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We charter a boat with our erstwhile captain, Danny (of the RROMAD group), and sail out on the sea of Achilles, Odysseus, and Onassis. This is the realization of a long-time goal, for me - to bareboat, anywhere.

To do it in Greece! Well, that's icing, isn't it?

Not our first choice in travel modes, but an opportunity to share the experience with a group of friends, combined with a fortuitous price point and the fact it was in the Greek Isles prompted us to embark on a smallish cruise on the Radisson Diamond.

Still not my favorite mode of travel, but you can't beat the service...

Trip outlines each point in the Itinerary, starting from Athens and ending in Istanbul.

As we watch the city go to dusk from the isolation of our arriving cruise ship, we get the overwhelming sensation we are in someplace truly different. The city is congested, with mixed architecture - prominent among all are the great mosques, set like great stones in an otherwise amorphous sea of lesser buildings and apartments.

As twilight slips in, we hear the wail of the muzzein drift across the water, reinforcing that sense of strange and different culture.

We wonder what is in store for us...

Another visit to Venice, one of our favorite cities in Europe.

This is an extension of a camping trip, itself the beginning of a greater trip. Many observations around the city, particularly in the sidebars.

Considered by some the most beautiful area in Italy, Lombardy and the Lake District consist of glacially carved lakes that finger down from the Italian Alps.

The deep blue lakes fill the steep glacial valleys, pretty terra-cotta and ochre towns sprinkled with church steeples flow out of the side valleys to the shoreline, graced also with beautiful lakeside villas. It's been an escape since the days of ancient Rome.

We explore Lago di Como, Lago di Lugano, Lago di Maggiore, and, on the way out, the southern tip of Lago di Guarda. We also are camping, this trip, saving funds for later events.

The "City of Apollo" and home of the famous Oracle.

Discovered by the French in the early 1900s, the excavation since has been breathtaking, and reveals the bones of a once thriving center.

It's a clot of a city - cascades of apartment buildings flowing down the hills like sugar granules layering a pastry.

But, it is also one of the most important ancient cities of the western world.

All those masks you see in the tourist shops? They're actually worn during Carnevale but that's not all!

We hie to the Piazza di San Marco and visit the most elegant Carnival/Mardis Gras celebration of all.