A Small Gulet Charter Cruising Turkey A Larger Charter Catamaran Cruising Greece And Turkey A Large Charter Yacht Cruising Greece And Turkey This page last updated on 03/01/2010 Dear Homo Sapiens, There is no need to continue reading this page. What
follows is intended for search engine robots and spiders and not necessarily for human beings. Further
information concerning charter catamarans cruising Greece and Turkey may be obtained by clicking on the
blue links immediately above. Thank You. You must be searching for a charter cruise in Greece or
Turkey. You may even be searching for charter catamarans cruising Greece or Turkey. It is even possible
you are searching for Broadblue charter catamarans cruising Greece or Turkey. Whichever, you have come
to the right place. This web page deals specifically with the latter possibility but necessarily with the
other two possibilities, as well. This page also deals with cruising remote and under-populated Dodecanese
Islands of Greece's eastern Aegean. It deals, too, with cruising Turkey's pine-clad and cove-indented
southwest coast. Could you be dreaming of a catamaran cruise with your family among motorbike islands
crowned with medieval castles? Or along Turkey's tree-fringed eastern Mediterranean coast en route from
ancient walled acropolis to ancient lighthouse? Could you be dreaming of children actually reveling in
history? Could you imagine your children absorbing without urging lessons in history piled atop lessons in
geography? Well, if so, you have again come to the right place. |
You have come to the birthplace of history; and there is plenty of
evidence to prove it. You have come to the birthplace of Herodotus who wrote at Halicarnassus, modern
Bodrum, the first history text, entitled History, in the middle of the fifth century before the
Christian era. You have come to the birthplace of Artemisia of Halicarnassus, Queen of ancient Caria and
hero of the 480BC battle of Salamis between Greeks and Persians. And aboard your mobile classroom you may
read about Artemisia in that first history text, a text still in publication
2500 years later. You have come to the capital
city of Mausolus who commissioned the building of one of the seven wonders of the ancient world: the
Mausoleum at Halicarnassus. You have come to Alexander's 334-333BC path along the coast of Asia Minor, a
path seriously interrupted only at Halicarnassus. You have come to the birthplace of Ptolemy Philadelphus,
Egyptian pharaoh and Cleopatra forebear, at Kos Town eleven nautical miles from Halicarnassus. You have
come to a realm of the Byzantine Empire, the longest surviving empire in history. You have reached
crossroads along which all four major Crusades passed. Minor Crusades, too. You have arrived in the backyard
of the Knights Hospitaller, the Knights of Saint John of Jerusalem who maintained at Rhodes the world's most
advanced medical facility, and who maintained at Rhodes and at Halicarnassus and at Kos Town one of the
Mediterranean's most respected maritime fighting forces. And you have put to the same sea long the haunt of
privateers, corsairs, and pirates, prominent among whom was Turgut Reis, known to the west as Dragut and to
the east as The Drawn Sword of Islam, born within shouting distance of Halicarnassus. At this
forecourt of history there was a second Artemisia, not Xerxes' hero at Salamis nor descended from Xerxes'
hero but rather the wife and sister of Mausolus. Upon the death of Mausolus in 353BC this second Artemisia
became Queen of Caria. Caria then covered much of the southwest quadrant of Anatolia (a Greek word meaning
east) from Greek-speaking Ionia to Greek-speaking Phaselis, including ancient Lycia and most of the
offshore islands now Dodecanese: Rhodes, Kos, Simi, Nisiros, and Kalymnos among them. She was the daughter of
the dynasty's founder, and after the death of her husband, she reigned until 350BC. Depicted at lower right, she
is renowned in history
for her extraordinary grief at the death of her husband. She induced eminent Greeks from the school of rhetoric
at Rhodes to proclaim his praise in their oratory; and to perpetuate his memory she built at Halicarnassus the
celebrated monument he had commissioned. Like her namesake, Artemisia II was also an accomplished mariner. The
island of Rhodes theretofore a part of Mausolus's 
kingdom deemed rule by a woman intolerable and dispatched a flotilla to subdue Halicarnassus. The
flotilla disembarked its crews to sack the town and was thereupon surprised and seized by a squadron of galleys
commanded by Artemisia, the disembarked crews interned. Artemisia with the captured Rhodian flotilla in the van
then headed for Rhodes Town. Seeing their own flotilla returning the aristocracy at Rhodes came down to the
harbor in welcome and lowered the harbor's chain. They in their turn were also seized. And so Artemisia II
commissioned a tropaion (monument) in her own image at Rhodes to commemorate her success in turning the
table on Rhodian insurgents. Decades later, after the Rhodians had freed themselves from Carian dominion, but
unable for reasons of Greek tradition to tear down the tropaion they
surrounded it with a fortified wall, the enclosure called an abaton, or inaccessible place, and so the
statue itself has come down to us as the Abaton. Artemisia II was also a botanist and student of medicine;
Artemisia, a plant genus with between 200 and 400 species belonging to the daisy family, is named after
her. But Artemisia II is perhaps most famous for having had a death wish. She is said to have mixed her husband's
ashes in her daily drink, and to have gradually pined away in grief during the few years she survived him. And
this but a small chapter at the crossroads of history. How about watching your children traipse along this same
crossroads while you bask under a warm Aegean sun brightening an azure sea, while you dine on grilled octopus
or seafood pasta? Or on innumerable Turkish mezes? Or while you take your bareboat catamaran further
along the coast of Turkey or out among Aegean islands of Greece. Starting in Bodrum. Are you searching for
Bodrum in Turkey? Well, Bodrum is located at the mouth of its own gulf just where the coast of Anatolia turns
from north-south to east-west, and it has its own international airport. Bodrum was in the time of the Knights
called St. Peters, as is their castle today, but whether Bodrum or Halicarnassus or St. Peters, there we can
put you aboard a charter catamaran for a holiday not to be forgotten. We can put you aboard a charter
catamaran and point you toward the crossroads of history. The Broadblue 435 is an impressive charter yacht
available for cruising Greece or Turkey or both. Contact Blue Cruise Yacht Charters
today at