It was an early morning — Rebecca and I left for our tour of Pompeii, Sorrento, and Capri at 7:15 AM (after a rushed breakfast in the buffet).  We boarded one of eight buses and rode from Naples to Pompeii, where we wandered the astonishing ruins in the shadow of Mount Vesuvius.  The air was filled with a pall of smoke…nothing to do with volcanic eruptions, just agricultural fields being burned.  Pompeii was as incredible as I had hoped it would be.

Next the bus drove along the rugged and beautiful coast to Sorrento where we had lunch, then climbed down a long series of rugged cliffside stairs to reach the boat dock and the jet boat for the isle of Capri.  On Capri, the funicular — a very steep cog rail — carried us to the mountaintop (filled with ridiculously expensive shops).  Rebecca and I sat down and ordered a dish of gelato — $22!  We had wanted cones, but the proprietor told us to have a seat and eat it there…little did we know that sitting down cost an extra $10!

Reb and I got back to the ship less than half an hour before it sailed, taking a jetboat from Capri to Naples.  GI JOE was playing on the open-air screen at 10 PM, but I didn’t bother staying up.  We slept in for the at-sea day, and I did some writing and relaxing; I worked out in the gym — a challenging prospect on choppy seas, with the boat rocking back and forth.  Then I attended a maddeningly dull lecture in the afternoon (supposedly about the history of the crusades, but the speaker spent only about five minutes on topic).

During the flight and snippets of downtime, I wrote the draft of a Dungeons & Dragons novelette — a bit more monsters and mayhem to go, and I’ll be finished.  Rebecca is editing our first “Star Challengers” book.

ATHENS & EPHESUS

In Athens we arranged for a taxi to take us around to the sights for the day.  Our cab driver Kostas was quite a character, and he showed us everything we could possibly have wanted to see.  We drove out to Corinth to see the amazing canal cut across the Peloponnesian Peninsula in the 1860s, then saw some ruins and a place where the Apostle Paul lived (and where he wrote his letters to the Corinthians), then we went up to a gigantic Venetian castle on a mountaintop.  Kostas even pulled off the side of the road, ran to some wild orange trees, and picked us a bag of oranges to eat.

Then he drove us back to Athens and took us one of his favorite local restaurants.  We had tzatziki, octopus, stewed fava beans, baked fish, greek salad, greek vegetable soup, spanakopita, and saganaki.  We went to the Acropolis to see the Parthenon, the Temple of Nike, Mars Hill where Paul preached to the Romans.  Next was the Olympic stadium, the Arch of Hadrian, the Temple of Zeus, and then up to another high point where the Church of St George overlooks the city.  Lots of smog, lots of incredible white marble buildings. 

We watched the highly stylized changing of the guard ceremony in front of the president’s palace, and it reminded us of the “silly walks” skit from Monty Python.  Kostas drove us around the winding maze of streets in the old town market district, and we were trapped there for a while, with streets blocked, alleys so tight the cab fit through them with less than an inch to spare.  It was very claustrophobic…and our time was getting as tight as the streets.  On our way back to port, the driver stopped so we could get cash out of the ATM to pay him (nobody in Greece seems to take credit cards).  We got back to the boarding ramp without much time to spare before the ship sailed.  A long and exhausting day.

Next morning we docked in Kusadasi on the Turkish mainland and toured the ruins of Ephesus.  The city of Ephesus seemed as extensive as the ruins of the Acropolis in Athens.  Huge pillars, statues, stadiums, a library.  Reb and I also visited another site, the Basilica of St John.  On the way back to the ship, Reb and I stopped to have some fresh-made baclava.