“Cruising the Dodecanese” is Peter Sommer Travels’ last scheduled cruise in Greece in 2017. This year, to give an impression of the experience, we are providing a diary of sorts on our blog. Rather than describing every day in detail (you can check our itineraries on www.petersommer.com for that), every day we will pick one image we took that day, accompanied by some explanations and thoughts.
Today is the start of this year's "Exploring the Dodecanese", our classic two-week gulet cruise in Greece's Dodecanese archipelago, the group of islands stretched out along the western shore of Anatolia (Turkey).
Accompanied by our expert guides, Maria and myself, our guests will be visiting nine or ten of the islands in that group, plus glorious Samos. On each island, they will be shown some of the most distinctive, important, fascinating or beautiful places to see there, such as archaeological sites, traditional villages, venerable monasteries or mighty castles. On many, they will also have the opportunity to savour local specialities. All in all, the experience will offer them a rich and diverse panorama of a very historic region and its ongoing tradition.
Much of Day 1 on most of our itineraries is a time of anticipation and preparation. And so it is today: Maria and I have arrived in Kos, our port of departure, early today, to run some errands, acquire some things and await our boat and guests, looking forward to an introductory dinner aboard.
For the moment, we are relaxing, while admiring the view of a typically Koan seafront (we have written about Kos Town elsewhere), including the full and eclectic range of the city's architecture, from a 15th century medieval House connected with the Knights of Saint John (right edge of image) to the grandiose but crumbling Gelsomino Hotel, built by the Italian occupants in the 1930s. Remains of the ancient city are just behind.
The depth of history contained in this simple view is in many ways a shorthand for the type of story or stories we hope to tell our guests over the next fortnight. There's more to come.
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