Category: Venice and the Med 2012

We stayed at the Grand Bretagne In Athens, which gave us time to savor a luxury hotel–and to spend time in the national archeological museum.  What a treat before the trek back to Bloomington. And ending the trip with a dinner on the rooftop of the Grand Bretagne, with the Acropolis in full view!

August 3, 2012

Yesterday’s highlight was Ephesus, a city that from around the time of
Alexander until the Mediterranean silted and “moved” the harbor two miles away (600 years later) was one of the great cities of the ancient
world. It’s certainly one of the great ruins today, with plumbing (a
communal toilet and sewer system) that medieval Europe would have envied. It was reputedly the place where Mary spent her last years and is buried. The 25000 seat theater still houses events. The library is one of the most recognizable ruins of the Greek World.  The city was also home to early Christian proselytizing.

An extra treat was that the port is Kusadasi, Turkey, whose bazaar is the second largest in Turkey–and after Cairo, a clean and friendly place. The
guide was quick to point out that in 1924, Ataturk, the founder of modern Turkey, created a secular Muslim state, separating Church and
State; “Turks,” she sniffed, “don’t wait for the government to do things
for them, unlike the Egyptians. You’ll notice when the stores opened,
people were cleaning the entrances themselves.”

August 3, 2012 Retrospective in 2024

I knew we were in for a different experience when we arrived in Alexandria, Egypt.  While I would have loved to spend time in that ancient city, it would have been criminal to have skipped Cairo and the pyramids if we were in Egypt.  Speaking of criminals, an armed escort joined our buses and escorted us to the hotel in Cairo.  What an introduction!

We stopped at the Saladin Citadel, built to protect the city from the Crusaders in 1176,  but it was the seat of government for 700 years, including the reign of Mohammed Ali in the 19th century, who threw off the Ottoman yoke. Ali reconquered Egypt from the French, and founded a dynasty that ended with the overthrow of King Farouk’s son in 1953.

Cairo is a city of 22 million, but it’s really third world.  Perhaps my view was colored by the garbage strike that occurred when we were there, but we were quartered in a five star hotel in sight of the pyramids.  The swimming pool afforded great shots of the nearby pyramids.

We also went on a Nile cruise in the city, but the true piece de resistance is of course the pyramids of Giza.  Once the tallest buildings in the world, the Pyramids have withstood weather and looting for 4,500 years.  Built by slave labor to house the remains of the Pharaohs, the Pyramids have over 6 million bricks, each about 2.5 tons each, moved without much technology. In front of the Pyramid sits the enigmatic Sphinx, human head, lion body.  It apparently predates the Pyramids, but supposedly looks like one of the pharaohs buried at Giza.

What was most impressive to me was that, while close to Giza (Egypt’s third largest city, behind Cairo and Alexandria), if you look West, there’s almost nothing you can see until you get to the Atlantic Ocean.

 

August 1, 2012

From the beginning to the end? The alpha and omega of our trip to Israel

We spent two days in Israel, which. for a boat trip, is a long time; of course, it barely scratched the surface.

Most of the time was spent following the steps of Jesus, which accounts for the alpha and the omega (the first and last letters of the Greek alphabet) in the heading.  We got off the ship in Haifa, and went to Galilee, then stayed on the west bank until Jerusalem, then went to Bethlehem.  Thus, we saw where  Christ was born (Church of the Nativity in Bethlehem, in an area under Palestinian administration), where   he grew up in Nazareth (and where Mary learned she was to bear Jesus–Annunciation), where he preached (Mount of Beatitudes), where he was betrayed, and where he was crucified (the Church of the Sepulcher, and the Via Dolorosa).  I’ll have another comment, but one of the most interesting places to me was the Mount of Beatitudes, where our guide suggested Christianity began because Christ drew a crowd of 5000 who followed his preaching for the first time.

Because of the importance of Jerusalem (especially) to Judaism, and its role as the third Holy city of Islam, both their religious sites made our itinerary, too.  The Wailing Wall—the remnant of the Temple area where the two great synagogues of antiquity stood—featured an evening visit during which Orthodox Jews were, ironically, mourning the destruction of both temples (the 9^th day of the 9^th month), as well as one during the day.  As mosques point to Mecca, synagogues point to Jerusalem, and the synagogues within Jerusalem point to the Wailing Wall.  Of course, since 1967 and the end of the 6 day war, all of Jerusalem is part of Israel, and the democratic/theocracy of Orthodox Jews who run the country (more or less) have stamped some of the laws—for example, our hotel had a “Sabbath elevator”; when I asked what that was, I was told it was an elevator that automatically stopped at every floor, without anyone indicating a floor, since pushing it was “work,” which is forbidden on the Sabbath for Orthodox Jews.  We also stopped in a Kibbutz, which dated from the late 1930s, for a kosher meal; since we had meat dishes (the farm raises cows), we had a flavored ice desert, not ice cream.

The main Muslim site is the Church of the Rock, sacred to Muslims because that’s where Mohammed was supposed to have ascended to Heaven (and to Jews because it is where God tested Abraham by asking him to sacrifice Isaac). It is pretty much off limits to tourists, however; we were told that you have to recite the Koran to gain admittance.  For many years (really until the British mandate over Palestine after World War I), Jerusalem was under Muslim rule after the fall of the Byzantine empire.  The Kingdom of Jerusalem lasted about 200 years after the first crusade, rebuilding many of the churches the Muslims destroyed, but the Muslim reconquest again turned many of the churches into mosques, or destroyed them again.  Hence, many of the churches on sacred sites are fairly recent constructions, though many include remnants of those built by Empress Helena (Constantine’s mother who helped him decide on the conversion of the Empire into a Christian state), and those of the crusaders.

I was a little surprised at the nature of old Jerusalem, a city of 750,000, like Israel itself, roughly 80% Jewish.  A wall built by the Ottoman emperor Suleiman the Magnificent surrounds it, which you might have seen on the news because Mr. Romney was here,  and   walking in the old city, one goes from quarters to quarters—there’s an Armenian quarter (Armenia was the first Christian country), a Muslim quarter, and a Jewish quarter—along with ruins from the Romans, and even King David, who founded Jerusalem around 1000 BC.  There was some pretty neat shopping—and it says something about the tourist mix that there were Sox, Cubs and Bulls tshirts in English—and Hebrew.  At 3000 feet above the Jordan valley (which is around 1000 feet below sea level), it was a lot cooler–thankfully.

As for the Christian holy sites, their administration reflects, I think, the divisions that sometimes plague Christianity itself— there are usually three groups—Catholics (usually the Franciscans), the Greek Orthodox (you can easily tell their part of the church by the icons), and the Armenians, but sometimes others such as the Coptic Christians (of Egypt), Assyrians, etc. There’s a ladder in the Church of the Holy Sepulcher, for example, that the Armenians used until the 1870s to enter the church from an adjacent building, until a truce allowed them to use the front door like everyone else. The ladder has remained in place, however, because the three groups haven’t been able to decide who should move it. The Muslim-other position can be perhaps defined by their closing of the Dome of the Rock to nonbelievers; and the Muslim-Jewish position was suggested by our guide from the Jewish side, when he pointed out a synagogue in the old city was destroyed when the Muslims took the city; when the Jews returned, they did not destroy the mosque, but rebuilt the temple next door.  And across from the Church of the Holy Sepulcher (through the checkpoint to get into Palestinian authority land) there’s not only a new mosque, but a poster of an armed Palestinian warrior with the challenge to restore and reunite….wouldn’t it be wonderful if there were peace among the religions in the holy land, as a step toward peace on Earth?

 

 

Breaking our voyage from Dubrovnik to Haifa was a stop at the island of Patmos.  With the city of Chora (and a population under 4,000)  this Dodecanese island is a pilgrimage site for Greek Orthodox because it is where John of Patmos received visions of the Book of Revelations in a cave, and where he composed the Book of Revelations in the New Testament.  The Monastery dates from 1088 and includes fortifications designed to thwart Turkish attacks on the island, though it fell to the Turks eventually (then to the Italians) and finally joined Greece in 1948.

I was looking for Ragusa
July 25-26, 2012
My contribution to our vacation (yes, David, I did become Scoutmaster because I couldn’t dictate family vacations!) was the Adriatic coast; I had wanted to explore this battleground between East and West for a long time. Carolyn, by contrast, wanted the Egypt-Israel part of this cruise. So yesterday, Ragusa, was on my bucket list.

Justifiably so. If there’s anything better than being on the ocean or touring a fort, it’s touring a fort on the ocean. Only this fort encloses the old walled city of Ragusa. When it wasn’t enduring a major earthquake (1677) flattening the city, or substantial shelling from the Yugoslav army in 1991 (the “aggressors” our guide insisted), or under someone else’s rule (early, and after 1806, when it invited Napoleon’s troops in to prevent destruction of the city, which led to it becoming part of Austria after the Congress of Vienna—1815, then part of Yugoslavia after the end of World War I, then part of Croatia after 1991), the city known then as Ragusa was an independent aristocratic republic ala Venice, which also claimed it for a time.

The result is a sun-baked old city that is under UNESCO protection for its quaint collection of buildings, relics, and above all, the wall. The city’s saint is Vlaho in Slavic, Blasius in Latin, which rather indicates we’re on the edge between the East and West, still Catholic, but with a nod to its Byzantine heritage, and a little to its Slavic ancestry as well.

Three prominent sites were part of our tour—the Franciscan and Dominican chapels and monasteries, with the oldest pharmacy in Europe (the plagues and their aftermaths were the source of many of the
churches in Europe) and the Cathedral with its relics—including gold-encased relics of St. Vlaho—his leg and arm. The star, however, was the city itself, and the prominent wall that surrounds the old city. The aqueduct system is a work of art as well, with world heritage reservoirs and fountains. The only building on the main street from the glory days of the republic was a customs house; with a portico, it gave a hint of what the city must have looked like before the earthquake of 1677—Venetian. After the earthquake, the other houses were rebuilt in a standard style, attractive, but without the frills of flamboyant Gothic and Renaissance period palaces. Interestingly, the old clock tower has a bell that rings on the hour—and three minutes later, giving a Mediterranean area comment on punctuality.

Ragusa’s claim to fame, though, was that it was a trading city, rather like Venice, but unlike Venice, sought to be neutral in war-torn Europe, rather like Switzerland with a fleet. Thus, the city had over 80 consulates at one time, and seems to have maintained good relations with Constantinople, even after that city fell into the hands of the Turks, a neutrality that lasted throughout the history of the Ragusa Republic (that is, until Napoleon ended its independence).  It was the first “country” to recognize the independent United States.

If you are looking for Ragusa, you won’t find it on the maps today, though. Its name now is Dubrovnik, the entrance on this cruise to a new world—Greece and the Middle East (or part of what was called the Orient. That’s one reason why, in our hour of free time, after circumnavigating the city on the wall, I ran back to catch the Jesuit Church—probably the last chance on this trip to view a Baroque church, and one that I was told was “the best Baroque church in town.” I am now Baroque!

July 24, 2012

I guess I’m fickle, since I found a new fancy today—an overnight sail to Ravenna and Bologna, and now I’m infatuated with those two Italian cities.

Bologna claimed my allegiance because it is the home of the first university in Europe—1088 was the origin of a school of anatomy and law (religion, apparently, was too serious to be left to the universities). Today, it houses 90,000 students, which is staggering in a city of 500,000.  Fortunately, the school was in recess, so the traffic rather resembles Bloomington Normal in July—rather light.  We exited the bus at the tombs of the first three professors, which are impressive indeed, from the days when professors were esteemed.  Furthermore, in the old library, faculty got to create and draw their own coat of arms, another European idea that would look pretty neat on the IWU campus—if we couldn’t build buildings that looked like they were from the 14^th century!  The most impressive one to me was an old castle, that after one of the many wars, became a palace with a new façade, constructed over two time periods, on one side.  I never before realized the difference between Romanesque and Gothic (especially flaming Gothic) until I saw them side by side—rather plain, square, and ornate arches and circles over the windows.

One amusing and sort of frightening event.  I was engrossed in the faulty coat of arms, but saw that our tour director from the boat was equally absorbed.  However, when we were ready to leave, we realized our guide had taken our group to the lunch stop. The Ukrainian tour director spoke no Italian, but we flagged down a police car.  One of the officers had been born in New York (he said he was the only English speaker on the force).  He called the boat, found out where our lunch was, and took us to the restaurant.  Happily, I did not have to spend the rest of my life in Bologna.

The other building worth going to Bologna to see is a massive cathedral, partially finished, in Gothic style, that the people of Bologna wanted to raise the money for themselves, and raised enough to start building the cathedral.  They wanted it big, and it was so big that the Pope intervened and said that no Church can be bigger than St. Peter.  It was never finished, but the city’s residents have exhibited some liberal tendencies (it was a hub of the communist party after World War II, and there were some terrorist bombings in the 60s and 70s).  The church is also renowned for a painting picturing Mohammed in hell, a picture which after 9/11 has the church under tight security (that along with the recent earthquake which closed a number of sites for repair).

Bologna is around 60 miles inland from Ravenna, the city where our boat was docked (actually, the city was on the Adriatic in Roman times, but the ocean had filled in, and it now sits 6 miles or so from the port). I was interested in Ravenna for its historical importance: after the split of the Roman Empire between Constantinople and Rome, the Romans eventually moved the capital to Ravenna,  which was far easier to defend against the northern tribes. It was, in fact, the last capital of the Roman Empire.  Theodoric I, an Ostrogoth, conquered the city and added something different to it: a form of Christianity that held Jesus was not one of the trinity, but the son of God.  That sort of doctrinal challenge to Catholicism, branded Arianism, was banished at the Council of Nicea in the 4^th century, but some of the sites in Ravenna managed to escape the order to destroy all Arian churches and mosaics.  The two (of eight) Unesco sites we visited were not Arian, but had what art historians argue is the best preserved Byzantine icons.  One set was in a church, where it portrayed the Byzantine Emperor who restored (Eastern) Roman rule, Justinian, and his wife, Theodora, whose accession from dancer to Empress scandalized the Christian world (The Empire became Christian when Constantine converted early in the 4^th century).  The bits of colored glass put together to depict Christianity, so characteristic of Byzantium, are among the best preserved in the world, and almost 8 centuries earlier than those in Hagia Sophia in Istanbul.

How I wish I had spent more time in Ravenna than in Bologna, but at least I have seen both.

We’re at sea on our way to my next favorite—Dubrovnik.

July 24, 2012 (retrospective from 2024)

I can see why visitors flock to Venice–to the point where the citizens of the Serene Republic have limited access to increasingly expensive housing, and have sought ways to reduce the number of visitors.  Tour boats have been shunted to Trieste and other ports to take some of the pressure off Venice.

The city is certainly historic, scenic, and unique. Before commerce shifted from the Mediterranean to the Atlantic, Venice vied for leadership with other Italian city states.  As party to the 4th Crusade in 1204, which conquered and looted and ruled Byzantium, Venice acquired many artefacts from Constantinople, which now grace places like St. Mark’s in Venice.  Two that come to mind are the four horses that graced the Hippodrome in Constantinople, and the Portrait of the Tetrarchs, celebrating Diocletian’s efforts to make the unruly Roman empire manageable by dividing it into east and west and having assistants. Napoleon took the four horses to Paris as spoils of war, but the French returned them as part of the Vienna treaties, which ended the Napoleonic Wars–and the independence of Venice.  There are, however, over 800 items in the Treasury in St. Mark’s Cathedral that were further east before the 13th century.

Set in a lagoon on land that is apparently sinking, Venice is a pastiche of colors, churches, and palaces, best accessed on foot or by boat.  No trip to the city is complete without a gondola ride–and even our hotel had a boat entrance.

The city also housed the first ghetto in Europe, remnants of which are still extant.

What I loved about the city is that it’s a wonderful place to wander.  You’d spot some intriguing doorway, open it, be treated to baroque artwork, and wonder why it wasn’t in the Lonely Planet.  I finally realized if the Lonely Planet listed everything worth seeing in Venice, it would be in a book that filled the Library of Congress.  With the waterways, too, I couldn’t go too far in any direction.  If you wanted to go somewhere else, such as Murano, home of famous glass blowing, you had to take a water taxi.  No wonder the bridge got a lot of foot traffic!