The Old City of Mdina, Malta

After a somewhat rough passage through the Straits of Messina (passing between the legendary twin dangers of Scylla and Charybdis, as you may remember from my post about Segesta, Sicily), our next stop was the  island of Malta.  Having dreamed of visiting this spot for many years, I was hoping that it would prove a highlight of the voyage, and I was not disappointed!

A first view of Malta, from a bus window

Malta, which became a Republic in 1974 after securing its independence from the UK 10 years prior, is a relatively small spot in the middle of the Mediterranean, measuring a mere 232 square miles.  It is fairly crowded, however, with about 3,400 people per each of those miles(!), making it the seventh most densely populated country in the world.  Its citizens speak two official languages: English and Maltese, in which Semitic (70%) and Latin (30%) roots are mixed, reflecting the history of this small country lying midway between North Africa and Europe.

The nation is actually an archipelago composed of 21 islands, only three of which are inhabited.  The main island, Malta, hosts just over 400,000 people, while the next largest of the group, Gozo, is home to approximately 30,000.  The third inhabited island, Comino, boasts a population of only four: 1 policeman, 1 priest, and the 2 citizens they serve, who both must feel fairly well-protected in every sense of the word!

The number of people on the island has recently swelled, as Malta has generously volunteered to serve as a staging point for the evacuation of refugees fleeing the violence in Libya.  China, India and other nations have sent planes to retrieve their citizens, and many of the operations have been run from airfields on Malta.  This provision of assistance to those in need seems a fitting continuation of the work of the well-known Knights of Malta (see more below).

Our focus was primarily on the ancient and medieval history of the island.  Settled as early as 1500 BC, and boasting impressive prehistoric megalithic temple remains that I will discuss in a later entry, the island had been established as a Phoenician trading post by the 6th century B.C.  The Romans took possession in 218 B.C. and gave the island the name Melita, from the Latin for “honey” (mel), perhaps in reference to the rich golden color of the stone quarried here, which is still used as the primary building material for most structures.  The Romans considered Melita a part of their province of Sicily until it became its own municipium (along with the smaller island of Gozo) in the second century A.D, a status that gave its citizens greater rights and responsibilities.  According to the Bible, Paul was shipwrecked on Malta and remained here for three months, during which time he healed many sick individuals (Acts 27:27-28:10); as a result, the population was converted to Christianity as early as 60 A.D.

View from Mdina to St. Paul City, where the Apostle is said to have come ashore after the shipwreck.

As was the case with many of the islands in the Mediterranean, Malta has long held great strategic importance.  Despite its lack of important resources such as fresh water, it was therefore a desirable piece of property in many historical periods. The Byzantines owned it for awhile, but it was eventually taken by the Arabs in the 9th century.  Most famously, the island was later home to the Sovereign Military Hospitaller Order of Saint John of Jerusalem of Rhodes and of Malta.  The Knights of Malta, as the group is more commonly known, grew out of the Order of the Knights Hospitallers, a religious order that ran a hospital in Jerusalem dedicated to helping the poor, sick and injured among the pilgrims who traveled to the Holy Land.  The Knights of Malta became a military order after the First Crusade and, following the loss of Christian holdings in the Holy Land, moved their base of operations to the island of Rhodes in 1310, and eventually to Malta in 1530.  Napoleon expelled the Order from the island in 1798, and it is now headquartered in Rome.  Although the Knights of Malta no longer hold their own territory, and hence have no claims to statehood, they are still viewed under international law as a sovereign body, and as such have been granted permanent Observer Status by the United Nations (an honor they share with the Red Cross and Red Crescent, the International Criminal Court, and the International Olympic Committee).  The Order in its current form is made up largely of lay members numbering approximately 13,000, a membership that now includes women as well as men.  They are aided by about 80,000 permanent volunteers.  The Knights of Malta provide emergency medical relief around the world to victims of natural disasters, war and epidemics, as well as long-term care for those suffering from terminal conditions such as leprosy.

Our first stop on Malta was the old city of Mdina, which occupies a high point on the island.  It takes its name from the Arabic word medina, literally, “the city.”  Most of the structures visible now date to the 13th century and later.  Here are a few of the highlights:

The gates of Mdina

The building that is now the Natural History Museum was constructed in 1722 as the summer palace of the Grand Master of the Maltese order.

The summer palace of the Grand Master of the Knights of Malta (now the Natural History Museum)

St. Paul's Cathedral (17th century)

The Cathedral, not surprisingly dedicated to St. Paul, was constructed in 1697.  While we were visiting, preparations were underway for the upcoming Feast of Corpus Christi (June 23 this year), which is why the interior  is draped in red damask curtains.  The church boasts Murano glass chandeliers and an altar painting by Mattia Preti (1613-1699).

Murano glass chandelier in St. Paul Cathedral

One of the most striking visual aspects of Mdina is the use of color in the decoration of buildings.  The color palette is overseen by local authorities, and is limited to red, green and blue, all in rich tones that beautifully accent the glowing native stone.  The result is a very cohesive and attractive face for the city.

Balconies in Mdina

A door knocker in Mdina

Mdina is a gorgeous and evocative, if somewhat sleepy, walled city that has been largely spared the bustling crowds of the capital of Valletta, about which I will be writing in my next post.

Prostitutes and Pastry: Ancient and Modern Erice

A few days ago, I wrote briefly about the Sicilian town of Trapani, which is where our ship first docked on the island.  On a mountain almost 2500 feet above that city lies the medieval fortress town of Erice, a beautiful site with a long and interesting history.

Erice, called Eryx by the Greeks and Romans, was founded by the Elymians, a somewhat mysterious pre-Greek people who inhabited western Sicily.  It is possible that they were from Anatolia, and that there is some truth to the legend that Trapani was founded by Trojans fleeing the destruction of their city, although it is also just as possible that they were migrants from Anatolia who left that area for more benign reasons than the Trojan War.  In any case, by the 5th century B.C., the town was for all intents and purposes dependent on nearby Segesta (see my earlier blog post on that beautiful site).  Like many of the important cities in this area, Eryx was eventually taken by the Carthaginians, and their Phoenician language appears on coins of the city from the fourth century B.C.  The surviving sections of defensive walls from this early period also show the marks of Phoenician masons.

It was the Phoenicians who established the worship of the goddess Astarte and built a temple in her honor on the slopes of the mountain above Trapani.  The rites of Astarte, a goddess of fertility, included the practice of sacred prostitution.  The temple and its prostitutes were understandably popular with sailors who made port at Trapani.  Although the steep climb of 2500 feet must have been somewhat daunting, the payoff seems to have been worth it – the cult retained its popularity through the later Greek and Roman centuries.  Depending on the culture in power on Sicily at various times, the patron goddess of the cult was known as Astarte, Aphrodite (by the Greeks), or Venus (by the Romans), all names for the same powerful deity of feminine regenerative fertility.  In fact, it is very likely that the worship of such a fertility goddess pre-dated even the Phoenicians, although they are the ones who seem to have institutionalized the celebration of her cult.  The temple of Astarte-Aphrodite-Venus guaranteed the popularity of Eryx in antiquity.  Unfortunately, it is now completely overbuilt by a 12th-century Norman castle known, appropriately, as the Castello di Venere.

The Norman castle at Erice (Castello di Venere)

Venus’s presence also lent credence to the Roman claim that the city was founded by the Trojans, because their leader Aeneas was believed to have been descended from that goddess.  In the Aeneid, Virgil includes a scene in which Aeneas arrives at the site of Eryx and founds the temple in her honor (Aen. 5.759 ff.).  So taken were the Romans with this popular goddess (known to them as Venus Erycina) that they exported her worship throughout the empire and built temples for her even at Rome.

As I mentioned, her temple is unfortunately not visible at modern Erice.  What IS to be found there, however, is a gorgeous medieval walled town.  A very curvy and slightly harrowing bus ride, made all the more nail-bitingly nerve-wracking by the thick fog that had settled over the coast, took us up to the town (it is also possible to ride up by cable car).

The view from the road to Erice on a foggy day.

As with many medieval towns that are now tourist attractions, Erice hosts plenty of souvenir shops but still manages to retain much of its charm in its winding, narrow streets.  Some of the shops even boast an impressive pedigree, continuing the tradition of baked goods produced for centuries at some of the religious institutions in the town.  The “Old Confectioners of the Convent” (Antica Pasticceria del Convento), for example, is well worth a visit, and is frequently cited as one of the best pastry shops in all of Sicily.

"Bellibrutti" (unsightly beauty), a popular traditional pastry at the Antica Pasticceria del Convento

It was founded by  Maria Grammatico, an orphan who learned to cook in the kitchens of one of Erice’s several convents in the 1950s.  Her story is recounted in the book Bitter Almonds, complete with traditional recipes.

An important monument is the Chiesa Matrice, the 14th-century cathedral, which has elements of both the Romanesque and Gothic styles.

The Chiesa Matrice

The church is dedicated to the Virgin of the Assumption.  This dedication was not made lightly: highlighting the virginity of Mary made a powerful statement about her triumph over the fertility cult for which ancient Eryx had been famous.

The Gothic rose window of the Chiesa Matrice

Additionally, the feast of the Virgin of the Assumption is celebrated in August (on the 15th), which was also the month in which the most important festival of Astarte-Aphrodite-Venus fell.  In a new Christian world, Mary the Virgin had replaced the prostitutes of Venus.

In addition to its importance as a historical site, Erice also draws crowds of a different and somewhat unexpected sort.  Since 1963, the town has played host to the Ettore Majorana Foundation and Centre for Scientific Culture (Ettore Majorana was an important Sicilian physicist).  Every summer, scientists flock to Erice to discuss advances in cutting-edge research.  The theme for 2011 was “The Second Workshop on Hadron Beam Therapy of Cancer”; in 2010 it was “Advances in Nanophotonics III: Plasmonics and Energy Efficiency.”  The classes and seminars are hosted in historic buildings that once served religious and civic functions, such as the San Francesco monastery.  

San Francesco Monastery, now home to the Eugene P. Wigner Institute with the Enrico Fermi Lecture Hall

It is quite fascinating that this tiny city, with a heritage reaching back into the first millenium B.C., now plays host to some of the world’s foremost scientific minds and witnesses the discovery and dissemination of advanced scientific theories.  Whether a traveler is interested in the ancient history of Sicily, in culinary traditions, or in the important work of modern men and women of science, Erice has something for everyone.

Sardinia

The next stop on our tour of the Mediterranean islands was Corsica’s neighbor to the south, Sardinia.  In an illuminating on-board lecture by Prof. Paula Lazrus of the Archaeological Institute of America, we had learned that Corsica and Sardinia were once part of the same landmass.  Geological evidence indicates that at some point in the distant past, after breaking apart into two separate areas of land, one of the two had rotated approximately 90 degrees.  (Paula, if you read this, maybe you could clarify the point in a Comment below since my explanation is lacking?).  Like Corsica, Sardinia has its own language (Sardinian) that may incorporate elements of the language of the ancient Etruscans from mainland Italy as well as of that of the Lydians from Anatolia (western Turkey).  Those with an interest in linguistics may wish to consult the highly technical Wikipedia article at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sardinian_language.

Cagliari

We visited the island on a grey day and made port in Cagliari, on the southern coast of the Island.   Sardinia is important for ancient historians for several reasons, and it has much to offer to those with interests in specific ancient cultures.  It is perhaps best known for the remains of the Punic occupation of the island.  The term “Punic” refers to the Carthaginian culture, a major ancient power and rival of Rome whose capital was located at Carthage (modern-day Tunis, Tunisia) on the north coast of Africa.  We were given a choice between two excursions that highlighted several phases of the island’s history: a visit to the Punic-Roman city of Nora, which boasts a fine amphitheater, or to the island of Sant’Antioco, which preserves traces of the Phoenician, Carthaginian and Roman presences on Sardinia.  I selected the trip to Sant’Antioco, located southwest of the main island of Sardinia and connected by a highway bridge, a modern version of an artificial isthmus constructed by the Romans in the 2nd century B.C.

Sant’Antioco’s history is long.  The Nuragic civilization, indigenous to Sardinia, flourished from the 18th century B.C. probably into the 2nd century A.D.  We did not have time to visit any of the nuarghe, the tower-like monuments from which the culture takes its name.  This was unfortunate because the other Lecturer on board, Prof. Lazrus, is a specialist in the Nuragic period.  A Phoenician settlement, called Solki (the Romans rendered it Sulci), was founded on what is now Sant’Antioco in the 8th century B.C. and  occupation has continued unbroken down to the present day.  It is impossible in a short blog to discuss all of the history, so I will only mention highlights here.

The ancient ruins at Solki are really made up of three main parts: a Punic-Roman acropolis, a Punic necropolis, and a series of hypogea.  Because of time limitations, we only passed by the acropolis on our way to the other sites.  Ongoing excavations continue to reveal monuments from both the Carthaginian and later Roman periods:

The ancient acropolis, with Punic and Roman ruins

The Punic necropolis is a fascinating site.  In terms of its importance in the study of Punic burial customs, it is second only to the necropolis of Carthage itself.  It has been called a tophet (literally, “roasting place”), a term found in the Bible and in several Roman authors in reference to a location for the ritual sacrifice of Carthaginian children by burning.

View of the Carthaginian tophet with reproductions of burial urns - the originals are in the nearby museum

Archaeologists have recovered the remains of 3300 child burials, and it was long postulated that this WAS a site for human sacrifice.  However, more recent analysis of the remains of the bodies uncovered little evidence to support the claim that the infants were ritually killed.  It seems more likely that it was simply a place for the burial of young children who had died of natural causes, a theory that is supported by inscriptions recovered at the site mentioning the god Baal Hammon and the goddess Tanit, two Carthaginian deities associated with the protection of children.

View of the tophet towards the sea - the excellent museum is visible in the middle ground

The evidence from other Carthaginian sites, such as a tophet at Motiya (Sicily) DO seem to point to child-sacrifice, however, so the question of its importance and prevalence in Carthaginian culture remains open.

The tophet is not the only important burial site on Sant’Antioco.  Within walking distance is a fascinating series of Punic hypogea.  A hypogeum is an underground chamber, and the term most often refers to such areas when used for burials.  On Sant’Antioco, areas of the island are composed of soft tufa, which is easily dug out.  This area lent itself to development as a burial ground by the Carthaginians, and the hypogea were dug and used between the 6th and 3rd centuries B.C.  Though only a small section are open to tourists today, archaeologists estimate that as many as 1,500 hypogea were in use over that period of time.

Reconstruction of a burial inside a Punic hypogeum.

Each hypogeum was a family tomb and could house the bodies of up to twenty individuals.  The dead were inhumed rather than cremated – they were laid in the tombs on wooden stretchers or in sarcophagi.  Burial goods have been discovered in abundance, placed below the wooden stretchers and in niches surrounding the bodies.

Detail of burial goods (reproductions)

These tombs served much the same purpose as modern family burial vaults: when someone died, they were interred and the tomb was sealed up with a rock and the entrance then covered with dirt.  Hopefully, by the next time it was necessary to bury a relative, the body had completed its decomposition.

The Romans continued to use the hypogea, as did the Early Christians on the island.  In modern times, as the island suffered extreme rates of poverty, some of the less-fortunate converted the hypogea into private homes.  Though some view this practice as macabre, it does not seem so to me at all – it seems, rather, like a very economical re-use of structures that were probably pretty comfortable, as underground houses tend to preserve very pleasant temperatures year-round.  The local museum has done an excellent job of displaying both the ancient Punic history of the tombs in their original forms and the modern history of the tombs as homes for the Sardinians.

Reconstruction of a modern bedroom in the Punic hypogea

Other aspects of the modern history of Sant’Antioco are also preserved in a small but excellent ethnographic museum near the hypogea.  Inside, a visitor can see beautiful examples of the local handmade pasta (a traditional Sardinian dish: fried ravioli stuffed with cheese and grated orange or lemon, and dressed with warm, bitter honey – oh my!) and exquisitely-formed breads and marzipans.

Beautiful Sardinian marzipan, traditionally prepared for Easter

Also of interest in the museum is a display explaining the local handicraft of producing bisso.  Bisso is a cloth woven from the beard of a certain large mollusk, the Noble Pen Shell (pino nobilis).  A traditional craft, the weaving of bisso is now greatly in decline, and the skill is in danger of being lost.

Another pleasant aspect of a visit to Sardinia is that the island is a botanist’s delight.

A home garden in Sant'Antioco

Like so many of the Mediterranean islands, the climate of Sardinia lends itself to the cultivation of a range of plants, and many types were imported by the people who passed through the island over the centuries.

One man's weed...

For example, the beautiful flowering bush you see here, whose name I do not know, apparently originated in Australia – the Aussies in our group could not believe that I was stopping to snap photos of such a bothersome weed!

Sardinia is definitely a stop that would repay more time spent.  The physical remains of the many layers of history laid atop one another are still clear and evocative, and the unique elements of its modern culture make it a delightful place to explore.

Corsica

“The Grand Object of All Travel is To See the Shores of the Mediterranean.”

So said Samuel Johnson, the famous 18^th-century English poet, critic, biographer (and auto-biographer) and traveler.  Certainly the Mediterranean has held a place of great importance in the history of the Western world since prehistoric times.  My first voyage on the Aegean Odyssey, taking Johnson’s quote as its title, put in at several Mediterranean islands before passing through the northern Aegean and up the Adriatic.  The islands in those waters preserve evidence of human occupation in numerous historical periods.  Though the advertised focus of the Voyages to Antiquity is ancient material, this cruise and others on their itinerary offer the opportunity to view the remains of thousands of years of history and to become (re)acquainted with a cast of fascinating characters ranging from mythological monsters, gods and heroes to just-as-legendary historical figures such as Crusaders, saints, and many different varieties of pirates.

Our ship set sail from Cevitavecchia, Rome’s harbor, after the passengers had spent two days seeing the highlights of that city (I only arrived on the day the ship left port).  Our first stop the next morning was Corsica.  In ancient legend, this island was a fearsome place, rocky and foreboding.  Odysseus visited it on his long voyage home from Troy and found it inhabited by man-eating giants, the Lystragonians (Odyssey, Book X, Lines 85-149).  This is how he describes his impression of the island: “Here, then, we found a curious bay with mountain walls of stone to left and right, and reaching far inland, a narrow entrance opening from the sea where cliffs converged as though to touch and close.  All of my squadron sheltered here, inside the cavern of this bay.”  His description is apt.  Although our ship, being larger than the vessels that enter the harbor, made anchor outside the arms of the cliffs, the island does offer protection for boats between high, imposing facades of rock.

The Harbor of Bonifacio, Corsica

Corsican Cliffs

When Odysseus and his men went ashore, they encountered the Lystragonians, who seized a number of their men and ate them on the spot, then gathered on the skyline of the cliffs to hurl boulders down on Odysseus’s ships as they made their frantic escape.  Some scholars theorize that the island gained a reputation as the home of giants because men standing on the cliffs cast extremely long shadows down the rocks, making them appear unnaturally tall.  It is very likely that the Bronze Age inhabitants of the island did defend their spectacular harbor by lobbing rocks at all unwanted passersby, a xenophobic tradition that continued well into the modern period as the island, which lies in a very desirable location, withstood siege after siege.

The fictional visit of Odysseus and his men is not the first evidence we have for the habitation of the island.  In the 1970s, the skeleton of a woman was discovered in the limestone cliffs near Bonifacio.  Researchers used carbondating to place her burial around 6570 B.C., some 5000 years before the historical fall of Troy.  She is now known as Dame de Bonifaco, “The Lady of Bonifacio,” and her remains serve as proof that Corsica has been a center of human habitation for thousands of years.  In some ways this is surprising, given the harshness of the landscape.  Although the interior of the island is lush in some places (we did not have time to visit the interior), the areas around the natural harbor are famously covered in a carpet of thick, hearty scrub called maquis.  The vegetation provides wonderful cover for those wishing to evade notice (so they can, for example, hurl boulders at ships) and is fine as grazing material for goats, but provides little in the way of human sustenance. (Geek alert: the term Maquis has since been appropriated in the Star Trek universe as the name of a fictional 24^th-century paramilitary organization, a name that reflects an association with the guerilla resistance fighters of Corsica and southeastern France who used the scrub to their tactical advantage).

Like many of the Mediterranean islands, the history of Corsica can be traced through military actions.  In the late 12^th century, the island was taken by the Genoese, who built the near-impregnable citadel that still forms the heart of the town of Bonifacio today.

View of the Genoese Fortress at Bonifacio

The Knights Templar passed through Corsica on the First Crusade in 1270 and left their mark in the form of the Gothic Church of S. Dominique.  The island suffered many sieges throughout its history, the most famous and terrible of which took place in 1420 when Corsica became the only remaining bit of land standing between the Spanish King of Aragon and complete domination of Europe.  Legend has it that after almost 5 months, running low on food and water, the Corsicans constructed a boat on top of the cliffs and lowered it to the water outside the harbor in order to send men for help.  By that point, the casualties among the men of the town had already been so high that the citadel was being defended primarily by women and children.  In the fine Corsican tradition of throwing things down on their enemies, it is said that the women of Bonifacio bombarded the Spanish forces from above with cheeses, which obviously did little damage except perhaps to wound their pride.  The siege was eventually broken and Corsica remained free of Spanish control.

Door of the Bonaparte family home

Other sieges followed in later centuries, including a protracted one by a French/Turkish alliance in 1553, at the end of which the Corsicans were tricked into surrendering.  The Genoese regained control of the island by treaty a few years later, but Corsica was to become French once again under the Treaty of Versailles, a turn in its history that culminated in the career of its most famous son, Napoleon Bonaparte.  Napoleon was born to Corsican nobility on the island in 1769, and although he spent much of his life on the French mainland, visitors to the island today can still see his family’s home, where he spent some time as young child.

Corsica was of great strategic importance in the Second World War, a situation that led to great misery for the Corsican people.  Known for their tenacity and ferocity, the men of Corsica were drafted as frontline fighters by the French.  All able-bodied men aged 16-60 were dispatched to the trenches and very few returned, leading to their gruesome designation as the “Human Hemorrhage.”  Several war memorials stand in the squares of Bonifacio in honor of their great sacrifices.  Despite that crushing blow to the populace of the island, Corsica has managed to retain much of its important cultural heritage to the present day.  The Corsican language, which lay dormant for many years, has been revived primarily through study of the lyrics of traditional Corsican polyphonic choruses.  It is now taught in schools, and all students attending college on Corsica must read Corsican at the university level.

Unique traditions of religion have also been preserved.  Notable examples are the dozens of yearly processions that wind through the towns, in which extremely heavy wooden “floats” depicting religious subjects are carried and revered.  Here is an example from the church of John the Baptist, depicting that beheading of that saint, with Salome and her mother Herodias waiting behind to receive his head on the silver platter:

John the Baptist float

The main draw of Corsica today is, of course, tourism.  The island’s population of 270,000 swells to six times that number in the summer, as people come to view the evocative Medieval/Renaissance citadel of Bonifacio, to appreciate the rugged landscape of the island’s coasts and interior, and to drink the local chestnut beer and visit the attractive shops.

A food shop in Bonifacio

Having visited for only a morning, our stop on Corsica definitely left me wanting to return and further explore this beautiful and historically important island.  For more on Corsica, see Dorothy Carrington’s book Granite Island (London, 1971).

View of MV Aegean Odyssey at anchor (background) from the cliffs of Corsica

For more on Corsica, see Dorothy Carrington’s book Granite Island (London, 1971).

Setting Sail on a Voyage To Antiquity

This past week I returned from cruising for five weeks on the ship Aegean Odyssey, the single vessel operating for the British line Voyages to Antiquity.  As their name suggests, the cruise line, which is just over a year old, has established itineraries that highlight ports of call at sites of historical importance, particularly (though not exclusively) related to the ancient world.  I was brought on board as a Guest Lecturer.  My duties were to present afternoon and evening talks on the archaeology, art and architecture of the ancient cultures that flourished in the areas we were sailing, as well as to accompany the passengers on shore excursions and to make myself generally available during mealtimes and days at sea to discuss what we had seen together.  It was a wonderful and exhausting experience.  As a recognizable public figure on a smallish ship with 350 passengers at its maximum capacity, in effect I was “on” any time I was out of my cabin.  While this may sound tiring (and it WAS), I enjoyed every minute of it and most likely bored some of my fellow passengers with my endless energy for discussing old things (note to readers: approach at your own risk an Academic while they are fully immersed in their Favorite Topic).  That being said, the people who had selected the Voyages to Antiquity cruise line out of all potential lines that operate in that part of the world had at least a general interest in history.  This camaraderie of travel purpose was one of the real selling points of the experience, in my opinion.  For some comments on that aspect of the cruise, you can see my submission to the ship’s official blog here: http://blog.voyagestoantiquity.com.  It had not yet posted as of July 14, but should be appearing soon.

My goal was to blog our travels in real-time on this site, updating from various ports.  However, the schedule of sightseeing and adventures proved too rigorous, and Internet access too spotty.  So what will follow here for the next weeks will be an after-the-fact discussion of the journey.  Although it may lack some of the immediacy of a shipboard blog, I hope that having had time to digest the overwhelming amounts of history through which we traveled will also benefit this narrative.

I should note from the beginning that I am NOT an employee of Voyages to Antiquity, nor am I a crew member of the Aegean Odyssey.  As a Guest Lecturer I cruised for free, but I was not paid for my appearance.  This is the place for full (and unsurprising) disclosure: I hope to be invited back in the future, but I am not writing this blog as an advertisement for the cruise line.  That being said, I do believe that the company has hit on a very exciting travel niche and that they are executing the voyages extremely well, to the delight of their patrons, although with a few hiccups that are to be expected of any new endeavor.  Again, I am not an official representative of the company; however, if someone reading this would like to correspond about the cruises and my experience on the ship, feel free to contact me at candace@candaceweddle.com and I will be happy to share with you.

Tomorrow on this blog I will launch into my first voyage, an itinerary titled “The Grand Object of All Travel Is To See The Shores of the Mediterranean.”  The ship set sail from Rome and put in at ports on several of the Mediterranean islands before traveling up the Dalmatian Coast to end on the other side of Italy, in beautiful Venice.  I hope you will join me!