September 11 – Delos

Another early departure via tender to the island of Delos.  Mary was not feeling well, so only Paul went.  

Delos was the birthplace of the twins, Artemis, goddess of animals, and Apollo, god of healing music and light.  As such it was a sacred place, but eventually transformed into a commercial city when it became a tax-free zone, and had up to 30,000 inhabitants.  Today, only the archaeologists live there.  

We first visited the residential and commercial ruins.  Very impressive, as many of the first story walls and several pillars were still standing.

Two monuments dedicated to Hermes, god of commerce.

Many commercial buildings, with a door opening onto the main road. 

Residences were large, with many rooms, needed to accommodate the couple, children, parents, grandparents, and servants/slaves.  The bottom floor was for entertaining guests.  The second floor for the family common areas, and the third floor had bedrooms.    

There was also a large amphitheater but it was in rather poor repair.

They had cisterns to catch rain water and a sewer system.  There were two and three story houses, open plazas, 

some mosaics that were in pretty good condition,

and lots of cats.  The Greeks seem to really like cats, they are everywhere.

We then visited the religious sanctuary site,  mostly only low walls and scattered blocks of rock.  But there were also some pillars, and some impressive lion statues, which guarded the sanctuary.

Paul then visited the museum, small, but had lots of vases, statues, and other artifacts, 

included the originals of the lions, brought inside to protect them from further deterioration.   

Once back on board they set up the sails again for out next leg of the cruise.

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Watch video of unfurling the sails.

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A portrait of the Sea Cloud

It was particularly interesting to see the raise the jib sails in front...a bunch of sailors would grab the rope and then pull/run like crazy a short distance towards the stern of the boat.

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Watch video of unfurling the jib sail.                               *****
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In the afternoon, the archaeologist on board gave an interesting talk on the Aegean area, compressing 2,000 years of history into about 45 minutes.

And our expedition leader gave a talk on the storied history of the sea cloud.

Paul and Jim enjoying the sun on the upper deck.

This evening many of the guests on the Main Deck of the ship agreed to open their staterooms for tours by the rest of us.  These rooms were the private bedrooms of E.F. Hutton…

Marjorie Merriweather Post…

their daughter, Adina (better known as the actress Dina Merrill), their guests, and Adina’s tutor and nanny.

Mark and Toni were our table mates tonight and they were in one of the guest suites.  It was much larger than ours and complete with fireplace (retrofitted with lights and glass glowing “coals”), bathtub and two walk in closets.