Athens to Antalya

I was lucky enough to board Holland America’s Oosterdam early due to my loyalty status. I had not been on this ship and I liked it immediately. The capacity is just under 2000 which is the perfect size for me. 

When I got to the casino in the evening, I was overjoyed that I had $1500 in casino free play. I had forgotten. Actually I think it was the same $1500 I had given them back in April. 

Friday was a glorious sea day and I spent it walking, gym mint and sunning. 20,000 steps which isn’t bad on a ship. 

On Saturday we arrived in the Egyptian port of Alexandria. We had been warned that there would be 38 coaches taking cruisers on an excursion to Cairo. 1200 people were doing the six hour round trip with an armed police escort. I avoided the pandemonium.

I hadn’t seen much of Dimitra since boarding, but we had arranged to look around Alexandria. We waited for the hordes to depart before getting off and found Mustafa who spoke almost intelligible English, and he offered to take us to the places I had identified. 

Mustafa seemed like a good choice at first, but he talked non-stop and he wasn’t easy to understand. The first stop was King Farouk’s Palace, Montaza, 11 miles away on the coast. Farouk became king in 1936 aged 16 following his father’s death. He reigned for 16 years before abdicating and was replaced by his son, Faud II who was only six months old. Faud II only lasted another year, and at 18 months old, Egypt abolished the monarchy and became a republic (1953). Faud knew nothing about it. He was kicked out before he could even do his shoelaces up. Imagine being told later in life that you were once the king of Egypt, in infancy. A total MF. Faud II was sent to live in Switzerland where he was bullied at school. I bet he was. “You’re not the king of Egypt anymore”. After being stripped of his Egyptian citizenship, Anwar Sadat reinstated it in 1974. Apparently he visits Egypt every now and again, but has no official title on his passport although his job title is shown as “previous king of Egypt”. You couldn’t make this stuff up.

We had to pay a few bucks to get in and were given a rather unsatisfying fifteen minute ride in a golf cart. We couldn’t go inside so had to make do with external photos. 

On the return journey we went over the Stanley Bridge and passed the Library of Alexandria. The library is modern looking. The original library was rather unlucky when it came to fires. Regarded as one of the great libraries of antiquity, Julius Caesar was the first fire starter in 48 BC. He burnt his own ships which then burnt the Egyptian ships which then set fire to other stuff in the city including the library. Julius was seen sloping off muttering, “oh shit”. 

Next it was a fort that we didn’t go in, a mosque that we weren’t allowed to go in, and an amphitheater that we didn’t want to go in, on this whistle stop tour. We settled up with Mustafa and dispensed with his services. The walk back wasn’t too far and we passed some interesting sights and general untidiness. I was persuaded to buy a packet of magnets. Six of them. Who are earth needs six magnets from Alexandria?

Driving in Alexandria looks challenging. Jaywalking seems to be the national sport, and why on earth they paint lines for traffic lanes was a mystery. 

The main coastal road is the Alexandria Corniche which is the longest corniche in the world at 26 km. The Lighthouse of Alexandria was one of the ancient seven wonders of the world, but it was destroyed in the 14th century by an earthquake. The city was established in 331 BC making it considerably older than Milton Keynes. Today it is home to around 6 million people, second only to Cairo. Alexandria was named after Alexander the Great. Cleopatra VII was born in Alexandria and died there 38/9 years later after ruling for 20 years. She was the daughter of Ptolemy XII and an uncertain mother. Nice! I bet after going through childbirth, she was certain. 

I concluded my day out with a beer. I needed to have an “Ice Cold in Alex”, following in the footsteps of Captain Anson in the 1958 film. It tasted bloody awful. 

I watched the masses return from their Cairo jolly and pitied them in the longest queue I’ve seen since Friday. It was my fifth or sixth trip to Egypt, and I still haven’t seen Cairo. 

Sunday was Limassol’s turn to offer hospitality to 2000 bewildered tourists. Limassol is located on the south coast and is the largest port in Cyprus. There was a shuttle to town, around 20 minutes away, but we opted for a portly taxi driver. It helps having a Greek speaker with me. 

He dropped us in the Old Town and we moseyed around for a few hours. It was super weather and for some reason there were literally hundreds of Indian looking females in saris. I asked one of them and apparently it was a Nepalese festival. I didn’t know that Nepalese girls held festivals in Cyprus, but I do now. 

 

We found a castle that looked like it had been designed by an unimaginative architect. 

Then is was a few beers in an interesting bar – Ice Cold in Limassol, before returning to the ship. 

I achieved a perfect score in 80’s music trivia, but so did other teams and I lost on the tie break. 

On Monday we landed in Antalya, Turkey. It was a fairly large city of 1.3 million people, and it was a fairly shlep in a taxi to the Old Town. I liked it a great deal and I could definitely spend more time in Antalya. I bought a few manageable items, unlike Dimitra who bought two rugs that she couldn’t carry. It rather curtailed our time in Antalya. 

The taxi there and back was the same price as the shuttle there and back. It made little sense that people would choose the shuttle unless they were travelling solo. 

In the evening I joined some other chaps playing poker on an electronic table. As usual, I was out fairly quickly.