Day 5 of Minerva Black Sea Cruise - Sinop

Sinop is a little town, called a city, on the southern coast of the Black Sea. It's in Turkey, and has a long history going back to 700BC and was once one of the most flourishing Greek settlements on the Black Sea.

But that was then. Now there's not a lot in Sinop to interest a tourist. As I said yesterday, I volunteered Peter to act as escort on the "Sinop city walk and archaeological museum" tour. I escorted Peter.

The walk was scheduled to take 3 1/2 hours, but to be honest that was far too long. There were two museums - the first was the Ethography museum. Basically a (very large)Turkish home, furnished exactly as it was 80 odd years ago. I quite liked the house - the internal decor was so different to what we are used to and made me think of gypsy caravans. Lovely.

A room in the Ethography Museum, Sinop

After that, we visited the archeological museum, which was closed! We did find a tortoise in the grounds though.

Last we went to visit the Aladdin Mosque. Again, I quite liked this. Our guide explained how 90% of Turks are Muslims, but Turkey is not an Islamic State, meaning that religion is kept of of politics and how the country is run. Alcohol can be purchased, people live as practising or non-practising Muslims, the country is tolerant of all other faiths - a bit like the Church of England and Britain. Our guide also explained a little about the Muslim way of prayer to us. The building itself was peaceful, as was the courtyard, and I found the whole experience very pleasant.

Inside the Aladdin Mosque, Sinop

From there, we crossed the road into what used to be the school associated with the Mosque. It isn't any longer, and now it is filled with shops and stalls of local wares. Our guide told us we would have 20-25 minutes there. I wandered off to see what was about.

When I got back to Peter, I discovered our guide had disappeared. "He'll be back" said Peter, "He's showing some of the group the way back to the ship and then he's coming back for us."

Famous last words! 

Our guide did not come back. 25 minutes later, Peter, myself and 5 others from the group were still waiting. We found the lead tour guides who started making phone calls, and spoke to Amy, the ship's Program Manager and also an escort on with a walking tour.

We decided to tag onto Amy's tour and follow her guide back to the ship, but her guide had already gone off with the group and we had delayed Amy - which effectively meant she had been left behind too!

We quickly tried to catch up, but in the twists and corners of the narrow streets, we'd lost them.
To be honest, we'd probably done ourselves a favour. We made our own way back, finding a little shop where Amy could buy proper Turkish coffee, and then finding our way to the harbour, which was a little more interesting than the streets of the city.  So, that was a first. Passengers have got lost from the tour before, but never the escorts!

Not a city I would recommend then.  The highlight of my morning was the Black Throated Diver I spotted in the harbour whilst we were waiting for the tour to start.

Black Throated Diver in the Black Sea - Sinop Harbour

It was a half day at Sinop, so the ship set sail about 1.30 and Peter had an art class at 3pm. It was the tonal study, and there were a 30+ people in the group, so it took nearly 2 hours for that class to complete.

The day ended with a talk from the Very Reverend Dr Victor Stock. We'd decided to go listen because our earlier interactions with him proved that he was something of a character. This held out and we enjoyed his very amusing after dinner speech.

Tomorrow the ship docks into Trabzon, from where we will join the tour to the Monastery of Sumela. I'm quite excited about that one