28-Day Turkey, Greek Isles & Passage To America

Alicante lies 225 miles (362 km) southeast of Madrid. It is a small city boasting beaches and warm weather most of the year. Alicante is a haven of sidewalk cafes nestled beside little piazas or set out on the palm-lined Explanade. Marvelous views are yours from the castle of Santa Barbara, perched on a rocky peak, and in the Museum of 20th-Century Art,
with masterworks by Picasso, Miro and Braque.

Today the port of Civitavecchia has the advantage of being the Italian “stepping stone to the Mediterranean” thanks to its excellent weather conditions and ideal geographical location.

From Civitavecchia it is a train ride to almost anywhere in Italy and a quick jaunt to Sardinia. Its position has helped make it the main national coastal shipping port.

Fort Lauderdale, (lô´der-dâl´) city (1990 pop. 148,377), seat of Broward Co., SE Fla., on the Atlantic coast; settled around a fort built (c.1837) in the Seminole War, inc. 1911. The city has more than 270 mi (435 km) of natural and artificial waterways and one of the largest marinas in the world. A major beach resort, it has a performing arts center and art and science museums. Products include electronic devices, boats and yachts, and various light manufactures.

Turkey is a great country to visit. The Turks are mostly overwhelmingly friendly to foreign visitors, the cuisine is frequently excellent, the cities are dotted with majestic old buildings and the countryside is often worth a good old-fashioned gasp. There’s an enormous variety of things to see and do ranging from water sports to mountain trekking, archaeology to night-clubbing and river rafting to raki drinking. Whether you leave Turkey with magnificent carpets, amulets to ward off evil, belly-dancing tips, an appreciation of its history, or just a tan, you’re likely to want to go back for more.

The famous city of Istanbul stands where Europe meets Asia and where East meets West, with all its magnificence, and signs from its far-reaching past. It has such a location that it constitutes not only a city of history, but also one of natural beauty beyond example. Extending on the two sides of the Bosphorus bordered by green groves, it also possesses beautiful shores along the internal Marmara Sea. Facing the city there exists small, pretty islands, adorning this big sea, Iying in the middle of the region. The sea features the land in that the climatic characteristics of the Black Sea influencing the north of it, is separated from the typical Mediterranean climate prevailing in its south. Rainfall is high enough to facilitate growing a variety of fruits, while snowfall enlivens the winter holidays. Indeed, it is Istanbul’s variety that fascinates its visitors. The museums, churches, palaces, great mosques, bazaars and sights of natural beauty seem inexhaustilbe.

Istanbul is also an international art and cultural center. In fact whatever intrigues your heart and mind can be discovered in this city where time lives on.

Resting along Andalusia’s bright Costa del Sol is the picturesque port of Malaga, birthplace of Pablo Picasso. At the Malaga Cathedral see the natural wood carvings of artist Pedro de Mena and visit the Gibralfaro Castle. Then continue on to the ancient city of Granada, high into the Sierra Nevada mountains. Here lies the spectacular Alhambra, the grand
fortress of the last Moorish rulers of Spain and one of the largest structures in the world. Inside is Isabella’s priceless collection of European paintings. The Granada Cathedral is the site where King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella are buried along with their daughter.

Mykonos is the most chic and sophisticated of all the Greek Islands–instantly recognized by its glittering crescent of white-washed houses lining an azure bay. The beaches here are unspoiled and inviting, especially along Plati Tialos Bay. Miniature churches, lazy windmills, and tiny cafes serving up Greek specialties line the streets. Sample the freshest squid or lobster just snatched from the blue Aegean Sea, or shop for typical flokati rugs.

Lava, spewing from a live volcano–no, you won’t see this in Naples, Italy, and you’re lucky, because the last folks in these parts who witnessed such an event were the natives of Pompeii, who were buried under 30 feet of ash and pumice stone in AD 79. You can, however, visit the beautifully preserved remains of this unfortunate city on a short tour from Naples.

There’s much more to Naples, of course. This picturesque city is one of the great cultural centers, full of extraordinary works of art and architecture in the classical Greek and Roman styles.

Naples, on its justly famous blue bay, is the great city of the south. Located on the southwest coast of Italy, south of Rome. The Amalfi Drive to the south arguably is the world’s most scenic motor route. Naples enjoys a very dry and warm climate year around.

As you approach the city over the bridge from the Italian mainland, you leave behind terra firma and, with it, earthbound notions of how to see and experience a city. Venice is not solely the spill of churches and palazzi on either side of the Grand Canal, but rather a city of islands, 118 in all, some of which are little more than the weedy, humps you see in the Lagoon of Venice. And yet these mud flats provided haven for the people who fled here (without benefit of a bridge) from Huns, Visigoths, and other marauders in the fifth century. And those refugees gave birth to a culture that ripened into a thousand years of greatness.

As you near the end of the bridge, you see at first only the back side of the city itself. But in the time it takes to walk through the train station, you begin to hear sounds peculiarly Venetian–the low rumble of boat motors, a humid incubation of voices, water lapping insistently against wood and stone. And then Venice confers her greatest gift: No matter how many times you’ve been here, it always seems, in that first glimse, like the first time.

If you are smart, you will immediately start a tour down the Grand Canal by hopping on a vaporetto (water bus) or gondola or water taxi. If you are lucky, it will be during those few hours before sunset when the light shines most kindly on the venerable facades that line this liquid boulevard. If you are particularly observant, you might even notice that neither the light nor the colors are quite Italian, not like the tawny earth tones of Florence or Rome.

The canal is a murkey green, the palazzi a mix of faded, grimy sherbets–watermarked mint and sun-blanched apricot and deep overripe peach. Sunlight shatters into spangles on the water, gondolas knife bach and forth, the Rialto Bridge looms overhead, and then, beyond one final curve, the Palladian church of Santa Maria della Salute and the Campanile (bell tower) of San Marco come into view.

Piazza san Marco is Venice’s grand salon–expansive, familiar, picturesque, pigeonesque. It is anchored at its eastern extreme by the Basilica di San Marco, which is not only the spiritual seat of Venice’s patron saint but also one of the most glittering monuments of Christendom.