barns.blog

Having boarded the Navigator of the Seas, we set out on a 12 night cruise of the Eastern Mediterranean. Our journey first took us to the most southerly region of Italy – Sicily. We visited their capital city Palermo, which is by far the most untidy city I have ever been to.

In Palermo we visited the usual array of castles and Churches, all of which were badly preserved and not of any particular interest. These included the smallest castle I have ever seen – half of it fell down – and a Church which was never completed. We did, however, also visit one of the most disgusting sites that I have ever seen. Catacombs are generally not on my visit list, but somehow these managed to slip into this tour without us realising it. Of course, it was not just a case of going into catacombs. These catacombs – known as the Capuchin catacombs – contain figures which were preserved and then dressed. As a result, most still have skin and some still have hair. We couldn’t take photos, but I found this page which has some links to photos on the left.

After Palermo we had a relaxing day at sea to soak up some of the Mediterranean sun before continuing onto our next stop – Athens. Unlike Palermo, and even Rome, Athens is a clean friendly city. We started the morning with a drive from the port city of Piraeus to Athens. The arrangement of Piraeus and Athens is much like that of Johannesburg and Pretoria, you’re not quite sure where one ends and the other begins – and these two are even closer.

The primary highlight in Athens is the Acropolis which contains the ancient Grecian temple to Athena, the Parthenon. We spent the better part of the morning on the Acropolis after which we wondered in the Plaka and had some lunch. We also engaged in a nominal dose of retail therapy and purchased a few souvenirs. There was the possibility to do some caching, but after lunch I wasn’t that excited and wanted to make sure I was on time for the bus.

Some days later, after the time we spent in Turkey (more on that in the next post), we revisited Greece with a trip to the second largest city Thessaloniki. There wasn’t much going for Thessaloniki, as it is primarily a large industrial city. We did visit a few museums and got a rather spectacular view of the city from the Citadel, but that’s about it.