21st Birthday – silverfox175

Acropolis by Leo von Klenze 1846

It was a short voyage from Istanbul to Piraeus, which is the port for Athens.  Once again I took advantage of the student tours and walked around the Parthenon overlooking Athens.

I took this photograph of Athens in 2015, the Parthenon was behind me.

Visiting the Parthenon was nowhere near as crowded in 1965 as it was in 2015, when Maureen & 1 and two friends visited.

2015

2015

How long will it be before the ruins have been worn away?

Naples, the port for Pompeii – 2018

A very interesting day with the students, and once again far less crowded than I experienced in 2015 ! The above photograph was taken in 2015.

From Naples our next port was Cagliari in Sardinia.  It was Palm Sunday, and the place was very, very quiet.

Piazza Repubblica in 1965.

I decide to go for a swim on Poetto beach, which was a beautiful beach of fine white sand, backed by white sand hills.

Part of the beach area – found this on the internet, which was taken in 1965.

I wonder if anyone else remembers this beach in 1965? Due to the removal of the cassoti (beach huts) in the 1980’s from the beach, and the failure to stop sand erosion, the beach had to be rebuilt using sand from dredgers.

Cassoti or beach huts – picture from approx. mid 60’s.

The problem was that the new sand was not the fine white sand of old, but different coloured sand. I believe they are having the same erosion problems today and the ‘new’ sand is being washed away.

The beach today showing the encroaching cafes etc – downloaded from the internet.

After my swim I felt peckish and decided to buy a ham roll as I walked back to the wharf to re-join the ship. I purchased my ‘lunch’ from a shop with a window full of different meats and bread sticks & rolls. My Italian was nil and the shop assistant’s English was as fluent as my Italian. I mimed and asked for a ham roll pointing at what I thought looked like ham. He handed me a dry bread roll with thin meat in it, all wrapped in paper. One bite and I realised it was not ham, but prosciutto. At that time, I had not yet come to appreciate this type of dry-cured meat. While walking along the street from the beach I had been ‘adopted’ by a dog that wouldn’t leave me alone, so I thought why not give him the meat? It’d save it going to waste, because I didn’t like the taste of the meat, or the dry roll.

The dog sniffed the meat and bread & refused to eat any of my lunch. He looked at me, turned and trotted back towards the beach. Obviously, the dog had better taste than I did.