​              When I retired, Sherrill and I celebrated my liberation with an exciting, unique adventure that she'd discovered: a trip on a gulet, a traditional wooden Turkish sailboat, exploring the coast of Turkey.  The boat would follow the routes of ancient geographers, visiting deserted shores and islands and historic sites, and retracing the steps of more recent explorers, as well.  The crew was the captain and two others, one who doubled as cook. We'd have a guide and guest lecturer, and there'd be only seven passengers, the two of us and one more from California and four, as it turned out, from England.   

​              The day after arriving in Istanbul, we sailed as far as the last two villages on the Bosporus and the notorious "Clashing Rocks," between which Jason and the Argonauts had to row, then back to the Golden Horn of Istanbul.  We'd visited the city briefly with our daughter twelve years before, but it was exciting to be back, to explore, and especially to see Aya Sophia again. The old church and mosque not only was as huge as we remembered it, but was even more marvelous.  Now that it was being restored as a museum, we were able to see parts that we couldn't the first time, including the magnificent early Christian mosaics that had been covered with plaster.  Of course, as long as we were there, we had to walk through the Blue Mosque next door again, the sun pouring through its many windows over countless small blue tiles, so that we almost had the feeling of swimming under water in that vast space. 
              Sherrill and I loved Istanbul's ancient elegance, its colorful and busy hillside neighborhoods, its energy and unpredictability, its myriad eccentricities that came together as astonishing, unconventional, beauty.  We walked along crooked streets between buildings leaning so closely together that they nearly obliterated the sky and explored again the covered bazaars and markets and ate fish with spicy vegetables and kebabs with pilaf and yogurt, with baklava for dessert.  After two happily crowded days in the old city, we returned to our gulet to sail with the others into the Sea of Marmara.    

​              The next day, when we docked we were met with a van and drove through silvery olive groves to ancient Nicaea and the site of the first Ecumenical Council, convened by Constantine the Great in 325 to arrive at consensus on Church beliefs and policies. 
              "This is it?" I asked, gazing at the surprisingly small stone building, roofless, now, in which this great meeting took place.  
              However, although neither of us was religious, we felt the power of history as we walked through those abandoned rooms where so much was at stake so long ago.  
              Coming from California where two hundred years is considered ancient, we found the rich historical stew of this land as daunting as it was impressive.  Pre-Roman, Roman, Byzantine, Ottoman, early Christian, Moslem: the remains of all these eras seemed to have been spilled carelessly over the rocky hills and valleys.  To complicate matters more, the next day we found ourselves at the site where Alexander the Great defeated the Persians, then hours later were trekking across World War I battle sites at Gallipoli, gazing into trenches where doughboys fought and died. 

​              The sleek little gulet, we discovered, was surprisingly comfortable for sleeping and the meals, often served on deck, were hearty and tasty.  We felt like true adventurers when we left our old-fashioned boat, hiked up the great mound above the Dardanelles strait, and looked across the Trojan plain that was the setting for the Iliad.  To the southeast, we could see the mountain from which Zeus watched the Homeric heroes battle.  

​              Nothing was as thrilling, though, as climbing among the seven or more levels of diggings that exposed the succeeding Troys from different eras.  We knew that vast stretches of time separated the different levels and only one of them dated to Homer's city, but I couldn't help feeling connected to Hector and Paris, Helen and Andromache, Achilles and Agamemnon, and the others wherever I stepped, whatever ancient stones I touched. 
              "You romantic!" Sherrill teased me.   
              From Troy, we continued to Alexandria Troas, where St. Paul preached, and Assos, where Aristotle ran a philosophy school.
              "Is there no place around here that doesn't reek of history?"  

​Sherrill shook her head.  "You'd be disappointed, if there were."
              The next day, we sailed past the wide beaches and rocky green hills of Lesbos and through a group of small islands known to the ancient Greeks as the Hundred Isles to a little town on the Aegean coast that probably dated to that almost mythical era, where we docked  for the night.  After a casual dinner of Turkish dishes, we drank more wine, watching the sunset splash over the islets, across the rippling water, and onto the gulet: a relaxing day, but followed by one of the most exciting of the trip. 
              Hot winds blowing over us, our little boat sailed smoothly into a marina by a Turkish village built of stark white stones above which we could see a towering Ottoman castle.  However, that wasn't our destination.  We were on our way to the market town of Bergama just beyond and the sprawling hilltop remains of the once rich and powerful Greek city of Pergamum, supposedly built by Alexander the Great's descendents.  Despite the heat, we climbed that hill and hiked among the ruins of great temples and piles of historic rubble that once were fabulous palaces and elegant houses.  As we so often had discovered, Roman ruins were mixed up with the original Greek remains, but they all were fascinating and evoked past times and lives.  

​              Sherrill and I had already seen the most famous of Pergamum's architectural remains—in Berlin.  Most of the Temple of Zeus with its marvelous friezes had been removed by German archeologists and set up in the huge Pergamon (German spelling) Museum on Berlin's Museum Island, leaving only the monumental foundation on the hilltop, one of many victims of the nineteenth century passion for carrying home the world's treasures.  Of course, many great buildings of the past, here and elsewhere, were cannibalized for their stones over the years to build houses, barns, and churches, maybe a worse fate. 

​              We found other treasures, however, on that sun-baked rocky hill.  The white marble columns and floors of the Roman Temple of Trajan had been partially restored, giving us an idea of how magnificent it had been.  The so-called "Red Basilica," a monumental temple to the Egyptian gods Isis and Serapis, dominated one side of the hilltop.  We also found an impressive Greek Theatre, probably the steepest theatre in the world—almost as vertigo-inducing as the steps on the pyramids at Yucatan.
              "Go ahead," Sherrill urged me.  "Climb it.  I'll wait here." 
              "Thanks, but I'll pass."  I knew that if tried I'd probably end up bouncing all the way down, but I could imagine ancient audiences in their togas stumbling on those narrow steps before settling down to watch Oedipus hurtle to his doom once again.  

​              Another day of sailing brought us to Sardis on the Turkish coast, capital of ancient Lydia, which reached its greatest strength and wealth under the legendary King Croesus, as in the saying "rich as Croesus"—at least, until Cyrus of Persia defeated him.  The Persian is said to have cooked him on a burning pyre, but however he met his end we saw no golden remains from Croesus's fabled city.  However, an impressive temple of Artemis still stood, along with a fascinating two-story bath/gymnasium complex and the largest synagogue of ancient times.  We spent the next day mostly sailing, but Sherrill couldn't have been happier, moving from one position on deck to another as we meandered through several groups of islets.  On days like this, she and I usually stayed in the shade, but our British friends sought out the sunniest spots on the deck, working on their tans and smiling at our excessive prudence.   

​              A few more sunny days of sailing and wandering through smaller archeological sites brought us to Kusadasi, the gateway to the huge archaeological phenomenon of Ephesus.  Today, Kusadasi is Turkey's busiest cruise port, with huge ocean-going ships docking in gleaming rows.  It was still fairly quiet a dozen years before, when Sherrill and I visited the Greek islands with our daughter and docked there in the Neptune.  Even this time, our little gulet was far away from the big ships, although a large, rakish, white yacht did slide into the berth next to us the second day we were there.  Whenever we were around, we saw several very good-looking, very young, people lounging on it.  We wondered if they ever got off their expensive boat.  

​              Sherrill and I were surprised by how much the excavation and restoration work at Ephesus had progressed since our first visit.  Entire houses had been pieced together, exposing handsome frescoes and beautiful mosaic floors.  In many cases, the rubble had been waiting to be uncovered and reassembled, like giant puzzles.  The greatest puzzle of all, however, could never be put together: the great Temple of Artemis, one of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World.  Most of the pieces had long ago been carried away to be used as building blocks, especially for the church St. Sophia in Istanbul, later the great mosque.  Only one column had been reconstructed, although a few large pieces remained on the ground.  However, we did get to a nearby museum, where we saw two remarkable statues of the nurturing goddess with her many breasts.  

​              After these weeks in the gulet, wandering through past centuries and civilizations, it was a jolt to fly back to London on the way to California.  However, a pilgrimage to the Garden History Museum that now occupied a Victorian church on the south side of the Thames helped with the transition.  Sherrill wandered happily through the museum, pointing out the exhibits that excited her, particularly one about the notorious Captain Bligh of Bounty fame, who actually was responsible for bringing back to England and Europe shiploads of exotic plants and flowers.
              "So that's why Bligh is one of your heroes?" I asked.  "Not his disposition?"
              "You doubted me?  Our gardens would be pretty boring without him." 

​To be continued....  
 
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                             Please pass the posts on to anybody else you think might enjoy them. 
 

        "How do you get ideas about where to go next?" people asked us. 
           "A lot of different ways," we replied. 
       Sherrill subscribed to a newsletter that printed pieces from travelers about places that had excited them, often with their own photographs.  Over the years, she picked up some tantalizing ideas from it.  She also discovered "the little red boat," as the World Explorer was affectionately known, in that newsletter.  The ship carried only fifty passengers, but took them on some unusual trips.  

​              "We've got to do this one," Sherrill told me, showing me the item.
              The itinerary might have been designed for us.  It focused on the heart of the Mediterranean Sea, from Nice in France south to the French island of Corsica, then on to the Italian island of Sardinia, continuing to Tunisia in north Africa, then making several stops around the coast of Sicily, and finally ending on the islands of Malta, visiting historical sites all along the way.  Historians would give background lectures on board and accompany passengers on shore excursions.  We liked the fact that it was a small boat with an intimate, friendly feel.  

Would Nice, we wondered, live up to our memories of our first visit seventeen years before?  It wasn't bad.  Wandering through the narrow golden streets of the Old Town, peering into corners, poking into shops, showing each other oddities and treasures that we discovered, we might have been kids again.  Eating at a beachside cafe and gazing across the bay as changing shades of blue pursued each other through the trembling water felt even more magical than the first time.  We were there only one day before boarding the ship, but were feeling extremely mellow when late that night we sailed past the shimmering lights of Monte Carlo.  Maybe it was the French wine, maybe it was middle-age.   

​              As the World Explorer continued toward Corsica the next morning, we managed to listen to a pair of (very good) lectures about the island and its long and complex history—even while gazing out the lounge's wide windows at the water unrolling like bolts of fabric that changed from blue to green to purple, stitched together with foamy white lace.  One of the lecturers, I remember, was a witty, knowledgeable woman from Newcastle with a slippery Yorkshire accent.  My notes show that I was trying to pay attention, but also that I was only partially successful:
              12th century Genoese citadel-Porto Vecchio.  Napoleon born Ajaccio, 1768.  Bonifaccio-natural harbor, old town within city walls.  St. Helena left bit of True Cross in cathedral.  Many Moroccans emigrate to Corsica.  Ancient cistern under church.  Only 5 1/2 million years ago when Atlantic flowed into Mediterranean basin.
              Some of those facts might have had a connection with each other, but I'm not sure how.
              Corsica may have been part of France, but it felt Italian to us, and as far as the Corsicans were concerned was its own world, even with its own language—and its own unique, dramatic beauty.  Mountains, rugged crags, sweeping beaches, forests, ancient ruins, and massive fortifications surprised us around every bend.  The roads were rough and the cobblestone walkways and steps in the towns not much better, but we told ourselves that this was part of the charm.  The hearty meals, heavy on seafood, completed the job of winning us over.  And then there was the local wine....  
              "Look—like Spain," I said, as we drove along.  "Or is it Greece?" 
              "Maybe both," Sherrill smiled.  

     The scenery did suggest parts of both Spain and Greece: groves of cork oaks and then of olive trees, vineyards followed by dry fields or rocky cliffs abruptly jutting up from the sea.  With its ever-changing, unpredictable terrain, Corsica was like a mini-continent.  
       We also came to realize as we sailed through this part of the Mediterranean that its history was a story of constant war.  Fortifications dominated just about every port we visited, from the town of Bonifacio perched on Corsica's white limestone cliffs to the great walls and towers of Alghero in Sardinia and Cagliari on Sicily to the massive citadel of Valletta on Malta.  

​              Sardinia on the map resembled a fallen leaf, but actually was the second largest island in the Mediterranean.  Alghero, the first town where we docked, was part colorful resort, part 16th century stone fortress.  Nearby, we discovered round stone houses from an ancient past when the population worshipped a water god.  The complicated history of Cagliari, the island capital, teased and impressed us.  We couldn't be sure what historical period we'd run into next: the shattered remains of the Phoenicians or a Carthaginian necropolis, a Roman amphitheatre or a Byzantine basilica, or even fortifications from when Pisa ruled the area.  

​              The Botanical Gardens, although not as huge as some that we'd visited, was one of the most interesting, with more than 2,000 species from different regions of the Mediterranean and tropics spectacularly arranged among remnants of several ancient civilizations.  Vita Sackville-West in England had a moat in her garden, but here they had a Roman cistern.  A large greenhouse displayed succulents, cactuses, and other desert plants that would've been at home in California. 
              "That one, too," Sherrill told me, from time to time, as we strolled through the gardens, until I had quite a list of plants that she wanted to remember. 

​              However, I confess that I was more interested in the remains of the Punic-Roman city that we saw the next day on the island's southern coast.  Part of the city had sunk into the Mediterranean, but from the shore we could see sections from Phoenician and Carthaginian times, including magnificent mosaic floors that seemed to ripple and undulate as we looked down on them.  There was something surprisingly romantic about gazing through sea water sparkling with sunshine onto ancient streets and parts of buildings in which people not so different from us had lived and worked.  

              As a boy, I was fascinated by the story of Carthage and Hannibal.  At last, I was going to see whatever was left of the Carthaginian city.  From Sardinia, the World Explorer sailed south to Tunisia in north Africa and its capital, Tunis, a city of blinding sun, white buildings, and dark souks.  Like many former colonial cities, Tunis had a modern section—built by the French with palm-lined boulevards, hotels, restaurants, and patisseries—but we enjoyed much more threading our way through the narrow, winding alleys of the old city, among madressas, souks, antique dealers, and tea shops, minarets jutting like needles above the flat roofs.  Parts of it reminded us of Aleppo and Damascus in Syria.  

​              At last, Sherrill and I walked among the battered arches, broken columns, and beheaded statues of Roman Carthage, but nothing—not a broken pot— remained of the original Carthaginian city.  The Romans had made sure of that.  Still, I found myself thinking: This was the home of that crazy general who took elephants across Europe to destroy Rome.  His guts and determination still appealed to the lingering boy in me.  

        Palermo on the island of Sicily had been notorious for years as the center of the Mafia, so we weren't surprised when it turned out that the organization still had a huge presence in the city—although a dramatically tall red marble monument had been erected to honor its victims.  One of a series of trials concerning the Mafia was underway, we were told, even while we were there. 
          The crew told us to be careful walking around the city alone and not to carry anything valuable, if we did.  Empty handed, our money, I.D., and cameras hidden, Sherrill and I spent a fascinating afternoon wandering among the once prosperous old neighborhoods of the city without being bothered once.  Back on the ship, we discovered that we were the only two passengers who'd ventured out on our own and that the others were amazed that we'd been so daring.  

​              "I've set the alarm for one thirty in the morning," Sherrill announced after the World Explorer sailed that night.
              "Okay," I groaned.  "Why?"
              "So we can see when we go through the Strait of Messina, of course."
              Then I remembered that we'd talked about when the ship would pass through the channel between Italy and Sicily on its way around the island to the ancient city of Syracuse.  We woke up and looked out our window alright, but In the dark didn't see much except occasional lights sparkling on one side or the other.  Nevertheless, Sherrill was pleased to have done it.  

​              Despite our interrupted sleep, we woke up when we reached Syracuse.  The creamy white buildings along the waterfront glowed in the morning light almost as if they were lit from within.  Exploring the city, we quickly understood why the entire place had been designated a UNESCO World Heritage Site.  Even 3,000 years after it rivaled Athens as the most important Greek city, we felt as if we'd stepped into that world.  Many of the later buildings, including the Baroque cathedral, built around the remains of the Temple of Athena, had incorporated pieces of ancient ones, creating a magnificent jumble.  

       Sherrill and I loved immersing ourselves in ancient, distant worlds.  Nowhere were we able to do that as completely as when, a day later, we docked on the western side of the island and went up to the remains of the once powerful Greek city of Agrigento, at one time home to twenty temples, including the four large ones we saw the remains of that day.  The old Greek city was destroyed by Carthage during their long conflict with Rome and then early Christians did their best to eliminate the "pagan" temples—although they preserved one as a Christian church—but when sunset washed the age-worn Doric columns gold, the ancient city was there again, real and alive. 

​              The most impressive moment of the trip, however, may have been when we confronted, from the deck of the World Explorer, the almost unbelievably massive fortifications of Valletta, Malta's capital, rising like great stone cliffs from the sea.  We both had been curious about Malta, three rocky islands in the middle of the Mediterranean, often a battleground during its five thousand year history, yet somehow surviving.  

        There was a lot to see there and we did our best to do it: from megalithic temples to the sophisticated debris left by Phoenicians, Greeks, Romans, and Arabs to the catacombs of the early Christians to the Palace of the Grand Masters built by the Knights of St. John.  Napoleon and the French took the place over for while, the British held it for almost 200 years, and it was bombed during World War II.  A very eventful history, probably too eventful, but it had endured.  

           From Valletta, we flew to London and eventually on to California.     
          We hoped when we said goodbye to the World Explorer to sail on her again.  The little red boat often departed for other itineraries that appealed to us, but we didn't get around to signing up for them.  Then, it was too late: she hit an iceberg in Antarctica and sank.  
To be continued....  
​

If you find these posts interesting, why not explore the rest of my website, too? Just click on the buttons at the top of the page and discover where they take you—including to several complete short stories and excerpts from my novels.  
                             Please pass these posts on to anybody else you think might enjoy them.
​

Sherrill, my wife, and I visited together more than 60 countries and most of the United States during our 52 years of marriage.  This is number 44 of a series about our lives and travels, true stories of two people discovering the world, each other, and themselves through five decades of traveling together.  If you scroll down, you'll come to earlier posts in this series.  To start at the beginning of our marriage and travels look at the Archives list in the sidebar and start with May, 2017. Older posts are a previous series.  
​

​              "Which was your favorite?"
         People love that  question.  When they asked which of  the countries of the Middle East ("middle" from whose point of view?) and North Africa that Sherrill and I had visited did we like best, we usually said that they all were fascinating in different ways.  Each one was an exciting opportunity for a curious traveler to open his or her heart to life-changing experiences.  Well, it was true, back then.  Still, Syria probably was our favorite. 
            "It's the people," Sherrill always said.  And I agreed.  

            Syria has always had a tradition of hospitality.  When Sherrill and I were there in 1994, it seemed to be successfully navigating the conflicting currents of a traditional Islamic religion and the modern secular world.  They welcomed people from other lands, happy to share the beauty and delicious food of their country—and its formidable history, a history that reached back to the beginnings of civilization, a land of places so old that they seemed almost mythical. 
            Maaloula, a village tucked into the rocky mountain cliffs north of Damascus, was one of them, a place where the people still spoke Aramaic, the ancient language of the Bible, and where in an ancient church we found an altar that long ago was adapted from a pre-Christian one used for animal sacrifices, with a carved channel for draining blood.  The morning after visiting Maaloula, Sherrill and I walked up the cobblestone street of a nearby town almost as old, passing a pair tiny old women in black leaning against the wind, the ochre stones of an ancient citadel behind them.  Then, up some steps from the street, we came to a little church, tried the door, discovered it was locked. 

​              A young man in sweats came out of a neighboring house and offered to open the church.  He showed us through it, pointing out the icons, then, with a sweet, eager smile, offered us coffee in his home.  With a glance at each other, we followed him into a small, tidy room with two little sofas and a couple of small tables.  He introduced us to his mother, a shy, kerchiefed woman in black, who made us strong Turkish-style coffee with cardamom.  Somehow, we managed to communicate with his few words of French and English and a lot of sign language.   
              Later that day, our friend Hala introduced us to the wonders of Krac des Chevaliers, the great crusader castle that dominated the rugged landscape from its hilltop.  Hiking on its cobbled passageways, through its many levels, dark chambers, and cool stone rooms, we almost could imagine life in a medieval fortress/castle.  From the battlements at the top to the base, where the stones were as much as 80 feet thick, the castle was more impressive than any Hollywood version.  For a while, Sherrill played hide and seek with a couple of Syrian children until their mother took them away.  

​              The town of Hama, where we continued, was hosting an all-Asia handball competition, so it was full of tall young athletes from the competing nations: Korea, Japan, the United Emirates, China, and so on.  Except for our little group, we saw no Europeans or Americans in  town.  While we were strolling along the river admiring the giant noriahs, or waterwheels, that for centuries kept water flowing in this oasis city, several of the athletes came up and tried out their English.  Soon, they had surrounded Sherrill, deep in conversation.  As often was the case when we traveled, people immediately felt at ease with her.  I think they sensed that she was really interested in them. 

​              In Syria, history wasn't just locked away in museums.  It was everywhere, from the remains of the classical city of Apamea still standing on its windswept plateau to the newly excavated city of Ebla, dating from 2,500 BC, to the great trading center of Aleppo, with a history going back at least four thousand years.  Even more than Damascus, Aleppo felt like a voyage into the past.  The old city sprawled across from a gigantic honey-colored medieval citadel: mosques, caravansaries, Turkish baths, workshops in which men hammered out copper platters and silver dishes, and huge covered souks with narrow covered alleys that wandered maze-like for miles.  We weren't surprised that Aleppo's historic center was named a World Heritage Site by UNESCO.  

​              Soon, we were happily lost in Aleppo's sprawling souks, maneuvering past tiny shops and displays of every kind of merchandize, dodging men pulling wooden carts piled high with bolts of cloth and other wares, even donkeys trudging stoically beneath their loads.  A couple of times, we had to jump out of the way of a darting motorcycle, narrowly avoiding women in traditional hijab.  Of course, we couldn't resist stopping to sip hot sweet tea with friendly shopkeepers in red-check kaffiyeh head coverings.
              A cramped little shop that sold antiques and small objects drew us in.  Sherrill was intrigued by an antique brass pen holder with an attached inkwell that was etched with an ornate, interlocking leaf design.  Curious, she lifted the little scallop-shaped cap to the inkwell and popped open the lid to the shaft made to hold pens and brushes.  When we left the shop a few minutes later with the newspaper-wrapped treasure in her hand, we saw four tent-like figures like black ghosts facing the bright display window opposite.  Even their gesturing hands were hidden by the inky fabric of the chadors.  Behind the smudged glass, three bald mannequins flaunted skimpy brightly hued dresses that revealed most of their plastic bodies.  

​              The next day, Sherrill's birthday, our little group had lunch in a restaurant across the street from the oldest hotel in Syria, the Baron, built in 1909 when the country was part of the Ottoman Empire.  T.E. Lawrence once lived in room 202 and Agatha Christie wrote Murder on the Orient Express in room 203.  Theodore Roosevelt and Charles Lindbergh also stayed there.  In addition to the brass pen holder, I gave Sherrill a silver necklace made from Syrian coins for her birthday.  The big surprise, though, was when Hala had the waiter bring a birthday cake with lit candles and present it to Sherrill.  Her name was misspelled, but the gesture pleased her.  She even blew out the candles with one breath.  

​              Following the Euphrates River across the great desert, we reached the once fertile heartland of ancient Mesopotamia, an empire that challenged that of Egypt, and finally came to the mud-brick walls of the once great city-state of Doura Europus towering over the dark waters of the Euphrates.  

​              Except for a lone guard in a tan ankle-length abaya, military-style vest, and red-checked kaffiyeh, the enormous site was deserted.  Our little group walked through the towering entrance and gradually spread out along the ancient streets among the remains of the mud-brick buildings.  Eventually, Sherrill and I reached the edge of the Euphrates, the city sprawling around us.  Then, unexpectedly, the sky darkened and rain started to fall.  We began the trek back, the huge drops turning the earthen street into a meandering parade of mud puddles.  Suddenly, the guard roared up on a motorcycle from behind a mud brick temple, rifle slung over his shoulder, and asked Sherrill if she wanted a ride back to the entrance. 
              "Thanks!" she said, ignoring my shake of the head and climbing onto the motorcycle behind the guard. 
              They bounced away, mud exploding behind them.  When I finally reached the entrance, I found them drinking hot tea with our driver and a couple of our compatriots under a makeshift shelter.  Before long, at least, the rain stopped, the sky cleared, and the ground began to dry.  The guard even let me take a photograph of the two of them on the motorcycle.  

​              As we continued across the gold-brown hills and valleys, we saw a random pattern of dark-haired goats stitched to the side of an almost barren hillside.  We stopped and Hala and our local guide climbed up the hill to a black goat-hair tent.  A few minutes later, they came back and told us that the Bedouin family living there had invited us to visit them.  Most of the men were away tending other goats nearby, but the three generations we met in the camp welcomed us into their tent and offered us some of their flat bread, still warm from the fire.  

​              Later, we visited the Bedouin bazaar in the town of Deir Ezzor near the Iraqi border, where colorfully garbed and veiled Bedouin women from several encampments had gathered.  They sold handicrafts, goat cheese, and blood-oozing goat meat.  Chirping loudly, dark eyes like birds, brown hands gesturing, they competed for customers.  Many of them wore meticulously drawn henna tattoos on their hands and faces, patterns that seemed to explode on their sun-weathered skin. 

​              That night, we stayed in a surprisingly modern small hotel in Deir Ezzor.  It seemed to be full of muscular, sunburned American men who were there to work in the oil fields.  A few European businessmen were staying there, too, but no other Americans until we arrived.  Hearty, friendly, somewhat lonely, the oil men spent six months in the desert, then rotated out for another six months.  We chatted together for a while in the hotel bar.  They were not allowed near the Syrian women, so they liked talking with the women in our little group.  

            The historical splendors throughout Syria continually impressed us.  Any one of them would have been the jewel in the crown for any other country.  The golden limestone remains of the 5th century Byzantine Church of St. Simeon, once the largest Christian church in the Middle East, still stubbornly stood on the hill where he supposedly preached from the top of a stone pillar for 42 years.  A Hittite acropolis adorned with 3,000 year-old sculptures, including massive Basalt lions, was still being excavated by Japanese archaeologists.  The next place that we visited, however, was the jewel above all the others.  

​               Under a bleached blue sky, we found the ancient caravan route from Arabia to the Mediterranean—not sandy, but desert, all right.  Here, in the fabled oasis city of Palmyra once ruled the rebellious Queen Zenobia, who challenged the Roman empire and nearly got away with it.  Long ago, all roads passed through Palmyra.  We stayed in a low-slung guest house next to the archeological site.  From its porch, we could gaze at the arches and columns, faded by sun, wind, and time, of the once magnificent city, rich and luxurious before the Romans.  It was easy to imagine camel caravans resting among those pale columns.  Next to the guest house loomed a three-decker vehicle pulled by a tractor-like cab.  The young Germans next to it, guzzling cheap wine and cooking on portable stoves, slept on shelf-like spaces in it.
              "It must be fun," said Sherrill.  "And cheap." 
              The next day, we hiked through the three thousand year-old city, past marble temples and through the ornate remains of Zenobia's palace, where we lingered beside the mosaic-lined pools in which she'd soaked her royal body. 
              "Emperor Caracalla claimed Palmyra as a colony," our guide told us, "but its wealth gave it unusual freedom.  Zenobia made Palmyra into an independent power—even dared mint coins with her profile."
              "Maybe I'll find one," Sherrill said. 
              "You'd be arrested if you were caught trying to take it out of the country."  

​              We drove in two jeeps into hills near the ancient city to see Palmyra's desert necropolis, where small limestone towers jutted like teeth from the sandy earth: elegant tombs in which the Palmyrenes originally buried their dead.  Later, they changed to safer underground tombs.  Each one held a family, each body on a shelf sealed with a carved stone slab, but the bodies were long gone, most of the stone portraits stolen.  From a cliff nearby, a much later  Moslem fortress stared disapprovingly down on us. 
              Later, after bouncing across the desert, we stopped at the limestone entrance of one of the underground tombs.  Our friend had arranged something special for us.  A pipe more than foot in diameter bridged sandy steps that descended to a pair of massive doors.  Our guide ducked under the pipe with a flashlight and unlocked the stone doors, so perfectly balanced that they swung open easily. 
              Following him down the steps and under the pipe, we walked into the dry dusty chill of the past.  With his flashlight and a single caged bulb shining through clouds of dust, we explored a tomb not denuded by grave robbers, with carved portrait slabs still protecting many stone shelves.  Here, a curly-headed youth, there a proud middle-aged woman, hair elaborately arranged atop her long face.  At the end of the room, a bas relief showed the entire family languidly eating Roman style.  We followed the guide through the icy tomb to where a portrait slab had been lifted from one of the burial shelves.  He aimed his flashlight inside, onto a skeleton, its shape  twisted as if sleeping, a small clay oil lamp near the bony hand.  

​              In August 2015, ISIS deliberately blew up Palmyra's best-preserved temple, the 2,000 year-old Temple of Bel, and damaged many of the city's other standing remains.  Today, it is almost impossible to the recognize war-ravaged Syria in the news as the beautiful, welcoming country that Sherrill and I knew in 1994.  Since 2011, when the civil war between the rebels and the dictator Assad began, with the western countries supporting the rebels and Russia and China behind Assad, much of Palmyra and other historical sites has been damaged and destroyed as battles have raged through them—and that's only one example of how the country's (and world's) historical heritage is being lost. 
              During recent years, the violence has persisted and escalated, destroying much of Damascus and Aleppo and their environs and other cities, as well.  Many thousands of the country's citizens have died, been left homeless, and fled to other countries, but Sherrill and I treasured the welcoming smiles that greeted us across the country before this conflagration overtook them.   

​To be continued....
If you find these posts interesting, why not explore the rest of my website, too? Just click on the buttons at the top of the page and discover where they take you—including to several complete short stories and excerpts from my novels.  
​                     Please pass the posts on to anybody else you think might enjoy them.  

Sherrill, my wife, and I visited more than 60 countries and most of the United States during our 52 years of marriage.  This is number 43 of a series about our lives and travels, true stories of two people discovering the world, each other, and themselves through five decades of traveling together.  If you scroll down, you'll come to earlier posts in this series.  To start at the beginning of our marriage and travels look at the Archives list in the sidebar and start with May, 2017. Older posts are a previous series.
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​              "Why?" a friend asked when we told him where we were going next.
              "We've never been there," Sherrill answered. 
              "And it'll be a trip back in time," I added.  "Way back...." 

​              On the lookout for adventures beyond anything we'd done so far, Sherrill had discovered someone who took very small groups to parts of the world that few others at the time were visiting.  Hala was interested in everything and eager to share her discoveries.  A trip with her was an adventure.  She became a lifelong friend and in eleven trips over the course of two decades introduced to us to some of the most exciting places we ever spent time in—trips that were not just "highlights" of these places, but the most in-depth, unique, travel experiences  of our lives.  Our first adventure with this new friend was to Jordan and Syria, also the first countries of the Middle East that Sherrill and I visited.  We quickly grew to love that part of the world and its people and returned many times.  

​               We both were looking forward to this new kind of trip, but Sherrill also was excited because it was launching her into the seas of early retirement. 
              "After thirty years," she exulted, "it's about time!"
              The security routine at London's Heathrow airport where we boarded the Royal Jordanian plane for Amman was unlike anything we'd experienced.  This was long before 9/11 and the enhanced security that followed.  Our hand baggage was x-rayed several times and I was frisked at least two or three times and an electronic wand was used over Sherrill more than once.  We wondered if somebody knew something we didn't, then decided that even if they did we didn't want to know. 

​              Whatever was or was not going on, we got to Amman safely.  The food at the Amman hotel introduced us to what soon became, during the years we traveled through the Middle East, a favorite menu: meze: a variety of appetizers, eggplant with tahini (baba ghanoush) hummus, olives, feta cheese, grape leaf dolma, pocket bread, fish or chicken in cream sauce, lamb, and pistachio-topped custard or ice cream, often with mint tea.  

​              After four hours stirring up red dust across the rocky desert landscape from Amman, we confronted the massive sandstone cliffs guarding the ancient Nabatean city of Petra.  Then, from a little Rest House next to the cliffs, we rode horses through the almost hidden siq, a mile-long gorge that was so narrow (only three meters wide at times) that sometimes the wandering ribbon of sky far above vanished.  
              The first of the temples, the so-called "Treasury," suddenly appeared before us as we emerged from the far end of the tunnel-like siq.  More than a dozen stories tall, it was hard to imagine how anyone could have carved it out of the sandstone—and it was only the first of many such wonders, no less impressive because of the crouching camels and young Bedouins lounging in front of it.  At last, Sherrill was following in the steps of her heroines, Gertrude Bell and Isabella Bird, two women of the 19th and early 20th centuries who defied the conventions of their times to explore the world, going alone to places that few European or British "ladies" went at all. 

​              As a restless sun licked at the ancient buildings chiseled from the variegated pink and red cliffs, they seemed to be transformed one by one from sandstone into strips of watered silk.  Behind these sculpted facades, we discovered empty sandstone rooms lit only by the sun reaching through the doors.  The days spent in Petra were full of wonders, but were almost too hot to climb the rocky paths and chiseled steps to explore the highest carved buildings.
              "Go ahead," Sherrill told me several times.  "I'll stay down here in the shade."

​The next morning, we left the Rest House at 8:30, so we could continue exploring the Nabatean city and the newer Roman city beyond it before the day grew miserably hot.  This historic wonder had been created nearly three thousand years before and then forgotten for a thousand years.  We had entered another world—and loved it.  

​              Caravans traveling back and forth from distant lands once passed through here with their exotic, valuable wares, but it couldn't have been easy for them.  Just driving down one side of the huge Wadi Miyab canyon was terrifying—the twisting road was scarcely wider than a single vehicle.  Maybe it would have been less frightening on a camel. 
              "Why is it that the most interesting places have the worst roads?" I moaned.
              Sherrill patted me on the knee: "This isn't nearly as scary as China." 
              "Not yet." 

              We survived that road and much worse in our travels over the years, but the challenge was worth the stress as we explored one astonishing historical site after another.  Civilizations came to this dry land, stayed a while, then left behind their spectacular debris: tombs, castles, temples, and more.  Another early morning start took us to Jerash, the ancient capital that Hala called the most "exquisitely preserved Graeco-Roman city in the world." 
              "How did it manage to survive for all these centuries?" I asked, as we hiked among the elegant theatres, Roman baths, temples, oval-shaped forum, colonnaded street, even a race course and an arch dedicated to Hadrian.  
              "Never mind," Sherrill replied, "just be glad it did." 
              Few tourists were walking the streets of Jerash when we were there in 1994, but it felt like a real city, a place where people could live, even today.  We felt privileged that we were there and wondered why more people didn't come to experience this amazing place.

​              After crossing the border from Jordan into Syria, we noticed more men than women on the streets in the small towns, both dressed conservatively, many in traditional, shapeless clothing that covered them completely.  From time to time, we stopped, met people, even tried varieties of the delicious local flat bread, hot out of the ovens.  Later, we stopped for lunch in a small cafe.  Everyone we met as we traveled throughout the country during the rest of the trip was gracious and welcoming and seemed genuinely pleased that we were there.
              "No need to fear terrorists," one man told us.  "This is a safe country." 

​              Syria, we learned, could claim more than three thousand archeological sites, many of them remarkable in age, beauty, and significance.  One of the first to impress us with its unique beauty was Bosra, a Roman city built entirely of black basalt—one of six UNESCO World Heritage Sites in Syria.  However, I read not long ago that parts of it have been destroyed during the recent years of the so-called civil war.
              We still saw few western tourists, but while we were in the country, U.S. President Bill Clinton also was there, meeting with the Syrian president for life, Hafez Assad, father of the current dictator.  According to the newspapers, their meeting focused on the conflict between Israel and the Arab world.  We saw no mention of the rights of Syrian citizens.  We did see a number of large billboards in Damascus and other cities, though, of the smiling, shark-eyed Assad trying to look fatherly.     
              "It would be exciting to see Bill Clinton while we're here," Sherrill said, wistfully, but of course it didn't happen. 

​              Damascus, the oldest continuously occupied city in the world, continually surprised and delighted us.  On an early morning walk I found my way to the city's ancient covered souk before most of the shops were open, but some vendors already had spread wares on blankets in front of the shops.  During the next days, we returned to the souk, which led beneath its high, patchwork ceiling to a Roman arch and the historic "Street Called Straight."  

​              We visited a great mosque, walked through an ancient caravansary, and visited a hammam nearly as old.  The city extended back in time to when people first domesticated animals and planted crops. It was the original "melting pot." Crossroads for trade from around the world, the fabled Silk Road passed through it.  It seemed almost impossible that so much of the distant past could still exist and be part of the lives of the people there.   

​        In Damascus and other large cities that we visited, such as Aleppo, people seemed more open to change than in the less populous areas. We saw, for instance, young men in jeans and tee shirts, men in business suits, and women in smart-looking suits and dresses that could have been worn in San Francisco, although the skirts were somewhat longer, the necklines higher, and sleeves longer than was usual in the United States.
           Every day turned into a treasure chest of experiences: archaeological sites, visits with people in their homes, trips to mosques, palaces, museums, a tomb reputed to hold the head of John the Baptist.  It seemed to be a particularly good time to visit Syria because it was in transition, blending old and new customs, but we had no idea where this growing tsunami of change would sweep the people and the country.  

​              Since then, of course, a quarter of a million Syrian people have been killed, tanks and planes have leveled neighborhoods, all six of Syria's World Heritage sites have been damaged or destroyed, some during fighting, others deliberately.  Almost daily, the media are filled with images of anguish and pain.  Today, thousands of Syrians huddle in basements and underground shelters, desperately waiting for aid as their own government rains bombs on them.  In 1994, few could have foreseen this complicated, deadly struggle. 

​To be continued....  
If you find these posts interesting, why not explore the rest of my website, too? Just click on the buttons at the top of the page and discover where they take you—including to several complete short stories and excerpts from my novels.  Please pass the posts on to anybody else you think might enjoy them.  

​          The White Emperor pushed along the Yangtze until late evening.  In the morning, it started again early, but Sherrill and I were soon up, gazing across the dark water at passing villages, farms, towns, scenes that would disappear when the great dam was completed.  We stopped at the 2,000 year-old town of Fengdu that climbed up the hills from the water's edge.  Known as the "City of Ghosts," Fengdu had a reputation since the Han dynasty as "a Portal to Hell."  Hundreds of years ago, a temple had been built in Fengdu to the god of the Underworld.  Pilgrims to the temple used to be able to buy a "Passport to Heaven." 
            We climbed across several rotting wood docks, then up mossy concrete steps lined with mud-hued beggars, some missing arms, others legs, holding out tin cans tied to stumps, making weird noises in their mouths.  Then we were guided to an ancient building and up and down a series of steps and through corridors and rooms displaying torture devices and scenes of "Hell."  It seemed anticlimactic after the mutilated beggars on the steps.  

​      "All this will be under water," Sherrill reminded me.
    Later in the day, the ship entered the first of the three great Yangtze gorges.  Variegated with green streaks of lush vegetation, the gorge narrowed in places, cliffs rising steeply on both sides.  Caves and oddly shaped outcroppings appeared high on the rocky cliffs, each with its own stories and legends, usually about monks, royalty, generals, and other historic or fictional figures.  Some of the huge rocks had been given descriptive names.  

​              "That's my favorite," Sherrill said, pointing.  "Rhinoceros looking at the moon."  
              At Wushan, we changed to a small motorized sampan for a side trip up the Daning River into three smaller gorges.  These narrow, cliff-lined gorges hurtled upward with unexpected drama, even more than the big one we'd just seen.  We entered the first Daning gorge under a graceful, high-arched automobile bridge.  

​              "When Yangtze River dam finished," our guide Rick told us, "water level will rise to roadbed of bridge.  Two thirds of gorge will be under water."
              "What about the people?" I asked.
              "Necessary more than million being moved and towns and cities relocated."
              "Then why do it?" Sherrill asked.
              "China will have world's largest dam," he replied, proudly. 
           We were tempted to use all of our film on that first Daning gorge—the "Dragon Door" Gorge—because the cliffs were so tall and close, dripping with yellow-green foliage.  On one side, endless rows of square holes penetrated the rock, all that was left of an amazing plank walkway constructed during the Han period: wooden stakes once were inserted into the holes to support planks from which peasant trackers pulled boats up river.  These historic remnants also would be drowned.
            The next Daning gorge was studded with jagged rocks and shadowy caves and the famous "hanging coffins" on the cliffs, where monks were placed when they died.  Small clusters of people appeared from time to time on tiny beaches.  Rick explained that they made their living collecting rocks from the edge of the river.  They would be relocated when the dam was completed—to a city far from this river where their families had spent their lives for generations.  

​              The third, "Green," Daning gorge, with its luxuriant bamboo groves along the river, was famous for the golden monkeys that lived there.  We didn't see them, but heard their shrill cries. 
              from the Daning River gorges, we returned to the great 25 mile-long middle Yangtze gorge, where the White Emperor was  dwarfed by the sheer cliffs and peaks that rose startlingly against a steel gray sky far above.  We might have been bobbing up and down in a toy boat.
              "Aren't you glad we came now, instead of waiting?" Sherrill asked me.  

​              The ship docked at night, but started again early each morning.  We got up at six the next day so we could be on deck as we sailed through the last of the three great Yangtze gorges.  The tall, pointed, foliage-covered peaks wore the morning mist like old ladies with lace shawls over their heads and shoulders.  Occasionally, waterfalls and small bridges unexpectedly appeared between mountains that plunged straight down into the river. 
              Later that morning, we passed through a huge lock at the Gezhouba Dam, the first dam built on the river, back in the 1970s. The lock was so big that we shared it with the Yangtze Princess with room to spare.  Talking from deck to deck, we learned that the VIPs who bumped us from that newer ship were a group of Taiwanese that the Communists wanted to impress. 
              The Yangtze suddenly spread out wider than before, the great cliffs left behind as broad green plains stretched out on either side.  The ancient town of Jingzhou, although we'd never heard of it before, surprised us in odd, conflicting ways.  We were impressed by the Han era treasures in its museum, especially the preserved corpse of a Han lord and 2,000 year old lacquer ware and silk clothing, but the stores in the town had almost no merchandise, just empty boxes and plastic bags piled on the dusty aisles and stairs.  Clerks stood around gossiping, ignoring both the mess and the few customers, reminding us of stores we saw in the Soviet Union. 
              "Obviously, they don't care," Sherrill said loudly, "if they sell a single piece of that garbage."  Not one turned to look at her.   

​              At last, we said goodbye to the White Emperor, staying that night in a hotel that Rick called the "best available."  It had no hot water and walking through the halls and rooms we skidded through drifts of dust bunnies and trash and the pungent odor of mildew attacked our nostrils.  Incongruously, though, we found tiny complementary packets of toothbrushes and toothpaste in our bathroom, but didn't dare swallow even a drop of the water.  In the morning, Sherrill and I went for a walk as people were on their way to work on bikes and little bicycle-taxis—anything rather than hang out in that hotel.
              Our experience with the Yangtze should have ended in Wuhan, but instead of getting there by ship, we now took an alarming six hour bus ride through small towns and past farms and new "industrial zones," the driver leaning on his horn the whole time.  The two-lane highway was a chaos of constantly passing vehicles—buses, trucks, cars, wagons, bicycles, motorbikes, and an erratic stream of pedestrians—but we saw only one accident, a minibus-truck collision.  
              "In China, when vehicles collide," Rick told us, "people say they kissed."
              We suspected that on Chinese roads there was plenty of vehicle smooching.

​              Shanghai, city of money and neon, was our next stop.  We flew there from Wuhan on China Southern Airlines, a better experience than our first flights in China.  We'd read about the old Shanghai, its long history, including the thousands of Jews who in the 1920s and 1930s fled from Europe to Shanghai, and even that Noel Coward wrote Private Lives while staying at the Cathy Hotel (the Peace Hotel in 1993).  However, now Shanghai was rushing frantically into the future—although it was nothing like it is today.  In 1993, we saw only three new skyscrapers, but many tower cranes were clawing aggressively into the sky above the city.  

​              "You see," Sherrill smiled, "this was the perfect time to come to China, when it's just starting to change."
              Trying to navigate Shanghai's streets in the morning, I discovered one day, was a struggle with torrents of people on foot and on bicycles and pushing on and off buses.  A few blocks from our hotel I was horrified to see another of those awesomely ugly buildings constructed across the Communist world by Uncle Joe Stalin, the Shanghai Exhibition Center, a huge horseshoe-shaped tower splotched with Mayan/Egyptian/Babylonian decorations.  Inside, the merchandise seemed intended only for gullible tourists.  No sane Chinese would waste money on any of it.  
              That evening, Rick took us through the city to the Shanghai Acrobatic Circus on Nanjing Road.  Along the way, he pointed out the architecture of the different foreign concessions, or districts, of the past—some distinctly French, others British or German.  Since we were there, most of those historic districts have been replaced with new towers.  The city didn't have many high-rises yet in 1993, but it had smeared plenty of gaudy, multi-colored neon, or sometimes strings of colored lights, over the old buildings.  

        A train excursion the next day took us to the garden city of Suzhou.  Sherrill had been looking forward to seeing Suzhou's gardens, famous for their eroded rocks and bamboo clusters arranged around ponds and pavilions.  At the station, Rick herded us into the waiting room for "soft seat" passengers, much more comfortable than the one for "hard seat" passengers, he told us, but when the train came our first class compartments turned out to be for sleeping, the berths already made into beds.  Since it was morning, we pushed the upper berths out of the way.  Thermos jugs provided us with endless cups of hot tea, if we wanted. 
              Constantly changing views, ranging from water buffalo trudging through flooded rice fields to the steadily coughing chimneys of power plants to chaotic scenes of new construction, kept us staring out the window.
               "I love this," Sherrill grinned, watching the passing scenes.  "It's almost like being on a boat."  

​              Suzhou was known as the "Venice of China," Rick told us, because of the network of canals crisscrossing the city.  The white-washed old houses were topped with black tile roofs, but parts of the 2,500 year old town, especially along the canals, were decaying and crumbling.  A couple of small motorized boats carried us on the Grand Canal, the ancient canal that cut through Suzhou on its way south, passing scores of sampans crowded with families, as well as old houses balanced at the water's edge.  Graceful old bridges arched over the canals, but garbage floated in the brown water underneath.  

​       More than a hundred ancient gardens were scattered through the city, but we had time to see only a few, including one that had been copied by the Metropolitan Museum of Art.  That garden, with strategically placed rocks and gravel areas, wove among several pavilions and around ponds and arcades.  More ideas for Sherrill's garden back in Berkeley.
       During the next two days, Rick seemed under pressure to make sure that we followed the official itinerary, taking us to a silk factory, an embroidery factory, a paper cutting workshop, and a sandal wood factory.  Of course, we had opportunities at each place to buy treasures to carry home.  A temple and a museum were squeezed in along the way, each of which also boasted a gift shop.   

         Walking was our favorite way to get to know a city, so Sherrill and I spent our free time in Shanghai exploring different neighborhoods on foot, including the Nanjing Road for five and a half miles all the way to the Bund.  The hike took five hours but at the end we felt that we'd immersed ourselves in the hustle and life of the city.  Crowds filled the sidewalks and spilled into the streets on both sides, beyond anything we'd experienced in any other city in the world, even Tokyo.  Often, as people pushed and shoved and jabbed us with whatever they happened to be carrying, we had trouble even staying together.  The experience reminded me of riding on the 30 Stockton bus that runs through San Francisco's Chinatown.  Lost in the vastness of the crowd we saw very few non-Chinese, but felt invisible.    
        Suddenly, the Bund, historic business center on the waterfront, once part of the International Settlement, opened up before us.  Now, we could stroll along the street without being shoved and pushed, admiring the old buildings, the broad esplanade, the white ships at anchor, the bridges and monuments against the blue sky—cities in China then still could have blue skies.  The buildings that once housed foreign banks and trading houses, famous cafes and bars and hotels, still stood, suggesting a romantic past, now gone forever.  Only on the other side of the river were new towers starting to rise.  Foot sore, we stopped for tea at the former Cathay Hotel, now the Peace Hotel, then indulged in a taxi across town to our hotel.  

              That evening, at our hotel, I talked with several foreign businessmen trying to do business in the People's Republic.  Some Americans and Australians said that it was a great place now to do business, but others trying to set up joint ventures were frustrated, saying that every time a deal seemed to come together some official backed down.
              "They expect bribes, now," one said, "the bigger the better."  
              However, we had only to see the huge line of people waiting to see Mao in his Beijing mausoleum to know that the country still had strong ties to Communist ideology.  The image that especially stuck with me, though, was that of a young man in a blue suit riding in Beijing traffic on his bicycle while talking intently into his cell phone.  What, Sherrill and I wondered, would China be like when all the ambitious young entrepreneurs like this one traded in their bikes for their own BMWs?
To be continued....   
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If you enjoy these posts, why not explore the rest of my website, too? Just click on the buttons at the top of the page and discover where they take you—including to several complete short stories, excerpts from my novels, and more.  Please pass the posts on to anybody else you think might enjoy them. 
 
You also might enjoy reading the new bargain-priced e-book of my first novel, The Night Action. Set in San Francisco's North Beach, it has been called "the last great novel of an past era."  The book is available at Amazon, Barnes and Noble, and other retailers.  Click on the title or Here for the link.