We are having several days of back-to-back leisure.
The 16th
was a sea day. It was formal night and
we were invited to have dinner at the officer’s table. Tonight, we had dinner with the Hotel
Director, Herbert, a couple and a brother and sister.
As we are at
sea they brought out the Enrichment Lectures.
There was a presentation on Istanbul and one on Greece and doing travel
journals. The second was by Terence Smith,
a journalist who spent some 40 years working as a foreign correspondent for the
NY Times and CBS News and Jim Lehrer, among others. He gave a presentation on the history of Israel,
“Israel in the Crosshairs, 1973 to 2023”. Very interesting. Terrance has been up close
to many historical events and covered five presidents.
Entertainment
tonight was by the ship’s entertainment group.
The title was “Icons in Concert”.
It was non-stop singing and dancing.
It was great and exhausting to watch.
All in all, it was a lovely evening.
April 17 and 18
we were in Istanbul. We spent several
days here during our month-long visit to Turkey and the Crystal tours offered
us no new sites so we opted to pass on the tours.
On our first
day in Istanbul we decided to go into the large shopping area immediately
adjacent to the dock. The Galataport is very new (opened in 2021 after
delays caused by COVID) and the terminal was pretty amazing. It is in an area formerly filled with mainly
abandoned warehouses.
The new
terminal has almost 4,000 feet of shoreline for docking and the entire terminal
is the world’s first underground ship terminal.
There were customs offices, a huge underground parking and road access
for taxi’s, tour buses and minibuses. The
terminal covers over 310,000 square feet (that’s a little over 7 acres). It was quite a hike just to get out of the terminal. Unfortunately, we didn’t think to take any
photos.
We headed out to find some lunch and a bit of exploring.
But what we were really looking for was baklava. From all of our travels we have decided that Turkey has the world’s best baklava. And Hafiz Mustafa has some of the best. As we walked out into the large shopping area surrounding the terminal, the first thing we saw was a Hafiz Mustafa shop. We had our lunch and then headed to Hafiz Mustafa for dessert.
Video of Hafiz Mustafa Store
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Video of Knafeh
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Paul had baklava and Mary had knafeh (also known as kunafeh, Kunafa, or knefeh). This is a divine Turkish dessert she discovered on our previous trip to Turkey. It resembles crumbled shredded wheat (but is really a spun pastry called kataifi) that is stuffed with a cheese, fried and then sugar syrup is drizzled over the top. Last, it is topped with crushed pistachios. This dessert is extremely hard to find outside this area of the globe so she opted for this instead of the baklava. It was a special treat.
Entertainment tonight was a repeat of Mark Palmer, the comedian, with an all new program.
Istanbul from the ship.
On the 18th we headed out to Galataport again, this time to do a bit of exploring...
and to buy some baklava to bring on board. We also bought some for Gohkan, our waiter (who is from southern Turkey).
Entertainment tonight was Bruce Hammond doing a tribute to Neil Diamond. He had a very good voice and sang many Neil Diamonds hits.
The 19th
was another day at sea. There were two very
interesting morning lectures, one on “Greece in the Movies” and the second discussing
plot development in movies using The Wizard of Oz, Casablanca and The Godfather
as examples. In the afternoon we attended
another lecture by Terence Smith titled "Four Wars, Five Presidents, a
Reporter’s Journey from Jerusalem to Saigon to the White House.” It was a very
interesting presentation where he talked about many major world events that
happened during his time as a journalist and his observations of the presidents
he covered. Very enlightening.
We also had commentary as we sailed through the Dardanelles. This is a very narrow strait with Turkey on both sides.
The cruise took us under the Çanakkale Bridge, the longest suspension bridge in the world at 6,637 feet long.
The entertainment this evening was amazing. Turkish Pianist Naki Ataman (accompanied by the ship's bassist and percussionist) performed a piece he had composed and performed at a UN function. It was an “Around the World” music trip. He played excerpts from pieces from something like 20 countries from around the world. We recognized many of the pieces and he separated each country by interpretations of the song, “Around the World”. He played non-stop for 45 minutes. It was a truly amazing evening of entertainment.
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