Turkish ports from the Star Clipper

Posted by Thane
When we arrived back at our ship in Alexandria, Egypt there seemed to be some delay in our sail away. After quite a few hours and much whispering among staff we heard that we would NOT be leaving Egypt today. Usually an itinerary would not be changed for anything so everyone was a bit nervous about staying in this port without knowing why. The next morning we received our "official" announcement from the ship that we were sailing without a flag and that the Egyptian port officials wouldn't let us sail until it was taken care of. The main office for Star Clipper had arranged for us to change registration from Luxemborg to Malta while we were in port for two days in Alexandria. Apparently the inspector from Malta didn't get the message in time. We were without registration and through much discussion the port officials let us stay out at anchor in Egyptian waters until it was taken care of.

Sailing again

Finally after two days awaiting the Maltese inspector and being wooed by the Star Clipper staff with an open bar and free internet access, he showed up by private jet. It was an eight hour inspection, but the authorities let us sail while he completed it.  We never saw him or else I would have posted a pic of him doing whatever it is he does. We did lose three ports in the process - Limmasol, Crete; Antalya, Turkey; and Dalyon River, Turkey.  Those ports were replaced with Marmoris, Turkey and Patmos, Greece.  With the passengers well placated and two extra days at sea, all was well and we were back on our sailing adventure. We managed to entertain ourselves quite well.

Egyptian night

Tom

George

Alina

Jennifer

We all dressed up in our best imitation Egyptian clothes.

Tom, our fearless leader

George, our resident Egyptologist,

Beautiful Alina, and

Jennifer, looking just like Elizabeth Taylor.

Melissa and Rolando

Rupert

From our new stop in Marmoris there was a tour to Dalyon River. We didn't take it because we would be back in a few weeks with more time to spend. This was our first stop in Turkey and we were excited to find out more since we would be spending three months in this country.

The shopping bazaar in Marmaris kind of reminded me of the Galleria in Milan, except Turkey style.  We were invited in for tea many times.

Walking the back streets of Marmoris we had many photo opportunities and met some beautiful Turkish ladies on the way.

Here I am doing my best Carnac impression while Melissa is busy learning HTML in her new found office.

Our next port was Bodrum where we went to the Castle of the Knights of St. John and the Underwater Museum which is actually not underwater but a collection of artifacts that were found in sunken ships.

These are wine Amphoras that stacked easily in the bottom of the ships. The next photo is the view of Bodrum from the top of the Castle.

We stopped for lunch on our way out of Bodrum. 

When we arrived in Kusadasi most passengers went to Ephesus but since we would be back here the next week we rode a dolmus up to Selcuk where our first hotel was booked.  Up to this point we have been on a two week cruise with friends.  In just a few days, we will begin our personal adventure of 6 months touring through Turkey, Italy and Spain. We decided that we wanted to check out the town that we had chosen for our first week. We met the owner of the hotel and he showed us all the rooms and gave us a choice.  We chose a room with a balcony overlooking the Mosque and the Castle for a total of $53/day.

When we arrived back at the ship we had an evening of local folk and belly dancers to entertain us, a great evening.

We finished our two week cruise with our friends by returning to Athens on the ship.  We stayed on the ship with the crew while they did the changeover and filled up all the appropriate tanks. We stayed busy surfing the net and sunbathing on deck.  The next group of passengers arrived and out we went for a two day sail back to Kusadasi.
Next up, our week in Selcuk.