Mediterranean Cruises

Sailing the Wine Dark Seas

Following the adventure described in an earlier story called "Lost in the Alps," I stayed with my parents for a couple of weeks on the Cote d'Azur, enjoying the sun and beautiful scenery in a small resort called Baie des Anges. When they left for home, I travelled by train to Venice to take another Mediterranean cruise, this time aboard a Greek ship, the T.S.S. Navarino. It would take me to some different places from my earlier cruise—Istanbul, Santorini, Dubrovnik, Corfu. When I reached the dock in Venice I felt reassured by the size of the vessel—it was a regular cruise ship, formerly called the Kungsholm of Swedish American Line.

Passengers were mostly European but included some Americans with whom I was seated at dinner. There was a family of three generations of women from California, a nice couple of about my age from New Jersey, and another mother and daughter. The Captain was a large, ebullient man with curly dark hair who fancied himself a ladies' man and clearly enjoyed his job greatly. After dinner, we all repaired to the lounge for entertainment.

 Corfu, a small island off the coast of Albania that belongs to Greece, was our first port. It is an unusually verdant Greek island noted for its Casino and Venetian-style architecture. In the distance, we could see Albania, a country that was virtually closed to visitors under Communist dictator Enver Hoxja. We could even spy some of the bunkers which he ordered placed all along the coastline of his mountainous country. We also stopped in Athens, where rather than take an excursion I hopped on the Metro in Piraeus and headed downtown, then walked up to the wonderful Acropolis with its Temple of Athena and museum.

I made friends with the young woman who was travelling with her mother. She was friendly and energetic, speaking of her life in California. She talked about a then-recent Mel Brooks movie set in an insane asylum. Later on, I realized she may have been an in-patient at the asylum. When we docked in Athens, attendants came on board and she was taken off the ship and to a waiting ambulance in a stretcher. I asked her mother what had happened, and she said she was ill and needed to be hospitalised. Apparently she was manic-depressive, and her fast talk and high energy were connected with the manic phase of the illness. Her mother carried on with the cruise.

Santorini was my favourite stop of this voyage. The island formerly known as Thera was the site of an enormous volcano eruption in ancient times, and ships dock in the picturesque harbour that is two-thirds enclosed by the spookily dark high cliffs of the island. We had to take tenders to reach shore, then ride donkeys up a winding path to the top, where whitewashed buildings with blue trim and tile roofs stood glistening in the sun. There wasn't a lot to see in Santorini, but it is a truly beautiful island.

Sailing through the Aegean, I tried to remember Homer's Odyssey, with its tale of the hero who roamed these seas in search of redemption. My favourite phrases from the translated version I read were about "sailing the wine dark seas" and about "rosy-fingered dawn" breaking over them. Just being out on the water was pleasure enough, and the port stops were an added attraction. In Istanbul I revisited Hagia Sofia, the enormous Byzantine church that it now a mosque, and the Blue Mosque. Topkapi Palace is always intriguing, and what I liked most was the Sultan's collection of porcelain from all over the known world. We also made landfall at Izmir, the port for ancient Ephesus. Ephesus is a well-preserved ancient city, especially known for its Temple of Diana, the goddess of the hunt. Not far away is a small cottage which, according to tradition, was the final home of the Virgin Mary, when she lived there with St. John, the favourite disciple of Jesus. It is altogether a fascinating place surrounded by trees in an arid landscape and with an air of sanctity.

The walled city of Dubrovnik was our final stop before returning to Venice. I can't recall much about this port stop, although I remember a more recent visit to the city in 1989 very clearly. On the later visit, we stayed at a luxury hotel outside the walls and my balcony was in the pine trees. I enjoyed sitting there breathing in their wonderful scent. This was during a convention of the Society of American Travel Writers, not long before the outbreak of the war that fractured the then-Communist country of Yugoslavia into its constituent parts, but not without an enormous amount of bloodshed and suffering. I opted to visit Croatia and Serbia, the two countries that were at the centre of the conflict.

When we docked back in Venice, I planned to take a plane north to Amsterdam. However, on arriving at the airport I discovered my passport was missing. I telephoned the U.S. consulate in Trieste, and learned they would not be open for a couple of days--it was the weekend. So I took a taxi back to the ship, very worried. Luckily, the steward had found the passport while cleaning my cabin, and I was able to proceed on my way. I had, however, missed my plane. I decided to take the train instead, and remember being awakened during the night and told to change to a different car--in my stressed-out state, I had boarded a car that was not headed to Amsterdam.

Unfortunately, the Navarino did not sail for long. A year or two after my trip, she burned in dry dock.