These six photos show more about life on board a cruise ship as we sail from Istanbul to Kuşadası in Turkey. One of the pictures shows someone using my new Mediterranean Cruise Ports book. As we consider our next edition, I’d love to know, what kind of information in a guidebook would be most helpful to you if you were on a cruise?
It's a special honor to be on the bridge with the captain when leaving a port, and I was there to bid farewell to my favorite port — Istanbul. The captain was very gracious and generous with me. He explained the process with the local pilot (who knows his home port intimately); told me about the wind, the current, and the uncontrollable ferries of the Bosphorus; and handed me a nice cup of coffee. Knowing how my dad always loved to be "on the bridge" in his boat — a 38-foot-yacht that seemed so big to me growing up but would fit three times across on this bridge — I felt my dad was with me in spirit. • The Turkish pilot bundled in like a doctor making a house call. The captain was nervously chewing his gum while he and the pilot huddled to chat about the wind and current. (A 15-story-tall ship catches the wind like a huge sail.) The Turkish pilot asked, "What's your power?" Considering his 100,000-horsepower thrust, the captain responded, "I could pull your pier out to sea." • The Bosphorus was churning with ferries and littered with fishing boats — "countless uncontrollable little boats," the captain called them. A security guard, arms folded, stood under a sign carved in wood that read "Eternal Vigilance Is the Price of Safety." The captain touched few controls on the bridge. He just barked out coordinates and commands. In spite of wind, current, and the confusion of boats, our ship majestically maneuvered out of port, heading south down the Bosphorus. Eventually — after an hour of urban sprawl — the city of 14 million was no more to be seen.
Our boat seemed designed to let you enjoy a meal as much "at sea" as possible. Some of my favorite tables were in the stern, overlooking the wake. Ships now offer romantic specialty restaurants where, for a cover charge of about $30, you enjoy more private and elegant service and better ingredients. Excited to get a window view for our fancy specialty dinner splurge, we made a reservation for 9 p.m. By that time, the view we dreamed of was long gone, and we dined looking at a black sheet of glass. Tip: If springing for a specialty restaurant on board the ship, do it early so you can see something out the window.
Traditionally ships come with a huge, chandeliered, multilevel dining room where passengers have appointed tables, appointed times, and regular dinner mates. In the cruise industry, this is becoming more flexible all the time; plenty of dining options means lots of empty chairs. Still, about every other night at 8:45, we'd join our gang at our six-person table, enjoy the lavish service from our multinational waitstaff, and share our adventures for the day — all under a huge and gently quivering chandelier.
On-board gyms and spas let cruisers enjoy taking care of their bodies. While the exercise gear was top-end — and the setting was breathtakingly beautiful — I never saw many people huffing and puffing here. Remember, I started this month of cruising weighing in at 212 pounds. On my last cruise blog — in a week or so — I'll be reporting on my embarkation weight. We'll be having a contest to see if anyone can guess how much I gained...or lost. More to come!
Arriving in Kuşadası on the west coast of Turkey, I was struck by the beautiful black hull of the Cunard Queen Victoria. Kuşadası built its pier after the 1967 visit by the pope (in which he OKed the importance pilgrims were giving the reputed "House of the Virgin Mary"). It has enjoyed a thriving cruise business ever since.
People always ask me why our guidebooks aren't produced spiral-bound. Of course that would be handy. But it would add enough to the cost of the book to kill sales — and even if someone did want to buy it, you wouldn't see it because, with a spiral binding, there's nothing to read on the spine. Still, there's nothing stopping a traveler like this one to drop by Office Depot and have the book spiral-bound. While I still prefer to rip out chapters and staple them together, this woman was really happy with having her Rick Steves' Mediterranean Cruise Ports done up this way.
Comments
5 Replies to “Istanbul to Kuşadası”
Steve,
One thing I want to know is where each and every ship docks and the best way to get into town without having to pay an arm and a leg. I l really want to see maps of every cruise port with a pinpoint of the port and maybe a line on the map showing the best way into the port city.
Rick–are you travelling solo or with a group?
I actually think that your current cruise guide hit the nail on the head as far as what types of info to include. I especially like the info on how to get easily and economically from the ports into the “sights”, the walking tours/guides to some of the most famous sites, and the starting/ending your cruise info re getting between the port and the airport.
I do wish you covered Malta as my cruise in a couple weeks is going there and it isn’t in your book! You should also mention cruisecritic.com (maybe you have but I don’t recall it) as for me it’s been a hugely useful source of info when planning cruises, and would be great for a first-time cruiser to get a sense of which cruise line/itinerary they want to try as well. One last thing that might be useful in a future edition would be some kind of guide to getting good pricing on cruises to the Med–maybe pros and cons of traveling in different seasons, how to find out about sales, etc. Of course Cruise Critic does a good job on that too!
And thanks SO much for doing this book. I haven’t been on a Med cruise or to that part of the world since 2002 and your book has helped TREMENDOUSLY in my planning for my cruise this fall. It’s JUST the kind of info that’s missing from other cruising guides but needed to plan a cruising vacation!
Information on ATM locations near ports would be helpful.
While you can easily find an ATM in any airport, we did some looking to find the nearest ATM’s to the cruise ports.
You ask what a cruise book should contain. Well, as you have written, most folk join one of two types of shore excursion – take the cruise line tours, or join a ‘roll call’ tour organised locally. My wife and I chose to forego both of these and to use public transport. It cost us a fraction of the other two options, and I seriously believe that we lost out on very little. On the contrary, we probably gained. Is it because we are less perturbed about getting out onto the streets?
So I would like, for instance, to see something about where to catch a local bus on Mykonos to get to Platis Yialos, how to take a water taxi from there to Paradise beach, and then to ‘bus’ it again back to town. Cost? Way less than a taxi for a single trip, not to even mention a ‘tour’.
Steve,
One thing I want to know is where each and every ship docks and the best way to get into town without having to pay an arm and a leg. I l really want to see maps of every cruise port with a pinpoint of the port and maybe a line on the map showing the best way into the port city.
Rick–are you travelling solo or with a group?
I actually think that your current cruise guide hit the nail on the head as far as what types of info to include. I especially like the info on how to get easily and economically from the ports into the “sights”, the walking tours/guides to some of the most famous sites, and the starting/ending your cruise info re getting between the port and the airport.
I do wish you covered Malta as my cruise in a couple weeks is going there and it isn’t in your book! You should also mention cruisecritic.com (maybe you have but I don’t recall it) as for me it’s been a hugely useful source of info when planning cruises, and would be great for a first-time cruiser to get a sense of which cruise line/itinerary they want to try as well. One last thing that might be useful in a future edition would be some kind of guide to getting good pricing on cruises to the Med–maybe pros and cons of traveling in different seasons, how to find out about sales, etc. Of course Cruise Critic does a good job on that too!
And thanks SO much for doing this book. I haven’t been on a Med cruise or to that part of the world since 2002 and your book has helped TREMENDOUSLY in my planning for my cruise this fall. It’s JUST the kind of info that’s missing from other cruising guides but needed to plan a cruising vacation!
Information on ATM locations near ports would be helpful.
While you can easily find an ATM in any airport, we did some looking to find the nearest ATM’s to the cruise ports.
You ask what a cruise book should contain. Well, as you have written, most folk join one of two types of shore excursion – take the cruise line tours, or join a ‘roll call’ tour organised locally. My wife and I chose to forego both of these and to use public transport. It cost us a fraction of the other two options, and I seriously believe that we lost out on very little. On the contrary, we probably gained. Is it because we are less perturbed about getting out onto the streets?
So I would like, for instance, to see something about where to catch a local bus on Mykonos to get to Platis Yialos, how to take a water taxi from there to Paradise beach, and then to ‘bus’ it again back to town. Cost? Way less than a taxi for a single trip, not to even mention a ‘tour’.