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Having
immersed ourselves in ancient history lately, reading
Jared Diamond’s “Guns, Germs & Steel” and “Collapse”,
Colleen McCullough’s “First Man in Rome,” “The Grass
Crown,” and “The October Horse,” and two histories of
Turkey, Arlon and I were inspired to go dig around in
the rubble ourselves. When the invitation came to join
The Planetary Society’s Turkey Eclipse Yacht Adventure,
how could we turn it down? They promised a yacht cruise
on the Mediterranean exploring 4th and 5th
century AD sites and a total eclipse of the sun. To
that we added five days in Rome and four days in
Cappadocia in central Turkey.
Rome
The
Hotel San Carlo in Rome is nestled into the narrow
streets at the bottom of the Spanish Steps right in the
midst of Rome’s trendy designer shopping district. We
window-shopped the boutiques and ate in the neighborhood
restaurants. We especially liked Otello alla Concordia
at Via della Croce 81, a family restaurant with
excellent food.
Rome is
such a treasure trove of history that we decided to
limit ourselves to the ancient Roman ruins, leaving the
Christian sites for another trip. Our first day, we
walked to the Colosseum, stopping to view monuments,
purloined Egyptian obelisks, the Victor Emmanuel
Monument and peering down into the ruins of
the Forum as we
walked by. Like most ancient sites, the Colosseum was
plundered for its marble, statuary and other decorations
after the fall of Rome, so what remains is a skeleton of
the great amphitheater. Restoration is on-going,
rebuilding walls and constructing a partial wooden floor
to give visitors a better vision of its former glory.
From there we climbed up Palatine Hill, where the rulers
of Rome built their villas and palaces. A touch of
color was added by visiting Scotsmen, big men in kilts,
in groups of four to six, drinking beer and predicting
victory over Italy in a big soccer match. They were
everywhere, restaurants, historical sites and the
breakfast room of our hotel.
Our
second day, we took a bus tour to Tivoli to see
Hadrian’s Villa and the Villa d’Este. Arlon had been
excited about returning to Hadrian’s Villa, but was
disappointed to find the beautiful mosaics he remembered
had been removed to museums. The Villa d’Este, however,
still sparkled with it’s hundreds of fountains, powered
by the diverted water of the Tivoli River. The third
day we walked through the Piazza del Popolo on the way
to the Etruscan Museum and walked back along the River
Tiber.
Our
last full day we decided to devote to the Forum, the
archeological site where the ruins of the Roman Empire’s
major buildings have been unearthed. On the way we
stopped at the Pantheon, a remarkable building that was
a temple to all the gods, built by Agrippa, friend of
Emperor Augustus, and rebuilt by Hadrian in 118 AD,
after a fire. The dome is still perfect after almost
2,000 years. It is said that Michelangelo visited it
when he was designing the Vatican. The dome has an
opening in the center, put there to let the smoke from
animal sacrifices escape. It is now a museum and
includes the tomb of Victor Emmanuel, first King of
Italy.
We
tried to do a walking tour from the Frommer’s Guide when
we went down into the Forum. We were totally
unsuccessful at orienting ourselves. While we found it
fascinating, we were also frustrated at not knowing
exactly what we were looking at. On our way out, we
discovered the guidebooks that use transparent overlays
to show what various buildings used to look like. I’d
highly recommend buying the book before you go to make
identification easier.
Rome is
a fascinating city, deserving of several more trips to
pick up the eras we missed. Maybe in a few years…
The Turkey Eclipse Yacht Adventure
We met
our tour group at the
Armada Hotel in Istanbul, a perfect location in the
Sultanahmet section of the city, within walking distance
of all the historic sites. The nighttime view from
their rooftop restaurant includes the lighted Blue
Mosque and Haghia Sofia. At breakfast, you have a
spectacular view of the Sea of Marmara and the
Bosphorus, where you can
watch commercial freighters, ferries and oil tankers
that carry Russian oil from the Black Sea ports. Our
room overlooked remnants of the ancient city wall that
protected Constantinople from successful attack
over the
centuries. Like all
Betchart tours, the group consisted of an
interesting mix of scientists, academics and other
educated and interesting people, many retired but some
still working. The conversations were often as
interesting as terrain.
Our guide was well versed in
Turkish history and did an excellent job of keeping us
informed and answering questions. The first city on the
site of Istanbul was founded in the 7th
century BC when Greek colonists founded Byzantion. It
was ruled at various times by the Lydians, Persians,
Athenians and Macedonians, before being taken over by
the Roman Empire. In 324, the Emperor Constantine the
Great moved the capital from Rome to Byzantium, which
subsequently became known at Constantinople. The
Byzantine Empire succeeded the Romans until the rise of
the Ottoman Empire. In 1453, Sultan Mehmet II’s 54 day
siege tore a hole in the city wall and Constantinople
became a Muslim city. It is from this period that many
of the famous buildings we visit today originate. The
Haghia Sophia was a Christian basilica built by Emperor
Justinian in 537. It was later turned into a mosque and
now is a museum. Many of the original Christian mosaics
can be seen in the balcony. The Blue Mosque was built
between 1609 and 1616, creating a controversy because it
had six minarets, the same number as Mecca. The Sultan
solved the problem by sending his architect to Mecca to
add a seventh minaret. The blue in the title comes from
the color of the famous Iznik tiles used to decorate the
interior. This building is also a museum full of camera
wielding tourists and busloads of school children on
field trips.
Among the most interesting
sites is the Basilica Cistern, built to store water for
the Great Palace. A visit to its depths reveals
beautiful architecture, using marble from ancient
temples, including two carved heads of Medusa used as
bases for columns. The Topkapi Palace covers a large
area. It was originally built as a seat of government
for the Ottomans, with an armory, hospital and schools.
Later it became the Sultan’s residence with a large
harem and beautiful gardens. Today you can visit the
museums to see the Sultan’s finery, including the
jeweled dagger that was the subject of the movie,
Topkapi, and the 86 caret Spoonmaker’s diamond. Of
course, we visited rug and tile merchants and wondered
through the Grand Bazaar. One rainy morning we went to
the University of Istanbul for a lecture about the
upcoming eclipse by an Astronomy graduate student. He
gave us a tour of their solar telescope and told us what
to watch for during the eclipse. Our only bad experience
was when we left our bus to board a boat for a Bosphorus
tour and were mobbed by a group of pickpockets disguised
as postcard hawkers. Two of our group lost their
cameras, in spite of being forewarned. If you go to any
big city, carry your valuables in buttoned inside
pockets.
After a short flight and bus
ride, we boarded our yachts at Kalkan. Each of the
yachts, the
M/S Odysseus and the M/S Arif Kapt, are Turkish
gullets that hold about ten passengers plus a crew of
four, a captain, a cook and two sailors. Our new guide,
Ergul Guvenc, gave us history lessons as we clambered
over rocks and old tombs and up and down mountainsides
at our stops along the Mediterranean coast of ancient
Lycia. The Lycians, and later, the Romans, carved
their tombs out of the mountainsides. Twenty-five
hundred years later, many of them still stand. We
visited the remains of Roman trading ports and Ottoman
forts, climbed up into Greek theaters and examined the
design of public baths and aqueducts. It wasn’t hard to
imagine the Romans, the Persians, Hannibal or Alexander
and their armies marching through Anatolia over the
centuries. |
Cappadocia
Having
seen photos of the strange rock formations in central
Turkey, we felt we couldn’t miss this opportunity to see
it for ourselves. After leaving the group at the
Istanbul airport, Arlon and I flew on to Kayseri, then
rented a car to drive to Urgup, where we had reserved
the honeymoon suite in a cave hotel, the
Elkep Evi. The unique terrain of Cappadocia was
formed from ancient volcanic eruptions. The base rock
is tufa, a soft cream colored stone topped by later
deposits of harder basalt. The strange rock formations
were carved by Mother Nature over the millennia, but the
cave dwellings were all sculpted by humans. This is the
land of the Hittites of the Bible and Egyptian history,
the Phrygians, whose King Midas
became a symbol of
fabulous wealth. The soft rock made it easy to create
homes that were comfortable summer and winter. As
marauding armies crossed Anatolia, the Cappadocian
tribes built underground cities, some as deep as
seventeen stories, where residents could hide for months
at a time until the invaders left. Climbing down into
these communities you can see stables, wineries,
communal kitchens and sleeping and living quarters, with
air shafts that brought fresh air in and stale air out.
At the
Goreme Open Air Museum, we toured old monasteries
and nunneries built into the rock, with communal dining
rooms featuring stone tables and benches. There are
many cave churches to visit, including the famous Dark
Church, with its beautiful painted frescoes that tell
the stories of the Bible. At Uchisar, we went up to the
castle, a high rock formation where the ancients could
post lookouts to watch for approaching enemies and warn
the settlements in the valleys. The last cave village
was vacated in 1966 after a damaging earthquake, but it
is still possible to visit some of the surviving homes.
Many of them are now used as pigeon coops so that the
pigeon droppings can be harvested to use as fertilizer.
One
morning the
Goreme Balloon Company van picked us up at 5:30 for
a dawn ride over the hills and valleys and rock
formations. It was a beautiful morning as we watched
brightly colored balloons rise all around us. Our
pilot, an Aussie who had been in the country only three
weeks, took us in and around the rocks for an overview
impossible to get from the ground. That night, we went
to see the Whirling Dervishes, a rite of the Sufi Sect
of Muslims. The movements were very slow and rhythmic
with very hypnotic music.
The
next day it was time to start our long journey back.
One shock was adding a third of a tank of gas to our
little rented Fiat at a cost of $50.00. Americans who
complain about three dollars a gallon don’t know how bad
it can be in other parts of the world. Our conclusion
on our long ride home was that this was one of our best
trips. Rome was beautiful, the Turkish people were
friendly and helpful, the food was excellent and we had
gained such a much better understanding of ancient
history and the importance of Anatolia in western
civilization. Beyond that, we experienced a perfect
total solar eclipse. What more could we want?
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the Slide Show>> |
