Istanbul to Athens

Suleyman the Great Mosque

We recently enjoyed a vacation and cruise in Turkey and Greece.  We flew into to Istanbul, after a long overnight flight from Chicago, to spend several days touring the town.  Jo had previously been in Istanbul for work back in May 2009 (you can check out the blog post from that time here) but it was my first visit.  I hadn't appreciated how large Istanbul was - over 16 million people call it home - and it was fascinating to hear about its diverse history from ancient times, through the Roman empire, Byzantines, Ottomans, and finally the independent nation it is today.  Some of the highlights of our visit was touring the Hagia Sophia and Blue Mosque, the Topkapi palace, seeing the whirling dervish's, and snacking on baklava - which our guide insisted was invented in Turkey - not Greece.

Whirling Dervishs

Roman Cistern

Next up was boarding our cruise to several of the Greek islands.  We had stops at Kavala (to see the ruins of Phillipi - which was the site of one of the pivotal battles in the Roman civil war, but got very little discussion from the guide), Rhodes, Santorini, Crete, and Mykonos.  We also stopped in Turkey to see Ephesus.  Along the way we saw a lot of ruins which always leave me overwhelmed by the ability of people 3,000-6,000 years ago to construct massive buildings without the use of motors or hydraulics as well as the exquisite sculpting that was done on columns and statues.  Also, left us both with a feeling about how often wars result in the destruction of cities, homes, and people since many of these cities were abandoned as a result of a battle.  We also enjoyed seeing the beautiful white and blue cities of the Greek isles, especially Santorini where people decided to build their homes perched on the side of a cliff in an earthquake prone zone.

Santorini

We ended our cruise in Athens and spent a couple of days there touring the Parthenon and acropolis buildings along with many other of the ancient ruins scattered about town.  This was the first visit for both of us to Athens and we really enjoyed the city, sites, and food.  We came home exhausted but with lots of great memories - along with another 800 photos to sort and store.  I've included just a few photos here, if you want to see all of them you have to visit.  I also tried to talk Jo into taking a vacation without any photo capturing device just to see what it would be like - she didn't seem convinced, yet.