Venice

Located at the head of the Adriatic Sea, Venice is a collective of 118 islands connected by a network of 150 narrow canals and 400 steep stepped bridges. Venice was founded in the 3^rd century by refugees from the mainland hiding from the Huns. Venice quickly became a major sea trading port for the Adriatic Sea. Much of the Holy Crusades used Venetian ships further adding to the wealth of Venice.

St Marks Square is described as “a great marble salon” open to the sky. It is in the centre of Venice where, in the oppressively hot open courtyard, a cacophony of sound with chiming bells, violins, concert piano’s, flapping pigeon wings, songlike Italian phrases and screams of uncontrolled children mixes into an orchestral melody of life. This is Venice.

Sitting in the shadow of the Basilica San Marco, built in 830 BC, never has a simple cappuccino and croissant been such a dining experience and for only 20 euro’s, a bargain I am told.

Venice is a working city encased in Medieval stone laced with aromatic green coloured canals and sometimes shoulder-width walkways. Once you leave St Marks and the Grand Canal the sea breeze dissipates, the temperature rises and the air thickens. All the usual shops exist and the Venetians buzz about their working day as in any other city, albeit mostly by motorized water taxi. The gondolas are the stuff of tourists, mostly.

Origin of the word “Ghetto” – Ghetto was originally used in Venice in the 5th century to describe the area where Jews chose to live in a tight single ethnic group, on the island called Gheto. A ghetto is now described as an overcrowded urban area often associated with a specific ethnic or racial population.

Santorini - more pics

The black sand beach of Perissa

No, I don't look like Hannibal Lector sizing up his next meal...

The vista...

How many donkeys, how many tourists?

Santorini

Of Greece’s 11 million population, 20,000 live on Santorini.

Soft-edged whitewashed buildings with colourful contrasting timberwork cling to vertiginous cliffs that plunge to a turquoise sea hundreds of metres below (get the picture). The strangely modern architecture is borne of one of Europe’s earliest civilizations, the Minoans, predating Greek civiIisation and the Egyptians. Historians still cannot interpret the Minoan language. The Minoans are also credited with having the first indoor toilets!

This stunning vista is what remains of an enormous volcanic explosion and consequent tsunami, in 1600 BC, destroying the Bronze Age settlements on the island and mainland of Greece and Crete.

Today, Santorini is famous for its many donkey trails traversing the cliff tops and its black volcanic sand beaches. On the trails are hundreds of unpleasantly odorous donkeys that are uncooperative on a good day and very nasty (bite you) on a bad day. Traversing the trails was fun but the tour operators really made things hard by pushing herds of donkeys along the trails, for rent. Several tourists were hurt by the hoof-clattering herds of donkeys but I was ready for it having queued for dinner in the ships cafeteria many times.

There are now narrow roads along the tops of the island so we hired a car and hooned around at 40kph for a few hours. We drove through Oia, Finikia, Fira, visited the Santos Winery and ended up at the south-eastern tip of the island, due to a wrong turn, so had a beer and a swim at Perissa beach.

Anzac Cove

The landing at Anzac Cove was part of the amphibious invasion of the Turkish Gallipoli peninsula by British and French forces on April 25, 1915. The landing, on the Aegean coast of the peninsula, was made by soldiers of the Australian and New Zealand Army Corps and was the first significant combat of the war for our countries.

The purpose of the invasion was to neutralise the Turkish forts that controlled the passage of the Dardanelles straits. The Anzac Cove landing went awry when the leadership cadre with the knowledge of the operational attack plan were either killed or wounded leaving the beachhead in chaos. Older semi retired Senior Officers, using WWI tactics, took to storming large numbers of troops up the hills and into the paths of newly invented high-speed machine guns. What was planned, as a swift operation became a protracted and deadly eight-month struggle.

Over 42,000 soldiers died at Gallipoli and over 10,000 were from Australia and New Zealand. The freedom we enjoy today was hard fought for. What I found heart wrenching was the ages of many of the soldiers that willingly volunteered to defend our country. Many were under twenty and many more under eighteen.

They shall grow not old as we that are left grow old.

Age shall not weary them, nor the years condemn.

At the going down of the sun and in the morning,

We will remember them.

Istanbul - Taksim Square - the political march

Taksim Square - 2pm, before the lunch rush

 during the lunch rush - 3pm

The political march in full swing in the middle of the lunch crowd

Fully armed Riot Police and the ambulance following the marchers (right behind)

on advice we left, no further pics of what happened, hopefully nothing........

Instanbul

Turkey has a population of over 76 million. Istanbul sits as its coastal capital with over 12 million and is the fourth largest city in the world. It is the only country in the world that is in two continents. One side of the harbour is Asia and the other side Europe, a handy trading location not lost on its various custodians and occupants.  

The 40+ coaches were jostling to get closer to the base of the gangways. We sidestepped our way through them to the taxi rank for a 20-euro city tour. We started the day visiting the Topkapi Palace, built by Ottoman Sultans, which boasts a Royal Treasury displaying diamonds, rubies and other rare gems, some larger than chicken eggs, encrusted into swords, dinnerware, curtains, bedspreads and clothing. In the Harem, the curtains are woven 24 carat gold thread. The Palace is fully furnished and accessible. You could spend a whole day just walking the grounds of this place.

We left the Palace to find our pre-paid taxi gone and assumed that he had to assist a more needy disabled person or perform some other humanitarian good deed. We wished him well in colloquial Australian that mixed in the humid air with the many other linguistic expressions being uttered and lost to all but those with the right ear.

The coaches had begun to arrive at the Palace and excrete camera-clicking tourists collected from the four cruise ships now in the harbour. We escaped 500 metres down the road to the breathtaking St Sophia Church built by Emperor Justinian with pillars stolen from the grand buildings of the then Greek port of Ephesus.

I admit to being a bit churched out by now; they are all magnificent and unique yet all the same.  We did not linger long and likewise at the amazing Blue Mosque, just a bit further down the road, famous for being very big and blue on the inside, glistening with over 20,000 blue Iznik tiles.

We walked for a while, electronically recording the old part of Istanbul, then taxied to the centre of New Istanbul, Taksim Square. We sat down to lunch and some EFES beer in a near deserted square. At 3pm someone sounded the proverbial lunch bell and the result was a frenzy of people crowded wall to wall as far as you could see. In the middle of the milieu of walking human hunger a small suicidal group of political activists decided to march through the square shadowed by a larger number of fully geared up riot police and an ambulance. We then noticed a Police water cannon vehicle had quietly taken up position in another corner of the Square. An almost-English speaking waiter suggested we should leave the area immediately as “these politics, they not end good” hence the ambulance.

We did not need to be told twice so quickly headed across town to shop at the Grand Bazaar housing over 4000 stalls of genuine fake everything, not at all slowed by what we imagined might be happening back at Taksim Square. The Bazaar is so big it has its own post office, school, bank and police station. This place is certainly the benchmark for all bazaars.

Churched out, shopped out and sweating good Turkish beer we floated back to the dock, found a local café and waited to sail away with some animated backgammon with the locals. Australia lost 3 -5 to the pipe smoking Turks.

Kusadasi - Virgin Marys House - thousands of blessings

 

A 25000 seat ampitheatre at Ephesus

up close in the ampitheatre, sadly you are allowed to walk all over the heritage site, all 40 busloads!