Death closes all: but something ere the end,
Some work of noble note, may yet be done,
Not unbecoming men that strove with gods.
The lights begin to twinkle from the rocks:
The long day wanes: the slow moon climbs: the deep
Moans round with many voices. Come, my friends,
’Tis not too late to seek a newer world.
Push off, and sitting well in order smite
The sounding furrows; For my purpose holds
To sail beyond the sunset, and the baths
Of all the western stars, until I die.
It may be that the gulfs will wash us down:
It may be we shall touch the Happy Isles,
And see the great Achilles, whom we knew.
Though much is taken, much abides; and though
We are not now that strength which in old days
Moved earth and heaven; that which we are, we are;
One equal temper of heroic hearts,
Made weak by time and fate, but strong in will
To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield.
— Tennyson, Ulyssses (1842)
ContentsItaly
Outbound; Changi; Flight to Rome
Rome; Around Termini; Foro Romanum; Palatino; Colosseo; Vatican Museums; San Pietro; Museum of Roman Civilisation; Circo Massimo; Via Appia Antica; Dinner at the Pantheon; Piazza Navona
Naples; Pompeii; Herculaneum; Capua Vetere; Castel Nuovo
Venice; San Marco and the Grand Canal; Circumnavigation — Murano; Circumnavigation — continued; Dinner at Rialto; Regatta Storica
Greece
Alitalia loses my baggage; On to Chania; Samaria Gorge; The Iron Gates; Agia Roumeli
North Coastal Crete; Malia; Gournia; Sitia; Zakros; Valley of the Dead; Kato Zakros; Knossos; The Archaeological Museum; A day of rest — on the trot
Santorini Day One; Sunset at Oia; Santorini Day Two; Night Moves
In the steps of Alexander; Monasteries of Meteora; The Hot Gates; Delphi
The Peloponnese; Olympia; Sparta; Mystras; Mycenae; Treasury of Atreus
Athens; Acropolis Now; Marathon; Rest day
Turkey
Ionia; Marmaris; Bodrum; Selçuk; Ephesus; The Temple of Artemis; Other sights
To the Hellespont; The Trojan Taxi; Çanakkale
Gallipoli; Chunuk Bair; The Farm; Turkish Memorial; Lone Pine; Anzac Memorial; Anzac Cove; Kaba Tepe
Sailing to Constantinople; Bandirma
İstanbul; Topkapı Sarayı; Museums; Aya Sofya; The Hippodrome; Yerebatan Sarniçi; Kapali Carsi
On the Bosphorus; Taksim; Dolmabahçe Palace; Kız Kulesi; Büyük Çamlica; Ali Muhiddin Haci Bekir; Beyazit; Bosphorus excursion; Rumelihisarı; The Land Walls
Egypt
The Pyramids; Khufu; The Solar Boat; Khafre; Menkaure
Dawn at the Great Pyramid; Egyptian Museum; Banks of the Nile; Back to Rome; The fast day
Home — Friday 4th October 2002
EpisodeThe bus shelter had two walls and a skimpy roof. Although one wall nominally faced east, none of them blocked the mid-morning blaze. The nearest usable patch of shade was the tree in the centre of the dusty town square on the far side of the road. But if I crossed the road to wait in relative comfort, the bus could come over the rise and be past me before I could return. So I suffered the glare.
Behind me, the Greek woman hitched her child to a more secure position on her hip, and murmured something to her. Sweat trickled down the front of her silk dress and made a damp patch where it pooled over her sternum, but her face was impassive.
Not so was the teenage boy who had just arrived. He paced; he twitched; he made fretful sounds with his tongue. He kept craning in the direction the bus would come from. He was obviously running late for something.
Another bus went past: another inter-city, forbidden to pick up passengers outside its home prefecture. The faces in its windows wore the trance of those who were now several hours into their journey but knew it still had hours to run. Their eyes picked me out disinterestedly: just a brief interruption in the flowing blue-grey and brown landscape they were passing through.
The sun beat down. My body copes with heat by sweating, but here there was no breeze to dry me and cool me. When I left Kalambaka at dawn, the air had been cool, almost chilly, but that was many hours ago and much higher.
Finally the local bus wheezed over the hill. It was packed. Somehow the mass absorbed the woman, her child, the teen, and me. The rear door scraped my back as it closed.
In a minute the village was behind and we were racing past classical Thermopylae. I watched the battlefield memorial go by with mixed feelings. One more childhood dream fulfilled.
Here a few thousand Greeks defied an army a hundred times more numerous — Herodotus makes it a thousand times more — and set an example that has inspired millions since. This morning I stood where they died, saw what they saw. It was easy to conjure the ghost. From the brow of the overlooking hill that displayed their epitaph, I saw the confining sweep of the mountains, that forced travellers down to the shoreline.
The hills had not changed since classical times. The shoreline had receded, but the modern road ran nearly where it was, and the cars and trucks stood in for the rush and crash of breakers.
As for the walls, the excavations of the archaeologists made of Thermopylae a book that people could interpret according to their own preference. There were at least two walls, each cutting back from the hills at an angle, designed to present a hoplite’s left (shielded) side to attackers and to force the foe to run a long way if they wished to try to wade around the wall’s coast end.
Which wall was “the” wall is debatable, but I chose the one that runs nearer the foot of the hill, because it provided a more dramatic overview of the site. From this hill an archer could pick his target, or a javelin could be cast over the wall. Reinforcements could see where they were needed and rush down to the hot spots. And when 10,000 enemy came out of the hills behind you, you didn’t have to run hundreds of metres to find a good place for your final stand.
But it was even debatable whether the hill with the memorial plaque and epitaph was the one where the Spartans died. Some evidence suggested it was actually a slightly taller, more distant hill. But I liked to think that the one with the plaque was the one.
The battlefield slipped out of view as the bus rolled on, and I dismissed the place from my mind. I had a new challenge. Somehow the conductor had squeezed his way through the mass and he wanted the fare to Lamia, but we had no common language. So I dug out my loose change and let him take what he wanted. He wanted €1.15.
IntroductionEveryone has dreams. Mine, for as long as I can remember, have included travel. Specifically, travel to North America and the Mediterranean. I wanted to walk the Grand Canyon and New York, and to feel the thunder of Niagara Falls. I wanted to explore the ruins of Rome and Greece, to touch the walls of Troy and to see the Pyramids.
In 2000, I went to America and fulfilled part of this dream. Now I was fulfilling the other, greater part.
There are some things in life that we can only do once, if we do them at all: lose our virginity, raise our firstborn child, climb our first mountain, wear our first hat. Some are minor but some are not. One such is the trip of a lifetime. If you travel, someday you’ll have a trip of a lifetime. Just one. I have no idea what yours might be; but you’ll know it when you have it, and nothing will ever be the same.
For me, 2000 was not it. It was a necessary pilgrimage, but it was the appetiser, not the main meal.
This is the story of what I did for my 2002 vacation. I had six weeks, departing Melbourne on 22nd August and returning 4th October. My itinerary included Italy, Greece and Turkey, and finished off with some days in Egypt.
I had never been to Europe, so I chose to pack my itinerary with famous historical places, no matter how touristy they have become. You won’t find many quaint, rarely-visited little spots here. On the other hand, I took no tours; if it’s in here then you can get there on public transport.
I visited five countries on this trip — Italy, the Vatican (which is a sovereign nation entirely surrounded by Italy), Greece, Turkey, and Egypt. Previously I’d visited just Australia (as a NZ resident), NZ (as an Australian resident), USA and Canada (my 2000 trip) so this more than doubled my score, to nine.
OutboundThursday, 22 August 2002
And so it began. I left work at about 12:30, walked around the corner and grabbed a taxi from the taxi rank outside the Como Centre. By 13:00 I was in the check-in queue at Melbourne airport. It was a long, slow queue. I finally checked in at about 13:40, which left me with just under two hours to kill before my flight.
This start was not without hitches. I’d hooked the iPaq up to its charger at work to get a last juice-up. “Must remember to put the charger back in my day pack before I go to the airport,” I thought to myself. Well, I forgot.
With the backlight off and the expansion sleeve trickle charging it, the iPaq would last through the flight and the first day in Rome; after all, that was the plan even if I’d remembered to repack the charger. But by then I’d better find a replacement charger or else I’d be in trouble. The iPaq was intended to be my journal, calculator, library, itinerary, entertainment and photo shop. I could get by without it, but that would be inconvenient.
Airport security had certainly been beefed up since my last overseas jaunt, but it didn’t slow things down as much as I expected. The security inspection was thorough but well rehearsed, and the passengers cooperated like sheep. The plane took off a few minutes late, but that was normal.
James Michener, the American writer, wrote a book titled The Drifters, that had a big impact on me. One scene in particular can bring tears to my eyes, and that is the moment when the plane takes off carrying the Norwegian girl, Britta, to Torremolinos. She has scrimped and saved and planned for this trip, and in the instant of take-off she exults, “it happened!”
As the wheels left the ground, I punched the air with both hands and exultantly whispered, “Yes!” It happened!
I’d decided to take a window seat in the waist of the plane for the Singapore leg, in hope of getting some good photos coming out of Melbourne. No such luck; clouds defeated me. The drawback of a digital camera on planes is that it’s treated like a computer; you aren’t allowed to use it during take-off or landing.
The couple next to me were on their way to London. The guy used to work in IT, so I showed off my toys.
The flight to Singapore was uneventful and has left scarcely a trace on my memory. When I wasn’t talking, I listened to my music; and when I wasn’t listening, I slept. The sleep was part of my anti-jetlag self conditioning.
The terminal at Changi was heralded by an eerie blue sign, “Singapore Changi Airport”. The terminal was huge. The gates were connected by travelators. It had soldiers carrying machine guns walking around it in groups. It had spotlessly clean showers (way down the far end from most gates; ask at the hotel counter) for about Singapore $8; and for that they threw in your choice of a free drink. With water selling for $3 per bottle of water, this was a worthwhile freebie.
The shops would discount major currencies but give change only in SGD. Rather than accumulate any unwanted currency this early, I used my credit card for everything.
I took a wander through the shopping mall, and in an electronics shop I found a travel adapter for the iPaq. $45 Singaporean. Not only was it half the size and weight of the original adapter (about the size of a mobile phone charger), it even had a European style plug! The power supply wasn’t as smooth as the original but this did no harm. The thing claimed to accept AC from 110 to 260 volts, 50 to 60 cycle, so I used it again the next year in the USA, with a plug adapter.
I like Changi.
For the flight to Rome, I asked for a seat in the rear of the plane (got 76A). The rear seats were two abreast, not three, and had a little extra room between the seat and the window. It was like a poor man’s Business Class. On a short haul (any international hop under 8 hours is “short” from Melbourne) it didn’t matter so much, but on 12+ hour legs, the extra space added up, and I was less likely to be trapped in my seat with a bursting bladder and sleeping companions. I’m short, so leg room has never been a major problem for me on planes, but I do like room to move. The only shortcoming was that you couldn’t lean against the wall.
My neighbour was Francesco, an Italian guy returning from a visit to relo’s living in Australia. His English was not good, but with the help of our dictionaries we got along. He even gave me his phone and address (he lived just outside Rome) in case of trouble — but I didn’t need to use them.
The highlight of the trip was when passing over the Persian Gulf. I woke up and looked out over a landscape of flame — oil rigs burning off in the night. I’m pretty sure it was Bahrain. I took some photos. They came out dim and blurred, but I was able to enhance them in my photo editor to show the street layout.
RomeFriday, 23 August 2002
By dawn we were crossing the eastern Mediterranean. It was dotted with small, fluffy clouds. These waters had seen so much, and today half the commerce of the world still crossed them. But from ten kilometres up, the ships didn’t show. Only the creations of nature had the necessary scale.
Eventually Italy appeared, below and to the left. To the right were the peaks of Greece. Both were remarkably nondescript — just like Victoria seen from the same height. I had no reason to expect them to look otherwise, but still I felt disappointed. When you are beginning the trip of a lifetime, you want it to start with the shiver of the strange, not the yawn of the everyday.
The plane crossed Italy and turned north near Formia — a spot that was to become familiar to me on subsequent flights and train journeys.
The plane landed at 06:55, ten minutes early. Passport control was slack — just riffle, stamp, done — but baggage claim was slow. I was resigned to losing time at customs, but there wasn’t a queue and they didn’t even look at me. The handful of customs officers were standing around chatting. I just walked straight through. This seemed to be par for the course at Rome, as much the same thing happened again six weeks later.
Rome was a good airport for the non-motorist. After Customs you just walked straight through to the railway station and caught one of the frequent express trains to the city.
I tore the nail on my little finger while wrestling with my pack. Preoccupied with managing the pain and bleeding, I asked for an express ticket to Termini. “€8.80”, came the reply. When I paid, he handed me a ticket — I don’t recall seeing it come out of his machine. It wasn’t till later that I realised it had yesterday’s date on it. Stung! The guidebooks all warned about scams. But since the tickets weren’t inspected on the train, I got safely to Termini.
Thinking about it since, the ticket was probably OK. Like Met tickets in Melbourne, most Italian tickets don’t start ticking until you stick them in the cancellation slot. I stuck it in the slot but didn’t leave it in long enough for the machine to print on it. So if my ticket actually was invalid, it was only because I hadn’t cancelled it.
I had booked a place (Sunshine House) for my first night in Rome. I selected it because it was a moderately priced hotel near Termini (the main railway station) that accepted internet bookings. Proximity to the trains made it a convenient base for getting around and away.
I thought my hotel would be easy to find, but I managed to get lost. My sense of direction was confused the same way as it had been in New York. Normally I have a “feel” for where my destination lies and what path or street will take me towards it. But this day I went south instead of north, and west instead of east several times.
Not to worry — I enjoyed the quest and the delay amounted to little more than 20 minutes.
The area was a bit seedy, with hole-in-the-wall shops run by what appeared to be Ethiopians or Sudanese. I made a resolution to explore them, but never really followed through.
Sunshine House turned out to be on the 5th floor of an old apartment building. There were several other “hotels” and “pensions” in the same building. Stupidly, I puffed up the stairs with my pack, assuming — wrongly — that the elevator would not work.
My room wasn’t cleaned yet, so I dumped the pack at the desk and took off to start sightseeing. I was determined not to fritter away my first day in Europe, and the obvious place to start my pilgrimage through the classical Roman world was at its heart — the Forum.
I walked. I like to walk a new city, when time and distance allow — it gives a good picture of where my bed is in relation to the landmarks, and gives me the opportunity to grasp the rhythm and spirit of the place at leisure.
In its intensity, Rome was unlike any city I had ever visited — even New York. New York bustled but there was so much of it that the intensity was diluted. Rome was very compact. It also crammed the population of Melbourne into an area no larger than Melbourne’s inner suburbs.
It took only about 25 minutes before I was walking past the Imperial Forums. However, the gates were all closed and although I saw some people inside, I couldn’t find an entry.
Since I couldn’t go through the Imperial Forums, I went around them, finally entering the Foro Romanum at Arco di Settimo Severo. I checked off my first personal “must” here by spotting the setting for a scene from the movie Hudson Hawk (the end of the ambulance scene). I found steps leading down to the Forum here — there was no need to walk around to the main entrance.
Food stands were everywhere, and uniformly overpriced. €4 to €5 for a 750ml Gatorade, €2.50 for a bottle of water — roughly 200% to 300% markup. The food was baking in the sun — I wasn’t game to touch any meat products, though I did risk a panini (choc nut paste wrapped in bread). Delicious to the eye, cardboard to the mouth.
The Forum was not everything I expected, but was still good. There was the thrill of walking where so much history was created, a sense that those events were still close by, if I had but the wit to pierce the veil of time. I played games in my mind with the foundations and pillar stumps, replacing the walls and columns until I could almost see it the way it had been, like a shadow cast on a wall of tissue paper. But with half a dozen tour parties nearby blaring commentary in almost that many different languages, the tissue kept tearing.
To stand before the actual Senate building was awesome — this was the real place behind all the plays and movies! To the left, the rostra; to the right, the temple of the Vestals and the Black Stone. Julius Caesar was cremated over there. And looming over the valley sides, were three of the Seven Hills.
I went up onto the Palatine hill (Palatino), and found what I was seeking: silence and a sense of place. The Forum was free, but there was an entry fee to the Palatine Hill, and fewer tour groups were ready to fork out money to take their customers through a sideshow. Instead they shuffled them through the Forum and down to the Colosseum (Colosseo) — which also had an entry fee, but was no sideshow — and never told them that they missed anything important.
The Palatine was quiet, with trees (a park was built over one portion) and many birds. I could hear the wind, and in some spots almost feel the vanished servants and aristocrats that made this a separate world within the city. I understood why it was a favoured dwelling place for the rich and the emperors. Below was noise and smell and tumult, but not here. Here you had space to think, and quiet to think in.
In places you could look down on the ruined fountains and gardens and still see the working of the minds that created them. But you couldn’t (except in some cases, by arrangement) go down and walk through them yourself. This undoubtedly helped preserve them for the future, by robbing the present.
Still, there were plenty of walls still standing at modern ground level, and you could walk through those. In some places the walls even had fragments of painted plaster on them. It was an eerie sensation to touch that, and brought a powerful feeling of connection with the past.
I walked down to an exit. As I descended, the noise came up to meet me. Welcome back to the REAL Roma.
I stopped at a souvenir stand and pretended to be interested in a statuette of the Palatine wolf. Large €40, medium €24. I hesitated over the medium one, then shook my head — too heavy, I said. And the price came down. €16, or €80 for my choice of any five. €10. As I walked away, the final offer on the medium statuette was €8. Since these guys are unlikely to try to sell at a loss, I’d take that as a good indication to how inflated those marked prices really were. Actually, at €8 I was sorry that it really was too heavy: the price was nearly right.
All these souvenir stands sold the same stuff. I was amused to see that one of the “centurions” — there seemed to be no mere legionaries — posing for and with the tourists had decorated his standard with the Palatine wolf. That’s okay, sort of, but the wolf had Romulas and Remus beneath it. That juxtaposition was not original. Someone put two separate works together, much later.
I bought a souvenir from the next stand. A tiny, tacky Colosseum, €3 (translation: worth more like €1). I still have it. It was enough.
The Colosseum was amazing. Despite the crowds, despite the overstructure built to help control the crowds, despite the loss of so much stone, it was still amazing. Come to think of it, the crowds contributed to this. The notion of an empty Colosseum is desolating. How the centuries must have dragged for it before the rise of tourism! This place was built to contain crowds.
Entry was from the side facing the Palatine; exit was to the Via Fori Imperiali. Inside you were free to wander.
On the way from the Colosseum, the vendors got in one last gouge. I handed over €10 for a last bottle of Gatorade and got €5 back. The thief then assured me that the price was €5 even after I told him elsewhere the vendors were charging €4.
Apart from a 180° wrong turn in the gardens, I made my way back to the hotel without incident. I didn’t go in for a tour of Domus Aurea — I was bushed. Barring a few rest breaks, I had been on my feet for more than 9 hours — after 22 hours of travelling.
The room was good, right at the top of the building, with double bed, a skylight (which leaked a bit when it rained) and brick ceiling, and an en suite. The water was always hot (although I took my showers almost cold to minimise heat stress to my winter-adjusted body) and plentiful, although the drain was slow.
I also did something that sounds foolhardy. I filled a cup from the tap and drank it. I continued this practice throughout the whole trip, except briefly in Crete and later in Egypt. My reasoning was that if I was going to get the trots I might as well get it over with, rather than avoiding salads and the like for fear of the local water. Also, it forced my body to get used to the local bugs. Seems to have worked — the only bug I picked up in the whole trip came from a dodgy roll in the Iraklio Museum, probably due to the grimy-pawed macho idiot behind the counter not washing his hands.
Saturday, 24 August 2002
By 06:20 I was on my way to Termini.
I lost some time finding an open ticket office, making me sorry I didn’t buy my ticket yesterday. When I did find an open window, I handed over €50 for a €12.40 ticket and received €30 in notes and a handful of shrapnel in change. I had left the window before I counted it and realised I had been shorted €5. I had not gone far and I considered going back and hassling for the missing change, but then I decided to chalk it up against the education fund. After this I tried to give exact change or small bills when buying tickets, and I was never ripped off again while in Italy.
My first objective for the day was to get into the Vatican Museums as soon as they opened. The queues for the museums were legendary, so I was resigned to a long wait to get in, but by arriving early I could spend that wait in the relatively cool early morning while most sights were closed anyway, and beat the worst of the tourist crush.
I took the metro to Ottaviano and walked south. I got so absorbed in the unfolding surrounds of St Peter’s that I missed the turn-off to the museum entrance and had to back-track. No matter — it was now only 7am, and there were only a dozen or so people lounging around the entrance. It was a different story down at the exit, where the tour groups were accumulating.
There was a coffee shop just opening for the day across the road, and I decided to have breakfast there, where I could sit comfortably yet keep an eye on the size of the queue. I was not surprised by the size of the bill — the site was prime — but I was surprised that relatively few people actually stopped there, and those were mostly locals. The tourists accumulated in the growing queues and seemed loath to surrender their place.
Just after eight, I noticed a pick-up in the rate of arrivals. The line had turned the corner of the building and started growing down the street. So I sauntered over and joined it.
By the time the museums opened at a quarter of nine the line was around the next corner behind me. There were hundreds of people waiting.
The line moved forward and passed through a security checkpoint. No slackness here — everybody walked through the metal detector and every bag and purse was scanned. Then we reached the ticket booths. €10, flat price.
Following the advice in the Blue Guide, I took off at a fast walk, dodging the hordes of tour groups that had been let in by the Exit before the Entrance was open, and made my way to the Cappella Sistina before the crowds did. The book’s advice was good — the Chapel was half empty and I was able to snag a prime seat from which to admire the ceiling. (When I passed through a second time, later, the place was wall-to-wall elbows.)
Taking advantage of my dumb tourist status I even took a couple of photos — no flash — before an official appeared and stopped me. Alas, the shots came out blurred.
The place was beautiful, though not as beautiful as reputed. Time and again during the trip I discovered that the pictures in a good coffee-table book or even a TV documentary can be easier to examine than the originals. You can take your time with them and there are fewer distractions. Also, the originals are often surrounded by a clutter of other art that is barely less superb, and the result is a homogenisation that robs them of some of their impact. However, there is a fascination in laying eye on the thing that no book or virtual tour can ever provide, and there are many things to see that will interest you that do not interest the makers of coffee-table books.
After the chapel, I set a normal museum- viewing pace until I got near the exit. Then I ducked through a passage and re-entered the museum to see the sections I’d rushed through earlier.
Personal favourites: the hall of maps, the Egyptian exhibits, the roof in the hall of tapestries, the huge bronze “Spheres Within Spheres”, and, of course, the Sistine Chapel.
Although the Vatican Museums were overwhelming, they were often depressingly devoid of context — just a collection of stuff filched from its rightful place by a succession of avaricious priests. The whole was mighty, but was not greater than the sum of its parts. This was true for all the museums I visited. A piece of building or sculpture left in its proper place gains more through context than it loses.
After the Museums, I walked around to San Pietro. The crowds by now were massive, and the weather was turning to showers. I had a damp wait while the crowd slowly squeezed its way through the security booths. The Vatican did not rely exclusively on God to keep terrorists at bay: it had grim and humourless security goons. It also had grim and humourless apparel nazis who made sure that God was not offended by the sight of naked male legs or female arms.
I had been planning to climb the dome, but the queue was huge, slow moving (up to two hours), and often forced people to stand in the rain. So I went in to explore the main floor instead.
After reading Mark Twain’s account of San Pietro, I was ready for the scale and the optical illusions, but in fact it wasn’t as impressive as Twain made out. The height didn’t sink in and the floor was not that big. I would put the floor area on a par with the Exhibition Building in Melbourne. San Pietro had more volume but the space was broken up by the pillars that supported the dome. The pillars were enormous, but dwarfed by the space. I’m not comparing the two buildings except in size … and light.
The light was unimpressive — too much gloom, and was not always where it needed to be. I got a good photo of the roof and upper part of the Baldichino, but I had to use a tripod and long exposure. A similar attempt on the high altar failed. The stained glass panels were too distant for proper viewing.
I did go down into the crypt to have a quick squiz at the dead Popes. But they hustled you through that room too quickly for a proper experience, and not being Catholic I was not properly impressed simply to be surrounded by so much pious hypocrisy.
After San Pietro, I rewrote my itinerary. The script called for returning to Ottaviano and taking the Metro to EUR to visit the Museo della Cività Romana, then another museum near Termini. Instead I crossed off the latter museum and walked down to Castel Sant’Angelo.
This started out as Hadrian’s mausoleum. It later became part of the defences for Vatican City, developing battlements and losing a bunch of Roman artefacts.
The place was worth the visit on several levels, but most notably because it had a cafe on top with breezes and a view. I’d not included it originally because I expected the rest of the Vatican to take longer than it actually did, and because I figured I might get to it on my last day in Rome. I was going to walk from Piazza Navona and cross the Tiber. But my rule when travelling is, if it’s there, do it.
Later I started to walk to Ottaviano, but after a few hassles negotiating the outer wall of the Castle, serendipity put a Termini-bound bus in my path. So I went to termini by bus and caught the EUR train there instead, and got to see something of the area around Piazza Navona in between. So I didn’t need to find time to do that later.
The Museo della Cività Romana was superb. Lots of Roman stuff, up close and in as much context as they could arrange. It was an overlooked gem, in the guidebooks but so under-sold that the only reason I went there is because the author of Route 66 AD raved about it. But he also under-sold it.
The Museum was in two buildings, separated by a huge courtyard and columned promenade. On one side you found a number of excellent models of classical Rome and its buildings; on the other you found chunks of ancient Rome and a model of the ancient city.
Outside, I was entertained by the statue of a Roman emperor standing in dignified glory in a pillared atrium above the street — incongruously surrounded by the waste and mess left by the homeless people who spent the night sleeping at his sandaled feet. The original man would have been horrified.
After that, my day was done. I went “home”, turned on the air-con, showered, and crashed. Jet-lag had not debilitated me, but I did get tired by mid-afternoon (around midnight Melbourne time). Rather than fight it, I went to bed and worked on my journal until I dozed off.
Sunday, 25 August 2002
Did my planned walks, but due to threatening weather and experience with the afternoon humidity, I moved up the schedule. I skipped the Museums and took the Metro direct to Circo Massimo.
Walking this strip of grass, it was hard to realise that this was once Rome’s main horse-racing track. But knowing what was once here, I could make sense of the various bumps and remaining structures. The way the Palatine hung over it was particularly impressive. Emperors could watch the fun without leaving home.
The Circus was now a grassy valley with a long hummock (the remains of the Spina) down the middle. It was bordered by trees on the long sides and shaded by the Palatine in the early morning.
Archaeologists excavated surviving portions of the stands at the eastern end. All else was ruined or buried. The result was a quiet and picturesque park where the locals came to jog and to walk their dogs — a long cry from the days when chariots thundered and blood soaked into the sand.
Evelyn Leeper on the Hippodrome in İstanbul: “I had always thought of the Hippodrome as a circular stadium, like the one in Ben Hur where you see the chariot race. But what is called the Hippodrome here is a long boulevard. I suppose the horses could run down one side and up the other.”
Yes, they could. The race track in Ben Hur was not circular but the same elongated stirrup shape as the Hippodrome in İstanbul, which was the standard shape for chariot racing tracks. The Circo Massimo was also this shape, as was the best surviving example, the Circo di Massenzio (see later)
The Leepers were naive and their pre-trip research skimpy, but their habit of recording details overlooked by the writers of guide books made their reports worthwhile reading for someone like me, who had never been there before. No amount of refined research and book knowledge can substitute for experience and first hand impressions.
After walking down to the flat end of the Circus (the stables entry), I decided to continue to the Tiburine Island. This took me past a couple of ancient temples, both in pretty good condition.
There were several bridges in this area. One, the “rotten" one, was now only a crumbling rock pile.
I crossed the Tiber by the bridge built to replace the “rotten" one, walked down to a bridge that connected with the island, and returned via the oldest bridge in Rome.
This bridge had been there and in use since about 60 BC. Julius Caesar probably walked or rode over it. At this time in 2002 it was the oldest intact construction I had ever touched. I had touched older things, but they were ruins or so changed that the Romans of Caesar’s time would scarcely have recognised them.
I returned up the Circo Massimo, crossed the road and took the Metro to Pyramide. Yes, there was a pyramid there.
I walked inside the wall a ways, stopping to refill my water at a public drinking fountain.
These fountains were a feature of Rome since Roman times, and though the design had been refined to the ultimate, the Romans would have understood them immediately. The typical fountain had a constant flow of water. This ran down a tube into a basin or drain. To fill a bottle, you just placed it in the flow. To drink, you placed your finger over the end of the tube. A hole higher up spurted water upwards — you might get a faceful if you were careless! Practical and sensible given classical Roman methods of water delivery, but I lived in a country where you didn’t let drinking water run constantly. Of all the things I came across on this trip, the drinking fountains of Rome were the most alien to my experience.
Soon after that, I cut off to the Baths of Caracella.
These were Rome’s largest baths, and the ruins were both gigantic and dramatic. They were also relatively untouristed — there were rarely two tours there at the same time, so the self-guided visitor could wander freely and lose himself in the past. Very little remained as it was, but there were fragments a-plenty from which the mind’s eye can rebuild it. Areas of floor, chunks of mosaic, and tantalising sections of wall and roof.
I continued on from the Baths, making my way down to Porta di San Sebastiano and the start of the Via Appia Antica — the Appian Way.
There was a museum in the wall — Museo delle Mura — but it was closed.
The Appian Way was one of the great highways of classical times, and on Sundays today it was closed to traffic. You could walk or cycle some 10 kilometres into the countryside along it, in some places on the original Roman paving. Scattered along the way you passed Roman estates and tombs, and many of the more recent walls and constructions were so close to classical insula style that the sense of walking into the past was overwhelming — until a car illegally blatted through and almost ran you down.
I was tempted to visit the Catacombs but when I saw the crowd of tour buses in the parking lots I decided to skip them.
Instead I walked on down the Way to The Mausoleo di Romolo (built by Emperor Maxentius in the 2nd century for his son Romulus). This was a round structure, like Castel Sant’Angelo or the Pantheon, but relatively insignificant in size.
Not so its neighbour, Circo di Massenzio, half a kilometre long and the best preserved of all Roman hippodromes. It was 100 metres shorter than Circo Massimo, but nowdays there was no real comparison. Circo Massimo required the mind’s eye but the regular organ could figure out Circo di Massenzio. If possible, seeing this before you see Circo Massimo — would really help!
The track itself was overgrown with weed and the stands were collapsing, but the walls and spina were intact. You could even see the Imperial box, halfway down the north side, and the remains of the starting boxes. Maxentius’ palace was on the hill above, but excavations for that were incomplete and the site was not open to the public.
This was the best remaining experience of actually walking around inside a classical Roman racetrack, at least until virtual reality technology advances far enough to give us the breezes and the textures and the simple physical effort of moving around in such a large space.
Continuing along, I came to the white Tomba di Cecilia Metella. Built for the wife of Crassus, this was about the same size as the Mausoleo di Romolo (30 metres across the round) but much more impressive, if only because some medieval robber baron added battlements and made it over into a glorified toll booth. This seemed appropriate for the tomb of the wife of Crassus, once Rome’s richest man. Now it was a museum, but not a very good one.
It started raining, so I decided to call quits on the walk. I walked to the snack bar and from there took the 660 bus back to the walls, then the Metro in search of Villa Medici. I eventually found the villa, but the rain defeated me.
I had dinner at Piazza della Rotonda, across from the Pantheon. This was something I had toyed with but had decided to leave “open” in case high prices and poor food set me up for a disappointing last evening in Rome. But I found the prices and food were both reasonable, and the walk-by music and the chance to eavesdrop on multi-lingual chatter were tempting. By the time I had wrapped myself around a steak and a glass of wine, the place had wrought its magic. The tension of the first three days dissolved. The trip was now well started and my months of planning and research were paying dividends in the form of an almost miraculous ability to reconfigure my plans around any hitch. This was a good omen.
The young boy singer with the loud voice and no sense of pitch must hjave wondered why the fat tourista gave him €5 where everyone else was giving small change. How could I explain that when his father played “Those Were the Days” and his own tuneless voice echoed off the portico of the Pantheon, in that moment all was well with the world and the present and past had become one? You can’t buy those moments — but you can tip for them.
Later, on the crowded train from Colosseo to Termini, I became the target for a pair of thieves. One crowded up and shoved his rear against my bumbag, which I had forgotten to padlock. Unsuspecting, I moved back, which probably screwed them up since it relieved the pressure. The other guy, hand hidden by a pink cardigan draped over his arm, tried to dip the bumbag anyway. Fortunately for me, I felt him open the zip. I had the iPaq and the camera in there, so it was rich pickings if I’d been less alert.
He got nothing and I didn’t feel like going to the risk and hassle of stopping him from getting away. So I padlocked the bag, gave him a cheery smile, and suggested he try again. I suspect that this gave a girl who saw the incident the wrong impression, as she seemed to think I didn’t realise what had happened.
In hindsight, I guess I should have grabbed his hand and “accidentally” broken a finger. He and his chum probably went on and hit some other, less lucky, tourist.
It was a cheap warning to me to be more careful. Losing the camera would be a nuisance, losing the iPaq disastous. My bankroll, except for a little spending money, was in my money belt. They’d need to mug me to get that, and I don’t mug easily. But the camera and iPaq needed to be accessible, and my daypack (also fitted with padlocks) was not convenient enough to suit me. Pockets were too insecure.
Monday, 26 August 2002
Checked out about 8:30 and dropped the pack off at Termini's Left Luggage. €3.10. Interestingly, it passed the scanner test despite the alarm clock inside. What do those hand-held ring scanners look for?
I went down to the Metro and caught a train to Spagna, then walked to the Pantheon. In the way of religions that set up shop in magnificent edifices built to worship other gods, the Church had plastered its icons and labels over everything in a strident attempt to claim the glory for itself. Although the building was graceful and beautifully proportioned inside despite its size and age, it had become merely another church and so was less interesting to me than it might have been.
I did not come to Italy to visit churches — though I did visit them, if they had appropriate historical context or were beautiful enough in their own right. But not to see the much-vaunted religious art and iconography. Acre upon acre of saccharine buttlicking — and not even to the big boss, just to his local minions — made me want to barf. So I glutted myself on dead cultures and dead religions, and simply accepted whatever experience of current culture and belief came along.
From the Pantheon I went down to Piazza Navona. Another place packed with tourists. Thence I went up to the Campidoglio to see if any of the Museums might be open even though it was Monday, but there was nothing. I did walk through the “Typewriter”, and was less than impressed by its bombastic presentation.
This seemed a day for negativity. Nothing I saw impressed me. At 16:45 the Eurostar pulled out for Naples, with me staring out glumly from a window seat.
NaplesThe train arrived on time at 19:14. I walked through and from the station, trying to look like I had a destination. It worked — none of the touts managed to stop me.
I was looking for Hotel Zara, but couldn’t find it. I did stumble upon a place called Hotel Siri 2 at about the same convenient distance from the station, so I cast my lot with serendipity. I walked up and used my phrasebook (no Inglesi) to ask for a single room. There were none available, but he offered a double with ensuite and fan (no air-con) for €40. I took it.
Later that night I did find Hotel Zara, just around the corner. It didn’t look much better. I decided to stay put.
I also browsed the local eateries and determined that I was not quite willing to trust myself to them.
I’ve been to New York. I’ve been to LA. Hell, I’ve been to Rome! None was a patch on Naples for sheer filth and gritty reality. I didn’t believe Twain, I didn’t believe the guidebooks, but I had to believe myself!
Perhaps it was only this bad around the train station, but the testimony of many casts doubt upon such optimism.
I ate at the McDonalds near the station. At least it offered “food” I could understand, with a known (low) nutritional value and minimal risk of food poisoning. I thought. Don’t ask me how, but even the McDonalds looked sleazy! It tasted like McDonalds standard, though. (That’s not a compliment.)
Tuesday, 27 August 2002
Just after 08:00 I was on the train to Pompeii. I originally planned to climb Vesuvius for the sunrise, but my feet were very sore from four days of heavy walking, so I decided to skip the early morning climb.
Pompeii was a grand experience. At Rome there were colossal ruins, and you could stand by them and try to rebuild them from their foundations. In Pompeii there were lesser ruins, but they still had walls, and some even had roofs and furnishings. If Rome was a reminder of the gulf of time, in Pompeii there was no gulf. Time stopped there, almost 2000 years ago, and started again — slowly — only recently. The Roman Pompeiians ran out into the holocaust yesterday, leaving their world to us.
Entry was via a ramp that brought me in through the Marine Gate, near the Forum. Although I arrived quite early, there were already several tours clogging up the big attractions.
They seemed in no rush to get out of the way, and I could see more tours arriving, so after fighting my way through the Basilica and the Temple of Apollo I abandoned my planned route — which followed the tour routes far too closely — and headed off to the north to do a clockwise circuit instead. This decision worked, mostly, although by midday there was no place left that didn’t have a tour either approaching it, in it, or just leaving it. So I would jump ahead to some temporarily deserted building, and hope that by the time I finished with that the original place would have emptied.
My revised route paid off quickly — I beat the tours to the Villa d’Misteri and so shared that only with other independent sightseers.
I looped all through the Villa, quickly deciding that it was superbly liveable. The state of preservation was breathtaking. Even some of the folding doors had survived.
It took me a while to find the room with the ceremonial frescos. It was blocked off and dim, flash photography was forbidden, and some walls were difficult to see from either of the two vantage points. Much the same was true for the other famous frescos. Seeing them with my own eyes was unforgettable and worth the effort, but you got a better view of them if you looked them up in a good book. It was poorly signposted and the guide charges were high.
My pre-trip reading paid off — I did not need a guide, there or elsewhere in Pompeii. I felt like a local of long ago, come back to visit his old stomping grounds. It was all so familiar that I often knew what I would see before I turned a corner.
Returning through the Herculaneum Gate from the villa, I moved east along the insulae of Regio VI, taking in whatever was open.
Inscription in a rest area outside Pompeii’s Herculaneum Gate: M…MIAE . P . F . SACERDOTI . PVBLICAE . LOCVS . SEPVLTVR . DATVS . DECVRIONVM . DECRETO.
To my regret the House of the Vetti was closed, as were a number of other famous sights. However, enough places were open so that I did not feel (as later at Knossos) that the management was deliberately blocking access.
I made my way through Regios V and VI, then turned back and south and took in the eastern part of Regio VII. I turned east again for Regios IX and III, and finally came south to the Amphitheatre at about 14:00.
I exited at the Nucerian Gate to see the Necropolis. There were several well preserved tombs and inscriptions.
I walked west outside the wall and came back in via the Stabian Gate.
The most touching sight at Pompeii was a clutch of body casts taken of a group who appear to have been trapped in the corner of their garden furthest from their fuming nemesis. The victims were all ages. One woman, probably young, a daughter or a servant, presented a rounded hip and buttock to the viewer. She lay almost gracefully, as if determined that even in death she would not disgrace herself. The young children were less dignified: they sprawled awkwardly, their final struggle to breathe starkly visible. A man, possibly the father, propped himself up on one elbow and looked across his dying family. Dunno how that pose was preserved — possibly he was pushing his torso up out of a fall of ash, which supported him when he died.
Their garden was now a vineyard, as it likely was back then. The house has not fared well, but enough remained so that you could reconstruct their last minutes: crouching in the shaky building until driven out by gas or collapse, the blind panicky flight downhill — otherwise they would have turned left to the gate halfway down the wall and so escaped or died in the street — and the final moments, trapped against the wall, perhaps watching the pyroclastic cloud swooping down on them.
I finished my visit with the theatres and the southern end of the Forum.
The biggest problem with Pompeii was its size. You couldn’t take everything in with a single visit, even if everything was open at once, although by hustling a bit you could at least see the high points. I would have to go back. I spent almost twice as long as planned and did not see everything I wanted to see.
Herculaneum provided an even better picture of what was. Although the experience was less complete because only a small area was available (most of it was still buried under modern Ercolano), the houses were in generally better condition and in my two hours there I got a much better sense of the Roman “neighbourhood”. Pompeii was the better, more complete experience, but only if you gave it a whole day (7 or 8 hours at least) or two half-days, and if your feet could stand the strain.
Herculaneum was also closer to Naples, which made it faster to get to if you were coming from Naples or on a day trip from Rome.
I Left Herculaneum in time for a taxi to take me up to the Vesuvius carpark, but from there to the summit and back would require more walking. Cowardice prevailed, even though it looked in retrospect like it would’ve been a good sunset.
All up I was out and mostly on my feet for about 12 hours. I spent about 7.5 hours at Pompeii and 2 hours at Herculaneum, and the residue (2.5 hours) comprises about an hour on the trains, an hour waiting for the trains (I just missed one at Pompeii and the next one was half an hour later), and the rest walking to and from the various train stations.
Wednesday, 28 August 2002
I got “treed” by a thunderstorm and downpour in a doorway at the south end of Piazza Adriano in Santa Maria Capua Vetere. At least it let me see the Anfiteatro Campagna before starting its dump, though the Antiquarium was blocked off by red and white tape and looked like it was under renovation.
Capua Vetere was classical Capua. Its greatest fame was as the cradle of the slave revolt led by the gladiator Spartacus. As befits a place so closely linked to gladiators, it also had the second largest Roman amphitheatre (eclipsed only by the Colosseum). Today the amphitheatre was the only major Roman building still standing, although there were some lesser survivals scattered around, such as a Mithraeum.
The Mithraeum was open by appointment — arranged at the Anfiteatro. By the time I learnt where to go to arrange entry there was no way I was going all the way back to the amphitheatre in the rain.
The amphitheatre looked like it was being decked out for some sort of event — rows of folding chairs and several light towers and camera platforms. However, the place was deserted and I wandered freely, ignoring barriers if they blocked me from something interesting.
I climbed up and sat in the seats. I clambered to the very top and made my way along the rim (crumbling, so I walked cautiously and stayed within reach of something to grab just in case). I made my way back down and walked through the spaces beneath the seats. The only place I couldn’t get to was the chambers beneath the arena. This was covered by metal grids (presumably to support the chairs and prevent the audience falling in). I found a tunnel that may have led me into the chambers but it was pitch-dark and damp, and I chickened out partway through.
The place was really little better preserved than the Colosseum, but more accessible (at least on rainy days).
Despite the rain and the constant danger of being run down by cars, Capua Vetere was a picturesque and charming escape from Naples. It was a real town, where non capisce inglesi but the people were friendly and there were no tours to contend with. Many streets were cobblestoned and had no footpath.
This was one time when I didn’t feel overdressed. In light t-shirt and shorts, I contrasted with the locals, who were bundled up for this “cold snap”. For the first time in Italy I found the temperature comfortable — even cool, especially during the rain storm
By 13:00 I was back in Naples — and in brilliant sunshine again.
I wandered along the waterfront to Castel Nuovo. This actually turned out to be a mistake, because as a result of visiting Castel Nuovo first I arrived at the gardens of Santa Chiara too late to go in. These gardens, famous for their beauty, were on my “must see” list.
Castel Nuovo was something of a disappointment — overpriced and under-presented. It was picturesque and worth a look, but not at the price of missing Santa Chiara or climbing up to see Naples from the hilltop castle.
I also had a quick look through the Archaeological Museum and saw much of the beauty that was torn bodily from Pompeii and other sites, leaving the gutted walls and the second-rate behind. As usual, without their context they lost much of their impact.
Pisa and FlorenceThursday, 29 August 2002
By 04:20 I was waiting for the train. The very early trains I was counting on weren’t running. The best I could get was the 04:42 via Formia, which claimed it would be in Rome at 07:00, where it would meet the 07:10 Eurostar to Pisa. It lied.
I had a bad several minutes when I arrived at the station: I couldn’t find my tickets. I recalled moving them from my red portfolio to a safer place, but couldn’t remember where. I virtually unpacked looking for them. Finally inspiration struck, and I checked my money belt. Bingo!
Tickets or no, the train was 55 minutes late into Rome. The Eurostar was long gone and the next one wasn’t till 9:30. Information directed me to a Turin train that was supposed to get into Pisa at 11:30. If I’d been thinking clearly I would have waited for the Eurostar, which would have got me there — reliably — at about the same time but with two hours on the train instead of three and a half. As it happened the Turin train left about 8 and crept into Pisa at noon, taking four hours.
After the struggle to get there, I was determined to see what I came for, so I lugged my pack north.
The pack proved to be a poser. My original plan had been to go to Florence first and drop my pack. Later I realised it was faster (ha!) to go direct from Rome. Mistake. There was no left luggage facility, that I could find, at Pisa.
So I got to the Tower in the end, carrying all my gear and desperately short of time, and found that climbing the tower was done by the numbers and cost about €15. I could climb the tower (and maybe have my pack pinched) or I could go on to Venice as planned.
I walked around it; I looked; I photographed; I departed.
The train got in to Florence at 14:37. Late. To have a shot at my last hope of the day, arriving in Venice near sunset, I had to catch the 15:25 InterCity. This had a connection at Bologna that I doubted would happen. I doubted it when I arrived, but because the train from Pisa was late, by the time I got to the ticket office, my alternative — the 14:38 Eurostar — had departed. Late. If the Pisa train had been on time I could have caught the Eurostar.
At any rate, the 15:25 supposedly had a 4-minute gap between arrival in Bologna and the departure of the Venice connection. But the 15:25 was running late. It was supposedly running 25 minutes late, but it pulled out at 15:57, 32 minutes late.
I did have the best pizza I ever tasted, in a Pizzaria opposite the station, just after I cashed €500 Travellers Cheques. 3% charge (€500 = €485 in hand) on the cheques — a ripoff, but the place next door wanted 5%, so if it wasn’t exactly a win at least I kept the cost down.
The Bologna train made up no time. In fact it lost another minute, arriving at 17:01. Naturally the 16:50 Venezia train was less than 11 minutes late. So took the 17:50 Venezia train, which, naturally, left late — for no obvious reason, since it was in the station on time.
Venice“But toward evening, as we sat silent and hardly conscious of where we were — subdued into that meditative calm that comes so surely after a conversational storm — some one shouted —
“‘VENICE!’
“And sure enough, afloat on the placid sea a league away, lay a great city, with its towers and domes and steeples drowsing in a golden mist of sunset.”
Now for the silver lining. Sunset in Venice tonight was 19:54. This train was due into Venice at 19:49. So there was still a good chance of seeing a Twain Venice drowsing in the sunset.
In trying for a forward-facing window seat for the best view of Venice, I stumbled into the smoking section. To balance that, the person who came along to fill the other window seat was young, pretty, and wearing a flimsy tank top. Naturally the aisle seat next to me got taken by a guy who passed several empty seats to get there. However, when he got off, his place was taken by another pretty Italian girl, so I was compensated for the smoke.
And so I came to Venice — but not quite to a Mark Twain sunset. I was mere minutes too late. The sun went in while the train was becalmed in the shunting yards of Mestre, and rather than a great, golden city on the sea I saw a great, greyish mass on a lighter grey sea.
But I was in no mood to quibble. Almost everything had gone wrong with the day yet here I was at my destination, almost exactly on time. I’d missed the best of the sunset but at least the dusk hid some modern elements of the landscape and cast a 19th-century veneer over the scene.
I walked out of the station and joined the great tide of tourists surging sluggishly along Spagna.
My hotel, Albergo Adriatico, was easy to find. The room was tiny but had air con, and the shower and toilet were nearby. No view — but views in Venice usually come with hefty price tags, and I was paying well below par.
I ditched my gear and made my way back toward the station. At a canal-side booth I bought a 3-day ACTV ticket. They now only sold them pre-validated, which meant the clock was already running on it. If I was smart I'd have waited till the morning. So rather than hiring a gondola, I took a night ride on Vaporetto #1, along the Grand Canal, to at least get some value from Day 1.
This was another of those serene moments. I was cruising down the Grand Canal at dusk, relaxed and at peace, exactly where and when I wanted to be. For the next three days my only worry was that I might succumb to the temptation to drift.
I was free of the menace of the motor car, at loose in a city designed for pedestrians. I had three hefty walking tours planned. But it would be easy to slack off, and the only loss would be that I would not explore the city as fully as I wanted to. Whatever I did instead would be fun and good, but I would be left with a mild regret that I had abandoned the plan I had drawn up so painstakingly.
The Grand Canal by night was one of my ten best experiences on this trip. [#1. The Great Pyramid. #2. Pompeii. #3. Palatino. #4. The Bosphorus. #5. The Land Walls. #6. The Grand Canal. #7. Samaria Gorge. #8. Troy. #9. Gallipoli. #10. Sunset at Oia.] The stains and scrapes disappeared, and the buildings glowed. The water was inky. I don’t remember seeing any stars.
I got out at San Marco and looked around the square. It was crowded. If the Stazione Santa Lucia was one axis of the tourist routes in Venice, San Marco was the other. Between these axes coursed a turgid tide of tourists with three main currents: north bank, Canal, and south (Rialto) bank. The tide was as well-defined as a column of army ants: go just a few steps off a main stream and you found a different Venice. You couldn’t get very lost — for if you got lost, you need only head back toward the Grand Canal. As soon as you found the tourists, you could just go with the flow until you knew where you were.
I drifted down to see the Bridge of Sighs. It looked just as I expected. Of course.
Walking back, I spotted a quiet eatery and decided to have a solid meal, with salad for roughage and wine for lubrication.
Friday, 30 August 2002
I was out early. I retraced last night’s route to San Marco and bought a cumulative ticket for the Palace and several museums, and another for the 11:30 Secret Itinerary.
The Palace was well worth a couple of hours. I didn’t need to join a tour to see most parts of it, including the Bridge of Sighs and the dungeons.
These latter were grim but fascinating, especially the ones floored, walled and roofed with iron-studded wooden slabs. The tour had a plot line that followed the attempts by one prisoner to escape. We saw his cells and crossed and recrossed his escape route as we were shown through the dungeons, the armories and the attics.
The attics (just roof spaces really) were especially interesting, being floored with the braces and fasteners that hold the ornamental ceilings in place and roofed by lead tiles that captured the heat and turned these spaces into furnaces by midday.
The Bridge of Sighs was divided down the middle. The side towards the Grand Canal was the exit. I took a snapshot of the eager gazers clustered down by the Grand Canal. I also stuck out my palm through the grill over a window — wonder if anyone noticed?
The Itinerari Segreti is a guided tour. I generally steer clear if such, but it was the only way most people could get a look at the offices and the rooms where the various masters of Venice convened. We even got to sit on the furniture — but since most of that was not original, this wasn’t such a big deal.
The records room with the cupboards painted with the coats of arms of the doges was eerie. So many secrets once languished here, waiting for the moment when they might be used to their owner’s advantage.
After the Palace, I looked around the square. I thought of climbing the Campanile, but the queue, already long when I started, was even longer now, and there was no shade.
Since I was going to be in the sun either way, I did my first walk — a clockwise circuit of the area towards the Accademia Bridge.
This first walk hasn’t left much of a trace in my mind. Everything was new and strange, and has now merged into a mass of churches and brick red walls and heat. I followed my pre-planned route closely except that I stopped at the bridge instead of crossing over to see the museums on the other side.
My Nike sandals now bit the big one. I’d noticed when getting dressed that the loop holding the front strap on the right sandal had broken on one side. I reinforced it with a literal Band-Aid solution, but there was no way it was going to hold out for another five weeks, or even today, and the design did not admit of much on-the-road repair work. So as I walked I kept an eye out for likely replacements, and finally found a pair in Rialto. €39.50 later, I walked out and left the Nikes behind.
The new ones didn’t fit as well, but I figured they would last the trip out, which was an improvement. I was to regret this notion later, as sore and cracked feet became my biggest hassle. I should have bought track shoes.
I also splashed out €45 for a terracotta design based on the tragedy/satire masks in murals at Pompeii. Alas, it turned out to be so fragile that it shattered at a hard look. Sigh. Liberal internal application of PVA glue and similar expedients eventually repaired and reinforced it enough so that it survives to this day, hanging from a bookshelf.
That evening was laundry night. There was an internet cafe next door, so I killed two birds by sending off the first instalment of news while my washing sloshed.
This laundrette, located just up the way from my hotel, was probably the best one I found during the trip. It was modern, self-service, and clean. It was also expensive, but considering the attrition to my clothes later in the trip, this was OK. My losses for the trip comprised one sock, one underwear, my Bungle Bungles t-shirt, and the mesh bag that was supposed to protect my socks and underwear and keep everything together. The people running laundrettes in Greece and Turkey did not understand the purpose of the bag, and usually removed everything from it either before the wash or before drying.
Saturday, 31 August 2002
This was the day of the long walk — essentially a circumnavigation of the city on foot, with an excursion to Murano.
I set out at about 08:00 and made my way clockwise down to the point nearest the shore, then up to the Fondamenta Nuove for the vaporetto to Murano.
The vaporetto takes about 20 minutes to get to Murano. The island is a miniature Venice, complete with its own Grand Canal.
I wanted to buy some glass, and to visit the Glass Museum. Watching the glass-making was not on my agenda — partly due to time but also lack of interest.
The shops were still closed, so naturally in one window I saw the exact piece I wanted — a small shallow bowl in blue and white, modest and unassuming. Sighing, I snapped a photo to remember it by.
I set off to find the Museum, but it proved elusive. I wandered up and down the quays and even took a walk inland. Finally, finding myself back where I started from, I gave up and was about to start back to the ferry stop when I realised that I was standing beside the Museum entrance.
The Museum was not large. The entrance looked like any other covered driveway. You bougt your ticket and dropped off your daypack on the left then crossedover and climbed some stairs on the right.
There was an impressive section of Roman glass illustrating that many of the techniques still in use today have been known for millennia. Further on there were some surprisingly modern pieces from medieval times. Finally you made your way back around to the gift shop and the ticket office.
Nothing in the gift shop raised a wow, so I set off back to the ferry. But when I passed the shop that held the bowl I liked, it was open. So I ducked in and, after a browse to see if they had anything better (they did, but not in my price range) I bought the bowl. They packaged it for me, so well that it survived five weeks in my pack and now occupies a proud place in my souvenirs.
I dashed down to the ferry stop and scrambled aboard, just in time.
Back in Venice, I took up the walk until I reached the most distant point from my hotel, Campo San Pietro. It took me over 5 hours to get there, but that included two hours for the Murano excursion. I probably walked about ten kilometres to get there, or double the straight-line distance.
I stopped to have a picnic lunch in the park, enjoying the grass and the birds.
The people around me looked like any other assortment of Italians — men in striped shirts and dark trousers, old women in black, younger women in tank tops and jeans. But I watched a motorboat come in, carrying about a dozen people of all ages, all in bathers. They looked like tourists, brightly-clad and chattering. A few minutes after docking, they had dressed and they stepped ashore looking just like the rest of the people around me. The eldest woman wore widow’s black. A pretty, buxom younger woman — who’d particularly caught my eye because her coral-pink bikini was barely there — wore a sober dress, a cardigan and sensible shoes. The transformation was startling.
From the park I made my way down to the Grand Canal opposite Rialto, where I caught a vaporetto to Accademia.
The last leg took me through Santa Crose and back to the hotel.
Curses and maledictions I reserve for the woman who, observing a weary traveller availing himself of her cafe’s vacant chairs and tables during the siesta, told him to move on.
By 16:15 I was home and showered. With all the turns and side trips I covered perhaps 20 km, the longest walk planned for this trip.
After a siesta I made my way back to Rialto for dinner, with a view to the bridge. Mildly expensive, but it was the last major meal I had planned for Italy. Tomorrow night I intended to eat lightly, after a solid lunch.
Today I did everything as planned, except that my original plan had me trudging through Santa Maria Formosa at dinner time. A last-minute pre-trip reassessment of the distances (and my church-visiting intentions) suggested I’d be finished by mid-afternoon, which I was. So I went home and had the siesta instead. I had discovered that a siesta from about 3pm to 6pm makes a lot of sense if you’re not working in an air-conditioned office. Many of the shops were closed up, and some of the tourist places. When feasible, a siesta in a cool room refreshed me and gave me the energy to make good use of the more temperate late afternoon and evening. It also gave the big outdoors attractions time to empty from their post-prandial clog of tourists.
Venice was beautiful from every angle — even where the plaster was falling from the walls due to neglect! It was also more varied than I expected.
The impact of the decision to ban cars was profound. Many streets were the same width as major cobble-stoned thoroughfares in, say, Capua Vetere. But in Capua, competition with cars made the streets feel cramped and confining. Here, the same width felt spacious and open. This is what Capua — or Naples — may have felt like 200 years ago; but cleaner, thanks to modern sanitation.
On sanitation, the local habit appears to be to put your garbage in a plastic supermarket bag and hang it from any convenient knob (presumably to keep the cats out).
Cats were everywhere. And they were complete snobs, even the starvelings. With so many visitors passing through, they undoubtedly received so many overtures that by the end of summer they gave up.
Here I was, half a world away from any cares, eating an excellent dessert after an excellent dinner, at summer’s end in Venice, beneath the Ponte Rialto, with a pair of buskers playing the tango. It didn’t get any better than that.
Then again, that meant that things could only get worse. So perhaps we should always hope for more. If things get worse, we can then look ahead and say it’s only a dip, not a slide. Always leave a little wine in the bottom of the bottle.
The bill … €56.34. $A100. The credit card for this one.
Sunday, 1 September 2002
Out early for the final walk — the areas adjoining the Grand Canal. I walked up to the Ponte Rialto, crossed over and worked my way back down on the Rialto side.
Towards mid-day I started the search for a good viewing spot. Unfortunately, by the time I made my way back to the best places, each one had already filled up with people. I eventually found a spot with a good line of sight down the Canal, but marred by some mooring poles.
The Regatta Storica was interesting but not equal to its build-up. The races meant nothing to me, the commentary was all in Italian, and I didn’t know any of the contestants.
Still, the procession was colourful and I had a good chat with a British couple and an American couple.
On the way back to the hotel I was passed by a gondola with music blasting and the gondolier poling along to the beat — the gondola equivalent of the doof-doof car.
Alitalia loses my baggageMonday, 2 September 2002
Got to the airport about 08:30 — at least an hour too early, as it turned out. What I saw as an international flight from Venice to Athens, the terminal staff saw as a domestic flight to Rome, with a correspondingly shorter lead-time. I immediately foresaw a hassle at Rome, with only 80 minutes to do an international check-in there. I had been expecting to do that in Venice and to check my pack through to Athens.
But when the check-in opened just after 09:00, I was able to check my pack through to Athens after all. This turned out to be mixed fortune, as the plane ran late. Scheduled for 11:00, it finally took off at 11:55 — cutting my expected 80 minutes in Rome to just 25 minutes.
Fortunately I already had my boarding pass for the Athens flight. My plane landed in Rome at 12:50. I got off at 13:02 and rushed from Gate A8 or A9 to Gate B16, arriving at 13:08. I thought this was cutting it fine and that my pack would be hard-pressed to follow me — but then I learned that the Athens flight was running 30 minutes late, so perhaps it would all come out in the wash?
I eventually boarded at 13:40. The boarding ramp led to a shuttle bus that took us out to the plane. Ay caramba!
Clouds met us as we approached Athens, but we broke through as we crossed near Methanon. I spotted Poros, and later Patroklou.
By 17:00, I was looking for my baggage in Athens. No pack. Several other people from the Venice flight were also missing baggage, so it soon became apparent that even with an extra 30 minutes to work in, Alitalia had not managed to get the baggage across from the Venice plane to the Athens one.
I lodged a forwarding address with the airport, hoping that my baggage was indeed only delayed, not lost. Alitalia would have to send it on to Crete after me. There was nothing else I could do for now: I still had one leg of my journey to do.
I took stock of my resources. Money, OK; just the small emergency cache in the pack gone. Tickets, passport, itinerary, Greece Blue Guide, Crete guides, maps, OK. Electronics, OK except for the chargers for the camera and the iPaq. I made a resolution: NEVER AGAIN put any crucial battery chargers in checked baggage!
The camera batteries were all charged, so except for the iPaq charger, I was in good shape. If the main pack didn’t turn up, I could easily replace all the lost functionality. I decided to press on, hope for the best and just buy a few immediate necessities to tide me over.
The iPaq’s power supply was turning out to be the Achilles’ Heel of my high-tech mode of travel. In 2001 I had to buy a surge protector to guard the device against unreliable voltages on the Indian Pacific train. On this trip I had to buy a replacement charger — the very one in the delayed pack, ironically — after I forgot to take the regular one with me after charging the device at work. Similar emergencies were to be a regular thing in future trips, until the spread of cheap, reliable USB chargers for phones and tablets finally reduced the loss or destruction of a charger from a disaster to a momentary nuisance.
After this, the leg on to Chania went smoothly. After puzzling over my ticket, Aegean sent me to the service counter, but only because they couldn’t tell if I had paid one of the various taxes. Turned out I had.
At Chania it had been raining, but was now clearing. Since I had no checked baggage, I was one of the first passengers out of the terminal and had my pick of cabs. This was an eye-opening experience that set me on a years-long quest to reduce my baggage until I could carry it all on board. Being physically powerful, I had never really worried about the weight of my pack. If I had to check baggage anyway then I might as well bring everything I might need. But to entirely eliminate the need to check a bag? Potentially priceless.
I had booked ahead to ensure I got a room at the Hotel Nefeli. I chose Nefeli because it was close to the bus station, could be booked on the internet, and yet was reasonably priced. My lack of baggage raised eyebrows, and it took me a while to convey to the woman behind the counter that I was expecting my Baggage to arrive the next day but that I would be in Samaria Gorge at the time.
Tuesday, 3 September 2002
By 06:00 I was at the bus station waiting for the Omalos bus. It pulled out just after 06:15.
The countryside was dramatic and beautiful in the dawn. I tried to catch it with the camera but the light was just too dim and the bus was shaking just too much. In the end I had to settle for watching it flow by.
The end of the ride was abrupt. The bus pulled over in the middle of nowhere and everyone piled out. There was a solitary shop in a carpark over the road, so I made my way over to buy some breakfast and something to eat later for lunch.
With coffee and some rolls inside me, I felt ready for the gorge. The path started down at the end of the road a few metres further on, and the ticket office was on the left just after that. Although my pause for breakfast had let some of the mob clear, there was still a short queue. Then I was past, and the slope steepened.
So this was it — the notorious Xyloskalo. The mob went down fast — a tangled mass of arms, legs, day packs and the occasional donkey.
The donkeys were carrying the gear for the park rangers who were on their way down to keep an eye on the walkers. The beasts did this walk every day and their contempt for the walkers was obvious. They did not hesitate to step on careless feet, and they hogged the easiest route, pushing aside anyone who got in the way. The ranger leading each donkey just grinned.
At the start of the walk, people were rugged up against the morning chill. As they — and the day — warmed up, they emerged from their armour. By Ayios Nikolaos, some were wearing very little indeed.
I thought I took several photos of the scrum and the fashion parade and the donkeys, but they aren’t in the Samaria Gorge set of my photos, so I guess they came out blurred and I deleted them when my photo storage filled up late in the trip.
The views were tremendous, though often broken up by the dense foliage that shaded the path.
Further down there were places where past walkers had built small cairns. Thousands of little piles of rock covered the ground, ranging from two or three rocks piled haphazardly all the way up to tidy miniature pyramids.
I was tempted, but resisted the urge to mark my passing with a cairn of my own. Partly because all the local stones had already been used: in order to make my own cairn I would have to rob stones from existing cairns. But also because I have no real need to mark where I have been.
I stopped for lunch at the abandoned Samaria village. I struck up a conversation with an American woman. Although we were each setting our own pace, we passed each other several times during the walk and it was pleasant to have someone to discuss the high points with. Lack of conversation and shared delight at discoveries is a drawback of travelling alone. On the other hand it does encourage you to be outgoing and friendy during chance encounters.
A goat was wandering around nearby, obviously on the cadge for scraps. My lunch companion immediately identified it as a kri-kri. I was dubious — these wild goats are supposed to be rare and shy — but her guide book had a picture of a kri-kri and the resemblance was distinct. So we eventually agreed that it was a kri-kri. I whipped out my camera, but by the time I was ready to shoot, the goat had disappeared.
After the village the gorge sides closed in and became steeper, and the path deteriorated. Those who were returning via Omalos usually turned back at the village and those who come up from Agia Roumeli stopped at the Iron Gates, so this was the least-used part of the trail and less care went into making it passable. Also, in winter, large sections were under rushing water, which forced large boulders onto the path. These could not be cleared away in summer, so the trail tended to wander between the boulders, or over them where a way around couldn’t be found.
The result was picturesque and could hardly be described as boring, but imitating a mountain goat got old pretty quickly.
The gorge kept winding and closing in. The path got squeezed between the walls and the stream until, looking ahead, I saw a point at which the trail vanished completely and there was only a log walkway perched precariously above the water. The walls were little more than a body-length apart, but they reared sheerly to a tremendous height. I had reached the famous Iron Gates — climax of the walk.
There were two main ways to the Iron Gates — the long way down from Omalos, or the “easy way” up from Agia Roumeli. After passing through the narrow point, I started to encounter the traffic coming up from the coast. The contrast was astounding.
By and large, the Omalos walkers were all ages past puberty but were relatively fit. Where you face a steep uphill walk if you give up, and an 18-kilometre walk to finish, you tend not to start unless you are confident in your abilities.
Not so the “easy” walkers. The people coming up from the beach were older and/or flabbier, and were an altogether different proposition. I never saw so many bikini tops so far from a beach, and I wished I had never seen some of these ones at all. The path from Agia Roumeli was flat and easy — and relatively short, but many of them were puffing and out of breath. Many carried high-tech climbing sticks, apparently under the delusion that they were undertaking a gruelling route march. The exceptions were usually families with young children.
At the exit, I surrendered another piece of my ticket — this was the gorge’s method of keeping track of how many people went in versus how many came out.
The road just past the park entrance was lined with overpriced refreshments and souvenirs. I paid too much for a cup of coffee in order to say goodbye my American acquaintance, and I found a good “Samaria National Park” t-shirt. Then I pressed on.
By 13:30 I was in Agia Roumeli. The walk took me about five hours. My feet were sore — the new sandals were taking their toll — but I still had a spring in my step. I was soaked with sweat from the glaring sun and the heat, but that was normal; my body was still adapted to Melbourne’s winter.
I rang the hotel. My pack had arrived! Suddenly my feet didn’t hurt so much and the sun was bright instead of harsh and glaring
All the intrepid daisy walkers I passed coming up on the way down were now arriving back, brandishing their alpenstocks triumphantly.
The ferry wasn’t due to leave till 15:45. Most of the other walkers went down and hit the black-pebbly beach. I bought my ticket and relaxed in the shade of a friendly cafe, swigging back huge glass mugs of iced tea to rehydrate. Later I went to lie in the shade of a power boat on a trailer near the ferry, to be ready when it was time to board.
I had expected a small passenger boat but the ferries were enormous — standard Greek inter-island car carriers. They loomed over the town. There were two — I am not sure where the other was going.
Finally we boarded and the ferry pulled out. The sea near the boat was coloured cobalt and tin: the land was gold and bronze. The ferry thrummed slowly through beauty, and in the cool breeze of its passage I wallowed in a complete lack of cares. I knew, beyond words or calculation, that the trip was going to work out just fine and that the temporary loss of my pack had been the worst disaster I would encounter.
When the ship pulled in at Chora Sfakion, there was a mass rush up the hill for the bus. But we needn’t have bothered — only the charter buses were waiting; the KTEL had not arrived. When it did pull up, there was plenty of room.
Back at the hotel I picked up my pack. The only damage was where Security broke the padlock to make sure the bag didn’t conceal a bomb — presumably the adaptors and their cables looked suspicious. I replaced the lock with a spare one.
I had a new and painful set of blisters and my feet felt like they had been hit with a tenderiser, but that was expected considering what I put them through. The day was a complete success. I even remembered to buy my ticket for Iraklio, although as it turned out I could have paid on the bus.
North Coastal CreteWednesday, 4 September 2002
By 06:00 I was half an hour on the way to Iraklio. I don’t remenber much of this leg — I was far more interested in trying to catch a little extra snooze time. This was going to be a long day, albeit easier on my feet, and the early start after yesterday’s exertions didn’t help.
My foresight in staying at the Nefeli had paid off well. Both mornings in Chania involved an early start, and both were made easier by the proximity to the bus station.
Just after 08:00 I was in Iraklio. After a little confusion, I discovered that I had to cross the road to the other bus station to catch the 08:30 Malia bus. No problem. I bought my ticket and wanted to buy breakfast, but an examination of the food bar turned up only a dry bun and some disgraceful coffee.
I also wanted to use the toilet, but one look at the facilities was enough to make me think again — there were two squat toilets and one throne. The throne was filthy and it stank, and there was no toilet paper. But nature was calling and the next pit stop was an hour down the road, so I broke out a seat cover and my own supply of paper and took care of business.
The bus left on time and arrived in Malia on time, but I had made a small miscalculation — the Minoan site was 5 km out of town on the other side. Rather than stuff around with the clock running, I took a taxi.
This was my first Minoan palace, and it made a good appetiser. If I had seen one of the big ones first, Malia might have seemed poky, but instead it was fascinating, and was so beautifully laid out and preserved that it later helped me grasp Zakros and Knossos. The main site was the “new” palace but there were some new diggings in the area of the “old” palace that cast extra light on how the complex functioned — there were artisan and craft areas, and a set of sunken rooms that was tentatively labelled as some sort of throne room but looked to me more like a factional or religious lodge.
It was an eerie feeling to walk through the main part of the palace. The original floors and door sills were still in place. With my guide book and maps I was able to identify key locations.
I left the site in good time and made my way down to the bus stop on the highway, but the bus was a long time coming. When it came, it was only going as far as Agios Nikolaos. I had to change there for the Sitia bus.
Agios Nikolaos was an ugly, nightmarish place. There was an archaeological museum there with some of the Malian finds, but I was not inspired to find it. Just arranging my onward ride took all the inspiration I could muster.
The bus station was badly organised and the staff had not heard about customer service. I asked for a single ticket to Gournia and was given — and charged for — two tickets to Ghod knows where. When I realised what had happened and went back, the man said the ticket was good for Gournia and he also refused to refund the unwanted second ticket. He said I could use it to cover part of the Sitia leg onward from Gournia. This sounded unlikely to me, and so it proved to be — the conductor simply refused it: “Is no good”.
Fortunately the first ticket was OK for Gournia, although the conductor looked dubious. The fare was right and the ticket was clearly just issued in Agios Nikolaos, so in the end he let me on.
That is, once the bus arrived. It was running twenty minutes late, and if the English speaking official had bothered to tell me this instead of grunting and gesturing vaguely towards the street, I could have spent that time sitting down or finding the muse instead of searching for a bus that wasn’t there.
My itinerary had me at Gournia at 12:30. The bus left Agios Nikolaos at 12:40, with a half hour drive still to Gournia. My schedule was slipping. But I was glad to see Agios Nikolaos disappear in the dust behind me.
Gournia was one of the more dramatic Minoan sites, a wave of waist-high walls spilling down a hillside. It was a town rather than a palace, although the top of the hill has the usual regal or vice-regal amenities.
A middle-aged English couple, George and Janet, were just arriving as I got off the bus. We were the only visitors, so we teamed up.
We made our way up the hill, attempting to relate what we saw to the maps in our respective guide books. We weren’t very successful at first, but in the hour we were there we managed to find the main features — the breakthrough being when we got to the courtyard at the top and were able to say with confidence “if this is here then that must be over there”.
About 14:00 I went down to the road to watch for my bus, cutting the Gournia visit short to be sure of getting to Sitia. I needn’t have bothered — when George & Janet came down half an hour later I was still there, reclining on my day pack in the shade of an olive tree while the travel pack staunchly stood watch in the sun by the roadside. They were headed for Iraklio, so they went over to the other side of the road — athough there was no shade — and we speculated across the distance between us as to which bus would arrive first.
To my relief, it was mine.
The bus trundled into Sitia just after 16:00 and I walked towards the centre of town looking for a hotel. I soon found one — Flisvos Hotel. I booked in for 2 nights (€28/night) to make sure I had the use of the room the next afternoon for a rest and a shower before heading back to Iraklio.
The room was good, with ensuite, aircon and balcony (though the view was not to the waterfront). The shower had no curtain, and the shower head was hand-held, which had interesting results when I took a shower, until I used a heavy duty rubber-band to anchor it overhead.
I had a siesta, then went down to the waterfront for dinner and a look around — found “Zorba’s” and couldn’t resist.
I think I startled the waiter by ordering a bottle of raki. I worried him by tossing it back straight instead of mixing it with water. I startled myself, too — I really meant retsina! But on reflection, after one glass, I decided it was exactly right. It was another of those perfect moments when I was where I needed to be, healthy, under budget, and with a million-dollar view in front of me.
Sitia was incredibly serene and laid-back, and the setting was lovely. The town was set around a bay and ran back up a hillside. It escaped the rampant over-developed ugliness of Chania, Iraklio and most of the other north-coastal towns.
After dinner, to walk off the food and the raki, I climbed up to the fortress overlooking the town. It was obviously used for open-air functions and was stacked with white plastic chairs. Behind the fortress the hillside continued up, covered with weeds and rocky outcrops. I found this fitting — it was as if all the ugliness had been swept to the edge of town and forbidden to return.
Thursday, 5 September 2002
By 06:00 I was on the Zakros bus. This was a summer special and it was the main reason I was so determined to get to Sitia on the previous day. The next bus was not till 1130, which was far too late for my purposes. I wanted to walk the valley of the dead, and I hardly wanted to do that in the mid-day heat.
There was almost nobody aboard — an older guy and a couple of girls. All for Zakros and so probably planning to walk the valley.
The bus ground its way through some miniscule villages — the main streets barely wide enough for it — and subsided in Ano Zakros. The guide book’s instructions were a bit cryptic, but I struck off in the direction they seemed to suggest and eventually came across some landmarks that more or less met the description. It took a while — Zakros was larger and more spread-out than I expected — but once I started coming across signs saying “Gorge Schlucht”, I knew I was on the right path.
The walk was much harder than I expected. It took me 2 hours and 20 minutes from the bus. It was poorly signposted — by which I mean things like putting a signpost just before a major fork, one of whose branches dead ends. I lost the trail at least twice — I may have lost it several other times but found it again before realising I was lost.
On one occasion I found myself high above the stream, where the wall went straight up, faced with a dangerous scramble down through loose rocks and thorn bushes. One thorn went in through the outside of my foot, and bled quite a bit. It gave me no grief at the time but I was too far gone to wash it properly. I just pulled the thorn out and slapped on a Band-Aid. It took a long time to heal and caused me plenty of grief later. I still have a lump there, scar tissue that formed as the wound tore open repeatedly under the strain of walking, day after day.
The only people I saw on the walk were a German girl coming up the gorge, and the older guy from the bus. I caught up with him when he was resting right near the end. He must have taken another route and beaten me into the gorge, or else passed me while I was lost.
The palace was signposted at the gorge mouth and was only a short walk further on.
The site was quite compact and it didn’t take long to inspect the easily accessible portions. It was not as tidy as Malia, but was mostly comprehensible. I did some amateur archaeology. Reasoning that people then as now would have taken the shortest path between two points, I examined a door sill between the banquet hall and the storage rooms. Sure enough, it showed quite a bit of extra wear just where hurrying feet would have scuffed over it for centuries.
Elsewhere, the royal chambers looked far too small and were blocked in on all sides by heavy walls and unconnected rooms, except to the courtyard. I’m inclined to believe that these were ceremonial rooms and that there were royal chambers on the second storey, where the breeze could get in and there might have been a view of the sea and docks.
In the portico at the north end of the courtyard I found what could be the start of some wide stairs up, but if so they were odd heights. It looked more like a bench, possibly with a now-missing wooden superstructure. I sat there. The height was just about right, and I had a good view of the courtyard entrances to the royal chambers. It was right at the entrance to the kitchen.
I walked across to a ceremonial pool. As I approached I heard odd clacks and plops coming from it. When I got closer, I realised that the sound was caused by terrapins diving into the water to avoid me. The clacks were their belly-plates rattling on the stones.
By half past ten I was sitting on the seawall at Kato Zakros, sipping iced tea and nursing my injured foot.
After a while I got bored and wandered down the beachfront towards the bus stop.
I ran into the older guy again. He turned out to be an Aussie, a road train driver from Oodnadatta. He was a long-time backpacker who had refined his baggage down to what he could carry aboard the plane. Given my recent experience with lost baggage, I was duly envious, but then, we had different objectives. Reduction of my baggage to such minimalist levels was not yet part of my mode of travel. I hate rinsing clothes every night, and I like to take my toys with me. I also like to have room for souvenirs. But I do assess the use made of everything I take along. My load gets lighter with each trip as I eliminate the unnecessary.
The bus timetables were a bit confused. My itinerary expected the return bus at 1230. The Taverna on the beach said 12:45. Either way it was running late, but by 15:00 I was back in Sitia, freshly showered, and enjoying a brief siesta.
I had checked the intercity bus timetable at the KTEL on return to town. The web said 17:45 and 20:00, but the buses actually left at 17:15 and 19:45. If I had trusted my itinerary I would have turned up half an hour too late!
I got up about 16:30, checked out, and made my way to the bus station. I managed to get lost on the way but still made it with a few minutes to spare. The bus left on time.
In Iraklio I was aiming to stay at Hotel Mirabello, one recommended by Lonely Planet. I’m not absolutely if that’s where I stayed, however — my notes don’t say, I paid cash, and I have lost the receipt. But I’m pretty sure it was.
The room had no air conditioning. The window opened on the street. I had a choice between sweltering and getting blasted out of bed till 02:00 by motorbike exhausts. Either way I got little sleep.
Friday, 6 September 2002
This was the big one. The chief Minoan site, and the one that has had the most reconstruction. The Labyrinth, the place where Minos ruled. Theseus and Ariadne, Daedalus and the Talus. Knossos!
I was down at the bus station early. Knossos was a busy tour destination, and I wanted to get in early to avoid the worst crush. But the bus was running late and I did not get there until 08:15, by which time at least two tour buses had decanted their contents.
The entry was via a long walkway that approached from the west, turned right, then turned left and brought you into the south end of the central courtyard.
The courtyard was the largest of all the palaces, and although using it for bull-leaping ceremonies might have been a bit cramped by modern standards, it looked large enough. However, in Minoan times it would have been put to many other uses. The surrounding buildings would have blocked much of the wind, creating a sun trap suitable for drying hides, fruit and other goods.
The buildings would also have provided shade, where handcrafts, school and government could have been carried on. Looking at the layout of the walls and speculating on the likely breaks and windows in them, I suspected that by opening and closing a few doors and arranging movable partitions, the palace buildings would have been well ventilated. The terraces would have been good places to sleep at night, and by day the upper stories would have intercepted the sun and protected the middle and ground floors. In short, the palace was an admirable adaptation to the Cretan climate in pre-industrial times.
I poked around a bit, then joined the queue for the throne room when I saw that another tour was coming into the courtyard and the queue was likely to grow.
The throne room was quite modest in size. Tourists couldn’t enter the room itself, only the antechamber. The reconstruction was good, but Evans went a little overboard with the murals. There was only one griffin mural found, but Evens added two more. Looking at the throne was eerie. This might be the very seat from which Minos held court — although the room may actually have been built or refurbished later. Theseus and Ariadne may have been here. Idomeneus may have mustered his Cretan forces here for the Trojan war.
In Italy I had visited ruins more than two thousand years old, in a city that has seen almost 2800 years, and I thought that was a long time. But this place was the capital of a great civilization centuries before Rome was founded, and it was built on the earthquake-tumbled ruins of an even older palace that was a thousand years older than Rome.
The antechamber to the throne room was about the only part of the reconstruction that the average tourist could enter at the time. Everything else was roped off or closed for repairs. I particularly resented not being able to descend the Grand Staircase.
The management seemed to regard the place as sacred. Even Evans’ worst excesses had become unalterable, and even a wooden replica throne in the antechamber, which Evans explicitly built for visitors to sit in, is now roped off.
The argument is that the trampling of tourist feet is slowly pulverising the structure. However, considering the price charged for entry, the volume of visitors actually would pay for the cost of any “philological” repairs using new stone of the same type. The value of Knossos is less in the materials used — the place is already mainly supported by modern concrete and steel anyway — than in the impression it makes on the visitor. Evans effectively ruined it for modern archaeological methods.
The policies of the management seem designed to preserve the place for future generations of archaeologists — who have paid nothing towards it and probably will get in free anyway — rather than make it accessible to the present day visitors — who are footing the bill.
Although the rooms were locked off, it was possible to walk around to most places on the site and to lean over ropes or do blowfishes against glass doors to see inside. By a rather free interpretation of which side of a piece of rope was the roped-off section, it was often possible to get to places they probably wanted to keep people out of, without crossing a rope or climbing over a wall. Frustrated in my desire to walk the Grand Staircase, I took advantage of their poor crowd control measures elsewhere.
I criss-crossed the place and walked around it. I found the various frescoes. I managed to find the base of the Grand Stairway, where a worker was lethargically pulling chunks out of a wall. Considering the volume of the areas closed for restoration I expected a small army of workers to be at work, but this guy was all I found. At this rate the area would be closed off for years.
I found the “Theatre”. Looks more like a ceremonial platform which probably doubled as an open-air marketplace and customs/tax office. Visitors approaching from the port could be met with due pomp and escorted to the north entrance. For more hurried or less portentious occasions, there was a short-cut to the north entrance that bypassed the theatre. Looming above the theatre there was a square tower. The base was not very big and it probably wasn’t very high. But it could have held a ceremonial statue and a priest or priestess, and at other times it would have made a good supervisor’s post or a good place for someone to count sheep or goats.
The Royal (port) Road was blocked off with “danger” signs after a short way. From the look of neglect, I’d guess that not much of the money raked in through entrance fees was making its way into the day to day upkeep that would have kept the weeds in check in the less frequented areas. But there was plenty of money for employees who'd slip away to closed-off areas in boy/girl pairs, reappearing separately twenty minutes late looking dishevelled.
The building’s roots were massive, but so superbly put together that it sat gracefully on the hilltop, belying its weight. Even ruined, it was a beautiful building.
I felt a sense of belonging as I walked around it, of recognition, of homecoming, as if I was returning to a much-loved place now sunk in ruin.
Knossos was one of my fantasy places. I had read about it for many years, pored over the floor plans, read novels and dramatisations, watched documentaries. Now I was there, and I found that I knew this place. I would turn a corner and see a familiar angle of wall, or follow a passage and know what was at the far end. Occasionally I was surprised because something wasn’t there.
I’m not a believer in reincarnation. The answer to the riddle is that my imagination had lived in Knossos all my life, and I unconsciously knew it better than I could ever consciously recall. I had the same feeling at Mycenae, later, but it was stronger at Knossos. My imagination had visited Mycenae, but it had lived at Knossos.
I finally wound up back at the central courtyard just it started raining. After the rain eased and the sun came back out, I sat on a block of ancient stonework and rebuilt the place in my mind’s eye, wall by wall, buttress by buttress. Then I filled it with small brown people, the men in either loin cloths or in skirts with cinched waists, the women in either long, shapeless jerkins or in flounced skirts with open bodices each according to status and role.
I could see only Minoans, the graceful people of the old frescoes. If Mycenaeans were there, I did not recognise them. The Mycenaeans were overlain in my mind’s eye by the later Greeks, and would be an anachronism in such a scene. I could envisage only thuggish royal faces and boar’s tusk helmets: I couldn’t see the ordinary Achaeans who would have been more typical. Odd.
Just after midday, I reluctantly pulled free of Knossos. I browsed the souvenir stalls on the way back to the bus stop. I knew what I wanted — a replica Snake Goddess, the faience one with her arms upreached and a cat on her bonnet. But I came away empty-handed. There were plenty of snake goddess statues, but they were uniformly overpriced and worthless, mass-produced tourist crap. I did eventually find one to my liking — in Athens, still a week and a half in the future. The only souvenirs I brought away from Knossos were postcards, some pamphlets, my entry ticket, a few dozen photographs, and my memories.
On the way back to the hotel I went past a ticket office for the ferries and picked up a ticket for the 09:15 Flying Dolphin to Santorini on Sunday. I would have preferred an earlier sailing, but there were none.
After a visit to the Post Office to dispose of 2 kg of accumulated junk, I made my way up to the Archaeological Museum.
The Museum was impressive, but I had the bad luck to arrive at the same time as a French speaking tour group herded by a woman whose loud voice quacked in my ear. She kept pace with me through several rooms, clogging up the big attractions and braying obnoxiously. I eventually skipped a gallery to get ahead, and went back to that gallery once her group had moved on.
I eventually came upon most of the famous items including the Phaestos Disk, the Snake Goddess statuettes, and the murals, and went through the rest of the exhibits. I gave it about an hour and a half and could easily have taken three, but my feet were hurting and I was hot and tired.
Rather than arrive back to my hotel room too early for siesta, only to have to go out again for food, I decided I would have lunch in the Museum — it had an outdoors cafeteria on a terrace overlooking the port. The place and its staff looked none too clean, but I picked up a feta-and-ham roll, a banana and a cappuccinos and made my way out onto the terrace.
The lunch was pleasant. I had a shady table, the view was pleasant, and it felt good to be off my feet. But all too soon it was time to go.
Shortly afterwards my bowels began to gurgle and my energy began to drain away. At first I just put it down to gas and tiredness; after all I had been on the go since 6:30 and it was now 16:00. So I went back to the hotel, showered, and took my siesta, expecting the rest to set me up to do internet and laundry in the evening.
Instead I felt worse. I woke up in a cold sweat and shivering fit, pain in the stomach, and running a degree of fever. A few hours later it had eased a bit but it left me weak and shaky as a kitten.
At a guess it was either giardia or food poisoning — the gas and diarrhoea fitted either, but the weakness and fever pointed to the latter or to a combination, with the likely culprit being that wretched roll from the Museum.
I reassessed my next day’s plans — Phaestos, Agia Triada and Gortys, to complete my Cretan itinerary. A hefty itinerary and not one I should risk unless I was healthy. Reluctantly I decided that unless I felt better in the morning, prudence dictated skipping the sightseeing lest I overrun my strength and allow the bug to get a real hold on me. Also, the trots are not an asset when you’re a long way from the nearest toilet. I could take something to dry them up, but that would simply lock the bug inside me where it could run wild. I work on the assumption that the trots are the mechanism the body has evolved to get rid of the worst of the irritation and give its other defences a chance to fix the cause.
Saturday, 7 September 2002
As feared, the poisoning was still running its course. I was belching huge quantities of rotten eggs, and when I crapped (every hour or so) it was liquid and gas, no solids.
That tied me down to keeping a toilet in instant reach, which put Phaestos etc out of the question. Plus I just didn’t feel up to the effort involved. Today would be a rest day, like it or not.
I took my clothes to the laundry (a 7 minute walk, took me 20) and was so weak and wavery I must have looked like I was on drugs! I had to stop in El Greco Park on the way back, to lie down and gather my energy.
But by 16:00 my energy was starting to rise. It was no longer a marathon just to get out of bed to go to the loo. My spirits were also rising: I was starting to function again beyond the animal level. I was belching less and it stank less.
Also on the upside, the rest allowed my feet to recover. I still had plasters on the three rawest blisters (on the knuckles of my big toes, and beneath the toes of my right foot) but my heels didn’t ache and the other blisters were drying up.
Around 20:30 I decided to venture a light dinner without going too far from the hotel.
I was feeling much better, although if I exerted myself I soon ran out of steam. Part of that was probably hunger — I hadn’t eaten anything in more than 29 hours, just plenty of [bottled] water, a couple of cans of tea, and half a litre of orange juice.
I wanted soup, but it was not on any of the menus so I went for saganaki, chips, chicken fillet and Greek coffee. Couldn’t resist the fried cheese. Probably should have resisted that and the greasy chips. I ordered chicken fillet to avoid too much grease, but naturally they grilled it — it was caked in grease. I’d now had far more grease than was wise, although I minimised the damage by eating only part of the meal. Explaining that the food was OK but I wasn’t was tricky.
Turned out I hadn’t shaken the bug. My light dinner turned to liquid and trickled out over the next few hours, accompanied by huge volumes of gas. Fortunately there was no lethargy or weakness this time, and I could operate like this for a while, if need be. I wished it hadn’t happened just on the start of my mad dash through central Greece, though — I’d have no opportunity to pamper myself for the next week or so and I’d be spending hours on buses that don’t stop for toilet breaks.
I balanced up my accounts and discovered that I was tracking well below budget. So I decided to upgrade my hotel choices to always include aircon. The heat was one thing, but the alleviation of street noise was something else. I was into the “cheap” countries now, so the extra cost would be moderate. (And so it proved — I finished the trip even further below budget, despite the more expensive accommodation.)
Santorini Day OneSunday, 8 September 2002
By 08:50 I was aboard the catamaran. The bug had relented for the time being and I made it through the two-hour crossing with only one minor toilet stop. My energy was also back to normal.
Despite the late arrival (11:15, originally planned on 08:40) I managed brief visits to Akrotiri and the two museums, missing only Ancient Thira. They all closed at 1500 and were all closed on Monday, so within four hours of arrival I had finished with my Minoan itinerary. But I’m getting ahead of the tale.
The catamaran docked the “new” port, Athinios. Everyone piled off and most of them milled around, easy prey to the waiting touts. I walked straight through the press to where a KTEL bus was waiting. I guessed right — it was the Fira bus. Within 20 minutes I was on my way up to Fira.
Fira was remarkable — a lovely village perched upon the edge of the abyss. I wonder if the Minoans had similar settlements, not found because they would have been scoured off the lip of the caldera in the explosion that buried Akrotiri and Thira. I once thought that before 1450 Santorini was a cone, but apparently it was already a ring. If so it would be remarkable if the Minoans had not settled in places with such views. If nothing else, they would be the most defensible spots on the island.
From the bus I made my way downhill and toward the rim. In a cluster of houses just back from the rim I found my hotel, Loizos Apartments. And an apartment is what I got, large, complete with aircon, en suite, kitchenette and TV. Not quite a caldera view — another building blocked it — but close. The caldera was perhaps twenty metres away. All this for €29 per night. For Fira this was a fantastic bargain.
I checked in, dumped my pack, and bolted back uphill. I had a bus to catch. By 13:00 I was at Akrotiri.
Akrotiri did not look like much from the road. There were a few food and refreshment stands by the road, and a dusty track leading to the site. But beneath the factory roof at the end of the road was a Minoan Herculaneum.
I shot around the site in 20 minutes. It was not large, and the archaeologists had carried off the frescoes and artefacts that made it such an exciting find.
What was left was a brown maze of rooms and buildings, almost without context unless you bought one of the heavy, expensive and abominably unreadable books available from the souvenir stands. However, I found that between my guidebooks and pre-trip reading and internet research, I was able to make adequate sense of the place without buying the overpriced books. (I later bought one more cheaply in town, as a souvenir.)
I would have enjoyed a longer look at the place, but time was running short if I wanted to see the artefacts and frescoes that had been taken away to the Museums in Fira.
By 13:45 I was browsing the Archaeological Museum. It had some interesting stuff, but almost no Minoan items. Turned out those were all kept at the Museum of Prehistoric Thira. By now it was after 14:00, so I had to hustle downtown again (I had passed the place coming up) to get there before they closed the doors.
This place was the goods — all the booty was well arrayed, often within its internal context (eg some attempt had been made to reconstruct the rooms in the Museum, as opposed to just hanging the prettiest bits of the frescoes on the museum wall as I saw so done often in Italy).
Top marks went to the fresco from the House of the Ladies where one woman stoops before another. Her breast hangs down from her open bodice — a huge dug, pendulous and stretched, which is more credible than the saucy balloons seen in the Cretan frescoes and the goddess statuettes. It shouts that here is a mature age woman, not a goddess. I suspect that it was drawn from life and immortalises a local person of some rank — what a shame her face is missing! Despite her stoop, she is too well presented to be a servant: so the seated, skirted person she is handing something to is either a goddess or someone of even higher rank.
By 15:00 I was back at the hotel for my siesta. My endurance was OK, but I tired quickly under the sun or if walking uphill. I was still belching and farting voluminously, but they were dry farts and the worst of the rotten eggs was gone from the belches.
The toilet was of the narrow-throated “no paper” type, but as I discovered in Iraklio, a quick spritz from the shower head cleaned everything up better and faster than wiping with paper.
Later I felt OK, so I went to Oia to watch the sun set — my only chance, as tomorrow I would be on the evening ferry.
The bus was packed. Watching sunset at Oia is a Santorini Must-Do, and everyone (it seemed) was doing it tonight. I was slow getting aboard, and had to stand.
It was the longest bus ride I had yet taken. It took over an hour, and when I got out, central Oia was still some way ahead. But I was tired of standing, the views were lovely, and I still had plenty of time in hand. So I decided that walking the remaining distance would be more fun.
I was right.
Over the next half hour I drifted towards the end of the island. Oia was almost deserted, except for a stream of people heading in the same direction as me. When I reached the slope at the edge of the land, I saw why. Every surface that could support a person had its occupant. They stood along the walls, on rooves, on the steep little steps that ran up and down the hillside. There were thousands of people, all there just to watch the sunset.
I kept moving. The best viewing spot was at the very tip of the island, on the Kastro.
Eventually I arrived at the Kastro. It bulged with watchers, but I was able to stake a time-sharing claim on a segment of battlement. The crowd may have been huge, but it was good-humoured and well-behaved.
The view was tremendous and beautiful at the same time. By day the spot was just another town like Fira and the landscape was typical Santorini lava and scrub, but in the twilight the flaws were lost and the descending sun picked out the lovely proportions and coated the rock surfaces with blue and gold. White houses gleamed like salt crystals. A windmill and a church broke the skyline. There was a flicker from cameras and cigarette lighters. The breeze was warm. The sweep of the panorama covered the entire circle of the horizon: there was no point that lacked appeal.
Quite simply, it was exotic and picturesque beyond description.
The sun went down in a storm of colour. There were no pastel tones — just fiery red and rose, set against cool blue and green sky and cloud, all turning slowly to shadow.
I stayed until dark settled in, then made my way back to the town. There I ate a snack and did some internet while waiting for the bus back. I deliberately let one bus go because it was already packed when I arrived, but the next bus caught me by surprise, too. I wound up standing — again.
I chaffered with my neighbours. One guy had set out from Fira early in the afternoon. It took him five or six hours to walk to Oia. In the heat. No shade. But he did get to take a good look at the sights on the way.
Monday, 9 September 2002
I declared the next day another rest day. The bug was still with me and made itself known if I ate anything greasy or substantial, major features of Greek food. I needed to eat to keep up my strength, but the bug got to the greasy food first! Understandable if what I had was the result of an idiot too macho to wash his hands: the bug was more used to the local diet than I was.
Conversely, my body was used to a cereal breakfast and a non-fat bread-based lunch, which would be strange fare for the bug. It might give me the edge to digest the food before the bug did.
I tested my theory — breakfast was a carton of choc milk, a dry roll, and an orange juice. It went down, lay there quietly, almost no gas, no diarrhoea. For lunch I walked down the scala to the port and had an omelette. Greek fashion, it arrived rolling in grease. I shook most of the grease off, but the omelette still sparked immediate gas and internal gurgles. Case proven!
So … to win I needed to fight the bug on territory my body knew but the bug did not. I bought some muesli and ultra-pasteurised milk. That would be breakfast. Each morning I would look for fresh bread and fruit. That would be lunch. Dinner I’d eat — or not, depending on hunger and non-greasy food.
With luck, two or three days of that would shake the bug loose.
The walk to the old port was interesting, thought rather aromatic. For centuries, donkeys were the main method of getting burdens and travellers up the steps. Donkeys imply donkey shit. Although there was one luckless person employed in the endless task of walking up and down the stairs, scooping up the worst poop and tourist litter, a lot of the stuff remained, drying and crumbling in the heat, wedging into the gaps between the cobbles.
The Port was interesting, and if you timed your visit to just after 11:00, after the tour boats left, it was uncrowded and peaceful. On the way down there were several good vantage points, including the old pilot’s cottage dug into the rock, with its outside oven. The old buildings survived — the custom house, the church where sailors would go to entrust their souls to God before entrusting their bodies to the Captain, the warehouses and taverns — all cramped together in that inadequate area at the base of the cliffs.
Watching the donkeys play dominance games was fun. Which donkey stood where was of some importance to the donkeys — those who did not know their place were the butt of sly nips and kicks until the “owner” had regained enough of his or her territory.
I took the gondola back up. I can walk all day downhill or on the level, but uphill is a different matter. Besides, it was the easiest way to get the complete experience.
The gondola turned out to be stuffy and not very comfortable, but floating up the slope I had sweltered down was better than sweltering back up it.
I took a last walk through Fira, and had a coffee on the edge of the cliffs. Then I went back to the hotel for a long siesta. I figured that I would sleep poorly on the ferry — I was going deck class — and had a long day ahead in Thessalonica, so I was stocking up while I had peace, security and comfort.
The ferry was a huge inter-islander. When I went on board, I made straight for the upper deck and claimed a place on a bench seat.
I secured the Travel pack to a stanchion nearby, where I would see it whenever my eyes opened and where it made a handy footstool.
The padlock and the wire were lightweight, but too strong to break by hand. The idea was to slow a thief down, or at least make it obvious that they weren’t the rightful owner. The critical stuff was in the daypack anyway, and THAT was always with me — as a pillow when I snoozed, on my lap when I sat, and on my shoulder otherwise. After my fright at Athens, I never let critical items out of my grasp again.
As the ferry moved out past Oia, the sun was setting. I’m sad that I couldn’t be up on the cliff top this time, as it was a magnificent sunset. The sun lit up the horizon, played around some wispy clouds, and went through many colour changes before becoming a coal red half-circle and fading out.
The horizon finally merged into a slate-grey haze, except where the vanished sun left a few vagrant colours behind it. I sat listening to Loreena McKennitt and feeling good. I had dinner — a bread roll — before coming on board, and I planned to fast until Athens. The bug, starved, lay dormant.
The ferry thrummed through the dark sea. A couple had grabbed the other end of my bench, but they got off at Ios and after that I had the bench to myself. The ferry docked at Ios just after 20:15, and turnaround took less than 10 minutes from tie-up to cast-off. You wouldn’t want to be on a call of nature just when your ferry came in.
After Ios, the passengers started shaking down into their sleeping arrangements. One group of half a dozen backpackers had arranged chairs and sleeping bags so as to wall off one corner of the deck, with the help of the stairwell. Their packs reposed in the middle of this fortress, under constant guard — these were obviously seasoned travellers.
I had come across some cushions from the chairs. They made a tolerable job of protecting my bones from the hard bench. I lay down, put my lower arm through the straps of my daypack — now pillow — and dozed.
The ferry pulled into Naxos about 22:05 and pulled out 23 minutes later — they had some trucks to move this time. This was visibly a much larger town than Ios, and it had a prominent kastro. I took several photos, but the ship was shaking and I kept only the least blurred shot.
At 23:36 we left Paros, 11 minutes after docking. Next stop Piraeus.
In the steps of AlexanderTuesday, 10 September 2002
The ferry pulled in about 5am but took a long time to get lined up. I was almost the first person off. I walked quickly, expecting a longish leg to the bus stop, but the E96 bus was waiting just off the pier. Either the stop has moved or we didn’t dock where I expected. No matter, it was a welcome surprise for a change. I even got a seat.
At the airport (06:20) I made straight for the loo. The heads on the ferry became too foul to be worth the risk by the end of the trip: too many dickheads who were too macho to raise the seat or flush, too many idiots putting paper down them. They were choked. The bug was still with me, but was losing its grip — I was going hours between breaks, and going then mainly “just in case”.
Sitting in the departure lounge waiting for the flight to start boarding, I knew this was going to be a long day. Although the interesting parts of the ferry trip happened yesterday, the ferry trip was a unit. Because it only ended today, it felt like part of today’s activities. Plus I hadn’t had a shower since Santorini and didn’t expect one until Kalambaka and already I felt grubby.
After looking at the chaos that was Thessaloniki (a festival day), my timetable was looking like it was in serious trouble. Traffic everywhere, and the bus stations had been moved around.
But I struck a deal with the taxi driver from the airport. €100 to do the loop to Vergina, Pella, and back. Steep, but so were the distances, and I’d get to see Vergina, which my itinerary did not think I could manage by bus.
Entry to Vergina was steep, €8, twice the expected. Reason: all the finds were now housed there (including Phillip and his odd greaves), and the ticket also let you into all the relevant sites nearby.
We started at the site of the ancient palace. Nothing was left standing, but the outline of the building was clear. The location had a magnificent view across western Macedonia.
Next we went down to the new Museum.
The layout of the museum was not intuitive, especially in the dark they maintained between displays, It was easy to miss important items by looking at the wrong thing — I almost missed Phillip’s Tomb because the entrance was dim and I was fixed on the brightly lit model further along! But the displays were beautifully presented and the museum works hard to provide information in context. But they discouraged photographs, which rather frustrated me as I wasn’t inclined to buy their official booklets.
In fact, looking at my photos later I found I had nothing to show for the time between Vergina and Olympus. I thought I took some shots of the outside of the museum, of Thessaloniki, of another tomb, of Pella, and so on, but my camera numbers its shots sequentially and there were no gaps in the numbering. Dang!
After the museum I was ready for Pella, but my driver — John — had gone the extra yard and had found directions to another tomb — the “Tomb with the throne”, I think, so we went there first. It looked just like the ones in the Museum.
As we headed toward Pella, it was raining heavily. When we reached Pella it was still raining. So I didn’t bother with the site, which from the road looked basically like some mosaic floors and a few columns, and settled for a look through the museum. It was a quick look — my spirits were low — and I recall little from it.
The rain eased as we entered Thessaloniki. I insisted on being dropped at the Museum, somewhat to the distress of the driver, who wanted to drop me at the new bus station to catch my 16:00 bus. We didn’t have enough common language for me to make him understand that I could catch a later bus (18:30) but that I couldn’t catch a later museum.
The taxi tour had worked out quite well: I even tipped John an extra €10 for a job well done. I hadn’t followed my planned itinerary and I had spent a lot of money but I was able to complete the main objectives of the day.
The Museum was interesting for its coverage of prehistoric Thessaloniki — the place had a long and turbulent past — but with the Vergina works now Being housed at Vergina, it had lost a lot of its best displays.
As I came out of the Museum, it started to rain again. I looked for a taxi but there were none. So I walked across town, heading for the bus station. I now knew that it was no longer where the guide book said it was, but surely it hadn’t moved that far! I had a good chance of making my 16:00 bus.
But it wasn’t to be. The monstrous new terminal was several kilometres further out, badly signposted, and off the main road. I walked past it and had to walk back after a kindly motorbike rider told me my mistake, but even if I had found it first off I would have missed the 16:00 bus by a good 10 minutes.
No matter: I put the enforced wait for the 18:30 bus to good use. The new terminal was full of shops and booking agencies, and had clean toilets, but offered no shower facilities. Instead I grabbed a toilet cubicle and improvised a cat-bath and change of clothes.
Afterwards, feeling cleaner and in better spirits, I rang Kalambaka and booked a hotel (Hotel Olympia, €25/night, aircon extra) then wandered around looking for something to eat.
Mindful of the bus trip and the bug, I restricted myself to milk, tea, and a filled bun. The bun nearly undid me — it was greasy inside — but the bug was nearly spent, and managed only a few internal rumblings. A quick pit stop before boarding the bus cleaned me out.
So I finally boarded the bus feeling cleaner than I had when I got off the ferry, and not nearly as tired as expected — except mentally. I was running on auto, and I fell asleep almost as soon as the bus moved out.
I woke an hour later at a tollgate just past Leptokarya turnoff. Mt Olympus suddenly became real for me — I was alerted by the sign for the Litohoro turnoff and got a couple of shots of a big grey mass briefly released by the clouds. Another tick in my long list of things I wanted to see. I had been afraid that Olympus would be hidden in cloud on this rainy day.
After Olympus, I dozed again until the bus pulled in to Trikala, where I had to change services. I didn’t see much in the gathering gloom — if it had been clear and I had caught the earlier bus, I’d hoped to see Olympus bathed by the setting sun, but that wasn’t to be.
The bus arrived in Kalambaka in the dark. Apart from spotlighting of the nearest rocks, there was nothing to tell that there was a very strange place just over there. If I’d been alert, I could have jumped off close to my hotel, but instead I only saw the sign in passing and had to wait while the bus continued up the interminable main street to the final stop. Fortunately the walk back was downhill. By 23:30 I was showered and in bed.
Wednesday, 11 September 2002
I was on my way by 08:00. After a brief stop to buy a dry lunch (I had muesli for breakfast) and some extra water, I walked from Kalambaka to Kastraki on the first leg of the day’s trek. I was feeling good — the bug was quiescent, my feet were in good nick, between the bus and an unbroken night I’d had almost enough sleep, the weather promised to be good, and I was under budget and almost halfway through my six week trip without disaster. Today I was exactly where I’d planned to be.
My rough timetable for the day was pegged around the monasteries. I didn’t expect to visit every one, but I wanted to have the option. My plan was this (with marks to indicate results):
I walked north through Kastraki and about 08:30 I took a path suggested by Lonely Planet, climbing through pretty green countryside towards Moni Agiou Nikolaou Anapafsa, the nearest monastery, perched high on its rock but overshadowed by the monoliths behind it.
Eventually (09:15) I struck the road that runs up to the monasteries. I followed it for a short distance looking for another track, found one, and began to climb up a valley that ran between two monoliths.
The way became pretty rough after a while — either I had found the wrong track or else I’d lost the main path. Eventually I struggled up a 40 degree slope on a slab of rock and found no path ahead. So I decided to sit and rest a bit while I rethought my tactical position.
Eventually I decided that the path had turned right at a point where it crossed a dry stream that I had followed. I was about to start back down to look for it when I was hailed from above by a German couple.
“Somebody is throwing rocks down from one of the hills up ahead. It is too dangerous, so we are going back to the road.”
I decided to go see for myself — maybe the rock thrower would give up by the time I got there. And now I knew that the path was only about three metres upslope from me. The Germans were standing on it! So rather than having to retrace my steps, I just scrambled up.
The path curved around and began to go between the monoliths that hold Moni Megalou Meteora on the left and Moni Varlaam on the right. I had not gone far when a cascade of stones clattered down ahead and to the left. But it was still some way off, so I kept climbing.
After another short distance, punctuated by periodic showers of gravel, I realised that I was about to walk into the area that was being bombarded. So I stopped to take stock. As I stood there, another walker, an Australian, caught up with me. He too had decided to ignore the Germans and see for himself.
While watching, I had picked out both the timing and the path of the stones. They were not random: it was as if the stone thrower was taking time to gather a good load before shoving them all down at once. If we followed the main path we would be exposed, but there was an alternative route that stayed out of the direct line of fall. By starting up just after one shower came down, we had a good chance of being past before the next one was due — provided the falls were being dropped blind, which was likely.
We galloped through safely. While I stopped to recover, the other guy — much younger and fitter than me — went on.
The last part of the climb was the steepest, and at 10:30 it brought me out, sweating and puffing, on the patio that links the carpark to the entrance to Megalou Meteora. There was a sizeable queue, so I found a shady corner of the patio and sat down to enjoy the view and cool off in the morning breeze.
By the time I felt better the queue had only shrunk a little, but I could see fresh tour buses pulling up. I decided to pull on my track pants and join the queue.
It zig-zagged up a long flight of stairs. At the head, a functionary sat at a small wooden table and sold tickets. A couple of others played clothing cop, mainly ensuring that women wore skirts. Those wearing shorts or slacks were issued voluminous skirts that looked like they had been around since the monastery was founded. Men also got the treatment if they wore shorts. Long hair on men had to be gathered in a pony-tail. My own getup passed muster, except for an American woman who squawked when she saw my ponytail and track pants going past her and assumed I must be a woman sneaking in. When I turned and she saw my beard, she went bright red.
Up close, the monastery was an impressive complex. There was no particular unity to its design — the place had clearly been built and rebuilt over the centuries — but it fitted together organically. Some parts looked Byzantine, others looked medieval, but all had been designed by the minds that worked and lived there, so the various areas — kitchens, storerooms, chapels, offices, etc — were located convenient to other, complementary areas.
Most of the communal areas were open to visitors, but I saw no monks — they generally stayed away from the tourists. There were displays of kitchen equipment and explanatory notices to tell us what we were looking at.
I went out into the garden, which I had identified as the source of the stone showers. Now the mystery was solved: workmen were rebuilding one corner, and they were getting rid of unwanted rubble by tossing wheelbarrow loads off the edge of the cliff, oblivious of the nuisance they were causing below.
I elbowed my way into the decorated chapel, saw nothing to excite my awe, and decided not to spend a lot of time on the religious aspects of the other monasteries.
Around 11:00 I left Megalou Meteora and walked around to Varlaam, following the road and arriving about 11:30. Varlaam was a smaller version of Megalou Meteora, built to a slightly more unitary plan. The queue was shorter.
I decided to bypass Moni Agias Varvaras Roussanou: its outlook was inferior, and from Varlaam I could see a huge queue. At the fork, I kept on instead of walking down to it.
This put me ahead of my timetable, and I reached Psorapetra by about 1:230. I looked it over, took some photos, and decided that, despite the spectacular views and availability of some shade by going a few steps down the Roussanou path, it was not the ideal place for lunch. If I had lunch there I would have faced a long, even hotter, shadeless walk afterwards.
Instead I finished the walk to Agia Triada and by 13:15 I found a cool, shady spot in sight of it below the road. A cooling breeze whispered, bees and flies buzzed, and a constant trickle of illiterate pilgrims toiled futilely down the Agia Triada path and returned a few minutes later (the monastery was closed 12:30 to 15:00, and had a well-placed sign saying so). The residents had a cable car that came and went, taking them about their business without need to walk that hot, dusty path themselves.
I could see Psorapetra. A few antlike people wandered across it. In my binoculars they looked sweaty and irritable — about how I would have looked if I had trapped myself there for lunch.
I ate my bread and then sat, at peace with the world, sipping at my water. I was perfectly situated for immediate action as soon as I knew my next decision: Stephanou, Triados, or find the path down to Kalambaka. Or I could use the payphone on the nearby roadside to get a taxi to fetch me. The choices were all pleasant and not all mutually exclusive. There was no rush to make a decision. I was exactly where I wanted to be and exactly where I needed to be.
But there are ants at picnics and poopers at parties. Around 14:30 I moved a couple of metres to avoid the column of ants that was investigating my crumbs; but then the party pooper spoke, in a rumble of thunder from the direction of Olympus. Perhaps Someone felt I had been impious.
Either way, the decision was made. I walked down to Stephanou, looked it over, and decided against a visit. Instead I walked back to Triados. On the way I looked out and saw a guy sitting atop one of the smaller monoliths. How he got up there and if he got down without falling, I expect I shall never know.
I trekked up the incredibly long approach to Triados. This was obviously being upgraded and improved, but at the time, it was a bomb site.
The monastery welcomed and farewelled its guests (today anyway) with Turkish delight and a genuine monk (Father John). The place was small and remote and utterly delightful. I made sure to check out the locations from the Bond film For Your Eyes Only. The view of Kalambaka was breathtaking.
While taking in the view, I started bantering with four younger travellers and as it worked out we spent the rest of the afternoon shooting the breeze. Three guys and a girl. To my chagrin I only got three names, so to protect the innocent I shall omit all the names here. Let us call them Portugal, France, Italy and New Zealand.
Portugal had walked the path from Kalambaka yesterday, so he showed us where it started (a clay slide beside the approach: on my own I would have walked right past it). He was learning Communications. Italy was making his way slowly to Oz overland. France was a student. New Zealand was born in Rangiora, called Nelson home in NZ, but spent most of her time on a station in WA. So we had the most common ground.
In town we stopped at Koka Roka and bought ice creams. I later cheered up the grumpy manager a bit (I think he found us rather parsimonious, but he also came out and listened avidly to our chatter) by buying a couple of glasses of his home-made retsina and praising it. Later we moved down to the main street for beer and coffee. The party finally broke up about 19:00, after three noisy hours.
Back at the hotel, I did my accounts and discovered that I was still doing well enough so that yesterday’s taxi extravagance did no more than arrest the increase in the amount by which I was under budget.
I also had an almost cold shower. I’d finally run into one of those places with inadequate water heating. However, given the heat of the day, this was not entirely unwelcome.
On the health front, there was not a squeak from the bug all day. I decided to keep eating muesli for breakfast as a preventative measure — it was cheap and supplied me with plenty of energy, yet it effectively starved the bug.
Thursday, 12 September 2002
Just after 07:00 I was on the Athens bus, bound for Lamia. I needed to get out in Lamia — the bus did not go to my first destination of the day, Thermopylae.
At Lamia I saw a taxi rank as I got off the bus. Pausing only long enough to grab my travel pack, I engaged the nearest taxi and told the driver to take me to Thermopylae. I showed her a picture of the monument there, to make sure she understood where I wanted to go.
Twenty minutes (09:00) and €7.50 later, I was standing beneath the huge bronze statue of Leonidas, king of the Spartans. It was an eerie moment. I learned about Thermopylae at school, but it belonged to that odd never-never land of historical events that feel more like myth than fact. Even while researching this trip, it was easy to see it as fiction.
But now, standing here, looking down that long curve of mountains and up to the looming mound, I knew it really did happen here. This famous defeat set a thirst for vengeance into the Greek hearts that went on to the crucial victories of Salamis and Phocaea. What happened here probably shaped the whole future of the world more than any other single battle in history. Without it there might have been no Alexander and no Roman Empire — Macedon would have remained a Persian satrapy, and Rome would not have had the fruits of the Greek golden age to emulate and to build on.
I crossed the road, imagining myself to be wading out of the surf. At the time of the battle, the shoreline ran approximately where the road did now.
The site was not signposted, and my research was not clear as to which ancient wall was “the” wall, but there were supposed to be several ancient walls, and “the” wall was not the foremost of these. I wandered down towards a distant truck stop, but found only two definite walls. The foremost was still recognisably a wall: the other had been reduced to foundations. After due consideration, I settled in the wall nearest the mound as being the better candidate.
I snooped around the area, finding the plaque on the mound and some old buildings, then recrossed the road and walked south to the modern village of Thermopylae to catch a bus back to Lamia.
Thanks to my initial taxi ride, I got back in time to catch the 10:40 Delphi bus instead of hanging around until the originally-planned 12:45 bus. This put me about two hours ahead of schedule, for no loss.
Amfissa, where I changed buses, was quite a bustling little town, with a huge square surrounded by tavernas. Not much fast food evident, though — whatever was happening here looked Greek, not tourism, driven.
By 15:00 I was in Delphi, had booked into a hotel, and was wandering down the road towards the archaeological site for a recce. My plan was to see it tomorrow, before the tour buses got moving. At this time of the afternoon I expected the place to be swarming with tours, so my jaw dropped when I saw only two coaches. Cursing the half-hour wasted wandering the modern town, I hustled down to take advantage.
I started with the very impressive museum, because it was the first place I came to. It was jammed with goodies that somehow survived almost two millennia years of systematic pillaging by whoever managed to get control of the area. Helmets from Thermopylae. Silver bulls. The Charioteer. If these were the leftovers, how great must the loss be!
There was even a reproduction of the omphalos, the marble altar that marked the centre of the Greek world.
After the Museum, I made my way along to the entrance of the Sanctuary of Apollo. To my surprise, it was quite some distance from the Museum, by a path parallel with the road.
The place was well signposted and easy to comprehend. The route zigzagged through the Sanctuary, climbing up to the Stadium, passing close to all the major sights.
The Treasury of the Athenians was being reconstructed. If the same were done to some of the other buildings, Delphi could rival Knossos as a window into the past. It’s feasible — with relatively few churches in the vicinity, much of the masonry remained in situ, requiring only raising and the odd philological replacement.
As it was, only some re-erected columns of the Temple of Apollo attested to its former grandeur. They dwarfed the visitors, yet were dwarfed by the platform that held them.
As I crossed the down slope side of the Temple, walking up from the Treasury of the Athenians, I noticed the Rock of the Sibyl. An unimpressive lump of stone.
Above the Temple of Apollo was the Theatre — conveniently located for the entertainment of the gods.
I kept climbing, leaving the Greek ruins and entering the Roman ones. I stopped by a sign that warned against dropping cigarette butts. Predictably, the ground around the sign was littered with butts.
The Stadium was impressive, and in pretty good condition. The walls were only a little out of true and the seating was intact along the high slope. The VIP seats were easy to find. Even the little shrines at one end, where contestants could offer up a quick prayer to their favourite gods, survived.
I made my way down to the road and followed it along to the Castalian Spring, where visitors would wash before beginning their visit. Then I moved on to what was, for me, the core attraction..
The single most recognisable and famous erection at Delphi was the three columns of the Tholos in the Sanctuary of Athena Pronaia. To many, that icon represented Delphi. It surprised many people — it surprised me when researching the trip — to learn that the Tholos was not part of the main site of Delphi (the Sanctuary of Apollo) but had a separate sanctuary, some distance away.
I arrived at about 17:15, so as you can see, I had covered the best of the site in just over two strenuous hours.
Entry to Athena's Sanctuary was either a zigzag path down from the road, or from the Gymnasium. You came out of the trees and passed the “new” Temple of Athena.
There was great power there, a feeling of imminence all over the ancient sites of Delphi, concentrated and potent in the ruin of the New Temple of Athena. Something not human and not concerned with us, but approachable and open to conversation; not female, but it felt female. I couldn’t quite nail it down. If this was what the ancient Greeks felt, I could now better understand their personalisation of their gods.
But this was the only place I felt this sort of power. The Temple of Apollo felt empty as a barn. There was something not quite right about the Rock of the Sibyl — more the absence of something than a presence, perhaps.
I was definitely in a mystic mood that day!
I moved on to the Tholos. It was as impressive as I expected. Based on tholos usages elsewhere, this building probably housed an eternal flame or an artifact.
Down by the older Temple of Athena, I found a convenient chunk of fallen stone and sat down to wrap my head around the site. I sat there for half an hour, until the threat of rain forced me to pull myself out of the past and take thought for the present.
I left the Sanctuary and walked through the old Gymnasium before rejoining the road and walking back to my hotel.
I came out again later on to watch the sunset. Delphi was spectacularly sited above a huge valley that ran down to the Gulf of Corinth. I never got tired of that view.
The sunset was OK, but nothing special. The Sanctuary of Athena Pronaia lost the sun too early, so I didn’t bother walking down there as originally planned; instead I found a good niche below the town, where I could watch dusk come down on the valley.
As so often on this trip, I felt utterly relaxed and in my place. There was nowhere else I wanted to be at that moment: nothing I needed to do. This moment in time was mine, to dedicate wholly as I pleased. In the navel of my trip, I had reached the navel of the world and the navel of my contentment. Under budget, on time, on track. My health was whole. The heat no longer oppressed me: my body had adapted. All was as it should be. As it had to be.
The PeloponneseFriday, 13 September 2002
Since I had seen the whole site yesterday, I felt no need to see it all again, but I roused myself anyway, if only to look at things I had skipped over yesterday. But when I turned the brow of the hill, I decided not to bother. Although it was not yet 09:00, the road was lined with buses and the Sanctuaries teemed with tour groups. Apparently many tours arrived in Delphi in the evening, spent the night, and hit the ruins briefly before heading off to the new day’s destination. Yesterday was not unique: mid-afternoon was often the best time to see Delphi.
Instead I chilled out in the modern town, teasing the souvenir shops and putting the children of the refreshment shop owners through college. Delphi was not a cheap town.
Towards midday, I had a shower and checked out of my hotel, lugging my baggage down to the bus stop. Then I sat on an old stone wall and looked down that huge valley, or watched the workmen lethargically repairing some steps, or watched the local cats interact in the weedy plot beneath the wall.
Tourist Information had recommended the 13:15 bus, changing at Itea for Patras. This worked out well. The bus glided down the coast, finally crossing on a ferry beside the rising pylons of the bridge that will someday put the car ferries out of work. Five hours out from Delphi, I was in Patras.
After the relaxed towns of northern and central Greece, Patras was a shock: a sprawling, ugly, blocky nightmare. The Greeks create excellent towns but they don’t create habitable cities.
My hotel was a short walk along the harbour. I stopped to photograph a couple of fountains in a plaza, but I don’t remember much else about Patras. I went to bed early and was gone before sunrise the next morning.
Saturday, 14 September 2002
My bus pulled out around 06:45 and I dozed my way through the early stages of the trip. After the sun came up over the mountains, I watched the countryside, but there was nothing exciting.
I was now five days into my dash through Greece, and after the high at Delphi, the thrill was fading. Even the prospect of opening my Ancient Wonders itinerary didn’t help — the day was overcast and raining, and I might be robbed of that prize if the rain didn’t let up.
At Pyrgos, about 08:45, I had to change buses. I had no idea when or if the Olympia bus would leave — there was no timetable information on the internet when I was researching the trip, and the KTEL people at Patras seemed to regard it as a secret. I was to discover that this was a feature of the Peloponnese KTELs: they wouldn’t give out timetable information on other KTELs even where the routes of the other didn’t compete. This uncertainty added to my pessimistic outlook.
I floundered around for a bit before a driver, maybe just to get rid of me, directed me to a KTEL office around the corner. It was the correct KTEL, and I caught the next bus.
I got to Olympia village about 09:45, not far behind schedule. It was raining so heavily that my umbrella was almost useless. Since there were no visible signposts pointing the way to the site, I made my way down to the Tourist Information Office. It had a sign up proclaiming proudly that it was open on Saturdays. Today was a Saturday, but it was closed.
There was a rough map in the window. Based on the map, the way to the site was up past the bus stop, around to the left, and across a bridge. There was no obvious shelter along the way.
I squelched on down the main street until the end, crossed, and swam back. I stopped in at a fast food place and bought breakfast. By the time I had done all this, the rain had eased a bit, so I braced myself and set off for the site.
Just short of the bridge, the rain picked up again, but there was a coffee shop just there, so I stopped for a cappuccino.
When the rain eased again, I drained my cup and went on. The bridge was narrow and there was no footpath. I scurried across it during a break in the traffic.
Eventually I found myself somewhere — on the left was a huge carpark and a refreshment stand; on the right, a field with some wet stone lumps sticking out of it. This was about 10:30. The rain was still heavy, so I decided to visit the Museum first. This involved a long walk through the car park. At the end was the Museum, with a queue of damp tourists waiting to get in.
The museum proved to be of limited interest — some so-so statuary presented almost without context, some boring displays. I went through it in less than 30 minutes, and I took that long only because it was still raining outside.
Outside, the rain had eased, although it threatened to resume. I dashed back through the carpark and entered the site.
It was poorly labelled, but my maps were accurate and detailed, and I had little difficulty figuring out what I was looking at. I walked past the first few ruins, cursing the rain; and then, just as I reached the Temple of Zeus, the rain stopped.
The Temple was mostly still there: a blocky platform with rows of tumbled column drums beside it on the side away from the site entrance. It didn’t look like much until I climbed up and examined a drum that was still in the platform. The drum was huge, and there was a long row of similar drums arranged along the edge of the platform. This had not been as long or wide as some temples, but rather tall and massively built. It would have been impressive when standing.
The Temple itself was not the Ancient Wonder, however: that honour went to its one-time occupant, the ivory-skinned Statue of Zeus created by Pheidias. The statue had stayed here for a long time after the decline of Olympia, but eventually it got hauled away to Constantinople, where it ultimately vanished. (I already knew this. The only Wonder still standing was the Great Pyramid. My Ancient Wonders itinerary was not to see the vanished Wonders, it was to visit their sites.)
After a while, I moved on to the Stadium, and walked its length. Inevitably I was passed by groups of sprinting tourists, but I felt no urge to emulate them.
I finished my visit off with a spin through the other buildings. The supposed workshop where Pheidias made the statue was still there, having been used as a church, but it had lost its roof and was now in a ruinous state.
By 13:20 I’d had enough of running between the raindrops.
The next hurdle was getting out. I soon discovered there were no convenient buses from Olympia on Saturday. The next Tripolis bus was 17:30, which would very likely strand me in Tripolis. The only cheap alternative was to go to Pyrgos and take the 16:00 to Kalamata. Then a connecting bus, if there was one, otherwise shell out for a taxi, to Sparta. There was obviously no chance of seeing Mystras that afternoon as I’d half hoped to. I’d have to go tomorrow morning.
The bus was late at both ends — it left Pyrgos late and arrived at Kalamata late. Not that it mattered — the last Sparta bus left Kalamata at 14:30. If the KTELs had not made such a secret of their timetables I could have saved myself a long wait and two pointless bus trips by taking a taxi from Olympia to Tripolis for about €50. That would have put me in Tripolis by about 14:30, probably in plenty of time to snag a bus to Sparta. Instead I spent almost €10 on bus fares and then €45 for a taxi to Sparta, and arrived in Sparta too late to see anything.
Then again, playing what-if in the middle of a trip is a futile undertaking and is the nemesis of pleasure. You take the cards you are dealt, and the ones you deal yourself, and you play them as seems best at the time. If you get it wrong, too bad. Better luck next trip.
I did get one consolation prize, and that was a chauffeured ride through some of Greece’s most dramatic mountain scenery. It was worth seeing — similar to some of the gorges in New Zealand, especially since the rain had made everything green and great chunks of the cliffs kept falling onto the road as we went by.
I finally came into Sparta about 19:45. I checked into my hotel, then went out to investigate the buses. Same mystery as at Pyrgos — they knew when their own buses arrived and departed, but wouldn’t give any information about connections with other KTELs. This meant I could get to Tripolis easily enough but had no idea about onward connections to Navplio. The bus station was 20 minutes walk from my hotel (the Apollon). That’d be a long haul with the pack.
I ate dinner — souvlaki and retsina — at a sidewalk cafe in Paleologou. The other customers and most passers-by were all locals. Few spoke English. They were curious enough to eye foreigners, and were friendly enough, but it was obvious that modern Sparta did not survive on the tourist dollar. This was a farming town.
Sunday, 15 September 2002
I got screwed by the taxi to Mystras — I said Kastro, he said €5, which was a fair enough price, but then he delivered me to the main (lower) gate, which should have cost no more than about €3. ALWAYS check that the meter is running!
It was short of 08:00 and the site was not yet open, so I chilled out at the lookout nearby. The view was beautiful. Sparta and Laconia slowly emerged from the morning mists, revealing ever finer details in the growing light yet hiding patches behind drifting clouds of rain. If you like musing upon the vast mysterious landscapes that figure in the backgrounds of many an old oil painting then I recommend this view unreservedly — although visiting Mystras on a rainy day may be too high a price!
The site opened promptly at 08:00 and I walked up through Mystras — in the rain.
The place was only mildly disappointing. What it lacked in clarity, it made up for in atmosphere. As in Pompeii, there was nothing between the visitor and the past except a veil of time (and in this case, a lot of rain). I walked where they had walked, saw things they had seen.
Between rain and confusing signage, I got lost in the early stages. I wasn’t always sure what I was looking at until I reached the Palace of the Despots. Some things were labelled, some weren’t, and the frequent bursts of rain discouraged me from spending a lot of time looking for signs or poring over the guide book.
The Palace was being reconstructed, and despite the scaffolding, it was quite an impressive old pile. It bent in an L shape to semi-enclose a rare patch of relatively level ground that was probably planted as a garden.
As I ascended, the views opened out and I was marginally less resentful towards the thief who had delivered me to the lower gate. If I had started at the upper gate I would have missed this slow unfolding.
The last section was a rush up a winding track to the Kastro to take advantage of a break in the weather. At the top, winded, I was so gobsmacked by the panorama that I even forgot to get my camera out — until suddenly the rains threatened and it was too late. I only got a couple of photos before it got too wet and misty to be worth further risk to the camera.
Getting back down in the rain was risky. In fact, half way down to the upper gate I came across a backpacker lying in a puddle in the path. She’d barked her shin and her brave companions had not even looked back in their own headlong dash for shelter.
I felt her shin. She had a huge lump over the bone, but it did not seem to be broken. So I helped her up and let her lean on me until we got to the upper gate. By the time we got there she was feeling better and ditched me to head after her friends, who still had not stopped. Some friends! (Some gratitude. But I was glad she seemed OK.)
I exited at the upper gate and, after a wait to allow another rainstorm to pass, walked back down by the road. The views of Mystras from the roadside were superb.
At the bus stop, the next bus scheduled for 12:15 — it was now only 10:30. But a friendly restaurateur called a cab for me, and refused a tip. When the cab it pulled up it already had €2.05 on the meter; at the hotel the meter showed €3.67 (total cost €4.51 with the call out fee), or an additional €1.62, which gives an indication of how much of a rip-off that first ride was.
I checked out of the hotel, leaving my pack in storage, and went to see Leonidas and the remains of the Spartan Acropolis.
Leonidas’ statue had gilded toenails. What was the agenda here, I wondered. Was it a misguided venture in reviving the polychrome tradition, or just some drunken backpacker with a spray can of gold paint? I may never know. The two British backpackers I shared this moment with were equally croggled.
Clutching this philosophical bath bomb, I veered to Leonidas’ right and followed the road around the stadium (soccer, not ancient) and up the hill to the acropolis. There wasn’t much to see. Apart from the theatre, the acropolis was basically a few unremarkable stones lying around in an olive grove. The guide book mentioned a Byzantine church and a couple of sanctuaries but either they were the ruins I saw, or I did not find them.
With the success of the great theatre at Epidauros as an example of the money-making opportunities, Greece was experiencing a wave of repair and rebuilding of the ancient theatres, and Sparta had joined the trend. The theatre had an okay view and even in its unfinished state I’d recommend it as a good place for a late night picnic — if you could get up there as the place was probably closed after dark — or a picnic lunch.
I ran into the British backpackers again at the Theatre. Apart from a couple of caretakers we had the acropolis to ourselves.
However, one piece of information may put the ancient town in context. At a late stage, threatened on all sides, ancient Sparta finally developed walls. These walls pretty much described the limits of the ancient town’s growth. The modern town (about 15,000 people) was built on top of the ancient one but even with its wide roads and low-rise development it did not fill all the area within the ancient walls. Make no mistake: late antiquity Sparta was a big city in its time.
Finally my time ran out. I picked up my pack and walked to the bus station, stopping off briefly at the Museum on the way. It was small and neat and I found nothing to delay me.
At Tripoli, sure enough, the next connection to Nafplio was hours away. But at the station a taxi gathered up two French women and myself and for €10 each, delivered us to Nafplio. Actually I slipped the girls €5 each at the other end — I had the front seat whereas the taxi driver’s partner had crammed himself and an overpowering dose of B.O. in the back seat with them. I’d figured on paying a premium price for another solo taxi jaunt, but the guys probably lowered their price to tempt the girls. So I was still well ahead of the game, whereas they deserved compensation over the smelly Greek. (It was also obvious to me that €10 made a significant dent in their budget whereas I was so far under my budget that I didn’t miss it.)
By 16:00 I had wandered around Navplio — admiring the steep cliffs with their wall adornments from the two fortresses — and found a hotel. The one I’d intended to try was full but Hotel Kapodistrias had a sweet little corner number going for €60. Love at first sight, but I put on a convincing show of reluctance and got it for €50.
I had time in hand so I grabbed a taxi ride up to see “wall-girt Tiryns”, a slipper-shaped wedge of rock just north of Navplio. Three to four millennia ago it was the acropolis of the port city of a Greek empire that was ruled from Mycenae. After the fall of Mycenae about 1200 BC, its population even increased for a time. Today its buildings were less than ruins, but its walls could still awe the visitor.
Tiryns was excavated under direction from Shleimann, the butcher of Troy, but fortunately he entrusted the actual work to his associate Dörpfeld, whose lighter touch exposed the floor plan of the palace without destroying it. My Blue Guide to Greece came in handy here; its detailed commentary and map allowed me to identify the key points easily.
It was all quite compact, but of course, all that survived were the foundations of the ground floor: there would have been at least a second story and probably a third. The Byzantines cleared most of the rubble in order to plunk a church on top of the rock. Dörpfeld’s magic removed the church without doing additional damage to the palace, but the Byzantines had done more than enough already.
Still, I enjoyed walking through the wall-less ancient rooms, rebuilding the place in my mind’s eye. There was a courtyard out front for state occasions, and a larger one out back that would have been ideal for cottage industries, relaxation, and entertaining guests. The views in all directions were splendid, and would have been even better back when the sea came within 100 metres of the rock instead of being a couple of kilometres away.
I saw as much of it as wasn’t fenced off due to danger of collapse. Amazing, that suddenly a structure that had withstood the trials of 3,000 years was supposedly in imminent danger of toppling! I amused myself by discovering that, as on Crete, some of the roped off areas could be entered by a round-about route without crossing a rope or leaving the beaten track. But some of the most interesting areas were closed off by plank fencing that had no plausibly accessible back door.
After quartering the upper citadel — the lower was blocked off, and it looked like there was an archaeological dig in progress, though nobody was around — I tried to walk around the base. The way was blocked by a locked gate on the east side just north of the main gate, so I went clockwise from there, making my way around to the north end. Alas, there I was foiled again by another gate, although I did sneak through an orchard track to complete roughly 80% of the circuit.
On the way back, I stopped at an internet cafe and sent an updated trip report, a long one this time, since there was no artificial time limit.
By now it was approaching 20:00. In just twelve hours I had seen Mystras, Sparta, Tiryns and Navplio. The sun had set and Navplio was coming to life — there was several hours of night life ahead of me. But I was tired and the hotel room was peaceful and welcoming and … In a fit of preparedness I packed my gear except for what I would need, then plumped down to rest for a minute. Two hours later I woke up, decided I’d missed the moment, undressed, and went to bed.
Monday, 16 September 2002
I was up before dawn. I showered, packed my gear, and checked out. The manager tried to make out the bill for €60, but caved in graciously when I reminded him that he’d agreed to €50. However, the hotel’s EFTPOS device suddenly turned out to be broken and I had to pay cash, so I suspect we both came out ahead in the end.
I made my way through the old town’s charming little streets and grabbed a taxi from the stand conveniently situated just where old town meets new. “Mykeenez” I said to the taxi driver, and “how much?” In answer he turned on the meter. In the end the fare came to €4.50 — cheap, considering the taxi to Tiryns has cost €3.50 the previous day and that later this day my taxi fare in Athens from the bus station to Plaka also cost me €4.50.
We roared out of Navplio, passing Tiryns in the dawn light, and soon passed through Argos. My anticipation was rising, for this was another biggie — another childhood dream, ancient Mycenae itself!
Shortly after Argos, we turned left at a big new crossroads, passed through modern Mykines (a strung-out town entirely devoted to the tourist dollars attracted by the ancient site), wound up around a long curve, and — there it was, touched with colour by the early sunlight but otherwise looking just as it did in the textbooks: a long arc of grey wall on the knee of a mountain.
The taxi dropped me off at the main gate. It was still a few minutes shy of 08:00, but the gate was open and they let me in. I walked along the path inside, past the ruins of artisans houses, my eyes full of the approaching walls. At the souvenir shop I dumped my pack then made my way up the long ramp to the Lion Gate.
And it was there. The huge stone lintel, the triangular slab with the carved lion bodies: so much like I’d imagined this moment that it couldn’t be real. But I put out my hand and fingered the post holes in the jambs, and I stepped across the huge stone sill, and I entered into the city of Agamemnon, and it was real.
What we call Mycenae today was the acropolis of ancient Mycenae — its fortress and palace. It was surrounded by a city that has largely not survived, although some buildings have been excavated. At its peak the city may have had a population of over 60,000. For the time and place, this was massive — almost a millennium later, Athens during the Persian Wars was no larger.
I’d seen estimated populations of Mycenaean kingdoms as: Mycenae, 180,000; Tiryns, 90,000; Argos, 60,000; Midea, 70,000; Pylos, 50,000. (The most startling of these was Midea, northeast of Navplio, where there was a fortress almost as big as Mycenae that didn’t rate a mention in most guide books! I didn’t make time for it on this trip but it was on my list for a future visit to Greece.)
I drifted right and made my way down the grave circle. That’s one way to discourage grave robbers: put the graves inside your walls. By the time your descendents can no longer protect them, everyone will have forgotten you were there.
After this I started the climb to the palace. Partway up I passed some workers, apparently waiting for their archaeologist. They were clutching hammers and picks.
Soon after, as I paused to admire the view, I heard several metallic chinks come up from the group of workers. A couple of them, apparently bored, were amusing themselves by cracking rocks.
Later on I found a number of other spots where rock-cracking had been going on. Several of the broken rocks had obviously once been squared off for use in buildings. In one place a hammer blow had knocked the corner off a block still in a house wall: the chip was lying on the ground nearby. This activity had been going on for some time — a couple of spots had clearly seen some weathering.
If this sort of casual vandalism continued, day after day, then sooner or later Mycenae would disappear at the hands of these idlers. The main danger to Mycenae was not the weather or the tourists: it was the vandals paid by the very people who were supposed to be excavating and preserving the place!
Thinking back, I recalled seeing similar destruction at the palaces on Crete. Then I’d blamed souvenir-gathering tourists, but now I revised that assessment.
Eventually I reached the top of the hill, where I quickly located the megaron — a circular hump of dirt roughly confined by a few stone fragments. This allowed me to figure out the rest of the palace plan, including the bathroom where — according to Homer — Agamemnon was assassinated, marking the fall of the House of Atreus.
Interestingly, whereas at Tiryns the throne was in the megaron, here it seemed to have been in a separate room across a courtyard. An indication, perhaps, of the greater importance of the Mycenaean king.
Below the megaron, the slope fell steeply away. In fact, the wall of the room of the megaron appeared to double as the fortress wall.
The views were breathtaking: a huge sweep, all the way to the sea. After some searching, I thought I found Tiryns: a hump against the line of the bay. What a superb defensive arrangement this must have been — no surprise attack could have taken Tiryns, and Tiryns could not safely be bypassed by an invader seeking to raid the fertile Argive from the sea or the south. From the north, Mycenae itself blocked the approaches, and Midea the north-east. Invaders coming from other directions would be pulverised between the mill of Mycenae and the grindstone of Tiryns.
There must have been windows, or at least a viewing spot in the courtyard. At least a place to take visitors to overawe them.
From the palace I made my way down to the east end of the citadel. There was no real feeling of discovery here, more a feeling of rediscovery: of being reminded of things that had once been here. Several times the way felt “wrong”, and sure enough, on casting round, I found that I had wandered off the path. Soon I would find a flagstone or some steps, and the place would click together again.
In the corner I soon found a sally port, cistern, and an overflow drain for the cistern. I also found a passage that led down to underground cisterns, but it was dark and steep, so I didn’t go far down.
Now I followed a different path up to the aristocratic apartments such as the House of Columns that survive on the slopes between the cisterns and the palace. Here would surely have been the residential heart of the palace — the gynaecium, close to the amenities but away from the hustle of the court and the barracks. There would have been courts with views where women could work, and room for children to play. Yet access would be by only one or two easily guarded entrances: say from the royal apartments beside the megaron, and from the cistern roadway.
From there I worked north, looking down on the postern gate then clambering across the remains of the barracks and store rooms to look down on the Lion Gate.
Somewhat to my surprise, the back face of the triangular slab was blank. It would have been more impressive had it been carved on both faces. Then again, perhaps this side was not visible back then: there may have been wooden structures or now-vanished protective stonework above the gate to allow for easy movement of men from side to side in the event that the path behind the gate was held by an enemy. Certainly the area behind the gate was lined by walls almost as high as the outer ones, and would have been a rather nasty trap for any enemy who managed to get past the gate. There looked to have been another set of gates beyond the altar near the ramp up to the palace. Then the palace itself probably blocked the top of the hill and access to the residences and water supply.
The spine that connected the mountain was protected by huge walls and by terrain that would prevent effective use of siege engines, although ladders covered by archers on the mountain slopes was possible. South and north the slopes dropped into deep ravines.
This place would not fall easily to direct attack, no matter how overpowering. At the same time it controlled the ancient roads through the mountains that separated the surrounding flatlands. It was easy to understand how it came to dominate its neighbours. Yet for most of Mycenae’s history the cisterns and the grave circles were outside the walls — the massive defensive constructions, including the Lion Gate itself, only started going up around 1350 BC! For the previous 600 years it had been more lightly defended, but in the end it was the massive fortifications that finally failed, sometime after 1200 BC. In Egypt and the Hittite kingdom, waves of the Sea Peoples washed over the borders. In Ireland, oak trees stopped growing for 20 years mid-century. In China, a little later, the Shang dynasty fell.
Reluctantly, I finally tore myself away from the citadel. I could see tour bus after tour bus pulling into the carpark — the place was about to go all to hell beneath the modern invaders.
After a quick pit stop I picked up my pack and headed off towards Mykines — but only as far as the turnoff to the Treasury of Atreus, most impressive of the great tholos tombs. It was open, and although the citadel was by now looking like a disturbed ant heap, I had the Treasury to myself.
There was no real evidence connecting Atreus or Agamemnon, if they even existed, with this huge tomb, but it was built around 1350 BC and so is probably associated with the dynasty that built the Lion Gate.
The side chamber was closed by a rope. I was tempted to duck under, but contented myself with reaching the camera over it to catch a flash.
The main chamber was more impressive than expected — a huge dome, eerily lit from the doorway. The corbelling was invisible from within: it looked like the stones were bricks in an arch. But how many true arches could survive 3300 years underground? (Trick question — the true arch was not invented till much later.)
Until I reached Egypt, this was the oldest non-ruined building I ever entered. It was older than Rome. It was younger than Knossos, but Knossos was a reconstructed ruin. For those with a Biblical bent, it was already standing when the Israelites left Egypt.
But time was marching on. Lugging my pack, I walked down to the carpark and asked about the buses. The next one was over an hour away. So I started walking, hoping that either a taxi would come by or that a car would stop for me.
It wasn’t to be. I walked down through Mykines, and on down to that big crossroads at the main road. Nobody stopped. A taxi went past headed for Mycenae, but never came back. No intercity buses came by. It was hot, and my water was running low, and … my hour was up. The local bus from Argos roared across the crossroads, then pulled over when I waved it down. I paid €0.80 for the privilege of riding to Mycenae, then another €0.85 for the ride to Argos. I decided I was lucky. I also kicked myself — there were things I could have seen and done at Mycenae if I hadn’t stubbornly headed off in that attempt to get ahead.
No matter — I caught the 11:30 Athens bus from Argos, abandoning thoughts of stopping at Corinth for an afternoon of sightseeing. I was all burned out with moving. I just wanted to get someplace and stop for a few days.
AthensAt Athens the bus pulled into a huge, soulless terminal. The queue for the taxis was half as long as the building, and Greeks did not make good queuers. Everyone had a reason why they should get the next taxi. There were scuffles and arguments. At one stage a couple dumped their suitcases in a taxi boot and the driver got out and dumped the cases on the ground, screaming abuse at his would-be fares. It was quite unpleasant, but eventually I got a taxi.
The driver spoke no English, but with the aid of my bilingual map I showed her where I wanted to go. She looked dubious, but we set off.
After a while we passed a woman who shouted a destination from the side of the road. The taxi pulled over and let her aboard. The new passenger had some English, and after a high-speed exchange of Greek with the driver, she explained to me that the one-way street system made it difficult to get where I wanted to go. So we discussed it in a three-way and came up with a solution that got me close without forcing the taxi to thread its way through clogged and narrow streets. With smiles all round, I was dropped off.
My first hotel was full, but I soon found a satisfactory alternative nearby. By 15:30 I was knocking back gyros and retsina in Plaka and contemplating four nights of blessed stability. I figured that by then I’d be raring to move on again. (I was right.)
I didn’t entirely waste the rest of the afternoon. I wandered towards the Acropolis and started around the north base of it.
At the entrance to the Agora, they wanted €12 for a ticket. I must have looked flabbergasted, because they quickly explained that it was a combined ticket with the Acropolis, Theatre of Dionysus, Roman Agora, Kerameikos and Temple of Olympian Zeus. When I remarked that I didn’t plan to see the Acropolis today, they added that the ticket did not expire. So I bought it, and in due course discovered that they’d told me the truth.
The Agora was in better shape and more intelligible than I’d expected. I made my way through it anti-clockwise, with a brief stop to see the fairly ordinary museum in the Stoa of Attalus. The museum apparently displayed finds from the Agora that other museums didn’t want.
The high point of the circuit — literally — was the Temple of Hephaistos, contemporary with the Parthenon but, not having been used as a Turkish munitions store, in better shape.
Then heat and exhaustion caught up with me. I went back to my hotel room and collapsed into the dim air-conditioned coolness.
Tuesday, 17 September 2002
Overnight I discovered that the hotel room came equipped with mosquitoes. They kept waking me — at least half a dozen bites. One bite on the right eyelid left me looking like I had been punched.
By the time I stumbled out of bed and around to the far (entrance) end of the Acropolis it was after 09:00 and a steady torrent of tours was clogging the place.
The entrance was disfigured and largely obscured by scaffolding. The place was being repaired and given a facelift in preparation for the 2004 Olympics.
I was clutching a carton of orange juice. A gate flunky told me I could not take it in. There being no rubbish bin at hand I lost my place in the queue when I went to dispose of the offending article. Although I understood the reason for forbidding drinks that might stain the ancient marble, I was irritated by their indifference to the impact of their policies. I also noticed inside that people were slugging back smuggled Coke and Fanta without a word from the patrolling flunkies.
The prime attention-getter in the Acropolis was, of course, the Parthenon — also surrounded by scaffolding and apparently being reconstructed for the Olympics. Although it robbed my visit of full value, I do applaud this. If the British Museum disgorges the marbles pilfered for “safekeeping” by Lord Elgin, the place will be a marvel in a couple of years. Not that I expect the originals ever to be replaced on the Parthenon — that would simply expose them to destruction from smog and acid rain. But it might encourage the authorities to do as they have done with the caryatids from the Erechtheion, and place castings where the marbles once were, thus simultaneously restoring the Parthenon and preserving the beautiful carvings.
More interesting, but less noticed, was the Erechtheion. This building looked ungainly at first sight, but it grew on me. It looked like three buildings pasted crudely together — the caryatid portico and two dissimilar temples — but the agglomeration somehow worked.
The Acropolis Museum was interesting, with all its bits and pieces from the various buildings — including the Parthenon’s predecessor. Looking at the top of the Acropolis today it was hard to see how all these things, some sizable, could have lain hidden; but of course, the surface was rarely if ever bare stone back then — it even bore trees — and some of the stuff would simply have been shoved off the cliff edge or used as foundation stones. Why haul rock up to make foundations when there's perfectly good rock already there?
I chose a good day to visit the Acropolis — the air was not quite as clear as yesterday, but I could almost see Piraeus, some 7 km away. That was better than average for Athens.
After giving the Acropolis a good bash, I drifted off in the direction of the Areopagus. This was a huge marble outcropping, a very popular place with visitors — partly because of the views and partly because it was such an unusual experience.
The surface of the hill — and the steps by which it was climbed — were super-slippery, worn smooth by millions of feet, hands and bottoms. There were traces of past attempts to roughen the high-traffic high-danger spots, but the marble wouldn’t hold the texture. Now there was just a sign warning about the slippery surface.
I wandered down towards the Piraeus end of the hill, where there are ancient foundations and even steps cut into the stone. I snooped around the vicinity a bit, but a stench warned me that someone had been using it as a toilet, so I didn’t go too far out of sight of the other tourists. The risk would have been slight but my traveller’s intuition was twitching and the likely rewards were too slight to be worth it.
From the Areopagus I headed for the Monument of Filopappos, climbing up through a pretty parkland. By now it was getting warm, but I followed a path down to the Piraeus end, above an open-air theatre that is being excavated or built.
I returned to my hotel for a brief rest, then set off to scout the buses to Marathon. It was just as well I did so, as my original plan treated this as “catch the bus” (“first, catch your rabbit”), which ignored the how of getting to the bus stop. Getting to the bus stop involved metro Line 3 from Syntagma to Omonoia, Line 1 from Omonoia to Viktoria, then walking east and north to the stop, which was not clearly marked.
I bought two 24-hour Metro tickets, just to make sure there would be no avoidable hold-ups.
Pleased with myself, I returned to my hotel again, forgetting that I’d intended to see the Archaeological Museum while I was up that way. Oops.
I found and smeared one mosquito but there was at least one more. So I invested in some Baygon spray and dosed the room and the bathroom. That fixed the other one. After this I slept in peace.
Wednesday, 18 September 2002
The morning went pretty much as planned. The bus ground interminably out from Athens, looped around counter-clockwise, and dropped me off at the turnoff to the Marathon Museum.
The Museum was several kilometres up a not very interesting farm access road. There was supposed to be a burial mound from the battle — Plataeans — and a Mycenaean Tholos tomb, but I didn’t see or didn’t recognise them.
However, walking through this corner of the battlefield helped me to understand the dynamics of the Battle of Marathon by displaying the landscape that shaped the battle.
I’d thought the Greeks had drawn up on the flanking hills and in that case I could not see why the Persians had stayed to fight — I would have marched past to Athens, sending my fleet around by sea to meet me. But actually the hill that the Greeks must have used thrust out into the plain, and was between and commanded the two feasible routes to Athens (the road on the east and a saddle on the west). The slopes were steep enough to give the defender a big edge but flecked with steep segments that would have reduced the front the Greeks had to defend. So the Persians could not get past without first winning a battle on unfavourable terms.
The Museum was small and a little disappointing. It had some maps, a nice bronze statue, odds and ends of grave goods, but nothing that really advanced my itinerary. In less than 20 minutes I started back to the main road.
Shortly a car pulled up. The occupants spoke no English, but we managed to work out a lift to the main road, and I climbed into the back seat. I don’t remember doing it but I must have laid my red portfolio down beside me on the back seat while fastening the seat belt. When I got out, I forgot to recover the portfolio. By the time I noticed, the car was long gone.
This portfolio contained all my jotted notes, itinerary, Athens maps and guide book, etc. It wasn’t critical to the trip — I could use the HTML itinerary on the iPaq and buy replacement maps and guide book. But email addresses gathered en route and the notes written on the paper itinerary were irreplaceable. I had meant to post the annotated pages home and put the addresses onto the iPaq — well, now it was too late.
The greatest nuisance was that tonight was laundry night — and the guidebook had the laundromat address! (Stupidly, I didn’t bring a soft copy of the Athens guide book.)
Nothing for it but to press on to the mound of the Athenians, in the midst of the battlefield.
The grave mound was an unassuming green hill surrounded by concrete-mortared stone paving and a couple of white walls and memorials. The site was deserted except for the lady in the ticket office, although some Greek families were picnicking in the carpark outside.
The mound had what looked like a path to its summit, but closer inspection showed that it was a rainwater run-off scar. So out of respect for the dead, I did not climb up.
Here was another neglected place that loomed large in history. Without Marathon there probably would have been no Thermopylae and no classical Greece as we know it. At least Marathon had its memorials and museum — Thermopylae, as I’ve already mentioned, was a deserted waste bisected by a highway.
It was nearing midday. I walked back to the road and caught a bus back to Athens. My Persian Wars itinerary was complete — Salamis and Phocaea I saved for a future trip.
Without a map I was lost in Athens. The bus did not terminate at the place the morning bus had left from. So, on foot, I headed towards the Lycavittos Hill, stopping in at any bookshops I came to. After trying several shops, I found a map. Bigger and better than the one I lost in some ways. For example, I discovered I was on Harilaou Trikoupi and Akadimias — not far from the Archaeological Museum. So I set off for the Museum. After a while I walked into an area hidden by sidings. When I escaped the sidings, I found myself in insignificant Odos Tzortz. No problem — I now had a map of Tzortz!
The Archaeological Museum was crowded but very worthwhile. It contained several famous finds including the “Mask of Agamemnon” found by Shliemann at Mycenae, a superb boar’s-tusk helmet, the boy with goose statue, and so on. The Mask was actually much smaller and thinner than I expected.
I spent an hour and a half in the Museum. I could easily have spent double that, but museum fatigue and the Marathon legwork had done for me. I took the metro to Syntagma, and made my way back to my hotel.
Later that evening, I noticed a guy in Plaka carrying a Lonely Planet Greece. I borrowed the tome and got the addresses of a couple of laundromats.
Thursday, 19 September 2002
Faced with the start of a new dash — through Rhodes and Aegean Turkey to İstanbul — I decided to spend my last day in Athens resting and doing my laundry.
The laundromat I chose was a fair distance away. As usual, “laundromat” was a misnomer. I had to leave my laundry and waste another half hour coming all the back for it in the heat of the afternoon. As usual, when I did, I discovered that they had treated my protective “delicates” mesh bag as an unnecessary frill, taking everything out to speed up drying. Inevitably, when I checked that night I found I was short a sock. I think they may also have been the ones who lost my Bungle Bungles t-shirt.
I also went looking for souvenirs, and in a small shop in Plaka I found a superb “Snake Goddess” statuette going for €55. This was the only such statuette I’d seen that bore a tolerable resemblance to the original. The statuettes I’d seen in Crete were mass-produced crap. This one, based on the statuette with her arms raised in a “Y”, not the one with the arms held forward, was hand-made by someone who cared about the quality of their output. One more item ticked off the list of “things to buy that I can’t get in Oz”.
RhodesFriday, 20 September 2002
By 05:30 I was at the airport, waiting for my flight to Rhodes. I took a taxi to save hassles with buses. €20, fairly well spent.
Naturally the plane left late.
At Rhodes I caught a taxi again. They had fixed fares from the airport to the city.
The hotel, the Mediterranean, was one of those ugly glass-and-chrome tourist places I normally avoid. However, my cheap Qantas ticket had a condition forcing me to spend $150 booking something else through them. Booking this hotel discharged that obligation and gave me one guaranteed night of relative luxury before I plunged into the Turkish unknown. I was there by just after 08:00. Naturally my room was not ready, so instead of heading out for the sights, I spent a largely wasted half hour cooling my heels in the foyer. (I wasn’t about to pay the big hotel prices to drink in their bars!)
On the other hand, the room, once ready, was quite acceptable — the best since Sitia, though at double the price, you’d expect that.
The Mediterranean was about 20 minutes walk out of the Old City, near the tip of the island. The walk along the shore road was pleasant enough, with plenty of refreshment places selling water and iced tea at reasonable prices. Most of the people I saw were obvious tourists but the competition must keep prices down.
Down near the old city the road passed an old Turkish cemetery. The cat population was phenomenal — practically one cat per grave. Indeed, the cats were mostly sitting on, or even in, the grave markers.
Just past that there was a long official-looking building along the waterfront. I’m not sure what it was: it looked like a customs house. Walking through an arch, I found myself at my second Wonders of the World site — Mandraki Harbour, once dominated by the Colossus of Rhodes.
Today nobody knows where the statue stood. The traditional location, straddling the harbour-mouth, had been discounted on the basis that the Greeks lacked the technology to build something that big and not have it fall down. The fact that it fell down after only 50 years is not correlated against this somewhat arrogant assertion — arrogant because new discoveries from time to time show that we have consistently underestimated the technology of Greek times. But if it had straddled the mouth, it would have fallen into the water.
The modern assumption was that it stood rigidly upright, either to one side of the harbour mouth or up by the city. Not knowing the exact site, I contented myself with the knowledge that if I walked the length of the two harbours I’d surely see or pass the spot one way or the other.
It occurred to me that bronze fragments, lying on the ground for hundreds of years, probably leached copper into the ground beneath them. Find a patch of ground rich in copper, find the site.
Meantime, the modern harbour mouth featured statues of a stag and a doe where the statue allegedly stood. On the western (doe) side the mole also featured three windmills and, at the end, the lighthouse and fortress of St Nicholas. From here, the harbour was backed by the massive fortifications of the Old City. The result was picturesque and photogenic in the extreme.
From the mole I wandered towards the city, turning right to walk uphill with the wall on my left. Eventually I reached the Amboise Gate. No simple portal this: entering the city involved turning between the walls and crossing a bridge to the inner gate.
The street inside (Orfeos) was full of tourist crap. I took the first left, which took me into the main street of the Knight’s Quarter — Ippoton Street. This was tidy and cobbled, filled with grand houses — each once the seat of a knightly order.
Partway down on the left was the entrance to the Palace of the Grand Masters. From the outside this looked superbly preserved, but looks can be deceiving — it was rebuilt by the fascists only half a century back. The exterior was reasonably close to the original, but the inside was extensively remodelled to reflect fascist ideas of what such a place should be.
Don’t get me wrong — it was often eye-catching, in a bombastic fashion, and the quality of the mosaic floors and the fittings and furnishings was high. It just was not true to the days of the Knights and the compilation looked tacky.
My attention was distracted from the Palace from time to time by a couple who were more or less pacing me through the rooms. The woman, pretty and very shapely, was wearing a dotted white dress with the interesting property — in the dim background of the Palace — that it became effectively transparent when a sunbeam struck it at the right angle. A beam from the side would go straight through the thin cotton dress and reflect off what was beneath, revealing all. The effect was simultaneously titillating and naive.
After the Palace I continued down Ippoton, admiring the architecture and the odd bites of street life — such as the window with a pair of cats sitting on the sill, peering intently at something going on inside, and the house with a water-stained fountain visible through the bars of the gate and a pigeon bathing in the fountain.
At the end I turned right into Museum Square (Plateia Mousiou), where — as you might expect — I found the Archaeological Museum.
The star exhibit here was the Aphrodite of Rhodes, a beautifully-proportioned marble statue of Aphrodite holding up her hair to dry. But there were quite a few worthwhile exhibits in this neatly organised museum, and I was pleasantly surprised by how long I was spending looking at the statuettes and pottery.
The building itself — the knight’s hospital in the 15th century — was interesting, with some nicely built ceilings and a lot of character.
After the museum, I walked out of the Agia Ekaterinis gate and made my way around the curve of the Commercial Harbour to the ferry terminal. There I fossicked around till I found someone who could explain the procedures for getting a place on tomorrow’s ferry.
Basically I had to find a booking office — there was one down by the Post Office — and show them my Passport and pay a tax. They would then make a booking for me. Tomorrow I should front up at the ticket office at the ferry terminal (open 0700) and buy my ticket. This was simpler and more straightforward than I had expected — it did not involve surrendering my Passport overnight as the guide books had suggested, and was almost hassle-free.
I returned inside the walls and continued round the city. At one point I stumbled across an arch in the wall with people coming out of it. On impulse I went in, and through, and shortly I found myself standing on a path in the grassy, sunny moat. It was tempting to follow the path but instead, after a brief rest on the grass I went back through the passage and resumed my walk.
Somewhere along the last section, I stopped at a street cafe for lunch. Inevitably, it had a cat. Cats were a feature of these cafes in Greece — usually thin and always hungry.
Tired, I went back to the hotel for an extended siesta, stopping along the way to make my ferry booking and do a couple of minor chores.
Around sunset I ventured forth again to get a taste of the city after dark and find some dinner. This was a highlight — the Old City was as beautiful by night as by day.
IoniaSaturday, 21 September 2002
I was down at the ferry terminal by 06:45 and got my ticket as soon as the office opened. Then it was hurry-up-and-wait for twenty minutes until they opened the terminal.
Passport control was the tightest I’d seen yet, and the officer actually riffled through my passport trying to figure out where I had been and how I got here. The lax EU borders had screwed up the trail a bit, but eventually he conceded and stamped me out.
Although I was one of the first into the terminal, somehow a huge crowd had gathered by the ferry ramp before I emerged into the wharf. I suspect the contents of a couple of tour buses had been waved through the gate on the wharf — these people were not backpackers.
Still, by 07:40 I was on board the catamaran and my travel pack reposed in a storage bin. Through the window beside me, Rhodes Old Town looked lovely in the sunlight. But the window was filthy — if I wanted to take any photos I’d have to abandon my seat. I decided to wait a bit.
Gradually Rhodes slipped away and the long grey coast of Turkey emerged ever more clearly from the haze. I eventually succumbed to temptation and squeezed my way to a viewing spot on the side of the boat, from which I watched and snapped photos until the ferry started its final approach. Then I went back to position myself for a quick exit, only to find that everyone had the same notion.
Eventually we tied up and people started streaming off the catamaran. I was held up by the scrum for luggage, but I then made up the lost time because as a New Zealand citizen I did not need a tourist visa. I went straight to Immigration, which was a quick riffle and stamp.
I emerged into a crowd of touting taxi drivers. I picked out one that looked honest and commissioned him to take me into town. But as we pulled out, on impulse I asked, “Bodrum. How much, how long?”
The answer was €60 and “two hours”. I tossed a mental coin — bird in hand versus cheaper, slower (just under 4 hours) bus ride — and decided to go with it. So in the end Marmaris for me was just ferry terminal, a blur of buildings, and a long, winding road into the encircling hills.
The outlook from the highway was spectacular. Far below, Marmaris was soon a toy village nestling in a deep blue cove. Far out on the horizon, Rhodes was a great grey blur.
We stopped at a good spot and I let the driver take my picture. I rarely step in front of my camera, but from time to time — beneath the Statue of Liberty and at the bottom of the Grand Canyon in 2000, for example — I make an exception. The photo shows me tanned and confident, in typical travelling costume — Samaria Gorge souvenir t-shirt, cheap shorts from Athens, sandals from Venice. My bum bag contains the iPaq — and the camera when not in use. More importantly, it makes it harder for unwanted hands to get at the money belt that’s hidden underneath my clothes. I’m wearing my glasses to get a clear view of the scenery.
Further on we pulled in at a roadside shop for tea and cakes. My introduction to the tulip tea cup of Turkey.
The driver dropped me off at the Bodrum otogar (bus terminal — perhaps the word is a corruption of “auto” and “garage”). I lugged the travel pack down to Left Luggage. They wanted ₺2 million but accepted my offer of US$1 (about ₺1.6 million) and my excuse that I was newly arrived and didn’t have any Turkish Lira yet.
I went down into the town, where I exchanged a US$100 traveller’s cheque and €15 cash for ₺170,750,000. A huge wad of currency! By nightfall most of it would be spent.
By now it was past 13:00 so I pushed off in search of ancient Halicarnassus and its monuments.
The guide book maps turned out to be almost useless, particularly when I was confronted with a lack of street signs, but through an occasional sign-language exchange with friendly locals I eventually found myself climbing above the town. I was getting discouraged when I ran into an American backpacker on his way back down. He told me the Roman theatre was just around the corner — and so it was, although it more resembled a building site.
With the theatre nailed down, my next objective must be just downhill. I took a likely side street then turned into a street that ran along the face of the hill. There was a large whitewashed wall blocking my view, but I walked along to the end of the wall — and found the entrance to the Mausoleum.
This was the third in my Wonders of the World itinerary. At Olympia, the Statue of Zeus was long gone and its temple was a ruin. In Rhodes, there was no trace of the Colossus. Here I found a great hole in the ground — there was at least no doubt of where the thing was — with hundreds of chunks of ancient stonework scattered about.
Nor had the rest of the Mausoleum entirely vanished. The missing stones were in plain sight: they had been used to build the Crusader Castle that dominated the view of the bay.
I spent an enjoyable hour poking round the site, browsing the museum and buying some postcards. Then I headed off in search of the legend of Hermaphroditus.
Allegedly the Pool of Salmacis was fed from a spring that still exists, but the sea level has risen so that the spring now bubbled up offshore. The Blue Guide said it could be seen near the harbour mouth. So I wandered down and looked, but to no avail.
Disappointed, I wandered back along the harbour, stopping for lunch at an eatery near the yacht club.
I was in no rush till I realised that I had completed my Bodrum itinerary (I’d forgotten that I had planned on seeing the Crusader Castle built from most of the Mausoleum stone — in the event that I ran early) and was about to miss a bus that would get me to Selçuk a couple of hours early. So I rushed back to the otogar, reclaimed my pack, and clambered aboard the bus just as it pulled out.
Alas, I had misread the timetable. This bus did not go to Selçuk — the best they could do was a town about 80 km short.
There, rather than wait an hour and a half for the bus I’d originally planned to take, I compounded my bad choices by engaging a taxi to take me to Selçuk. My pronunciation or his hearing must have been deficient, and like an idiot I neither wrote it down or pointed it out on my map. The driver simply nodded and started off.
The taxi wound interminably into the mountains and finally stopped at a one-horse town in the middle of nowhere. “Selçuk”, announced the driver. “Jimmy’s Place”, I told him, which occasioned scratching of the head. Then he called a passing local and the two conferred. Then they went off to a nearby shop, leaving me enthroned in the deserted taxi.
Ten minutes later they returned with a teenager who had some English. After some more to-and-fro, we established that I wanted to go to Selçuk but the driver thought I had said Selçuk. The subtle difference escaped my ear.
So we set off again, down to the coast and through Kusadasi. By the time we finally got to Jimmy’s Place, it was dark. If I had toured the Crusader Castle and taken my originally planned bus I would have got here sooner!
The driver wanted ₺85 million (about US$53) — the fare showing on the meter. Now I was safely at my destination, I dug my heels in. I was willing to take some blame for not making sure he understood where I wanted to go, but so should he.
The manager of Jimmy’s Place came out and interpreted. In the end we settled on ₺80 million lira (about US$50). Whether the $3 was worth the hassle is debatable, but it vented my spleen and constituted a moral victory, however minor.
After that, Jimmy’s Place was an anticlimax — a room with en suite (but no aircon) for US$10 per day.
I wandered downtown. Since bus, taxi, food and sights had devastated my lira supply, I went to the post office and cashed US$100, this time receiving ₺165 million — which shows how much commission I’d paid on my earlier transaction (about 12%).
A good dinner with wine cost me ₺6 million lira (US$3.75) — a bargain!
Selçuk by night was an attractive and friendly little town, although most of the greetings came from carpet sellers. A grim stone fortress squatted above the town, floodlit. There was little wheeled traffic — most people were content to walk and to enjoy the ambience.
Sunday, 22 September 2002
I was up early to beat the crowds to Ephesus. It was a fair walk, out along the main drag. There was a cycle and walking route (Dr Sabri Yayla Bulvari), but it was not well designed.
Quite early on, I came across the entrance to the Temple of Artemis, but it was not yet open. The inevitable lounger nearby offered to sell me old coins, but I refused — if they were fake I’d be wasting my money, and if they were real I’d be risking a jail sentence. If they were GOOD fakes I could still be risking jail. Never buy black market antiquities in Turkey — it’s not worth the risk and it’s also irresponsible
Ephesus began to come into view — ruins along the crest of the hill on the other (left) side of the road — on the far side of a smelly swamp. Then a turn-off that ran beneath the hillside and ended in a huge, ugly parking lot. There was a cluster of vendors and park offices, and finally, inconspicuously tucked in a corner, the lower gate. But then I had to find the ticket office.
Once inside, the road took me more or less immediately to the Arcadian Way (the street that led down to the now dry harbour). To my right, blocked off, the deserted roadway ran down and eerily just … petered out. I had a sense that if I ducked under the rope and went down there, I might slip back in time. To my left was the theatre, looming above the ruins of an old gymnasium. It seemed to cover half the hillside.
Since the port road was blocked, I made my way into the theatre. It was deserted except for a young Japanese backpacker sitting quietly, high up. She had passed me on the boulevard, with a shy smile. I tossed her a smile now, then politely left her alone.
The theatre was in good condition, and the acoustics — established by a single clap while standing at the focus — were excellent. Some seats were left unrepaired, and parts of the structure were collapsed, but it compared favourably with theatres elsewhere. The guide books were dismissive of the materials used in the reconstruction, but it would take more than that to spoil this theatre.
After the theatre I followed the tourist route up Marble Way, with its wheel ruts, to the Library of Celcus. There were some good views across the Agora along the way.
The library was an impressive structure, though really only a facade by now. Some of the niches had statues in them — though I doubt they were the originals. That would be asking too much. According to the guide books, the Austrians grabbed everything here that wasn’t nailed down, and for the rest they used crowbars.
The Curetes Way stretched uphill from in front of the library. There was an impressive struck on the right hand side, which was probably the palace; but it was closed. Instead my next stop was the Temple of Hadrian, with its clever friezes.
I slipped through the Gate of Hercules without recognising it, only stopping when I reached the forecourt of the Fountain of Pollio. This was the point (about 09:20) when I realised that the rising trickle of other visitors was actually the start of the daily tourist invasion. Just as I reached this point, a huge tour party washed into the forecourt and the brassy lungs of the guide put paid to the peace and quiet. From here on I was never out of earshot of one tour group or another.
After a brief stop at the Odeon, I just kept walking. By the time I reached the upper entrance, about 09:30, it was like finals night at the MCG. I had to force my way against the current to get out!
Overall, Ephesus was impressive, but not really up to the hype.
My original plan had been to walk back down to the lower gate, picking up on anything I had missed, but the massive crowd persuaded me that this was folly.
Instead I headed off towards Selçuk, and took the first left turn that offered itself. I was seeking the Cave of the Seven Sleepers.
I had a pleasant walk along this dirt road, though it was getting warm. A couple of horse-drawn traps passed me going the other way, and then one came from behind me and pulled up. The old gentleman driving it offered me a ride. I initially declined the lift, explaining that I was quite happy to walk to the Cave, but he insisted that he was going there anyway and his offer was a charitable gesture. I caved in and climbed aboard.
It was surprisingly comfortable, and to lounge on leather cushions and watch the dusty landscape flow by proved to be a memorable experience. I was sad when we reached the Cave.
The Cave actually has a substantial Byzantine church built in front of it. From the number of sarcophagi and grave niches, it must have been a popular place to be buried. Perhaps they hoped they would wake up a hundred years later.
The opinion of some of the modern locals was less optimistic. The Cave was locked up, and someone had decorated the wire mesh gate with hundreds of bits of toilet paper.
I walked back down the hill. Passing some tents with souvenir stalls outside, I noticed some graphical maps of Ephesus. There were no English language ones left, but I eventually tracked down the stall holder — relaxing in one of the carpeted tents — and bought a Turkish edition.
When I got back to the road, there was my friendly driver, rested and just about to head off to look for customers at the lower gate. This time I engaged him in his professional capacity to drive me down to the main road. It wasn’t an expensive ride.
As we reached the road, we passed the young Japanese backpacker. I grinned and waved, and got a big smile and wave in return. (She passed me again on the boulevard, but her stamina gave out and I passed her in turn before we got back to town.)
This time when I got to the Temple of Artemis, it was open.
This was Wonder #4 in my Wonders of the World itinerary — a swampy paddock that used to hold a temple that dwarfed the Parthenon. It was far more impressive than I expected. If you poked around, you found that quite a bit of the building’s paving survived.
A single mammoth column had been re-erected. It was pretty ugly, but served to provide a scale by which to measure what was once here. There was a French film crew making a video of the site, and at one point they moved down to get some close-ups of the column. Their heads did not even come level with the pedestal. There were eight of these columns across each face of the temple, and 21 down each side, in files at least two columns deep.
I wandered all around the site. Down near one end, where there was a standing pool of water, I heard the familiar clack-clack-plop of terrapins. There was a rock in the middle of the pool where some bold individuals stood their ground even when I’d reached the edge of the pool.
Satiated with the Temple of Artemis, I continued into town and ferreted out the Archaeological museum, well endowed with magnificent finds from the local sites. Unfortunately it was closing at midday, so I only had about 20 minutes in which to give it a quick once-over. I found most of the major pieces and I’m quite pleased with a photo I took (unfortunately just a little out of focus due to the need for haste) with a spectacularly well-endowed visitor walking past a large statue of the spectacularly over-endowed Diana of Ephesus.
I found a small food shop where for some trifling amount — about ₺1.7 million — I bought half a kilo of delicious home-made Turkish delight. I rationed this and it lasted me several days.
After a rest back at the hotel, I went out again, determined to investigate the hill that dominated the town, crowned with a fortress and mantled by a ruined church (the Basilica of St John).
My first approach, directly towards the road to the fortress, was rebuffed by a soldier. I’m not quite sure what he was guarding — he spoke no English — but I had to backtrack and make my way around several blocks.
This put me immediately below the church, so I decided to go up there first.
Many walls were standing, and here and there it was possible to puzzle out what the place used to look like. The floors were often in perfect condition.
At one point I was accosted by some children. They seemed out for fun rather than mischief, but I was careful not to let them have hold of my camera. My bum bag and day pack were padlocked. I had a sachet of Greek coffee whitener (left over from the Rhodes flight) in the clip-shut pocket of the bum bag, and when I pulled out my post-it notebook the whitener fell out. They grabbed it and asked if they could have it. They ripped it open avidly and licked the paper. So I gave them a couple of chunks of Turkish delight.
There was a large grassy patio, formerly a church garden, with an excellent view down to the town and over the plain to the Temple of Artemis and the hill of Ephesus — although most of Ephesus was out of sight on the far (seaward) slope of the hill.
In the end I never did get up to the fortress. When I went down from the church I was befriended by a couple of the carpet-sellers, English-speakers, who challenged me to backgammon — loser pays for the next round of tea. I’m quite proud of how convincingly poorly I played (since I hadn’t played for some time while they really were very good, it actually required very little acting). I cheerfully paid up for two inexpensive rounds of tea (about ₺1.4 million, or US$0.85) and all in all, it was a pleasant afternoon. Turned out most of the local sellers were actually from Van. They spent the winter accumulating carpets from the local weavers, then came to Selçuk in the summer to sell them to the tourists.
Back at the hotel, I paid my bill and my tab, ready for an early departure the next morning.
My itinerary called for a return visit to Ephesus for the sunset (19:03) and the rise of the full moon (19:53) but in the end I settled for going downtown for an extra special dinner.
They brought the bill, and took the money away, in a small wooden box shaped like a treasure chest. I was so charmed by this that when I saw similar boxes for sale in a shop on the way back to the hotel, I bought one as a souvenir. I keep souvenir coins and banknotes in it now.
To the HellespontMonday, 23 September 2002
I was up before dawn and off down to the otogar. Since I arrived by taxi and hadn’t been down that way during my visit, it took a little effort to find it, but I did, and sunrise found me almost halfway to İzmir.
At İzmir I changed buses for the long haul to Troy.
At the rest stop at Ayvalık, I noted that petrol was about ₺16 million reg/sup, ₺12 million diesel. That was more than double the equivalent Oz rates at the time!
This was my longest Turkish bus ride, expected to take five hours to get to Çanakkale. It took six hours to get to the Troy turnoff. Troy was 5 kilometres away, it was after 2pm, and I had no better plan than to walk it.
However, a local woman had also alighted from the bus, and an older man was waiting for her with a tractor pulling a trailer. He picked her up, then pulled up beside me and offered me a ride. I accepted with alacrity, tossing my pack into the trailer and climbing up on the mudguard.
It was a fun ride albeit precarious, and this “Trojan Taxi” dropped me off by the souvenir shops at Troy at 14:30, just an hour behind my original plan. The day was looking up.
I checked the time of the last dolmuş in a shop, and they told me 16:00. That gave me less than an hour and a half to see Troy. I had no time to waste.
From the shops, a farm road went right and the Troy road continued straight. I shouldered my pack and walked up it, past the car checkpoint, and on interminably until suddenly the infamous touristic wooden horse loomed up above a small cluster of buildings.
I bore left to the inconspicuous ticket office, and bought my ticket. I asked where I could leave my pack, and they showed me a small lounge used by the staff. I squeezed the pack into a corner behind the door, where it would not be in the way, and headed for the horse.
This piece of tack stands in a pretty garden that is ornamented by some attractive Hellenic and Roman stonework from the site, removed, presumably, in order to leave the older layers exposed.
I climbed up into the horse. Of course. As expected, it was bare wood inside — the thing was really just a platform to stand on while sticking your head out of the window.
The horse gave some mediocre views inland but bugger all view of Troy. To see Troy you needed to walk through Troy, and that was next on my agenda.
The approach was via a path that brought me right up against a dramatic piece of Homeric Troy, the remains of the south-eastern bastion (VI h) of Troy VI. To its right a characteristically cambered segment of wall led off to the eastern (Dardanian) gate of the city.
For me, this was one of the big moments of the trip, and of my life. When I reached the wall, I put my hand out and rested it on the ancient stonework. Whether you think it was Troy VI or Troy VII, this was the same wall. If Homer’s yarns had a historical core, this was the wall that shielded his Trojans from the Mycenaean onslaught. Now Troy was real, and I was in touch with the legend, a priceless memory to take away and treasure in years to come.
The stone was warm from the sun, grey, and a bit porous. It bore the marks of many hammers — ancient or modern, I couldn’t tell, but the odds are that tourists have been chipping bits off it ever since it was brought to light. I successfully resisted the temptation to find a flake to take with me.
I went on along the wall and entered the city. Past the gate the tourist trail turned left and climbed. After a short distance, the way was blocked. This lookout (roughly on top of house VI C) allowed a look back southeast over some VI houses to the VI wall, and west down to some bits of II wall.
From this point I had to walk back down and turn left to continue the walk, passing by the Temple of Athena (IX P) and looking down on the eastern wall and well of VI.
My next stop was where the trail reached the distressing remains of Schliemann’s “great trench”. The exposure of the various layers was interesting, but served to remind us that in his crude quest for Homeric Troy, the man destroyed much of the very place he was seeking and made the task of later investigators much more difficult.
The trail eventually brought me down to the ramp of II. Schliemann claimed to have found the “Jewels of Helen” near here. The ramp was disassembled but had since been reconstructed. It was in excellent condition. The walls that bracketed it show the same camber as VI, but were more crudely constructed and the stones were smaller.
A little further on, after a detour up to a lookout, I came to the VI western walls. (Schliemann effectively demolished the northern half of VI in order to expose II, thinking that II was Homeric Troy.) These would have overlooked the now silted up gulf, and might well have seen Mycenaean galleys creeping up to the beaches below them.
Just inside the walls there was a VI house (VI M, I think) whose walls cambered the same way as the city walls. A nearby storyboard showed a reconstruction of what appears to have been a rather pretty aristocratic house.
Nearby (behind me) was what may have been the weak part of the western wall mentioned by Homer.
Outside the walls was a IX temple precinct, cut away in places where it was underlain by VI houses built outside the wall — evidence that most of what we see of VI may have been just the acropolis of a larger town.
About this time I ran into another visitor coming uphill between some wire fences. He told me there was a Roman well down there, so I drifted down to have a look. It was mildly interesting. No terrapins here: just a tired-looking frog.
I went back up to Troy and followed the trail, now moving east, mainly past disorganised Roman ruins, until I came to the southern tower (VI i) — the great tower of Ilion? — that once loomed above the Scaean or southern gate, which was visible to its right. There were some odd-looking pillars outside that Dörpfeld thought may have supported images of the city’s gods.
Moving on, I completed my circuit of the city. There was a lookout above the south-eastern wall that I had bypassed earlier. I climbed up this time, and watched the tour groups streaming through beneath me, and looked out across the site.
Troy was more coherent and comprehensible than I expected, although that may be because of all the pre-trip research I put in. Between the information boards and the guide books I did not get very lost, and my feeling of connection with the past was strong.
But the time was now heading towards 16:00, and the last dolmuş to Çanakkale would soon be leaving. I went down to the ticket office and reclaimed my pack, then legged it for the souvenir shops.
The dolmuş was waiting, but would not leave for half an hour yet, so I went into the shops to get some munchies and to check out the souvenirs.
The typical Troy souvenir was a card or a tea towel showing the wooden horse, or a model of it. I almost despaired, but finally spotted an archaeological map of the site almost hidden beneath the tat. It was in German, and ten years old, but I grabbed at it with the despairing clutch of a drowning man. I bought the map, and a selection of postcards showing reconstructions of ancient Troy, and bolted.
I lingered over a bottle of iced tea, writing postcards. I added some stamps and posted them, then went down and clambered into the dolmuş.
The dolmuş pulled out at 16:30, went up to the village, got blocked in by farming wagons loading produce, and spent the next 15 minutes grinding up and down looking for an unobstructed way out. But it finally found a way through, and now I was on the final leg in to Çanakkale.
The dolmuş dropped me off outside the otogar. I crossed the road and headed down toward the water.
Walking past Anzac House — a run-down place that looked a bit like an old movie theatre — the touts battened on to me and looked incredulous when I told them I wasn’t going to take a tour. They even tried to tell me it couldn’t be done. These touts made me glad I wasn’t planning on staying at Anzac House; and if I had been thinking of doing so I might well have changed my mind.
Instead I kept walking, turned left, and signed into the Anzac Hotel — a somewhat better establishment and just as conveniently located.
Later I went out to “recce” Çanakkale. It was trickier than I expected to find my way back to the otogar: the map was subtly wrong. But after that I was oriented, and easily found my way back to the ferry dock by another route. I checked out the ferry timetables and bought a couple of tokens for use tomorrow. A ferry was coming in, so I stopped to watch it.
After dinner at an eatery across the road I was tempted to duck into Anzac House to see what info they had, but the touts were still out in force so I decided “bugger this” and went to bed.
GallipoliTuesday, 24 September 2002
Because of certain men who strove to reach,
Through the red surf, the crest no man might hold,
And gave their name for ever to a beach
Which shall outlive Troy’s tale when time is old.
— Rudyard Kipling
I did the walk in reverse, starting from Chunuk Bair (Conk Bayırı) at 09:15 and ending at Kabatepe at 16:45. I wasted a couple of hours in wrong turns. At the start I went down to The Farm before looking over the Turkish memorials — so I had to walk uphill to pick those up. If I’d done them first I could have simply turned downhill after the Farm maintenance track reached the road. Then I followed the road after Lone Pine. If instead I had gone down to Shell Green (1km) I would have saved myself a boring 4 km, one hour dog’s leg. The wasted time meant it was too late and I was too tired to go down to Helles afterward.
But I did the walk in the right direction, considering the heat, the distance, and the elevations. Halfway down, I ran into an Australian couple on their way up. Their “why didn’t we think of that” expressions were priceless.
The experience was worthwhile. I was surprised to find myself wiping away tears at the NZ memorial on Chunuk Bair, and again at the Anzac memorial (now located on North Beach).
But let’s tell this in sequence. I was down on the docks early, and on board the 08:00 ferry by 07:50. But the ferry did not pull out until about 08:20, having had some trouble fitting on as many as possible of the waiting vehicles.
I slipped into reverie the moment the shore receded. There had been a column of large ships steaming down the channel, and by now they were on the horizon. It was easy to convert them into Allied battleships, steaming away after bombarding the gates of the Dardanelles in 1915.
The Allies had tried twice in February and turned back without penetration, but on 18 March, 18 capital ships sailed past Helles/Kumkale and attempted to force the passage. They made it more than halfway to Çanakkale (Chanak Kale) and even hit the place with shells, but were then forced to turn back. A third of the force was sunk or badly damaged.
As a result, the Allies abandoned hope of capturing the straits by a purely naval assault. Just over a month later, 25th April 1915, the troops stormed ashore near Helles and also further up, near Ari Burnu. The small cove south of Ari Burnu came to carry the name of the armed forces who paid such a high price to take it and to hold it: ANZAC.
The ferry coasted in to the terminal at Eçeabat, and I was quickly off. There was a line of taxis waiting, and I grabbed one. I pulled out a map and pointed to Chunuk Bair, moving my finger there via the back road. The driver agreed, and we were off. (This ride cost me ₺38 million, or about US$22.)
The countryside was quite attractive, and the views were superb. It was no surprise that in recent years, parts of the peninsula had become popular spots for holidaying Turks.
The driver pointed ahead to a hill with a transmission aerial on it, and suggested a stop. I’m not sure, but since it was the tallest peak in sight it was probably Koja Chemen Tepe (Hill 971), a peak never reached by the Anzacs. There was a lookout there, and the views north, east and west were dramatic.
But I could see Chunuk Bair, and after ten minutes I noticed that the driver had finished his cigarette, so I moved us on.
As the taxi coasted up to stop by the New Zealand Memorial on Chunuk Bair, I felt a lump in my throat. This summit marked the furthest Anzac advance, made by the Kiwis on 8 August 1915, but they couldn’t hold on to it. The British reinforcements who replaced the Kiwis on the 9th were forced off by a counter-attack on 10 August. (The Ghurkhas could have eclipsed this achievement if they had captured Hill Q, but some misplaced friendly shells broke up their attack when it was on the point of success.)
I climbed out of the taxi and ran my fingertips over the names on the wall beside the road. Then I walked around to the left and up the slope to the memorial. Nearby, a pensive bronze Atatürk, much larger than life, pondered upon the scene. The statue reflected the mood — it was difficult not to feel sad and thoughtful here. So many lives, so many hopes rested here.
On the western crest there were some reconstructed Turkish trenches. Since the Kiwis came up from the west and used captured trenches, it’s likely that the Kiwis fought here, but these trenches actually dated from the Turkish reoccupation. Down near one end a notice told the visitor that this was the spot where Atatürk, leaning over to view the slopes, was struck over the heart by shrapnel and was saved because a watch in his jacket pocket got in the way.
A sign pointed down slope to The Farm Cemetery, and I followed it. The signs warned that the path was steep, and they were right. I hesitated — climbing back up would be tough — but by then I was already well along, so I decided to ride my luck. All the cemeteries are accessible by road: this was not a road. So there should be an easier way out down below.
The path was peaceful and overhung with trees, but the steepness and the frequent washouts provide a graphic sample of the terrain that the Anzacs fought their way up and their replacements fell back down.
The Farm is where the Turks stopped after rolling the allies back down from Chunuk Bair. More than 1,000 men were slaughtered here, but the Turks didn’t bother trying to hold it. They left it to the corpses. Overlooked by The Apex and Rhododendron Spur and by Chunuk Bair, it was a death trap if either was enemy-held. With the Anzacs on the former and the Turks on the latter, it was not worth the price.
As expected, an access road wound away south around the face of Rhododendron Spur, so I followed it. From this track almost the whole area held by the Anzacs was visible, all the way to the cliffs that hid the beaches.
Eventually I found the main road, and turned left (uphill) to take in the bits I had missed by prematurely heading down to The Farm.
At a side road there was a “WC” sign, so I went down. There was a building there, well stocked with blankets and domestic bits and pieces — apparently someone was living here. Since there was a port-a-loo here, they obviously weren’t squatters. I used the loo, but had to go out and follow a hose to find a tap to turn on the water in order to flush it.
I continued uphill, and came to a big open space surrounded by five huge concrete fans. This was the Turkish Memorial, shaped into the open hand symbol that is often made by praying Moslems “giving thanks” to Allah.
When I was there it was not a pretty sight: the living quarters I had stumbled across obviously belonged to the workers who were here performing extensive repairs on the fans. Several fans had been partially disassembled, and stone masons were chipping out fresh editions of the inscriptions on blocks that were being readied to replace the old ones.
I could see the NZ Memorial from here, so I turned back downhill, crossing Battleship Hill.
Past the turnoff to The Farm I came to the Baby 700 Cemetery. Baby 700 was a killing ground on 25 April, changing hands repeatedly, but eventually the Turks re-established themselves and never lost it again. This was the high-water mark for the initial Anzac attacks.
Just down from that was a narrow saddle called The Nek, which the Turks also recaptured, leaving them facing the Anzacs dug in on Russell’s Top for the duration. There was another cemetery here.
Just past here I looked up at the ridgeline I was approaching, and saw a man with a rifle. It gave me a turn, but then I realised that he was facing away from me — and was a statue anyway.
Soon I came around to that spot. It was a statue of Sergeant Mehmet, who died with a noble exclamation on his lips. Not far away was the Turkish 57th Regiment Cemetery, with its attractive arched tower.
Then I reached the Australian lines. Quinn’s Post, Courtenay’s and Steeles’s Posts: all within a span of about 10 minutes. Then a few minutes later, Johnston’s Jolly. Below me was Monash Gully that ran down to Shrapnel Gully, and across it was Russell’s Top.
And then I reached Lone Pine, and the main Australian Memorial. It was presided over now by a single pine tree, but the original, survivor of a grove that was cut down by the Turks to help fortify their position, was actually cut down just before the 6th of August battle in which the Australians stormed across 150 metres from The Pimple.
I walked through the cemetery and looked downhill to the south, and across to the Dardanelles. They came so close to breaking out!
My foot kicked up a chunk of ceramic, probably from a WWI rum jug. On impulse, I picked it up. When I went back into the cemetery, I laid it down on a big platform that looked like an altar.
What Chunuk Bair was to Kiwis, Lone Pine was to Australians — although the Australians managed to keep Lone Pine. In less than 3 hours I had unhurriedly walked the length of the front line — a crow’s flight distance of some 3 kilometres, but twice that with the detours I took.
At this point, I had a brain failure. Instead of walking one kilometre down to Shell Green (say 15 minutes), I took the wrong lesson from my The Farm detour and kept on down the main road. This was a mistake. I did get to see the famous statue marking the spot where a Turkish soldier rescued an Anzac officer under fire, but the price was a long and not very interesting dog-leg: down to the coast then almost doubling back to Anzac: perhaps 5 kilometres. It took me an hour, and would have taken longer except that a couple of Dutch guys gave me a lift the last kilometre to Ari Burnu. I repaid them with a load of bad history — the sun had fried my brain and I was not thinking well.
At Ari Burnu I walked past the fan-shaped plinth carrying the famous message from Atatürk (“… After having lost their lives on this land they have become our sons as well.”), down to the beach, and turned right.
This was once North Beach, but now it was dominated by the Anzac Memorial, where the dawn service was held each year. I walked along the beach, now feeling more than ever like a pilgrim. Emotions surged this way and that: sadness, exultation, excitement, humility. And then I stood on the commemorative platform, looking at the inscription: ANZAC, and I just felt awe.
Overhead loomed the huge bluff called The Sphinx. The land sloped up to it, unchanged since 1915. Unseen beyond the Spinx, the next ridge was Russell’s Top, which I had seen from the other side a couple of hours ago. The battlefield was so small!
I left the memorial and followed the road back to Ari Burnu. I was so sun-fried that I kept going and almost walked past the real Anzac Cove: I actually had to backtrack to Ari Burnu when I realised what was the sliver of sand below me.
Before that I ran into an Australian woman standing beside a car, watching her husband explore Shrapnel Gully. I had run out of water, and was by now desperate enough to beg a drink. She was generosity itself, giving me what was left of a 3-litre bottle, about 1.5 litres, and refusing payment.
At Ari Burnu, I turned left, walked around the point, and there it was: a sliver of sand, half a kilometre long, backed by clay cliff faces. Anzac Cove, heart of the legend.
Walking on the beach at Anzac Cove was surreal: there was so little trace of all those thousands of men and their munitions and machines. A few pieces of collapsed concrete wall, and a couple of shards from a rum jug. Time, the sea, and the hands of past tourists had erased the rest.
Knowing it happened here, it was possible to conjure the ghost. The hills were only a little changed, so it was child’s play to superimpose the old photos on my mind’s eye and see how it was. The hardest part to visualise was the beach itself, which had become a narrow ribbon of sand — and the high tide licked the cliffs like a predator rasping bones with its tongue, stripping away the last shreds of flesh. But by seeing the whitecaps as sand, it could be done.
For one instant I was there: with grey battleships on the horizon, the whistle and splash of shells amidst the scurrying transports and swimmers off the beach, hunched figures running from place to place, the bray of mules, and the flat banging of rifles echoing down the gullies from the front a couple of kilometres upslope. And over it all the odour of the dead, despite the brisk sea wind that whipped up flurries of sand and flung them recklessly against the stubborn cliffs in an unknowing emulation of the Allied effort.
Then a wave washed over my ankles and wrenched me forward 87 years to this peaceful, deserted place. Offshore, a lone freighter chugged along on some errand, pursued by the scree of a lone gull. The only shots being taken were from the Ari Burnu cemetery at the north end of the beach, where a Hassle-Free tour group was snapping pictures. And the smell of death was reduced to a faint whiff of rotting seagrass.
It was time to leave.
I walked around to Kaba Tepe, a distance of about four kilometres, taking about 50 minutes.
The Museum at Kaba Tepe was impressive — and cool! After more than 7 hours in the sun, its air-conditioned interior was heavenly.
Less so its content — all the grotesque leftovers of the battlefield, samples of battledress, maps, and so on. Alas, I had only about 20 minutes to go through it before I had to go back out into the heat and wait for the last dolmuş to Eçeabat.
There was a souvenir hawker down by the road. I bought a t-shirt off him for ₺10 million, and he threw in bits and pieces of tat left over from Anzac Day, five months ago.
By 17:45, ten hours after setting out, I was back at Çanakkale.
Sailing to ConstantinopleWednesday, 25 September 2002
I was now approaching the naming point of this holiday. This long yarn is titled Walking Through Byzantium because every place I visited — even Rome — was once part of the Eastern Roman or Byzantine Empire, ruled from “the second Rome” — Constantinople, modern İstanbul. I was originally going to call it A Roman Ramble, but once London and Paris dropped out of the itinerary I had to find a more specific label for the truncated route.
Now at last I was on my way to İstanbul. I had a relaxed start to the day, leaving Çanakkale at 08:55 on the 09:00 bus. I wasn’t taking the bus all the way to İstanbul. My first destination was Bandirma, where I hoped to catch a catamaran to İstanbul.
Autumn already lay on this land — the trees beside the road were turning gold and brown. We rolled through rich rolling land. This had once been the core of Byzantium, during the interregnum when the Latins held Constantinople and scions of the Greek Emperors held out in Nicaea and Epirus. In the end Nicaea prevailed over the Latins and recaptured Constantinople, resuming the Byzantine Empire. But a couple of centuries later, it was in the core of the growing Ottoman Empire, which eventually swallowed up what was left of Byzantium and claimed Constantinople itself. Greeks still lived here, but gradually became a minority.
The Greeks recaptured it briefly, 90 years ago, but Kemal Atatürk threw them back and in the subsequent population transfers, the remaining Greeks were sent packing. It was entirely Turkish now.
Moments: at 11:00, the bus was filling up with gas. A tractor with enclosed cabin pulled up, driver smoking. Access to the gas tank was in the cabin. Still smoking, the driver helped the attendant insert the nozzle. He continued smoking while diesel (“motorin”) was pumped in. Although diesel ≠ petrol, I shrank back in my seat and thought of non-flammable things.
The bus pulled in to Bandırma at 11:55 and I hastily grabbed a taxi to take me to the ferry, although I was aware I had no chance of the 12:00 sailing.
I wouldn’t have had a chance anyway, even if the bus had pulled in early — there was no 12:00 sailing. I had been misinformed. The next sailing was 15:30.
So I got three hours to sample the dubious delights of Bandırma. It was not a charming experience. The people were surly and almost none spoke English, the food was overpriced and not good, and I wasted an hour trying to track down a place to cash a traveller’s cheque, or even a functioning ATM connected to the international networks. No luck.
So it was a pleasure to board the catamaran and leave this dump for the pea-green Sea of Marmara. The ship was crowded, and there was no place to stow my pack, so it spent the trip leaning against my knees. My seat had no window, but by craning a bit I could see through the windows at the sides of the lounge. Mind you, finding my seat was a mini-adventure, because the seat numbering was somewhat sparse. I had to find a numbered sequence, then count along to find mine.
The trip was over almost too soon. An hour and a half into it, the Princes’ Islands peeped over the horizon. They never came close, but remained just dark lumps on the horizon.
Then I saw the horizon ahead bump up, covered by gleams and knobs. Central İstanbul — the area that was once Constantinople. While I was there I was careful to use the modern place names, but for purposes of this tale when I talk about “Constantinople” the physical place, I am referring to the peninsula bounded on the west by the Theodosian walls, on the south by the Sea of Marmara, and on the north by the Golden Horn and Galata. It’s a convenient shorthand for an area that still possessed a unique identity but which was today broken into dozens of locality names, with no overall modern label except the rather lame and inaccurate “Central İstanbul”. I also prefer “Aya Sofya” to the more correctly Turkish "Ayasofya”. It's my story and I'll say how I want to.
I could have stood there and just drunk in the approaching skyline, but I wanted to get off the ferry quickly, so I shouldered my pack and headed for the stairwells.
I did get one good view through a window as the catamaran turned and manoeuvred its stern into the terminal. For once I had my camera ready, and got a good shot of the skyline. My initial identification of the sights is problematical: my desire to recognise Aya Sofya conflicts with its apparent location left of the Blue Mosque. I may be confusing it with a smaller mosque that also had a red complexion.
The ferry eased in and stopped, and the stern dropped. I hitched my pack and walked ashore at Constantinople.
İstanbulThe immediate vicinity didn’t look prepossessing. I walked across a parking lot and the main road and found my way to the Yenikapı railway station.
I bought a jeton and went up on the platform. It looked much like run-down stations anywhere. But a small, ragged boy wandering around trying to sell unidentifiable foodstuff (actually I think it was char-grilled corn on the cob) was a new sight to me.
He latched on to me, as the only tourist in sight, saying “hello, hello” — the common greeting of street children everywhere — which exhausted his English, and thereafter we lapsed into mutual incomprehension. Eventually he conceded that I wasn’t going to buy anything and wasn’t going to give him money for nothing, and he wandered off, Kim-like, to berate the other passengers and try to sell them his wares. He was an altogether picturesque introduction to İstanbul, but it didn’t occur to me to photograph him till too late. He got on the train, but got off at Kumkapı.
The train was ancient and ramshackle, reminding me of the old “red rattlers” that used to service St Kilda. It shook and juddered its way past unsightly 5-storey apartment blocks until it reached Cankurtaran station, where I got down and made my way uphill into Sultanahmet.
I knew my hotel was on a corner somewhere along Ishakpaşa Caddesi, but not exactly which corner. So I trudged uphill with the wall of Topkapı on my right, dodging traffic. I was confused at one point by passing a side street that wasn’t on my Lonely Planet map (I later found it on the electronic map I’d stored on the iPaq), but eventually I came to Akbıyık Caddesi and saw, on the other side, the facade of Barut’s Majestic Hotel — recognisable from the photo on their web site.
I crossed over and checked in. My room was ready. There was no lift, but the climb up the stairs was not long. The room was excellent, with en suite and aircon; and at US$40 per night looked to be a bargain.
I went to the window and looked out. Just across the road was an old tower in the Topkapı wall. How romantic can you get? I wondered if I had a view of Marmara, and looked to the right — riiight. Right into the flaring mouths of the loudspeakers clustered around the minaret of the local mosque …
No Marmara view, but a guaranteed wake-up call in the morning. No wonder the room rate was so reasonable! (I later found other reasons, such as that the hotel restaurant was just above me, so each night I went to sleep — eventually — to the scraping of chair legs and the clatter of dropped cutlery. And they were carrying on renovations to a section of the ground floor, with much dust and clatter by day.)
No matter. The hotel made an excellent base of operations, and I’d willingly stay there again. I even got used to the lazy drawl of the local muezzin, who sounded almost as asleep as I had been moments before his dawn lament. By the third morning I was sleeping through the call to prayer rather than praying for it to end.
I was tired but not exhausted — I had spent the day sitting down, after all. It was not yet 18:30, and the sun was still up. So I went out to explore and to see the sunset.
I turned left out of the hotel and headed uphill to where I could see some minarets. As I approached, a massive dome lifted itself into sight, upheld by a red wall. No matter that I’d known it was there, this first sight of Aya Sofya stunned me. For a thousand years this was the largest and grandest church in the world, and then it was the biggest and grandest mosque. People tried to build bigger and grander buildings, but they either fell down or did not match up in one respect or another. For example, the Blue Mosque was bigger but was also a less daring achievement.
By now the sun was going down, and the sky was changing colour. I walked around Aya Sofya, splitting my attention between the ancient pile and the sunset, until the Blue Mosque came into sight across Ayasofya Meydanı.
The Blue Mosque was set in a lovely park. There was no denying that it was a lovely building. Aya Sofya bore the scars and accretions of 1500 often turbulent years, and its beauty was that of an aging matron whose bones are splendid beneath her sagging skin, but the Blue Mosque was clean and beautiful and looked newly built. Set against a flaming sky, seen across a still pond, it was dressed in its best finery that evening.
I found a bench and sat there a minute or two, letting it all sink in. There was the Blue Mosque. There was Aya Sofya. There, with the tram in it, was Divan Yolu. This was Constantinople, an imperial capital for 1600 effectively uninterrupted years — longer than any other surviving city in the world, including Peking. Memphis and Thebes exceeded it in longevity, but they are dead and, anyway, had extensive interregnums when they were not imperial seats: for example, under the Hyksos, under Akhenaton, and during periods of disunity.
In 330 AD the Romans took a sleepy provincial town and made it their eastern capital. After the fall of the West, it was the sole capital of the Roman Empire, called "Byzantine" by unfriendly historians. It was the capital of the miniscule and short-lived Latin Empire, and then again the Byzantine capital. Finally came the Ottomans, whose empire was only formally abolished in 1922. And not only was it the seat of emperors all that time, but two of those empires — the Eastern Roman under Justinian, and the Ottoman under Süleyman, were the largest in the world in their times, and among the largest empires ever. No city in the world, living or dead, could match this pedigree. And here I was, sitting within it.
But the sun was going down and I could see a glorious sky happening over in the direction of the Golden Horn. I headed off, crossed Divan Yolu, passed the Million — the Byzantine milestone — then dived off the main street to look for a shortcut through the back streets. As I went past, I saw the dealers closing up their hole-in-the-wall shops. The drifting crowd of shoppers was gradually replaced by a river of shopkeepers heading down to the docks. I followed the flow.
But I was too late. By the time I reached the Golden Horn, half an hour later, it was full dark.
As a consolation prize, I went on down to the ferries and bought a couple of jetons (₺750k each) for the Üsküdoy ferry
The night was warm, and the breeze from the ferry’s own movement was welcome. The Bosphorus was a vast expanse of lights, moving and weaving, backed up by the sparkling light climbing the hillsides. To my right, Constantinople was a blaze of floodlights, picking out the great mosques and Topkapı Sarayı. To my left, the slopes of Galatea rose to the great floodlit tower. Across the water, Üsküdoy was a hill of light. It was altogether a marvellous sight.
Refreshment sellers came around selling tulip glasses of tea and cans of soft drink. I bought some tea — and why not, when it was only about US$0.25 per glass?
Moments — at 19:45 sipping tea on the Üsküdoy ferry as Constantinople slipped away. A million-dollar experience for about two dollars Australian.
Thursday, 26 September 2002
I tried to start the day by walking to Saray Burnu via Gülhane Park, but it was closed “for renovations”. After being turned back from the Palace by a polite but firm armed guard, I then tried to walk the long way, via Sirkeci. However, after getting about halfway I conceded the point and turned back so as to at least enter Topkapı soon after it opened at 09:00.
The entrance (the Middle Gate) was huge and impressive. Inside, the Second Court was a colonnaded expanse of parkland.
I veered left, heading for the Harem. I soon learned that the first tour, an English-language one, was departing at 09:30, so I bought my ticket and hung around.
The tour was pretty much the same one detailed in the 2002 İstanbul Lonely Planet, at least so my memory and my camera agree. We entered via the Carriage Gate, proceeded through to the Black Eunuchs Courtyard, through the main gate, turned left, made our way down to and through the Valide Sultan’s Quarters, the Sultan’s hamam and the Emperor’s Chamber. The LP doesn’t mention the possibility but we were allowed out into the Favourites’ Courtyard, after which we were shepherded down the Golden Path to exit into the Third Court. The whole thing took only 35 minutes!
If the Second Court was a park, then the Third Court was a temple. It had a library, a mosque, buildings for rest and contemplation. All closed to the public today.
I went through the Gate of Felicity back into the Second Court. The Gate itself was quite beautiful, covered with murals, tiles and inlays. The murals were landscapes, possibly fantastic. But the gate paving showed the wear of traffic: the heavy marble sill was deeply indented, and the intricate patterning of the paving slabs had been worn away except where the doors had kept traffic off.
I went down into the old kitchens, now used to display old clothing, furniture, utensils and bric-a-brac. A lot of the better relics followed the Sultan to Dolmabahçe — these were the leftovers.
I drifted back into the Third Court and down to the end, where a ramp led down into the Fourth Court. But I barely glanced at that, instead heading for the terrace restaurant to buy some overpriced tea and munchies, and enjoy the view of the Bosphorus.
But time was a-wing. It was past 11:00, and my itinerary had been dented by yesterday’s late arrival.
From the Palace I walked down and to the right to get to the Museums.
I started with the Museum of the Ancient Orient, which contained glazed brick panels pinched from the Ishtar Gate of Babylon. But the Turks were modest thieves, or at least late to the party: the Germans took the gateway itself and set it up in a Berlin museum. Walking through the entire gate now requires visits to Turkey, Germany and Iraq — getting through it could take a while!
The panels were sympathetically arranged, as they might have appeared on the gateway, and considering their age they were in good condition. They depicted various animals in low reef, and the workmanship was superb. My desire to see the rest — preferably returned to and reassembled at Babylon — increased.
Next in line was the Tiled Mosque, with its amazing display of tiles. I am not usually a fan of Islamic tiles, which tend too much to the abstract, but the quality and variety here won my admiration.
Finally there was the Archaeological Museum, with its friezes, sarcophagi and Byzantine remnants. Star attractions for me were (upstairs, in the İstanbul Through the Ages exhibition) the head of a serpent from the Twisted Column and a length from the chain that once blocked the Golden Horn.
The chain was a bit disappointing. It was not nearly as massive as I’d expected. But the links were as long as my arm and the metal was as thick as my wrist: presumably it was strong enough to stop the wooden ships of its day.
I was in full flight by now. I went back down to Divan Yolu and made my way around to Aya Sofya.
Hagia Sophia, the Church of Divine Knowledge was completed in 537 AD and for 916 years was the grandest church in the world, until captured by the Turks in 1453. Then for 104 years, it was the grandest mosque, until Sinan built the Süleymaniye for Süleyman the Great. Today it had become a museum, which permitted the revelation of things that for centuries lay buried beneath plaster and paintwork.
Aya Sofya’s main attractions were not things brought from elsewhere in order to be displayed: there were no long rows of dusty cases here. The attractions were the walls, ceilings and floors themselves — in short, it is its own main attraction.
The former main gate (in the north-west) is blocked off: entry to the precinct is via a side gate. But once through that gate I walked straight ahead until I could look south-east from the main gate to the main entrance, and approached as directly as possible, as only imperial processions once could.
The guidebook’s gradual unfolding of the domes and semidomes was marred for me by the scaffolding that seemed to hang from the dome, but the sight was still spectacular. Aya Sofya exuded a dignity that I found lacking at St Peters. There was no doubt which was the larger and more splendid, but St Peter’s was completed more than 1,000 years later, with all the advantages of technique and technology — based in part, in fact, on lessons learnt from Aya Sofya — implied. Aya Sofya was easily the greater accomplishment. For example, although St Peter’s dome rose more than twice as far above the floor, Aya Sofya’s dome was wider — 31 metres versus 22, though both were eclipsed by the even more ancient 43 metre Pantheon.
I did a clockwise circuit of the ground floor.
Coming around towards the way up to the galleries, I ran into the queue for the Weeping Column. On impulse I lined up, but when it came my turn to try it I just took a photo and stepped aside for the next person. With so many people of dubious cleanliness sticking their thumbs in one after the other, I figured that any moisture there was unlikely to have come out of the column!
The column was rectangular, not round, with a small oval hole in the brass plating that covered the lower section. There was a polished aureolus worn around the hole. Through the hole you could see a smooth depression worn into the marble of the column, about the size and shape of a large thimble.
The technique was to stick your thumb in the hole and rotate your hand. Millions of hands had polished the area around the hole and worn away the marble.
The ramp to the galleries was surprisingly rough and unfinished.
The galleries formed a mezzanine that almost circled the building. There were things to see all round, but if all you were after were the Byzantine mosaics then from the ramp, you walked clockwise.
First was the fragmentary image of a shifty-looking Christ making a blessing sign, with his Mum to his right and John the Baptist to his left.
Down the end of this gallery was the famous mosaic displaying Mary with Christ, with Zoe to their left and the last of Zoe's several husbands, Constantine IX, to their right. Constantine’s name and face look distinctly hacked-about, which is what you’d expect given the mosaic’s history. Unlike the other group mosaics, Zoe and Constantine face out at you, not at the divine family; they appear to be giving Mary side-eye.
Looking at Aya Sofya, its influence on Turkish religious architecture was obvious and profound. Every major Turkish mosque displayed the same massive domes and semidomes on a blocky base.
Close cousin to Circus Maximus in Rome, the Hippodrome was Constantinople’s premier horse-racing track and stadium.
Circus Maximus today was a shallow valley with a few fragmentary structures down one end and a low hump, the remains of the spina, down the middle. No more survived of the Hippodrome, except — oddly — for three columns that lined the spina, each with its unique characteristics.
The Rough-Stone Obelisk was once covered by bronze. When the Crusaders captured Constantinople, they looted the bronze but left the column.
Next in line, the Spiral Column represents three coiled bronze tubes. The tubes once ended in three serpent heads, but those were knocked off a couple of centuries back. I saw the only surviving fragment of one in the Archaeology Museum. My acquaintance with this column extended back to Delphi, whence Constantine pinched it in 330 AD, and further back to Thermopylae, the first battle in the war against the Persians: the column was cast to commemorate the final victory over the Persians.
Finally there was the Obelisk of Theodosius, pinched from Egypt by that emperor. It broke in transit: what remained was only the top two thirds of the thing. But carved from granite around 1450 BC, it had survived better than the Byzantine marble it was set upon even though it was twice as old.
One other surviving feature of the Hippodrome was now in Venice: the bronze horses that once stood on the box at the blunt end of the Hippodrome were carried off when the Crusaders took Constantinople at Venetian instigation. They (or rather their replicas) now decorate the Basilica there.
The Hippodrome itself was now a grassy park surrounded by surging traffic. The ground had risen until the footings of the columns were below ground level. Without the columns and the name, there would be no way to tell that it had ever been here.
As I came back toward Divan Yolu I came to a fountain presented to the sultan in 1902 by Kaiser Wilhelm — a nice little rotunda with water basins around the outside.
A walk through the park brought me to the Million, the central milestone of the Byzantine Empire. It was a truncated white column, characteristically seated below modern ground level and not looking particularly significant.
The Sunken Cistern was a vast underground water catchment constructed by Justinian. The place today was eerie and impressive.
On entry I came out on a ledge in the south end high above the current water level, from which stairways led down to dimly-lit walkways that ran in all directions. The air was cool and damp, and the sounds made by the other visitors were muted. However, the sound of dripping water was everywhere.
I went down the stairs and walked along the landing below the ledge. I saw carp swimming in the water. Several were quite large, but I saw few small ones. Perhaps the large ones ate them.
The water was fresh-smelling and clear, and the depth seemed to vary. It was quite shallow in places, showing a bottom strewn with coins and pebbles. In other places I couldn’t see the bottom, although that could also be due to the lighting and the colour of the bottom. The quality of the water suggested to me that there was a runoff somewhere. Otherwise it would stagnate, despite the fish.
I drifted down to the far end, where I found the famous medusa heads that had been used as pillar bases — one upside down, the other on its side.
I used my camera flash to illuminate the roof, which had the characteristic concrete-and-flat-brick finish that I had come to associate with Roman architecture. However, there were also metal rods running between the column capitals that were probably modern bracing against earthquakes.
This was easily the oddest place I visited in İstanbul, and one of the strangest places I have ever visited.
Back in Divan Yolu, I was struck by how familiar it looked: a tree-lined boulevard with tram tracks down the middle. It could not really be mistaken for Melbourne, but the resemblance was there — until the tram came through and nearly ran me down!
Further down I came to the Çemberlitas or Banded Stone, a column erected by Constantine, originally topped with his statue. The column was wrapped in steel bands that preserved it against earthquakes, but the statue disappeared long ago.
I followed the signs and found myself in the Kapalıçarşı (Grand Bazaar or Covered Market). It was a maze of hallways filled with a seething mass of shoppers, shopkeepers and pickpockets. Fortunately I only met the former.
The place was confusing and exhilarating, and I had a ball. I quickly learned to look at the shop displays from the corners of my eyes, unless I was willing to turn and find the shopkeeper at my elbow. I soon abandoned any notion of systematic exploration and threw myself into the whims of the moment.
I did have two shopping objectives.
One was that I wanted a Turkish charm for my bracelet. At a small kiosk I found a small silver setting with a white and blue glass eye — a charm against the evil eye. (The glass later fell out and is lost, alas.).
The other was a meerschaum pipe. I don’t smoke, and my father smoked cigarettes, but my grandfather smoked a pipe and somewhere in the lost days of my pre-adolescence I acquired a desire to own a pipe of my own. And now I do — nicely carved with a motif of a wolf attacking a horse. Being a non-smoker I don’t know how it pulls. I almost certainly paid too much, but as Turkish souvenirs go it’s perfect.
On the BosphorusFriday, 27 September 2002
I’d heard from the Tourist Information Office near the Million that although there was no AMEX office in İstanbul, there was a bank branch in Taksim that didn’t charge commission to cash traveller’s cheques. Since I needed money, today seemed to be a good time to have a look north of Galata Bridge.
I trammed down to Eminönü and walked across the bridge — wide and sturdy, with large towers every so often, its edges crammed with people fishing.
The other side (Karaköy) was a nightmare of rushing traffic with little concession made for pedestrians. I had to get to the other side to take the Tünel cable car, but there didn’t seem to be a pedestrian ramp, underpass or crossing anywhere. There was probably something going under the bridge end, but confused by the bedlam, I didn’t think of that. My maps were no help.
After several risky dashes, I found an underpass and made my way to the cable car. This trundled up its tunnel and eventually deposited me near İstiklal Caddesi.
In Tünel Square, an antique tram was getting ready to pull out, almost empty, but they wouldn’t let me board. Puzzled and angry, I watched it rock its way out of sight around the corner, then I shrugged set off in its wake. Taksim was only a couple of kilometres and the walk was supposed to be scenic.
It was indeed quite a pretty walk, though it took longer than expected.
Partway along, I found why the tram was not taking passengers: there was some sort of “Turizm” ceremony taking place. Since all the signs were in Turkish I had (and have) no idea what was going on, but if “Turizm” = tourism then probably neither did they. But they were going at it in a big way, with busloads of school children and numbers of self-important bigwigs milling around.
I went on past, and wound up in Taksim Square — a big traffic interchange. After a bit of hesitation I found my way to the bank and upstairs, where I cashed my cheques. I hadn’t brought proof of purchase on the trip with me, and this was the only time that I was asked for it. Fortunately she didn’t persist when I told her it was back in Australia.
Cashed up, I made my way back to Taksim and then down towards the Bosphorus, then north to Dolmabahçe Palace.
I reached the Palace almost unexpectedly — the clock tower beside the entrance just appeared in front of me.
The photos I took of the clock tower — one on arrival, one on departure — have proved useful in several ways since. For example, they give a good idea of the accuracy of the camera’s internal timekeeping. I set the time before leaving Oz, and I didn’t touch it again until my return. After five weeks on the road, the timestamp of the clock tower photos agreed — after time zone conversion — with the tower clock to within a minute or so, and as the clock also agreed with my watch, I know that I can rely on the photographic timestamps.
So I know that I arrived at Dolmabahçe at l1:04 and departed at 13:27 — I was there for two hours, 23 minutes — and took a number of photos. This is good because my entire diary note for the visit runs: “Both tours, Harem first.”. Not exactly a meaty record on which to build an account.
Inside the gate, a drive led down to the Selamlik, or Ceremonial Suites. I followed it down — stopping to admire a couple of lawn statues of lionesses with cubs that faced the palace across the end of the drive.
Inside the palace doors, I saw people putting plastic bags on their feet — my first exposure to this method of reducing wear and tear on the carpets.
I hadn’t seen enough of the grounds yet, so instead of joining them I continued on around to the left, through a gate and into a garden built around a large pool and fountain. I crossed the garden diagonally, went round the corner of the building behind, and found myself at the entrance to the Harem. So I went in.
With my feet wrapped in plastic, I joined the next English-language tour. There was no choice about this — you could only tour the buildings as part of a group.
The Harem was a succession of opulent apartments, although close inspection of the fittings indicated that many items were overdue for repair or replacement — threadbare, frayed or worn down.
Some of the furniture was simply lovely, even when worn. Carved side tables with glazed, metal or crockery decorative inserts, polished to a soft glow. Ornamental panels and carpets. Murals and mosaics. The shame was that often the decor clashed — things that were individually beautiful did not work well when thrown together in one room.
The larger rooms all had huge chandeliers in the middle, with lamps scattered around the walls — freestanding or on side tables. The furniture was designed and arranged around the lighting, usually with a table beneath the chandelier, and chairs by the lamps. There was usually a large mirror or two placed so as to throw back the light of the chandelier. The larger rooms were all furnished to an open plan, with no hidden corners or angles.
A couple of toilets, including one royal one, used a design that would have been familiar to the Romans and Byzantines — a stone ledge with a round hole and a frontal slot. These probably could be used as squat toilets, but the concavities in the wall behind suggests that they were designed for seated use. Other toilets were obvious squat types, complete with textured foot grips, similar to toilets seen elsewhere in Turkey.
The climax of the tour was a relatively small bedroom where for once all the fittings were in harmony. The bedspread was designed as a Turkish flag, with a huge embroidered crescent and star. This was where Atatürk spent his last days, and where he died. The clocks inside the house were all stopped at 9:05 — the moment of death.
The tour lasted about 40 minutes, and when it finished I immediately headed back around to the Selamlık to don more blue plastic and join another tour.
This tour had even larger chandeliers, and even larger rooms, but the fundamentals were the same.
At the top of the grand stairway there was a politically incorrect but very attractive set-piece using ivory tusks to set off a lounging family of bronze elephants.
Further on there was an exquisite bathroom in translucent marble. All it needed was a matching jacuzzi and toilet throne and it would be perfect.
Many of the windows didn’t appear to open as a unit. Instead they had small stained-glass portholes worked into their designs.
Many of the ceilings were domed and ornate and some were lovely, more than a match for anything at Topkapı Sarayı. The architect had a predilection for blue: dark, light, aqua, and shades between.
In a big room at the end of the tour was the biggest chandelier of all — and so dense that you couldn’t see through it. It was moored to the roof by a hawser that looked like it would hold an ocean liner.
This tour also took 40 minutes, refuting the Lonely Planet, which claimed the Harem would take 30 minutes and the Selamlık an hour.
Sated with the indoors, I followed the flow of tourists around to the Bosphorus side of the building, and then onward into the cafeteria beside the entrance. I ordered tea and sandwiches, paying too much, but then clumsily dropped the tea, shattering the tulip glass. After I mopped up the mess I found the attendant at my shoulder — with a replacement cup of tea!
After the Palace I went further along the Bosphorus and, ignoring the Maritime Museum, took the ferry from Besiktas across to Üsküdar.
I walked along the edge of the Bosphorus down to the point where small ferries connected Kız Kulesi — the Maiden’s Tower — for several times the sum I was by now accustomed to paying for İstanbul ferries.
Kız Kulesi was more impressive to look at from the shore than to visit. The views were good, but a regular ferry gives better ones and you get Kız Kulesi in the views.
The restaurant’s food was OK but nothing special, and the service was indifferent.
Out on the pier I sat in a chair and waited for the ferry, while watching a pair of watchdogs play the ancient dog games of catch-me and sniff-my-butt. They had to be guard dogs — I couldn’t see any other reason to have dogs on this small islet — but they ignored me completely.
Back on the Asian shore, I flagged down a cab to take me up to Büyük Çamlica.
This was an attractive park set high above Üsküdar, with spectacular views of İstanbul. If I’d had more time in İstanbul I would have liked to spend a whole day there exploring its paths and views.
But the day was moving on. I came across a taxi that was just about to go back downhill, so I took the ride of serendipity and then the ferry to Eminönu.
Back in Constantinople, I made my way to the shop of Ali Muhiddin Hacı Bekir in Eminönu. This was the original shop of the man who invented Turkish delight, and a visit to this shop was a long-held desire.
The shop is modest in size, but the variety of Turkish delight on offer is staggering. I was in a delicious agony of indecision. In the end I bought 2 half-kilo boxes, one of lemon and one of rose. Neither made it back to Australia — when it comes to Turkish delight, I have little will power. I was ashamed of myself even as I gobbled them down.
I grabbed the tram to Beyazıt Meydanı to pick up my Divan Yolu walk where I left off yesterday.
Beyazıt was a big expanse of concrete in front of the University gates, just the right size for a really big student demonstration — or for troops to muster in just before storming the towering gates. The University was surrounded by walls — whether to keep the students in or to keep the dealers out, who knows. Armed guards watched the gate and controlled traffic. Contrast with Melbourne, where the campus was integrated within the city, or Berkeley, whose campus I walked through in 2000.
I kept walking down, until a row of massive arches told me that I had reached the surviving section of Valens Aqueduct. Here I turned left and crossed under Kardeşler Caddesi to get to The erstwhile Church of St Polyeuchtos.
This was one of those places built in late Roman times — unsuccessfully — to eclipse Aya Sofya. In its time it was huge, but today it is a field of rocks and ruined foundations, while Aya Sofya is still awing the yokels. Nobody has even bothered to wall it off and charge to see it. I shared the site with an idle local kid who was more interested in what the tourist was up to.
To round off the day, I decided to continue down to Ordu Caddesi and take the tram back.
While I was waiting, a German cycle-tourist pedalled up, looking on his last legs. Spotting me for a fellow tourist, he asked me “where is Tourist Info?” I told him, as best I could. I was tempted to add that it would be closed by now, but then I figured that he had to go down there anyway to get to Sultanahmet, where most of the backpackers hung out, and the mirage of the Tourist Information booth would keep him motivated in the meantime. Somebody would latch onto him near the Million and steer him to lodgings.
In the end, I managed to do everything I’d originally planned for the day, just not in the planned order.
Saturday, 28 September 2002
I had a sleep-in the next morning, since the Bosphorus ferry was not due to leave until 10:35, but I was still down on the dock by 09:20, just to soak up the atmosphere and make sure of catching the right ferry.
It was a greyish day and had been showering, but the clouds were showing signs of breaking as we moved out of the Golden Horn and entered the Bosphorus.
Unlike the Dardanelles, these two waters felt more like wide rivers than estuaries or sea channels. The banks were crowded with bustling hamlets separated by green belts. Hundreds of small boats beetled to and fro, pursuing their small errands.
Many buildings were built right on the riverside, Venetian style, complete with private jetties. Some grand houses still appeared to be private homes — presumably owned by the rich and powerful.
The views were excellent, though I always seemed to be on the wrong side of the boat when something really impressive came by. The ferry chugged from side to side, servicing a number of the places we passed.
Half an hour on our way, we passed beneath the Bosphorus Bridge. It was an impressive sight. This was a minimalist suspension bridge, comparable with the Golden Gate in the USA but even more spartan.
Fifteen minutes later we passed the two fortresses used by the Turks in 1452–1453 to strangle Constantinople’s Black Sea trade routes. Anadoluhisarı, the Asian fortress, was a pile of ruins. But the larger European fortress, Rumelihisarı, still glowered down on the watergrim and forbidding. But more about that later.
Overshadowing Rumelihisarı was the Fatih Bridge, similar in size and construction to its sister downstream.
An hour and a half out, looking to the skyline far ahead, I saw the ruins of the huge Gneoan Yoros Castle that once dominated the Black Sea entrance to the Bosphorus.
A few minutes later, the traffic of small boats began to give way to clusters of fishing boats — so many of them that it seemed they must exhaust the supply of fish in no time.
Not quite two hours out of Eminönü, we tied up at Anadolu Kavağı (Roman Hieron) — the end of the line. The sun was shining and it was getting warm. I was tempted to stop for some tea at one of the portside cafes, but I had my own food and drink so I decided to press on for the castle and picnic there.
I wandered uphill, a little vaguely at first, but eventually struck a road that went towards the castle above the town. I was accompanied by a mangy, fleabitten local dog — not threateningly but rather with the air of a local on their way to work.
The only sticky point was at a fork, where the left branch ran by the ruins and the right ran away around the curve of the hill. But the left branch was guarded by an armed sailor who made it very clear that there was no left turn. Not being inclined to argue with guys waving guns (but see 2007), I went right.
Twenty minutes off the ferry I came over the crest and found a magnificent view of the end of the Bosphorus. Two points reached out toward one another, and beyond them — belying its name — was the endless blue of the Black Sea. A large freighter just coming through, and some fishing boats milling around, provided a yardstick for the scale of the scene.
When I sat down to eat my lunch, the dog came over and watched every bite, so close I could have touched him. Angrily, I told him to “dur” and to beat it. He just grinned at me amiably and edged closer, drooling, until I picked up a stone. He clearly knew that gesture because he immediately slunk off to pester a nearby family instead, leaving a little pool of drool behind. Rather than risk sitting in it, I moved elsewhere as well.
I wandered towards the castle. Actually, my seat at the lookout was part of an old building — Byzantine, I thought at the time, but now I’m not so sure. In one place there was the remains of some flooring, and it doesn’t look right for Byzantine.
My route took through an arch beside the two huge half-cylinders that were once part of the castle keep. The castle was an impressive ruin. It must have been quite a place centuries ago.
Inside the circuit of the walls there was a large grassy lawn — too sloping for use as a parade ground, but it would have made a good spot to sit and watch the day go by. Then the idlers would have been Byzantines, perhaps on a break away from the city: today they were tourists.
But this place really belonged to the ants. I spotted one ant hill with what amounted to a beaten track of dead brown grass meandering away from it. Ants hurried along it by the hundred.
I climbed up and walked along the top of quite a large section of the wall. Massive construction, and still sturdy. In its time, this place would have made Rumelihisarı look small and mean. It was at least as massive and covered a greater area, and its position was superior. But without cannon, it would not be able to do as effective a job of controlling traffic. That would have required a fleet of patrol boats, with the castle providing logistics and controlling the shore.
One of the keep towers could be entered. What the tall room inside once was, I don’t know. The ceiling was domed, the windows were arched, and it was cross-shaped, but as a chapel it would have been a mean place to hold a service. Most likely it was a store room or guard room.
I decided to walk down, using a path that led directly back to town, avoiding the road. On the way down I ran into a friendly American woman called Terry, who was being shown around by some Turkish acquaintances. We hit it off well and wound up having lunch on the waterfront with her and a British couple she’d befriended on the ferry. It was a convivial way to kill the time till the 15:00 ferry.
I got off the return ferry early to see Rumelihisarı. I thought the walk along the Bosphorus might be three kilometres — four at the outside, but it was at least six following the shoreline. I finally reached the fortress at about 17:10.
The ticket office was unmanned, but a man at the gate took the ₺3 million lira entry fee. No ticket, but at least I got in.
It was worth seeing. I always wondered why — apart from military weakness — the Byzantines didn’t knock it over the first tine Mehmet turned his back. Well, I’d hate to have had to capture it with 15th C weapons. The towers and battlements do not connect direct: you need to go up or down narrow exposed stairways to and from the ground to reach the three big towers. The inside would be a death-trap if the towers are hostile. There are no solid buildings, and every metre is open to arrows or guns from walls and towers. The only place to hide would have been the mosque, which was probably rigged to be blown up or knocked down in an emergency.
The place would have to be taken piecemeal, starting with the north or south tower. The south is higher but the north commands access to the main gate. Dominated by the captured tower, the shoreline tower would need to be taken or at least neutralised next, although it is backed up by a smaller tower. With two major towers gone, the minor towers could be cleaned up one by one while cannon blew in the doors of the remaining major tower. Only then could it be rushed by troops.
After a call of nature, I left ₺500k under a rock for the loo, even though the place was filthy and non-functional and there was nobody around. Walking up some steps a few minutes later I found a ₺1 million note lying at my feet. Virtue may be its own reward, but it’s always nice when it pays off in cash!
I wandered all over the place, climbing along walls and towers, moving generally clockwise. Some of the climbs were nerve-wracking, crossing wide gaps on concrete and stone of uncertain stability, and winding up narrow stairs with long falls beside me. Many of these features would have been deliberate, part of the last-ditch defence measures. Aerial bridges could be collapsed, denying the enemy the heights; narrow steps could be defended.
I could have spent hours there, but I’d had a busy day. I left the castle and picked up a taxi from a rank nearby to take me back to the city.
I missed an opportunity with the taxi — I should have made him take me to Asia over the Fatih Bridge and bring me back to Europe via the Bosphorus Bridge. Instead I crossed neither bridge.
Sunday, 29 September 2002
I caught the 07:20 Eyüp ferry from Eminönü as planned. However, my original plan — going from Yedicule direct to the airport — would have necessitated doing the walk carrying the travelpack (small planning oops there), so I had to leave time to get back to the hotel to pick up the pack. I decided to skip Pierre Loti’s cafe and the mosques, and started directly on the Walls.
Back in 2002 I had to do my own wall research. Today we have Wikipedia.
On the way up the Golden Horn the most notable sight was the remains of the original Galata Bridge, towed here to rot. It would have been much more picturesque than the modern bridge, and apparently it had been stuffed with small shops — a concept which would have given İstanbul an extra tourist attraction if extended to a second, pedestrian level of the new bridge.
I hit the first wall section just on 08:00. I know this because there was a tomb there, with opening hours posted. Two sets of opening times: one claiming the tomb opened at 08:00, another that it opened at 09:30. The first sign lied, for the time was 08:02 and there was no sign of (so to speak) life.
Even ruined, the walls were impressive. Huge towers and ramparts marching across the land for kilometre after kilometre. If they had existed in ancient times they would certainly have ranked as a Wonder of the World. Other cities had longer city walls — though if you count the sea walls, few would equal Constantinople — but not so complex or so massive.
From the first section of clearly identifiable wall I worked southward from the Golden Horn towards the Sea of Marmara. I tried to stay outside the walls, but occasionally I was forced inside.
With the aid of the Blue Guide and the map I was able to track my progress well enough to anticipate each gate or location as I reached it. There may be some mistakes in my photo attributions, as those were put together months later and without the benefit of being able to look around me or double-check obscure details.
The first section was rather confused — remnants of several eras of construction, mostly either in bad shape or else rather creatively “reconstructed”. They were bulky and impressive, but they lacked the grace of the Theodosian sections that made up most of the land walls. There were some important ruins — two Byzantine palaces and a gate — inside the bulge of them, but it looked a bit too much like a maze, so I stayed outside.
Further along I struck the Theodosian walls. These were more complex, still showing the double structure with alternating towers, and even swampy grassland where the moat once ran.
I crossed a big street, and on the other side came across what I believe was the Edirne gate. Inside, there was a large mosque crowning the hill, which must have been the Mihrimah Sultan Cami.
As I hesitated here I was surrounded by curious locals. We had no mutual language. I attempted to confirm my location by pointing to the gate and saying “Edirnekapı?” They smiled and agreed, saying “yes” — almost their only English word. I pointed to the mosque and said “Mihrimah Sultan Cami?” and again they agreed.
One old man borrowed my notepad and tried to write some notes on it, but we were mutually unintelligible. I’ve tried to find that note page since but it has gone AWOL.
I went back through the gate and walked over the crest of the hill. I found myself looking across a wide, deep valley. A river — the Lycus — once ran through, and this valley was the weakest point in the land walls because cannon could be stationed on the adjacent hills to fire down on the walls.
The walls and towers here were battered into ruin by Mehmet’s cannons, and were never properly repaired in all the hundreds of years of Turkish rule. I saw evidence — fresh rubble lying on the grass — that they were still being ruined, to this day. Rubbish and horses and housing snuggled up to the broken towers.
Walking down into the valley, I reached the Fifth Military Gate — also known as the Gate of the Assault (Hücum Kapısı). As I approached, a man came through it, turned his back on the roadway, and urinated against the wall. Then he calmly buttoned up and went back through the gate. Just as I lined up to photograph the gate, he was replaced by an infinitely more photogenic pair of gypsy women.
The section of wall between here and the river (whose course was now marked by Adnan Menderes Caddesi) was where the Turks broke in, and where Constantine XI, last Byzantine emperor, was last seen alive.
I had to detour at Adnan Menderes Caddesi due to some sort of police do. They had the street cordoned off and initially wanted me to turn back. I managed to get passed from place to place until one cop with authority and some English understood that I just wanted to get to the other side. After a quick bag search he directed me to an underpass where, carefully watched from both ends, I was able to get to the other side and resume my odyssey. I wound up walking some distance inside the walls before I found a lower, crumbled spot where locals were obviously wont to clamber over.
I was thrown off by this detour. I don’t recall seeing the Cannon Gate (Top Kapı). The next gate I identified was the Rhesion Gate (Mevlevihane Kapı), more than half an hour later, and after that the Gate of Selymbria (Silivri Kapısı), 15 minutes further on.
Silivri’s claim to fame was that here the Byzantines entered in 1261 to regain their capital and end the brief Latin Empire.
Finally I reached Xerokerkos Gate (Belgrat Kapısı), the Third Military Gate. From Mevlevihane on the walls were in superb condition, often with even the moat preserved — albeit filled with growing vegetables.
Now the walls ahead were backed by more towers. I was approaching Yedicule, the fortress built by the Turks behind the Byzantine Golden Gate.
The Golden Gate was closed up, but there were new gates on ether side of Yedicule. When I reached the first of these I was torn: I wanted to go in and see Yedicule, but I also wanted to finish the walk. I decided to finish the walk and come back.
I tried to get to the Golden Gate, but I missed the track in. I followed the road and found myself walking through a Turkish cemetery. By the time I found a way through, I had reached the gate on the far side.
I kept moving south, passing under the railway line. Finally I reached a road. Across the road was the Sea of Marmara. The wall turned west. The octagonal corner tower was faced with marble around its base: it had to be the Marble Tower, marking the end of the land walls.
I turned back toward Yedicule, walking up between the walls. However, despite a well worn track in the grass, the area was deserted and secluded. I started to feel insecure, as if I was being watched by unfriendly eyes. Ahead, the path went past several dark doorways in towers. The sensation of danger was strong now, so even though I still saw nothing, I turned back. The feeling of danger waned as quickly as it had come on, which tends to confirm my belief that it was a genuine warning. A mere funk would have stayed with me until I got all the way back to a public area.
Once I felt safe, I found a gap in the wall and scrambled through, clinging to precarious handholds in places. I saw tatty blankets and ratty utensils in some deep cubby-holes, evidence that people actually lived here.
I reached a gate and made my way around the walls of Yedicule to the entrance, only to find that it was “closed for renovations”. But there were a couple of tour buses outside, and someone had been paid off because the gates were open. I snuck inside and grabbed a couple of quick photos before being discovered and shooed out.
I tried to view the (bricked-up) Golden Gate but the outer gates were closed. All I could do was stick the camera round the edge of a broken panel and take a couple of snaps. There was a stinking pile of human shit by the other panel so I had no will to hang around and try for more.
I found a taxi dropping off a passenger at the Yedicule Gate. I’d finished the walls in less than four hours, and by noon I was back at the hotel.
By 13:40 I was at the airport and had checked in for my 16:15 flight. Although my ticket proved my bona fides, my seat reservation with Egyptian Airlines had vanished. However, they found a seat for me — beside a stewardess — so no harm done.
The two-hour flight to Egypt was not memorable. I was not near a window, so I didn’t get to watch Turkey roll away, nor did I get to see Cairo roll up.
CairoMy nominal arrival time was 17:15. Sunset was 17:43. By the time I cleared Customs & Immigration, it was dark. I walked out into the carpark and made my way towards the taxis. I didn’t get to pick one: an official beckoned one for me.
We agreed on a fare of EGP 40 (USD 8.60) to Midan Talaat Harb (I wasn’t about to name my hotel, in case he tried to claim a commission for bringing me in). We had to do this, as the taximeter was an antique that didn’t work — standard for Cairo. The car was also an antique that eventually stopped working well short of destination.
The driver got out and kicked it a couple of times, lifted the bonnet and fiddled, kicked it again, and when that didn't work he flagged down another taxi. I saw them talking, and my driver passed the other driver some cash. Meanwhile I had discovered that the driver’s door was the only one with a functioning internal latch: unless I snaked over into the front seat, I was trapped in the car. I was just about to do exactly that when the driver came back and let me out. He had arranged for the other taxi to drop me off. He emphasised that he had paid the other driver and that I wouldn’t need to pay anything else. And so it worked out.
This was an educational introduction to Cairo’s taxis. It also proved in advance that not all Cairo taxi drivers were grasping bastards. They bargained for every dollar they could get, but once the bargain was struck, some did honour it.
I walked up from Talaat Harb to find my hotel. I walked past it initially — the entry was set back in a large yard that became a ventilation shaft in the heart of the building. The stairs were on the left. Some people were sitting on the step, smoking. A man wearing the badge of the hotel jumped up and showed me to the lift, a narrow and rickety contraption that shuddered its way to the reception area of the hotel, which occupied a couple of floors in the building.
At my hotel I had a feeling of deja vu on the way to my room. I walked down a corridor that wrapped around that big ventilation shaft. One wall of the corridor was lined with windows, all thrown open in a vain attempt to catch a breeze. I’d seen something very similar before, but couldn’t recall where or when. A cheap hotel in Melbourne or Sydney, perhaps.
I’d asked for a room with air con, and discovered that once again I was going to have to choose between coolness and sleep. The thing sounded like a jet engine, but was not very effective unless it was left running all the time I was in the room. In fact, on my last night there it gave up the ghost, spattering me with drops of oily water.
The PyramidsMonday, 30 September 2002
I was up early, but not early enough to see sunrise at the pyramids. I was to regret this, for the dawn was crisp and clear. Perfect viewing conditions.
I took a taxi out to Giza and arrived at the gate at 06:40. I’d nursed a vague hope that it might open early and give me a head start on the tour groups. As I came up the avenue, I could see the tops of the pyramids over the housetops, shining in the sun. There were police and militia everywhere. They stopped me at a barricade — the site was not open till 08:00.
As I walked back down to find some place to kill time, I ran into another tourist on his way up. He turned out to be from West Australia, and had been to the Pyramids before. He knew the way to another entrance, so we walked to the other gate together.
This entrance was where most of the tour buses arrive, and it was also still closed. But the views across to the Sphinx and the Pyramids were superb. They shimmered like mirages. It was hard to believe that I really was looking at the real thing.
Rather than wait for this entrance to open, I walked back to the main gate. It was still not 08:00, but the barricades were gone and the guards waved me through.
I walked uphill, curving to the left around some stables. The ticket office was a lonely concrete shack on the right side of the roadway. I paid up for entry, then headed for the Pyramid of Cheops.
This was it — the sole surviving Wonder of the World, #5 in my Wonders itinerary. Looking at it from the back entrance, it had seemed like a mirage. Looking at it from a metre away, it still looked like a mirage. The stone block beside me was as tall as I was, and the Great Pyramid rose behind it, a lumpy receding landscape of stone. It was difficult to keep it in scale, to realise that those stacked brown sugar cubes up there were the same size as the block that I had just laid my hand on.
I could see the main entrance to the Pyramid up above me, with a small hole below it. The small hole had people sitting in it. But the ticket office was across the way, so I went there first.
On the way back to the Pyramid, I was hailed by a local. With my mind on the Pyramid, I had let my defences weaken. Before I knew what was happening, I had a Bedouin scarf on my head, three trashy pyramids in one hand, and a sheaf of postcards in the other. Then he stood there and brazenly demanded EGP 20. So I laughed, demanded he stand still while I took his picture, and paid him. It was a cheap enough lesson — about US$5. After this sample of Bedouin sales technique, I was immunised. They couldn’t catch me out the same way again, and since they all used the same technique, it meant that they wouldn’t catch me out again at all.
The way into the Great Pyramid was via some steps carved out of the very stones. The steps became a trench, and the trench came out near the small hole with the people in it. My ticket was inspected, and I passed into a rough tunnel that wound its way into the heart of the Pyramid. It looked like it had been dug into a hillside: there was no feeling yet of being within an artifact.
The roof descended, forcing me to stoop and to almost duck walk uphill, and the air became close. I began to sweat.
Then I passed through a short passage and emerged into a colossal corbelled corridor: the Grand Gallery. There was no longer any doubt that this place was man made. The walls were huge blocks of stone, laid slightly overlapping so that the hall narrowed as it rose toward the ceiling, which was a series of smaller blocks laid across the remaining gap. I stopped and just let myself gape at it for a minute. It looked newly built, but it had been here for 4600 years.
At the top I had to duck under some lower rafters, and then, suddenly, I was in a large stone-walled chamber with a dozen people milling around, touching the walls, taking photos, and murmuring in subdued tones.
The room itself was an ageless shoe-box, but closer examination of the walls revealed layer upon layer of graffiti and grime.
Down the far end was its major feature, a broken stone sarcophagus. The edges were marked with countless hammer-marks, the scars of generations of “specimen” hunting tourists. Elsewhere the edges were worn smooth by generations of hands.
This was far the oldest room I had ever stood within. It was built around 2570 BC. There were older buildings still standing — the step pyramid of Zoser, 2650 BC, was supposedly the oldest stone building in existence, for example — but the difference was a matter of decades, a century or two perhaps, not millennia.
The sensation was strange. Perhaps it was because of the other tourists scuffling around nearby, but I couldn’t grasp the age of this place in the way I had the age of the much younger Treasury of Atreus. At the same time I was very aware of the age of the Pyramid, which was also the age of this room.
I returned the way I came — except that when I reached the steps outside I had to turn left to descend. At the bottom I paused to admire the few remaining blocks of the one-time limestone casing, still snowy-white in the sun.
It’s a shame that despite talk of preserving the pyramids for future generations, there were no moves afoot to repair damage and replace the casings.
I drifted clockwise around the Pyramid. Around the back I came across the bizarre hexagonal profile of the Solar Boat Museum.
The Solar Boat was a barge that was buried in the sand beside the Pyramid, the only ancient river barge that survived. The modern authorities built this museum to display it. The boat itself was in the hexagonal section: the ground floor has various displays and a recreation of the pit in which the boat was found.
Visitors were required to don mittens for their feet. Considering the fact that the museum was a modern building, that the finds were behind glass, and the boat was suspended in mid-air, this requirement was ridiculous. More dust blew in through the open doors than sand was trekked in on dirty footwear — and one of my mittons had a hole it it, rendering it only slightly more effective than no mitten at all. Wear and tear on the floor from grit could as effectively be addressed by laying down cheap mats — of which Egypt had an abundance.
I can only conclude that this piece of effrontery was not for the sake of the building’s contents but for the sake of the staff, who were thereby saved a little cleaning effort.
The exhibits on the ground floor — bits of rope and wood, the pit, the story of the boat, and a scale model of the solar boat — were mere preliminaries to the boat itself, which you reach by climbing the steps at the far end of the ground floor.
The boat itself, lovingly restored from a heap of fragments, was impressive. You could walk under and around it. Every detail was laid out to be seen.
Through the window of the museum you also got a close-up view of one of the wounds suffered by the Pyramid during its long history: a deep gash, which from the ground was so insignificant as to be almost lost against the scale of the Pyramid.
Even so, the solar boat was barely worth the EGP 20 entry fee.
Giza was a neatly packaged place: so much to get in, so much for each pyramid, so much for the Sphinx, the funerary chambers, the solar boat. No item was very expensive if you thought in US$: $3 to $10. But if you tried to see everything, it soon added up.
I continued on from the Solar Boat Museum to the second pyramid, that of Khafre. This is the one that still had its limestone coat on the upper section. It was only a little smaller than the Great Pyramid, and due to an optical illusion — it stood on higher ground — it could even look bigger. It is also the one closest to the Sphinx, so it is the one most likely to be in the frame when people go for the Sphinx-Pyramid shot.
Khafre was also open, so I did some more pyramid-spelunking. Very similar to the Great Pyramid, but without the low passage and Grand Gallery.
Coming around Khafre on my way to Menkaure, I ran into Mohammed, a camel driver. I declined his invitation to ride, and he beckoned me closer, then furtively gave me two tiny, cheap blue pottery scarabs and demanded baksheesh. I was amused by his effrontery and almost gave them back to him, but then I remembered that one of my workmates had challenged me to get a photograph of a genuine scarab. I’d had no luck, despite the quantity of camel and horse dung lying around. So I decided to give my friend one of these, and demanded that Mohammed pose for the camera. He obliged — and so did the camera. This little exercise cost me EGP 10 (US$2.50), but I counted the money well spent. The scarab was well received back in Oz, and the photo is one of my favourite shots of the trip.
I walked on to Menkaure, with Mohammed hovering in the middle distance in hopes that I would weaken and hire his camel. I didn’t much mind, as his presence kept other camel jockeys at bay.
Menkaure’s was far the smallest of the three main pyramids, and it was closed. Ah, well, I got to see inside the best ones. It was the only pyramid small enough to show the efforts of would-be vandals: it had a deep slot in one face where a presumptuous sheikh spent 8 months trying to dismantle it. I just circled it and headed towards the Sphinx down Menkaure’s funeral causeway.
About this time Mohammed realised I wasn’t going to hire him, and headed off to find better suckers. He was promptly replaced by a succession of optimists who, seeing me unaccompanied, decided that I must be longing for someone to offer me a camel ride, or a horse ride.
Walking down the causeway, I startled a jackal. At least, I assumed it was a jackal — despite long muzzle and big ears and red coat, it could have been a mongrel from the nearby village.
I gradually worked my way around the Sphinx, past rows of intriguing holes in the rock — noble tombs, perhaps.
I managed to get Sphinx and Great Pyramid in the one frame. The Sphinx was in profile and turned out to have quite a massive jaw line, an effect enhanced by the amputation of its nose. Otherwise he was looking his best, after a recent restoration effort.
I ended up back at the main entrance. I had been on site less than three hours, but the day was well into the 30s, there was no shade, and my water supply was running low. (I wasn’t about to pay five times the price to buy Coke or rebottled tap water from the boys wandering around with ice-filled buckets.)
I had been thinking of chartering a taxi to take me down to Saqqara and back, but I was already feeling beat. Regretfully, I decided to head back to the hotel for a siesta and maybe a longer look at Cairo later, and maybe the lightshow that night. In the event, I only did the siesta, and the afternoon was so uneventful that I don’t remember doing anything except maybe some email. A waste, maybe, but after six weeks on the road I was getting tired.
AlexandriaTuesday, 1 October 2002
Went to Alexandria. I did not go on to El Alamein — getting up for the 05:00 bus was just too hard; I caught the 07:30 instead, and came home on the 15:00 train instead of the 18:00 bus. Those five and a half hours represent the time required to get out to Alamein and back, and see the cemetery. I could have done that, or something else, but apathy was taking hold of me as the end of my wanderings neared.
I took a taxi to the intercity bus terminal. Actually I took two, as the first one didn’t know where it was, and he covered up by dropping me at a city bus terminal.
The terminal was pandemonium and gimcrack buildings, but I eventually found my way to an office where a man at a desk sold me a ticket I could not read, then directed me to wait nearby and he would point out the Alexandria bus when it was ready to go.
The bus duly arrived, the man waved me over to it, and my ticket turned out to be good.
The bus was in good condition and quite comfortable. It had two stewards, although their service was notably defective compared to the Turkish buses.
The bus went out past Giza, giving me another look at the pyramids in passing, then heading out into the western desert. Except that after a brief stretch of sand and rock it wasn’t nearly as desert as I’d expected. We were skirting Wadi Natrun, and the land was a weird admixture of agriculture and waste.
I was fascinated by the odd cone-shaped towers — pigeon palaces, I learned much later — that stood up in the midst of the farms. The patterns on their sides were holes, and I could glimpse the sky through the towers wherever two holes lined up.
The road signs were all in Arabic. I could not read them. For the first time in my adult life I was travelling through a landscape with no clue where I was save by comparing time against distance on the map, a notoriously unreliable measure, as vehicles tend to go faster or slower than their average speed. It was about 220 kilometres from Cairo to Alexandria, and the Lonely Planet claimed it took buses two and a half hours. Actually it took about two hours and 50 minutes.
At Alexandria, I grabbed a taxi and told it to take me out to Fort Qaitbay.
The ride took me out along the Corniche that overlooks the ancient harbour that swallowed most of the ancient city. As we took the long curve that was once the mole, modern Alexandria lay across the water, baking in the sun. The new library was a white cascade of stone set against grime-grey older buildings.
At Fort Qaitbay I wandered around. The locals thought I was interested in the Fort, but what I was really doing was absorbing the site of the Pharos. The Lighthouse was lost for a long time, even though it was known where it had to be. Recently the actual ruins have been found, shoved off the land to clear it for Qaitbay.
It’s interesting to speculate whether enough of the Lighthouse was preserved for it to be accurately reconstructed. Probably not. Meantime, this was the closest I was going to get unless I was willing to risk Alexandria’s murky waters. Standing where it had stood was close enough.
And so I completed my itinerary of Wonders. I’d visited six of the Seven Wonders of the World. The seventh, the vanished Hanging Gardens of Babylon, was out of reach, if indeed it wasn't actually the Hanging Gardens of Nineveh or the Walls of Babylon. I had no desire to go into Saddam Hussein’s Iraq to reach that — although there’s enough else to see in the land of the Sumerians to make it worth a visit if the area ever becomes safe enough.
Outside, a couple of hundred metres from the gate of the fort, I stopped at a street kiosk, attracted by some soapstone scarabs. The man wanted EGP 10 each for them, which was at least ten times their value. I beat him down to US$5 for three, clinching the deal by pulling out the greenback. When I got back to Australia I gave one each to some team-mates.
I walked back into Alexandria along the Corniche. At one point I stopped into a snack bar and drank a glass of fresh mango juice, watched by curious locals.
Downtown, I headed for the Greco-Roman Museum. This was well worth seeing. Apart from things retrieved from the sunken grave of the Lighthouse, it had a wide variety of Egyptian, Greek, Roman and Arab salvage. Some of the Greco-Roman grave images were so lifelike that I felt I would recognise them if I met them in the street. In fact, I did — their descendants were still living in Alexandria.
The statuary was also good — I was particularly taken by a lively Aphrodite-and-Cupid statue. Her lively expression and pose were set off by her rounded hips and jaunty breasts — the latter clearly irresistible to Cupid, who was playfully reaching out to tweak a nipple.
Other statues retained the paint that was a feature of Greek art but that hasn’t been preserved by the advocates of things classical, who enforce their bone-white preferences upon us. Pastel pink and blue appear to have been popular with the Greeks — but then again, perhaps the pink is an artifact of fading.
From the Museum I chartered a taxi to take me to Pompey’s Pillar and then on to the train station.
The Pillar was actually in honour of Domitian and had nothing to do with Pompey. It was surrounded by an archaeological park that included sphinxes and stellae. The place was deserted except for an attendant sitting in a chair. I was able to wander around freely.
The taxi dropped me off outside the train station and I made my way into its cavernous interior. The ticket office was not immediately obvious, but eventually I found it and bought a ticket back to Cairo.
The train took a different route to the bus — it cut across the delta to the Nile, then south to Cairo. Like the bus, it was quite modern and fast.
It wound interminably through suburban Cairo — less attractive than suburban İstanbul — and finally stopped at Ramses Station. Outside, I walked a skyway that cut around the replica statue of the great pharoah, and after considering the buses and minibuses on offer, took a taxi back to Talaat Harb.
Back at the hotel, I intimated that tomorrow was my last day, that I still had a wad of Egyptian pounds to unload, and that I hankered to see sunrise at the pyramids. They said they would make enquiries. When I came down later, they said it had been arranged — EGP 40 for the taxi, 150 for the horse and guide, baksheesh extra. I accepted the deal and they told me to be down at 04:30 (sunrise was due for about 05:49).
Dawn at the Great PyramidWednesday, 2 October 2002
I came down a little early, to find my taxi driver asleep in the reception area. I woke him up and we set off.
We approached the pyramids near the rear gate, swinging aside into an alley by a stable. Horses were being saddled by yawning grooms. The stable owner, Mohammed, appeared and took his fee. He introduced me to my guide — another Mohammed. I slipped the taxi driver some baksheesh and he disappeared, off to catch a nap in the taxi until my return.
Two horses were led out — white and bay. Mine was the bay. He was docile enough to suit me, so much so that in fact he looked like he only wanted to go back to sleep.
We rode out through the wakening town, taking a back way that bypassed the gate. I attempted to pull together the fragments of my very limited riding experience, but my seat was abominable. Mohammed prudently refrained from breaking us into a gallop.
We passed through a wall by way of an ancient Egyptian gate. The lintel was a huge monolith, and we rode beneath it with room to spare.
We reached the lookout point at 05:38 and I dismounted. The pyramids were still in shadow. We were exactly in time — if Cairo’s smog had been cooperating. I’d hoped to see the light of the rising sun creep down the Pyramid, but the horizon was so hazy that all I saw was steadily increasing visibility.
Other riders were out in the twilight, exercising horses and camels. Mohammed hailed several who passed nearby. Our horses huddled together, tails to the breeze.
06:00 passed, and suddenly I spotted a dim red circle in the haze, somewhat above the horizon. The pyramids were turning a grubby brownish rose colour. Dawn had passed.
I had missed the full spectacle, but I didn’t feel disappointed. This was the last “must” of my itinerary, the capstone for the trip. I had done my part: if the pyramids failed in theirs, that was too bad. In a city as polluted as Cairo, it was always on the cards.
The trip was ending. Mohammed mistook my introspection for disappointment, and I had to reassure him. He didn’t have enough English for me to express myself completely, but once we got back I tipped him EGP 20, which cheered him up considerably.
I had reached a point in the trip where saving Egyptian currency scarcely mattered.
Back in Cairo, I set out in the last items in my itinerary: the Egyptian Museum and the Nile.
Getting into the Museum was an ordeal: the place was surrounded by police and the queue was long. There was also a form of systematic queue-jumping by the French visitors, with late arrivals identifying fellow francophones and arranging for them to buy their tickets. The ticket machines were broken save for one, and the queues were so long because every French visitor bought a dozen or more tickets for friends not in the queue, using up the ready supply. Then everyone else was forced to wait while new tickets printed out.
Another queue jumper was a tour guide who claimed that guides had priority. He pushed in front of the Japanese couple a few places in front of me and they were too polite to tell him to bugger off. The ticket seller shrugged and turned over the stock of twenty tickets he’d laboriously built up.
But I finally got in. The place was mind-blowing, but too dim for good photography — where photography was allowed at all.
I worked steadily clockwise around the ground floor, then went upstairs. I tried to give exhibits fair attention, but there was just too much crammed into the available space. I found myself skimming.
I was amused by a character in one frieze that looked just like Alfred E Newman of MAD Magazine fame.
Akhenaten. Tutankhamun. Ramses. Fayoum. Six thousand years of Egyptian history in a couple of hours.
The Royal Mummy room was the strangest thing of all. About a dozen pharoahs were gathered here, including Ramses II “the Great” himself. It was odd to gaze upon the very face and flesh of a man who may have been (but probably was not) the Biblical Pharoah of Moses. To read about someone of those times and to stand where they stood was one thing, but to come face to face with the very person was a different order of experience.
By 12:55, I was on a park bench on the corniche of the Nile, washed up and hung out. The Nile rolled below me, as it has for so many ages. The river endures, but its waters, like the people who have watched it, flow on.
This trip was ending. From old Rome I had made my way to the New Rome, and thence to this ancient place. I had stood in the pages of my history books. I had seen the roots of the world I lived in.
I had been swindled and ripped off by the locals, as has happened to travellers throughout history. I had lost luggage, left important articles behind, and been ill, as has happened to travellers throughout history. But I came through with money left over, my essential kit intact, and only sore feet and a runny nose detracting from my health.
I had kept a diary, a little sloppily and — towards the end — sporadically, but there was an entry of sorts against every day.
And above all, I did every major thing I set out to do. My biggest failure was Phaestos, due to illness, but that was just one part of my Minoan itinerary. (I ticked off Phaestos in 2005.)
Six weeks. It seemed nothing, set against the Nile, but those weeks were filled with more adventures than the 12 months that preceded them. I had set myself a big agenda, and I had fulfilled it.
I felt good. I was ready. It was time to go home.
Two hours later, I felt less good. I’d carried my leftover EGP with me through Passport Control, reassured that there was another exchange bureau on the other side.
There was — but the only cash they had was EGP. For all conversions from EGP to other currencies, all they offered were USD traveller’s cheques, in minimum USD 20 amounts. I had EGP 282.50 left (not bad — I used up more than half of the excess). At their quoted rate of EGP 4.6 to the USD, that would come to just under USD 61.50, but after subtracting commission they offered me USD 40 in travellers cheques.
I’m assuming that they would have generously given me back the leftover EGP 90 (less their commission) but I never discovered that, because I told them to forget it. I decided to exchange the wad at Rome or Melbourne, even if the rate was less.
Which is of course, what this shell game was about. If they gave me EUR or USD, they’d be exporting hard currencies (never mind that every cent of EGP I had was imported hard currency in the first place).
Biting exiting tourists is not smart. It ensures that the tourist’s final experience of the country is negative.
An hour later, I was even less amused. To get into the terminal you and your gear were scanned. Then you could check in. Then you went through passport control. Then you and your gear were scanned again and your gear was opened and eye-checked. Then you finally got to the boarding lounge.
What narked me most was that they had two people checking. As I approached one desk, being next in line, the woman there motioned me away, saying something incomprehensible (it turned out to be “other side, please”, although it sounded like “outside, please”). So I had to queue again, for no discernible reason — she accepted the couple behind me in the queue.
Never mind. I swallowed my anger: no good could come of talking back to this sort of vermin while in their power.
Cairo to Rome departure, scheduled 15:20, was 20 minutes late, but otherwise went without a hitch. I identified the coastline west of Terracina as we passed over it and turned north for the approach to Rome at 18:51. Since we were scheduled to land at 18:45, we had clearly not made up the late departure.
At Rome, Passport Control was startled when I checked through for just a few hours, but my luggage was on the other side, and I wanted the freedom of the airport so I could find a shower.
It didn’t work out as planned. There were no showers at Fiumicino except in the VIP lounge. Not being a VIP, those did me no good. I settled for washing my armpits and a change of shirt in the toilets, and staying downwind of everyone for this leg. I knew there were showers at Singapore.
Thursday, 3 October 2002
My Qantas flight was scheduled to depart Rome at 23:55 on the 2nd and arrive in Melbourne at 04:45 on the 4th, with a change in Singapore — a time change of nearly 29 hours, but a total journey time of less than 21 hours. This used up the 3rd pretty quickly, but I was just burning the hours that I had gained on the outward leg.
The plane landed early at Singapore, which was just as well as there was a queue for the showers. But the water felt grand as I scrubbed off the Cairene grime I’d been wearing too long.
HomeFriday, 4 October 2002
At midnight, my flight was headed for the coast of WA. The plane crossed the coast near Port Hedland at 01:11. It touched down at Melbourne at 04:29. I walked through my front door at 05:39 — and it was over.
I went to bed and crashed, hard. The trip was already becoming a lovely dream and the post-trip depression was setting in. Domestic chores clamoured, but it was all just too hard.
I burst into tears. I wanted to go back!
I cannot rest from travel: I will drink
life to the lees: All times I have enjoyed
Greatly, have suffered greatly, both with those
That loved me, and alone; on shore, and when
Through scudding drifts the rainy Hyades
Vexed the dim sea: I am become a name;
For always roaming with a hungry heart
— Tennyson, Ulyssses (1842)