What We Learned in Venice

As your diligent correspondent, I want to wrap up the report on our visit to the Aegean and Adriatic with a handful of comments on Venice.

We enjoyed the city much more than we expected to. The palaces are magical. The paintings and statues are overwhelming. The prices are breathtaking.

Getting around is good exercise and, when the crowds are lighter (as they were this time of year), and good fun. We never realized that all those gently-arcing footbridges over the canals actually have steps on either side, so every three minutes or so we were adding more aerobics to our workout.

We had been warned that, as non-residents, we would have to pay 6.50 euros every time we boarded a vaporetto (water bus), which are the best way to circumnavigate the islands. And if any of the boatmen had actually collected a ticket from us (or, from what we could see, anyone else entering and exiting the boats), we would have been a lot poorer after three days -- but it must have been vacation season for the ticket-takers.

San Marco was pleasant on a cool, quiet Sunday morning in late October. After the obligatory walkabout and shuffling through pigeons, we took a table at Grand Caffe Quadri, one of the two original cafes on the square, and for $50 enjoyed a cappuccino and the music of two neighboring caffe orchestras, the Quadri's five-piece band (piano, violin, clarinet, guitar and the all-important accordion) and the similar Caffe Florian combo. They take ten-minute shifts playing little thematic sets (Italian folks songs, bossa nova, American show tunes, and so on). And when their ten minutes is up, that's it -- even if they're in the middle of a number.

Once you've done your San Marco thing, get away from the oppressive retailing atmosphere and head for the neighborhoods. We took a walking tour of Dorsodouro (where we stayed), the finger of land that separates the Grand Canal from the Giudecca. We wandered by the longtime home of Ezra Pound, the original harlot district, the university neighborhood, the gondola maintenance shop (which has an Alpine-like wood facade reflecting the architecture of Alto Aldige to the north), and the main craftsman of forcole (the odd-shaped carvings that hold the gondolier's oars in place, more of which are sold as decorative souvenirs than for the boats themselves). An even more entertaining walking tour of the Cannaregio included a visit to a small brass foundry (where they used to make the hood ornaments for Jaguars), a Venetian printer (Gianni Basso, about whom more below), a marble workshop in Tintoretto's old studio, and other hidden pleasures.

Being introduced to a character like Gianni Basso (or, as he call himself, "Gianni Gutenberg"), is the kind of kick that makes city-wandering fun. He owns thousands and thousands of old carved printing plates, and an endless trove of typefonts. He does small-run specialty printing, setting the type and inking the plates by hand with classic colors like Venetian red. His window features calling cards he's done for Hugh Grant and Gael Greene, music plates for Michael Tilson Thomas, and on and on, a global clientele with whom he will only work in person -- no PCs, no faxes. Sometime next month, we'll be the proud owner of Gianni Gutenberg calling cards.

The secret to getting your "gondola ride" without having to fork over bags of euros is to hop aboard the traghetti, little, genuine gondolas rowed by little, genuine gondoliers, that operate as short-hop shuttles across key points on the Grand Canal and elsewhere. Forty euro-cents a ride. In fact, this article on touring Venice by traghetto (which ran in The Wall Street Journal while we were in Venice) looks like a terrific off-the-beaten-path itinerary, and incorporates segments of our own adventure.

We enjoyed our visits to the Accademia (currently undergoing extensive renovations, but wonderfully easy access to its 13-17 c. paintings at this time of year) and the Peggy Guggenheim (with her modern art collection arrayed in a beautiful canalfront setting). But this was our favorite Venetian painting story:

In Santa Maria Assunta church in the residential neighborhood of Cannaregio, there is stunning carved marble and marble inlay intended to mimic the look of Venetian velvet. There are works by Venetian masters including Tintoretto ("The Assumption of Mary") and Titian. The latter's "Martyrdom of San Lorenzo" is a fine example of the artist's work in chiaroscuro. San Lorenzo (St. Lawrence), we learned, is the patron saint of chefs and comedians. He is depicted being burned alive (hence "chefs') by the Romans, lying on a fiery grate and reaching his hand upward -- but, they say, he's not pleading to God for mercy, but instead is saying, "Turn me over, I'm already done on this side."

Our only real disappointment with Venice -- it's difficult to eat well there. Everything has to be shipped in (as one guide said, "Venice produces only one thing: rubbish"). Maybe because it's trapped in a culinary no-man's land between the Germanic bread-and-fryers and the Adriatic catch-and-grillers, they don't seem to have any indigenous dishes of note (I love calves' liver, but "Venetian style" with onions or figs and polenta left me cold). Our most satisfying meals were comprised of cicheti (tapas) at the neighborhood wine bars.

We will be back -- but we may pack a lunch.

A "Taste" of Reality at the Googleplex

In September, I blogged about my visit to Google's headquarters in Silicon Valley, where I marveled at the quality of free food and drink available anywhere on campus at all hours (as well as the bikes, helmets and umbrellas by every door, and the remarkable, if slightly singeing, heated toilet seats). Well, it looks like the new economic realities have even reached the Googleplex. The New York Post reports -- at Google's New York offices, at least -- a cutback in cafe hours, the elimination of afternoon tea, and other concessions... including limits on free food for guests! I apologize to the Googlers if the fact that I was seen leaving with Power Bars and Honest Tea stuffed in my coat caused this reconsideration of policy.

No Dogs, No Guns, No Ice Cream

In the waning days of our visit to the Aegean and the Adriatic, time flew too quickly, and I couldn't find a few minutes to post. Let me share a few observations about the Balkans, and later in the week I'll come back to what we learned about Venice in three nights (and about 50,000 steps).

*We popped into a few fragments of Tito's Yugoslavia -- Kotor, a beautiful seaport town on the coast of Montenegro (the 192nd member of the United Nations, admitted two years ago), followed by Split and Rovinj ("ro-VEEN," or in Italian, Rovigno) in Croatia.

*You'll hear a lot about Croatia and Montenegro being "the new and undiscovered Riviera." Listen to those people. These areas feature some lovely coastlines (some of which has, unfortunately, already given way to Costa do Sol-style overdevelopment), stunning mountains (Kotor is a fortified town tucked in against a mountain that soars 2000 feet almost straight up from the sea), and fascinating history (most of Split's old town is built within the substantial remnants of the palace of the fourth-century Roman emperor Diocletian -- the only Roman emperor ever to retire, and thus to die reasonably happy)... oh, and some very good cheese (fresh farmer's cheeses seem to be a mainstay here) and seafood (if you find yourself in Kotor, grab a table at Galion just outside the city's walls on the fjord and enjoy the best grilled calamari you'll ever taste).

*Croatians are a tall people. I am accustomed to walking through ancient European tourist zones and ducking the low clearances. In Croatia, I had plenty of company -- both men and women. (I followed one rail-thin blonde for a block to try to figure out whether she was taller than me, but her gait was so fast that I'm just about certain she was -- or that she thought she was being followed.) Now I understand why the NBA has so much Croatian talent.

*One of my favorite parts of any trip abroad usually has something to do with music, and this trip was no exception. As I walked through the emperor's gate in Diocletian's palace in Split, I saw five young men in denims assembling themselves in a niche in an open-roofed, egg-shaped hall. One of them sounded a chord on a harmonium, and the men launched into the sonorous harmonies of Croatian folk songs. Some of their chords and phrasing reminded me of emotional Eastern hymns, but there were a few moments where they sounded like an American doo-wop group. I bought their CD (though I've got the feeling it may have been their older brothers, as it was recorded at the Radio Split studios in 1999), which I've added to my small collection of great street music of the world.

*My favorite signs in Croatia: three symbolic decals on the windows of a hotel with the universal red circle and slash that signified "no dogs, no guns, no ice cream."

*We were struck by the fact that as we sat at cafes by the ports in these towns, we always saw at least one middle-aged or older fellow walk by in a nicely-cut suit, with a fedora, a pocket square, and the look of someone who is ready to talk his way into someone's heart or wallet. "Dirty Rotten Scoundrels," Ann joked. (Which was actually the Cote d'Azur, but point taken).

*The Balkans are (rightly and sadly) synonymous with political instability, and things are no different in the 21st century. A couple of days after we left Croatia, there were bombings in the capital of Zagreb that killed some journalists. And just a few days before we arrived in Montenegro, there were demonstrations in the capital of Podgorica opposing Montenegro's recognition of the breakaway nation of Kosovo (which wants to say goodbye to Serbia). While in Kotor, I picked up a copy of The Montenegro Times, a weekly English-language newspaper (with a couple of pages in Russian), and flipped through it to get some sense of what was on the minds of Montenegrins. I came across a story in which the metropolitan (equivalent to bishop) of the Serbian Orthodox Church warned Montenegro against recognizing Kosovo, despite the fact that the EU is inclined to do so. If you don't appreciate how deeply the passions run about religious, ethnic and political matters in the Balkans, take a deep breath and read the following paragraph (quoted in the Times) from the metropolitan's letter to the leaders of Montenegro:

"You have the historic responsibility to decide whether, following the path of St. Petar Cetinjski and King Nikola, you will save honor and preserve the dignity of Montenegro, its righteousness and freedom, which our country rests upon, or, God forbid, you will set a mark of disgrace on its face, and adorn it with such shame and humiliation that has never been seen in the centuries-long history of chivalry and strong character."

Makes our rhetorical brawls back home look pretty tame.

Piccolo Mondo

There are six billion people on earth, but it's astonishing how frequently you find yourself talking with someone who has intersected with someone else in your life.

During our just-concluded trip to Europe, we had quite a number of "piccolo mondo" episodes. Here are just four that happened in the last few days:

*On the ship, we befriended a delightful couple from New Zealand. Over dinner last Thursday night, we learned that the gentleman once served as prime minister. He said he has also been a Constitutional lawyer and teacher, and that he and his wife had once lived in Iowa when he taught at the University of Iowa Law School. I asked whether they might ever have met Nick Johnson, an FCC commissioner under President Johnson, whose work influenced Ann and me to get involved in communications policy decades ago; I knew that Nick was a long-time member of the Iowa Law faculty. Turns out they knew Nick well enough to have been his guests for Thanksgiving dinner back in Iowa.

*We took a walking tour through the Cannaregio siestri (district) of Venice. Our guide was a young graduate student of the art of Renaissance from Arizona. He brought us into a dusty workshop (which had served as Tintoretto's studio centuries ago) where men wearing handmade hats of folded newspaper were cutting and carving marble into tombstones for the city cemetery on the nearby island of San Michele. Our guide pointed out the maestro of the shop, a near-deaf 94-year-old man who stood silently as he delicately chiseled the face of an angel into stone. We struck up a conversation with another stoneworker, a man of our age. Upon learning that we were Americans, he reported that he has a nephew who owns a restaurant in Los Angeles on La Brea Boulevard. "What's it called?" our young guide asked. "Al Angelo," the man said. "Wow!" our guide said. "When I lived in L.A., I worked in that restaurant. Piccolo mondo!"

*We were waiting in line at Gatwick for a transfer to Heathrow. I was wearing a fleece jacket promoting the U.S. Comedy Arts Festival in Aspen (now sadly defunct). A woman tapped my arm and asked, "Are you actually a comedian or just a judge?" "Neither," I replied. "My son is studying film in college and is a comedy writer and improv artist." "Oh, our children do comedy, too," she replied, and said that her daughter's name is Rebecca Drysdale. "We saw her perform in Aspen," we exclaimed. In fact, Rebecca won the top performance award during our first year at the festival. Her material and characters (particularly her musical comedy) made a strong impression on our son, who works in a similar vein. The Drysdales also said their son, Eric, was a long-time writer for Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert, and was a part of this year's Emmy-winning Colbert writing team. I told them that the sister of a former member of my staff was the sole woman on that writing team. And, to top it off, we discovered that 20 years ago, Eric attended the same college in Boston that our son attends today and had the same (outstanding) writing teacher.

*As I write this aboard our British Airways flight back to the States, Ann is chatting with Norma, the flight attendant. It came up that Norma hails from Belfast, Northern Ireland. Ann mentioned that she and our son visited the city last July at the invitation of our friend George Clarke, a one-time camp counselor for our son, to attend the premiere of George's independenly financed political/zombie movie (a first for Northern Ireland in countless ways!). No, Norma wasn't at the premiere, but she knew all about the film from local press.

Piccolo mondo, indeed.

I Love You Trulli: A Visit to Puglia

Puglia is the province on the heel of the boot of Italy. It is a dry land, but by tapping into deep aquifers, the natives have made it a thriving region for growing olives, almonds and cherries. (We're told springtime there is particularly beautiful.)

On our cruise, we arrived in the city of Bari, one of the region's two most important commercial centers. We were taken to the town of Alberobello, about an hour away. This town, a UNESCO World Heritage Site, contains an estimated 4000 examples of an architectural style unique to this region and inspired by a desire to evade taxes: the trullo ("TRUE-low").

Trulli are houses that are built using the native limestone which is constantly being burped up out of the soil - you can see small limestone chunks everywhere amid the olive trees and farmland. The homes and roofs are built as dry walls, without cement. Some of them resemble beehives, but most look like tiny white silos (they are whitewashed annually) with grey roofs (the off-white limestone stacks darkens with exposure).

The drywall construction has its roots in feudal times. The region of Puglia was divided up among feudal lords during the 15th century when the King of Naples ruled over the land. After a lengthy war, the victorious lord allowed the peasants to begin building trullis as homes using the fieldstones, but they were only permitted to use dry construction.

The reason? Periodically, the king of Naples would send his controller around the countryside to assess the taxes he was owed by the feudal lords. Taxation was based on the number of residences standing in the lord's domain. So when word arrived that the controller was on his way, the peasants were ordered to dismantle their homes. This was easily done by removing the keystone, which caused the roof to collapse, so when the controller rode into town, all he saw were piles of stones.

Today, many of the trulli have been adapted into simple but attractive residences, and almost all are still drywall. We were permitted to walk through one, and it was surprisingly spacious considering that the buildings look like hobbit huts from the outside. Some trulli in the countryside have been purchased by Brits and others and refurbished into cozy holiday homes.

The village of Alberobello is charming. It is like no other place on earth, and it's worth a visit.

Of Cats, Olives, Graffiti and the Market

The comment we heard uttered most frequently aboard our ship in the past week was, "If this cruise wasn't prepaid., I wouldn't be here." It has been a bit surreal plying the waters of the Aegean and the Adriatic while the pillars of the global economy were crumbling. You can probably look for cruise ship bargains for the next couple of years while our economic ship is being righted.

Our tour of Greece began in Crete (where we elected to stay on board and rest) and ended in Corfu. I won't bore you with too much travelogue - the Greek isles are in fact among the most beautiful on earth, Oia (pronounced EE-yah, on Santorini) is picture-perfect with its whitewashed buildings and cobalt blue rooftops, the Acropolis is awe-inspiring (made even more so as we clambered around it while being buffeted by 30 mile an hour winds and trying to keep our balance on worn-smooth marble), Navplion (in the Peloponnese, the first capital of independent Greece in the 19th century) and Corfu are perfect Aegean/Ionian towns that we'd return to in an instant.

Some notes along the way:

* Cats are everywhere in Greece and Turkey. Apparently no one "owns" them, and there are no SPCAs in the region, but they all appear to be well cared for.... and widely photographed. Ditto for the dogs on the Acropolis and in the ruins of Ephesus (Turkey).

* On every tour we have heard about each region's unique contributions to the olive oil industry. We heard that southern Greece has about 140 million olive trees, and that the Puglia region of Italy (about which more later) has about 50 million trees, and that other regions on our journey had tens of millions. Doing some rough math to account for Turkey, the rest of Greece and Italy, France, and the rest of the Balkans, we've concluded that there are a bajillion olive trees on earth. And to think that it all began (according to myth) with the Tree of Athena atop the Acropolis.

*On a trip to the beautiful old town of Lyon, France about five years ago, we were stunned by the amount of graffiti on its ancient walls. On this trip, we've continued to be amazed at how much graffiti mars the beautiful towns and villages of Turkey, Greece and southern Italy. For those of you who are Philadelphians, you'll know what I mean when I say "Paging Jane Golden!"

Notes on the Journey (from a harbor in Crete)

Remembering that we were on this cruise to relax, we decided not to go ashore at Aghios Nikolaos in Crete, which appears to be a nice but unremarkable Mediterranean port city. Most of the attractions here are in museums - not our favorite when there's so much to see outdoors in situ around the Aegean - or involve long bus rides. Prof. Sussman, the guest lecturer onboard, characterized the largely reconstructed Minoan palace of Knossos as "Disneyland," which we took as a license to pass it up. And just sitting in the harbor, almost completely surrounded by Greek isles and trying to finish Ted Sorenson's book "Counselor," is pleasant enough. We'll next go ashore at Mykonos tomorrow.

Odds and ends from the last several days:

*The well-trained Turkish tour guides made certain to inform us that Herodotus (the father of history), Homer, and Santa Claus (St. Nicholas, bishop of Myra in southern Turkey), were among Turkey's famous denizens, and that ancient Troy and Smyrna, as well as Mt. Ararat (where Noah's ark landed) were all on Turkish soil.

*Turkey was also home to two of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World: the afore-mentioned Tomb of Maussollos (mostly reduced to rubble, but the ruins at the site are worth a visit), and the Temple of Artemis (Diana) at Selcuk (of which nothing remains).

*Note to Turkish marketers: if you want your bottled spring water to appeal to Westerners, best not to give it a brand name like "Aroma" - that's not an attribute people look for in their water. (The stuff is actually pretty good.)

*You meet some interesting people on these ships, not the least of whom are the young crewmembers. Some join just to see the world, some are climbing the next rung in the ladder of professional hospitality, and some have fascinating backstories of travail and consider their cruise ship experience to be the best break they've had in their lives. One notable thing that typifies the crews on all three Mediterranean cruises we've taken. - other than entertainers and lecturers, there hasn't been an American in the lot. This is a shame - onboard experience clearly builds character, rewards a serious work ethic, and exposes you to many corners of the globe.

*A "Greek Breakfast" as defined by our guide in Santorini: "coffee, cigarettes and a newspaper."

Goodbye to Turkey, Hello to Greece

This is usually not the best time of year to visit Turkey's southern coast, we're told - it can get very rainy during late September and early October. But we were presented with a perfect day to walk through the primary tourist attractions in the whitewashed city of Bodrum.

The Castle of St. Peter (erected by the peripatetic Knights of St. John in the 13th century before they moved to Malta) and the remnants of the Tomb of Maussollos (the source of our word "mausoleum," it was one of the Seven Wonders, destroyed in an earthquake, with many of its parts later used in other structures - it became kind of a "pre-cut marble quarry" for the town) .

Bodrum has a picture-perfect inner "yacht harbor," but rather than a basin full of floating fiberglass mansions, this harbor features scores of wooden sailing ships, many of them the round-sterned, locally produced craft know as "gulets." And the promenade around the harbor is one of the most pleasant we have seen in our visits to Middle Earth.

Our wrap-up on Turkey: This is a land that has really only opened itself up to tourism over the last two decades, and there is much of historic interest to see - the quality of the antiquities is stunning and not to be missed by any fan of archaeology or ancient civilizations. The towns and cities are well-maintained, and the streets and sidewalks are kept very clean. The food is good and fresh, if not particularly inventive. If you're a bargainer by nature, shopping can be great sport - if you're not, then it's not as much fun. The three Turkish guides we had over the course of three days were warm and interesting people, and they all were emphatic that Turkey is a secular nation and that it should stay that way. It's clear that the current ruling party, which has fundamentalist Islam leanings, is a source of discomfort for the educated class, and they are concerned that the image of these rulers not scare away tourist dollars. Fortunately, if the crowds of tourists we saw during the early autumn season are any indication, that is not an immediate risk.

From Bodrum, we sailed to Santorini, anchoring in the harbor facing the walls of the immense caldera that sits in the middle of what was once the island's core. It's a picture-postcard island, with iconic views of whitewashed buildings, cobalt blue doors, windows and rooftops set against a turquoise Aegean Sea. The villages are set 1000 feet above sea level, and you get there either on a bus making hairpin turns on roads with no safety barriers (as we did, because we were on a tour), on a funicular (much like a skilift), by mule or on foot.

Santorini's primary contribution to history seems to be the fact that it blew up circa 1500 BC, and the volcano created a quake and tsunami that destroyed the Minoan civilization on Crete, opening the door to the Mycaenean civilization. Today, the island exists mainly for fun and, relatedly, for winemaking - though I would stick with the vinsanto and some of the whites and avoid the reds. Oia ("EE-ya"), the loveliest of the 13 villages, offers fun walks, awe-inspiring views and a number of fine and creative jewelry shops and art galleries.

Tourist tip: When a guidebook tells you how many steps you must walk to approach a hillside castle or trek through a mosque or a palace, multiply that number by three. Ann called Bodrum Castle "a medieval Thighmaster."

Snapshot: Ephesus, Turkey

After crossing the Dardanelles, we docked in Kusadasi, a summer resort popular with Europeans. We went almost immediately to the historic site of Ephesus.

Ephesus is magnificent - a 3000-year-old city in southwestern Turkey, abandoned in the 7th century AD (when the harbor silted over), where an incomparable set of Greco-Roman ruins representing about 10 percent of the original city have been excavated and beautifully restored.

Ephesus was the third-largest city in the world at its peak with a quarter-million residents. Only Rome and Alexandria were larger.

In the Christian world, Ephesus is associated with St. Paul who, during one of his three visits as a missionary, locked horns with the silversmiths making idols of the goddess Artemis and was nearly put to death. It was also visited by St. John the Evangelist (who is buried in nearby Selcuk), and Mary, Mother of Jesus, whom John (according to legend) brought to Ephesus where she later died in.a hilltop building that still stands.

Some highlights of the visit:

* The breathtaking facade of the Library of Celsus, to which we returned in the evening for a chamber concert under the stars.

* The remains of a brothel immediately across the road from the library ("honey, I'm going to get something to read").

* The terrace houses - generous grants from Austrian banks and businesses have restored seven private homes full of mosaics and frescoes, and they've built a plexiglass catwalk that lets you see the homes from every angle.

* The latrines - everyone chuckled as we walked through, and the Chinese tourists all wanted their pictures taken sitting on them.

* The infrastructure - roads were made in large part of marble, grooved for safety; an elaborate water and sewer system made of terra cotta pipes, many portions of which are visible in their original locations.

*The outdoor theater - it's in terrific shape and seats 24,000 - Elton John, the Berlin and London Symphonies, Joan Baez, and Ray Charles are among those who have performed there in recent years. After a show by Sting literally rocked the house, they decided to bar rock concerts and to stop using the top 10,000 seats because they had become unstable.

*The columns- Ann points out that it's an art historian's dream to see Doric, Ionic, and Corinthian columns all simultaneously in use in one place.

*The harbor road - a stately, colonnaded marble road on which Anthony and Cleopatra walked into the city.

We had a warm-up lecture by Dr. Louis Sussman, professor emeritus of classics at the University of Florida. He used the layout and facilities of Ephesus to highlight Greco-Roman city planning concepts.

One of Dr. Sussman's favorite things at Ephesus - and it became one of ours, too - was the signage on little shops at both the entrance and exit to Ephesus reading "Genuine Fake Watches."

Unnerving moment of the day: we learned that the only commercial cruise ship that has ever been attacked by the infamous Somali pirates is the one we're on - apparently an RPG went thru the window of a suite, and there are still bullet holes visible in the hull. Fortunately, after two hours of evasive action (during which most of the guests were fast asleep), the captain shook the pirates and headed out to open sea.

More Notes on Istanbul

As we ride the rolling seas (urp) crossing the Dardanelles on the way to the Turkish Aegean ports of Kusadasi and Bodrum, a few more observations about Istanbul:

*Our breakfast buffet included the elements of a typical Turkish meal: many varieties of cheese, sheep's milk yogurt (salted, more savory than sweet), a huge array of olives (some with unusual stuffings such as orange peel and almonds), and chunks of honeycomb (I'm not entirely sure how they are to be eaten so I worked the honey loose and spat out the waxy comb. I didn't get odd looks from the waitstaff, so I guess that was OK).

*Our lunch on our day of touring the Old City was at the Pudding Shop (aka Lale Restaurant), an unremarkable place serving typical Turkish foods (stuffed zucchinis, stuffed peppers, kofte meatballs, doner kebab). But the proprietors will tell you that the Pudding Shop is "world-famous" because in articles in The New York Times and elsewhere over the years, it is hailed as the place where many a hippie would hitchhike a lift to Afghanistan or Nepal during the Seventies.

*As we sailed out of the Bosphorus into the Sea of Mamarra on Saturday evening, we saw a hundred or more container ships and other commercial craft lined up to enter the passage to the Black Sea. Apparently a serious crash in the recent past has led to strict limits on how many may pass at once. Given the huge volume of ships we saw in the Bosphorus, it's hard to imagine it any more crowded.

*A special moment on our first night in Istanbul: as we were leaving the hotel terrace, we spotted a perfect crescent moon hovering above Topkapi Palace.

Snapshot: Istanbul

Ann and I are privileged to be spending three weeks traveling from Istanbul to Athens by boat. We'll post some impressions of our ports of call, and add some photos later. (This is a Blogger Mobile posting using Blackberry, so let's hope for the best.)

This evening, we're sitting on the terrace of our hotel on the European side of the Bosphorus, gazing at the Asian side. It's a rather narrow (maybe the width of the Charles in Boston?) and incredibly busy (an estimated 50,000 commercial craft a year) waterway, hugged by buildings on both sides.

Istanbul is immense - over 15 million people - and densely populated. Traffic is as thick and scary as Rome. There is advertising everywhere - not traditional billboards, but big murals, building hangings, and some creative 3-D (for Knorr soup bases, of all things) and electronic displays. Minarets and domes of 3,000 mosques pierce the sky all across the landscape.

Ramadan is just ending. Many shops are closed. The bridges over the Golden Horn (the natural harbor that separates the Old City on the European side from the financial district) are lined check-to-jowl by men (almost exclusively) with fishing poles enjoying their holiday.

We are in a Muslim land - sung prayers ring out from loudspeakers on the minarets of the mosques several times a day - but there is a strong Western sensibility. From our visits to key tourist sites, we learned about this city's gradual orientation toward the West, beginning with some of the sultans of the 18th century who abandoned caftans for jackets, and completing its arc to secularism under Ataturk's bold leadership after World War I.

Having only one full day in the city, we hired a guide and toured Topkapi palace, Hagia Sofia (the Byzantine church turned mosque), and the Blue Mosque. We skipped the Grand Bazaar (which sounds like one immense hustle) in favor of the Spice Market, which features curries, saffron, teas, honeycombs, dried peppers, figs and fig concoctions, and every imaginable spice, but also loofahs, pastirma (Turkish pastrami, which our guide called "spicy and smelly"), 18k gold bangles, and the ubiquitous hookahs and Turkish delight sweets. The most interesting come-on: a big yellow sign reading "Turkish Viagra 6 times in night" - "garanti," said the news article below.

I always keep an eye out for street food. Here, popular items include kastane (roasted chestnuts, like "castagne" in Italian), roasted corn on the cob, freshly squeezed orange and pomegranate juices, and doner kebabs (like gyros, but on Italian-style bread rather than pita).

Odd moment of the day: a small Japanese gentleman approached our guide at the palace kitchens in Topkapi and asked our guide to take his picture. I began to step aside, but it then became apparent that he wanted to be photographed with me - not because of my celebrity, but because I stand 6'6" tall and he came up to just below my sternum. This reminded me why I've not rushed off to visit Japan - I'm afraid I'd be regarded like Godzilla.