Turkey - Kusidasi then on to the Greek Island of Patmos

While we slept lightly on our first night on board, the ship cruised through the night to dock at Kusidasi on the coast of Turkey in the early hours. It was noisy from early in the morning with loud clanging of something as the ship docked and then the intercom system burst into life at about 6am reminding all passengers booked on the tours to be down below ready to disembark at 6.45am. Thankfully we were not on a tour so I rolled over and tried to go back to sleep. We rose at about 7.30 and had a pretty crappy breakfast at 8.00am - our first breakfast on board.

We were prepared for a hot morning in the port town and had to be back on board by 11.30am so it was a short stop.

As we disembarked we were hounded by 3 wheel bicycle taxi drivers wanting to toake us to the shops in the city for 5 euro. We politely declined but later found that we were hounded by the Turks trying to flog us everything from phone cards, taxi rides, boat excursions, carpets, t shirts, food, coffee, breakfast - the list goes on.

We were actually short of money and found a money machine that was out of order. Another but wouldn't take our travelex visa card. Another worked but declined to give us our requested money. We later figured we'd been a bit dumb as our travelex card is pre-loaded with euros and while the Turks would take our Euros, their local currency was the Turkish [Lira?]. Thanskfully we didn't end up with a whole lot of their Lira!

We walked along the bay and visited an ancient 13the century byzantine (small castle) nestled on a point at the end of the bay. After that we walked into the town and went into a market area. Every store we passed we we "greeted" with "Hello, please come and see my , they are very good, very good price". It was every 20 seconds and we decided after 100 metres of it we just had to get away so be bolted. Had they left us alone we may have bought something.

We found a cafe and had two coffees each (they were really good and cheap too) before doing some more wandering and photography before returning to the ship.

Kusidasi photos...

We cruised for a few hours. Jan sunbathed again, this time with plenty of sun screen on and doug sat in the shade mostly. I went below for an hour and went through the last few days photos and wrote up what we'd been up to. Later Jan came down and corrected all my spelling mistakes as we berthed at Patmos Island. It is famous for the monestry on top of a high hill where St John wrote the Book of Revelations.


As usual, we went walking around the port village. While not as pretty as Mykonos, it was far smaller, quieter and less "touristy" which suited us just fine. We spotted a money machine and got ourselves another tranch of Euros whcih made us feel more comfortable as were were down to about 25 Euros cash left.

The port area had lots of cute little fishing boats and, while browsing the few shops we noticed how no one hounded us and how polite these Greeks were after our bombardment by the Turks this morning.

We bought a muslin top for Jan and replaced my ancient board shorts with new locally produced ones - both for no more than 20 Euros each.

We had a drink on the beach under these cool thatch like umbrellas (see photos) then worked hard to find a non-tourist, authentic restaurant. We found one, noticing that a few of the ships crew were eathing there so figured it must be good. It was. Jan had lots of lightly fried shrimp while Doug had 4 kinds of small fried whole fish. It was tasty while messy eating and by the end of it were full to the gunnels.

We're back on board, cruising to the next destination, and the sun has now gone down. The sunsets here are nice, but because here are no clouds - like not a single one all day - they aren't as spectacular as we can get down under.

It was hot today - 27-33 degrees and felt like it too.

Hopefully we get a better nights sleep tonight - it has been a long day.

Pictures from Patmos...