___________________________________________________________________________
Note: To make the text larger or smaller, do the following things: If you are right-handed, use the cursor in the following way:
- Holding the control button down, roll your cursor forward to make the text larger or roll your cursor backwards to make the text smaller.
___________________________________________________________________________
A Personal Note: Harriet (my wife) and I jointly share a spirit of adventure. As we have no mortgage, we are free to travel the world financially. We built a handmade house in 1981 on five acres of land 35 kms. out of Brisbane, Australia for minimal money.
See the house / land posts:
OUR HOUSE …. An Overview
OUR HOUSE ….The Actual Garden See the photos of the house and garden and the history of how we obtained rejected materials like from the Supreme Courthouse stone (where the Law Courts are now in Brisbane) …. two loads for nothing in 1980. They dumped 100’s of cubic metres as fill and built a school over the top. The stone was cut out of the Kangaroo Points Cliffs in 1877.
See these travel posts:
- Ken and Harriet’s Travel posts from 2003 to 2018. I wrote this in April 2020 even though this New Zealand Travel Blog May 2010.
- An International Perspective ….. Ken and Harriet’s Travel post from 2003 to 2018
____________________________________________________________________________
Note: I would like to share with you through these few words, photographs and hyperlinked websites, a 3 Dimensional experience as though you were actually there with us. Click on any photograph and it should enlarge to different size ….. at least half screen or size full screen. It will be clearer in detail than the photo on the post. It will be as if you were really there looking at the actual scene. You are an arm chair traveller with us.
If you would also like to see the post in a larger or smaller size, I suggest you follow this procedure: If you right-handed, with your left hand, press down continuously on the Control Function Key with your left hand and with your right hand, move the little cursor wheel either forwards or backwards to make the text in the post larger or smaller.
___________________________________________________________________________
03.06.15
In May we went away with Voyages to Antiquity … Cruises to Ancient Civilisations. We were away for four weeks for the whole of May. Harriet (my wife) and I have just come back on last Friday morning at 6.00 am. from another one of overseas trips. Fortunately we had a friend of ours, Rob who lived at Morningside (about half an hour away from the Brisbane International Airport) who gladly took us to the Airport two hours before we left (his suggestion!). That meant we were not dependent on the Airport Train getting us there at 10.00 pm. = a 4 hour wait!! We flew straight to Istanbul in Turkey with a stopover in Singapore and Dubai to connect with a small ship with Voyages to Antiquity. Then he picked us up with his wife Lynne, at 6.00 am. in the morning. Unbelievable !!
Harriet and I both love history and art. This not studying things out of books that other people have written for you to read and understand but it is really about actually walking through, photographing, sensing and reflecting on what you actually see in unique three dimensional ancient buildings and the art that is part of the building. Then you can then discuss with other tour members or with friends when you get home.
With me personally, I have become a photographer and writer since my severe brain injury in December 1995. See my post on this website: A life changing situation I love to photograph where we have been, come home and then:
- Download my hundreds of photos
- Select which ones for a particular post on the region we visited
- Insert the photos into the post
- Write about them in an appropriate way.
I can then send an e-mail broadcast to hundreds friends and associates around the world through my personal experiences website at http://www.kenaitken.net/. As you may know, this website is used to personally stay in touch with hundreds friends and associates around the world. I frequently send out our personal experiences photos and then links to the website posts.
We love the real sense of personality in these old buildings and their hand-madeness. This is in contrast to the way buildings are built today with their machine-like qualities: Office buildings are built out of concrete, metal and glass. Houses are built out of bricks shot out of a machine, timber of different sizes and shapes shot out of a machine as well and houses built by efficient machine – like methods to make them as cheap as possible.
Harriet and I go on these trips to see things but to especially meet other people from different cultural backgrounds. One of the special things about going on a trip, is not the places you go to but the people you meet. If you did a psychological personality test like a Myers Briggs test, you would fit into one of four categories: Relating, Socialising, Rational and Managerial. We all have a primary personality style but with various combinations of all these styles. We primarily fit into the first two categories in a primary sense as these focus on people. We meet people, sometimes in unusual circumstances. Have we met them before? We get on so well ….. we have that special spark of ongoing relationships. You have meals with them or coffee in the coffee area. You then want to connect with them long-term by e-mail.
These people finish up building villages, towns and cities that have similar functionality patterns to other cities in other cultures. Social groups in these places have a sense of their relationship with others. 1 + 1 is not equal two but more like __________________________ ?????.
We love then to:
- To talk about these things with other like-minded people on the trip with us
- To talk about these things with friends when you get home
The Voyages to Antiquity website documents our daily schedule we had over 16 days. See our daily schedule: The Holy City of Byzantium. Also listen to the YouTube website on the things we explored …. it took my breath away just thinking about the things we saw and experienced! The history of the past which we do not know much about!!
For example, when we reached Athens, we all went up on the Acropolis and we saw the huge Parthenon with pillars many metres high and about 1.50 metres thick, you realise this land has 2,500 ++ years of recorded history with the Parthenon being built in the 420 BC era. Australia is a very young country with only 240 years of recorded history when Captain Cook sailed into Botany Bay from England in the 1770’s.
We went down into the Mediterranean Sea, past the Greek Islands and up to Venice over the May period. We were looking at the Byzantine Empire. We were on a small ship of 350 people only, so the ship can go into small ports that larger ships couldn’t enter.
When we got to Venice, we all disembarked and were put up in the Hilton Hotel and spent two days looking around Venice as part of the tour. Then we all flew home. However Harriet and I stayed an extra two nights in Venice. We stayed in the luxurious Hotel Danieli overlooking the Grand Canal. Seeing it was a life time thing, we indulged ourselves.
On coming home, Harriet and I stayed two days in Dubai. Whilst there our travel agent had booked us in for an experience through Arabian Adventures whereby we were picked up from our hotel and taken out into the desert on the final day. This was for a standard desert safari included a brief dune drive, access to the Dubai Desert Conservation Reserve, and a dinner, camel rides (I have photos of Harriet on a camel) and a belly dancer.
See the many photographs at:
I am still slowly sorting the 2,800 photographs I took of the trip into folders.(slowly: since is only four days when we got back and I have been jetlagged!) In a couple of weeks I expect to start sending out some personal e-mails on our trip.come up with the option:‘ Ópen link in a new window’. Clinking on this option should bring the photo up to full screen.
_____________________________________________________________
NOTE: to see the text and photos in a larger size or smaller size, hold down the Ctrl button with the left hand and use your right hand to move your cursor forwards or backwards to increase or decrease the size of the print and photographs.
_______________________________________________________________________________
… The Ship with Ken and Harriet in the foreground …
See the Ship we went on with Voyages to Antiquity
…. We were on a small ship of 350 people only, so the ship can go into small ports that larger ships couldn’t enter …..
… Up on the Observation Deck of our ship …. You walk into the lounge and observe the outside world without being caught by the wind ….
…. A very large ship moored near our VOYAGES TO ANTIQUITY Ship. It could take hundreds of passengers ….
….. Up on the 5th deck = the Observation Deck. You could then look down on the swimming pool area and onto the back restaurant deck as shown below …
….. Our ship from a view on the Observation deck …. looking down on the general passenger deck. There was small swimming pool and plenty of deck chairs for enjoying the emerging summer sun in Europe ….
…. This was the Reception Desk on floor three. The ship only had five levels compared the large ship shown above ….
… This was the large lounge were you could sit with friends you had made over the sixteen days ….
….. This was the Observation Lounge where you could quietly sit away by yourself or enjoy the scenery ahead with friends out of the wind … There were a bowl of orchids to soften the scenery and make it more homely …
…. this was the lecture theatre that 350 people would come to once a day to hear a lecture on the sight we would see the next day. We had lectures from two visiting professors …. One in ancient history and the other in archaeology ….
... This was the staircase you could go up or down five floors (if the lift was not working). Normally you would take the lift up or down ……
…..The door mat at each door … .‘Aegean Odssey ‘……..
Models of ancient triremes were in glass cases in the the Reception Desk area. A trireme had three banks of oars and was an ancient vessel and a type of galley that was used by the ancient maritime civilizations of the Mediterranean, especially the Phoenicians, ancient Greeks and Romans.
The trireme derives its name from its three rows of oars, manned with one man per oar. The early trireme was a development of the penteconter, an ancient warship with a single row of 30 oars on each side (i.e., a double-banked boat), and of the bireme , a warship with two banks of oars, probably of Phoenician origin, The word dieres does not appear until the Roman period. “It must be assumed the term pentekontor covered the two-level type”. As a ship it was fast and agile, and it was the dominant warship in the Mediterranean during the 7th to 4th centuries BC, after which it was largely superseded by the larger quadriremes and quinqueremes. Triremes played a vital role in the Persian Wars, the creation of the Athenian maritime empire, and its downfall in the Peloponnesian War.
:
___________________________________________________________________________________________
To see the next post:
Post 2: ISTANBUL: Day 1= 9th May: InterContinental Istanbul Hotel … Where We Stayed For Two Days
______________________________________________________________