Nick strikes again.
A few minutes after we sat down the owner came out with a plate of fresh fish and told us to pick which one we wanted.  No menus, just pick a fish.
Once we settled on the grouper, he described how he would prepare it and then what sort of sides he thought might go well with it.
When you're in that situation the smart thing to do is just nod and agree.  End result: one grouper devoured, one bowl of tomatoes, feta cheese and sliced red onions devoured, one bowl of tzatziki devoured, one bowl of olives devoured, one plate of crusty bread and some kind of wonderful milky olive oil devoured.  Our plates were wiped clean.  Clean.
At the end of the meal the owner came out and tried to persuade us to let him prepare a bowl of fresh fruit, "for the children at least" he begged but we were in danger of having our lunch revisit us if we continued eating.  In fact, it was no longer lunch time, it was nearing four o'clock in the afternoon and dinner on the ship was a mere two hours away.  A nap was in order, that is to say, I could feel a mild coma coming on.  It was time to crawl back into Niko's yellow-painted Skoda and head back to our monolith of a ship.

I would like to have walked on a beach in Greece but the afternoon grew cool (it being November and all) and we figured our Greece Beach Vacation is for another time.

My one serious regret is that I did not get a photo of Niko but when we parted he told me happily: "I'm on Facebook!" 

If you have an account you can look him up under Niko, The Marvelous Greek Taxi Driving Wizard.

Turkey

I realize for some readers this time of year is "turkey time" but that's not what I am referring to in the title.  I mean the country.  The glorious, beautiful country to which I have longed to make a visit for years.  Years.
And I got less than a day.
Am I complaining?  Not exactly.  It was my choice after all.  Sort of.  Didn't I agree to this trip?  Yes I did but I harbored a secret, highly unrealistic fantasy that I could somehow alter the itinerary once we arrived in the country. I more or less forgot that there were 4,000 other people and an entire ocean liner that had to be taken into account. Because we were visiting this port as part of the aforementioned cruise so this was not the typical Ionescu trip wherein we could switch up the plan just because there was another restaurant we wanted to try or just because Leigha desperately, desperately wanted to stay longer.
No folks, that was it.  One day.
The first half was spent visiting the ancient ruins of Ephesus which happily satisfied my cravings for all things antiquated and biblical.  I didn't have to go to Jerusalem with 500,000 other Jews, Muslims and Christians, I just got it right there in tiny, underpopulated Ephesus.
We didn't opt for any organized land excursions.  For one, we aren't that organized and the idea of having to be at a specific place at a specific time sort of runs contrary to my idea of a vacation.  Also, I find that a great deal of the tour guide's lecture content does not interest me.  Not that I am more cerebral than other people, on the contrary, probably I am less cerebral so I find myself thinking "la la la la" while the tour guide provides information on how many tons a certain stone pillar weighs.
This is in no way intended to disparage land excursions.  Point of fact was that I was very impressed with them (albeit from a distance) because I could see how greatly they would benefit the aged or someone without much stamina.  The cruise staff are very accommodating to those folks and make sure they can get the most possible out of the sites without winding up crippled or in intensive care.  There's a lot to be said for that.  When I am aged or if I put on another 60 lbs I will no doubt book the first land excursion that comes my way.
But for now that's not really our approach to traveling.  We don't know how to visit a place unless by the end of the day we've logged a minimum of 10K on foot and at least one member of my family has a blister, leg cramp, or has had to hold their urine for 2 or more hours.
So no organized land excursions.
Instead we got a taxi to drive us the 30 km to Ephesus and along the way the driver found out we are living in Romania.  His fluently broken English switched to fluently broken Romanian and he told us with tremendous enthusiasm how much he loves Brasov and of his plans to spend this coming Christmas there.  Somewhere during the discussion over which city is more picturesque-Brasov or Sinaia-he apparently decided that we were the sort of folks who do things in rather backward fashion (maybe something about leaving the States to move to Romania) and told us that he was going to drop us off at the bottom of the site and pick us up at the top so that we could avoid most of the crowds.
And he was right.
We suffered a few moments of confusion trying to figure out where to go to get tickets (seeing as how we were at the bottom of the tourist site) but we were assisted by the local restroom clerk/saffron seller who held up his yellow-stained hands as proof of the seriousness with which he approaches his profession.  The saffron-picking I mean.  The restroom clerking is apparently a side job and I chose not to think about how his hands are involved with that since we bought saffron from him.
In any case, we had the ancient site of Ephesus almost exclusively to ourselves for the first 3/4 of the morning until we met up with the descending tour groups.  It is shocking how 1,000 people can make an open-air hillside feel so incredibly cramped particularly when they are all trying to take photographs of the same thing you are trying to photograph.
Fortunately we had seen just about all we needed to see at that point and were able to put the camera in the bag and worm our way through the throngs of fanny packs and orthopedic shoes.

The fact that I spent the second half of our day in Turkey shopping comes as much a surprise to myself as anyone. But apparently that's what you do there. (is that really true, Vanessa Jackson?  Surely not)
I wanted to see some mosques but the only religious site that was offered close by the was the tour of the House of the Virgin Mary.  No thank you, after Italy I've had more than my fill of the edifices of Christendom.  I wanted to balance it out by touring religious buildings from another monotheistic faith like Islam.  But the most I got was a drive-by on the way back down the mountain although it was noon so I could hear the call to prayer which was almost as good.  It's a very moving, almost haunting sound and I did my best to block out the Romanian chatter of our secular driver who told us he has little to no interest in religious things.
So much for my mosques.
Then it was onto lunch where we had some wonderful seafood and in particular I had the best, hands down the best (sorry Barcelona) garlic shrimp I've ever had which didn't photograph nearly as well as it tasted.
We also had some perfectly fried calamari, a glass of raki and Turkish coffee.  The coffee wasn't anything new in itself since you can get it easily in Romania.  Still, drinking Turkish coffee in Turkey is not an event one passes up lightly.

Then it was time to shop.  And shop.  And shop.
Mihai bargains with ease because he's not only been to Turkey before but he was raised under communism and that somehow prepares one for this sort of thing.  Either that or being from New York.  But I'm a Californian and we don't behave this way.  We just pay whatever price is listed and wish everyone a nice day and skip out of the store while secretly wishing we were visiting a mosque instead.
I can't deny that we saw some beautiful stuff.  Like rugs and tapestries and towels and other large, heavy things which we did not buy even though the proprietors assured us that they would ship it to our house for free, even if that house was in California and even if we weren't going to go back there until the spring of 2012, it was NO PROBLEM MADAME!  However, we figured Marius and Monica would not appreciate UPS delivering box after box of rugs and other merchandise they would have to stumble over for the next five months.
So instead we bought scarves (lovely but far more ho-hum than a 3-meter-squared silk and wool rug) for the wonderful Teo and other good folk here in Obedin.
And instead of trying kebabs as planned, we spent the rest of the afternoon trying to find a very specific hat for Lucian which he had to have and has yet to wear.  Mircea bought one as an afterthought and it has hardly left his head.
Ah, the inconsistencies of children.

And then it was back to the ship.
No blisters, no mosques.
However, Luci almost wet his pants and my shoulder ached from carrying the bags with scarves which has to count for something.
One day I will get to wear my feet raw and bloody on the streets of Istanbul.  Everyone must have a dream, right?