We found everything amusing, including the name of our port, so my dumb joke about a potentially wooden dock sounding like a nursery rhyme made us giggle.
I kept doing variations, and eventually Miss Mature herself came up with one involving Star Trek that had the punchline of Trickery Dikili Spock.
As Julie surmised, those phrases undoubtedly lose a lot in translation, especially when you consider that the port name should be pronounced dee-KEE-lee rather than my nursery rhyme singsong mispronunciation as dick-illy.
Nonetheless, we enjoyed a very pleasant day exploring sites outside Dikili.
We had planned to be on our own that day, which would have been a bad idea, because Dikili is definitely a tourist town for residents of Turkey and not geared at all to English speakers.
We received a free excursion ticket following the port presentation for Dikili that we'd attended on the morning of the jazz brunch.
This time we didn't win the ticket ourselves, but rather received it in part because we had waited patiently in our seats for the crowd to clear out after the talk.
Flash back to the prior morning when we shared a table with some nice folks from Arizona. I don't remember their names, but the bronzed husband reminded me of a trim version of actor George Kennedy's cowboy from the 1968 movie Bandolero.
Let's call them George and Raquel for the purposes of this blog.
As the port presentation tour concluded, the speakers pulled a ticket out of a bag for the lucky winner of a Red Basilica Tour ticket.
As Julie surmised, those phrases undoubtedly lose a lot in translation, especially when you consider that the port name should be pronounced dee-KEE-lee rather than my nursery rhyme singsong mispronunciation as dick-illy.
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| Bergama Museum Exhibit of Traditional Muslim Wear |
We had planned to be on our own that day, which would have been a bad idea, because Dikili is definitely a tourist town for residents of Turkey and not geared at all to English speakers.
This time we didn't win the ticket ourselves, but rather received it in part because we had waited patiently in our seats for the crowd to clear out after the talk.
Flash back to the prior morning when we shared a table with some nice folks from Arizona. I don't remember their names, but the bronzed husband reminded me of a trim version of actor George Kennedy's cowboy from the 1968 movie Bandolero.
Let's call them George and Raquel for the purposes of this blog.
As the port presentation tour concluded, the speakers pulled a ticket out of a bag for the lucky winner of a Red Basilica Tour ticket.
 |
| Above the Trees Are Hilltop Remainders of Pergamon Ruins |
Raquel won the free ticket, but she and George had previously booked a tour to the ruins of Pergamon.
Azamara offered to let them cancel the one they'd previously booked for a refund and change tours, but they elected to stay with their original plan.
When they turned around, Raquel's eyes found us still seated in the rapidly-emptying theater, and remembering our pleasant time over coffee, offered us the ticket.
Only needing to buy one ticket changed our plans from DIY to ship-sponsored excursion.
Our tour actually turned out to be better than the one George and Raquel kept, because they later reported the ancient ruins of Pergamon had mostly been moved to Berlin, as we'd read previously.
Both tours visited the small Bergama Museum near Pergamon (not to be confused with the Pergamon Museum in Berlin, where Germans, in cooperation with the Turkish government, took most of the best pre-Muslim artifacts they excavated from the area, including the gigantic pagan Altar of Pergamon itself, which they reconstructed there).
Still, Bergama Museum had plenty of interesting artifacts to hold our attention in the time allotted, including a model of the Temple and photo of the Berlin reconstruction.
It had historic remnants from the Greek, Roman and Muslim ages.
After an hour or so, our tour headed over to the nearby Red Basilica, which turned out to be pretty awesome.
At almost 600 feet long, this massive red brick structure is the length two football fields placed end-to-end.
The main building is 86 feet wide, and its walls are 62 feet tall, above which there had once been a massive roof, so you can imagine how impressive it would have been standing before it.
Construction workers were busy restoring the building from scaffolding inside the walls.
Built in the early second century (most likely under the rule of Roman Emperor Hadrian), the Red Basilica was initially a pagan temple.
When Constantine converted the Empire to Christian, the temple became a Catholic Basilica.
Like much of the Holy Lands, the Red Basilica and the surrounding area moved into Muslim hands, and it became a mosque.
Right next to the main building, a tall, fat tower with an oculus opening at the apex of the dome captured our attention after most of the group had returned to our bus.
We returned to the seaside town of Dikili in time for a late lunch, but as I mentioned previously, it really is not geared to English speakers. In fact, it must have been about 99% middle-aged Turkish men filling the tables at the cafes and walking the streets. We finally gave up on finding an inviting cafe featuring Daghne's-style gyros, opting instead for another delicious lunch on board Azamara Journey.
We would not be sampling any Turkish stir-fried cactus prepared in a Dikili prick-illy wok.
Red Basilica
Azamara offered to let them cancel the one they'd previously booked for a refund and change tours, but they elected to stay with their original plan.
When they turned around, Raquel's eyes found us still seated in the rapidly-emptying theater, and remembering our pleasant time over coffee, offered us the ticket.
 |
| Altar of Pergamon in Berlin, Germany |
Only needing to buy one ticket changed our plans from DIY to ship-sponsored excursion.
Our tour actually turned out to be better than the one George and Raquel kept, because they later reported the ancient ruins of Pergamon had mostly been moved to Berlin, as we'd read previously.
Still, Bergama Museum had plenty of interesting artifacts to hold our attention in the time allotted, including a model of the Temple and photo of the Berlin reconstruction.
It had historic remnants from the Greek, Roman and Muslim ages.
After an hour or so, our tour headed over to the nearby Red Basilica, which turned out to be pretty awesome.At almost 600 feet long, this massive red brick structure is the length two football fields placed end-to-end.
The main building is 86 feet wide, and its walls are 62 feet tall, above which there had once been a massive roof, so you can imagine how impressive it would have been standing before it.
Construction workers were busy restoring the building from scaffolding inside the walls.
When Constantine converted the Empire to Christian, the temple became a Catholic Basilica.
Like much of the Holy Lands, the Red Basilica and the surrounding area moved into Muslim hands, and it became a mosque.
We returned to the seaside town of Dikili in time for a late lunch, but as I mentioned previously, it really is not geared to English speakers. In fact, it must have been about 99% middle-aged Turkish men filling the tables at the cafes and walking the streets. We finally gave up on finding an inviting cafe featuring Daghne's-style gyros, opting instead for another delicious lunch on board Azamara Journey.
We would not be sampling any Turkish stir-fried cactus prepared in a Dikili prick-illy wok.
Red Basilica
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