Wed Oct 16, 2024
Hi All! Well we cruised further south from Istanbul and it got warmer. It was sunny and 82 today, very nice weather. Today we are docked in Izmir, Turkey.
Izmir is a city on Turkey’s Aegean coast. Known as Smyrna in antiquity, it was founded by the Greeks, taken over by the Romans and rebuilt by Alexander the Great before becoming part of the Ottoman Empire in the 15th century. Today, its expansive archaeological sites include the Roman Agora of Smyrna, now an open-air museum. The hilltop Kadifekale, or Velvet Castle, built during Alexander’s reign, overlooks the city. It is the third most populous city in Turkey, after Istanbul and Ankara with a population of 2.9 million.
İzmir has more than 3,000 years of recorded urban history, and up to 8,500 years of history as a human settlement since the Neolithicperiod. In other words, that’s a very, very long time!
We had signed up to take a tour thru Regent but it was 7 hours long and involved a lot of riding on the bus. So we decided we’d just take the free Regent shuttle bus into the town square and walk around on our own.
We first saw the huge clock tower they have as well as the tiny little mosque next to it. We then walked thru the Kemeralti Bazaar. They said it had 2,400 shops (less than the 4,000 at the Grand Bazaar in Istanbul) and it was fun to “get lost” down the little alleyways between the shops!
We also looked inside the Hisar Mosque which was nice but nothing like Hagia Sofia in Istanbul. We then caught the bus back to the ship and had lunch.
After lunch we played two of their games. One was called speedball but was really just a tabletop version of Skeeball. Kathy did good and came in 2nd and I choked and came in last! Then we played what they called skittles but was just bowling with small pins. We did good with me coming in 2nd and Kathy coming in 3rd. It was fun!
We then got ready early for dinner since we were invited to the Seven Seas Society Pre-Dinner Cocktail Party for those who have sailed Regent before. It was nice but it was mostly people standing around talking about their Rolls Royce’s, their villas in the South of France and their million dollar investments in gold. You know, the usual cruise passengers. Lol. Just kidding!
I’ll post an update after dinner. As our Italian Captain always says, “Ciao for Now”!
The Wandering Italian 