On our third day in Odesa we took a bus trip of almost two hours to Akkerman Fortress. Akkerman Fortress (also called Bilhorod-Dnistrovskyi fortress) was built on the site of the ancient Greek city of Tyres. Construction of the fortress is believed to have begun in the 13th century. Akkerman Fortress was protected by the Black Sea (Dniester Estuary), a moat, and its walls (see birds eye view below). Like most of this region, the area has had many rulers, which you can read about in the Wikipedia article.

Odesa has a long and complicated history, like much of this area. In antiquity there was a Greek settlement at the site. There is known to have been a settlement which was part of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania by 1415. The Grand Duchy included large portions of the former Kievan Rus’ and other neighbouring states, including what is now Belarus, Lithuania, most of Ukraine as well as parts of Latvia, Moldova, Poland and Russia. Odesa became part of the Ottoman Empire in 1529 until the Ottomans’ defeat in the Russo-Turkish War (1787–1792). In 1794 Catherine the Great, empress of Russia, established a navy harbor and trading port and soon after it was named Odesa. From 1819 to 1858, it was a free port. During the Soviet period it was a trading port and naval base. Ukraine became independent again when the Soviet Union dissolved in 1991. Odesa is the third largest city in Ukraine and (was) a major seaport and transportation hub.

In this post I’m going to show some photographs of Istanbul related to the Bosporus: a Bosporus cruise and sights along the Bosporus. And next comes Ukraine! We just added a few days in Istanbul before our Ukraine Viking cruise.

We toured Topkapi Palace on our 2013 visit to Istanbul. Since it was very crowded and I did not feel like standing in line to go into a museum, I stayed outside and photographed whatever I found. Part of what I found was very interesting trees, especially their bark.

I will start with the famous hollow tree. I read that a fungus attacked but not kill some of the trees, and some became hollow. (I think the black interior of the hollow tree was applied by man, not nature.)

The Topkapi Palace is now a museum but in the 15th and 16th centuries it served as the main residence and administrative headquarters of the Ottoman sultans. I must say our visit was not as pleasant as it could have been. First it was raining, and second it was so crowded there were very long lines to get into any of the buildings. So we mostly wandered the grounds, which were beautiful. It is also huge and we did not have a guidebook.

On our way to our cruise in Ukraine, we spent a couple of nights in Istanbul, Turkey. We stayed in the Conrad Hotel in Besiktas, close to downtown Istanbul.

We toured Acoma Pueblo with Bob and Zeina Cook in late October 2018. Also known as Sky City, it is situated on a 367-foot high mesa in New Mexico. You check in for a tour at the Sky City Cultural Center and ride to the top of the mesa on a road that was blasted into the rock face in the 1950s. The original footpaths can be used for your return trip if you choose. (Click on any photo for a larger view.)

Below left is the view of the mesa from the road to the mesa. On the right is a view from the mesa.

I discovered the old feed mill in Johnson City, Texas, in 2008. It had been converted into a complex of businesses that were no longer in operation and it was already in disrepair. I took it upon myself to attempt to photograph it. Recently I came back to these photos and realized there seems to be very few photos of it on the internet, so I decided to process my photos for a story. The complex has now been turned into the Science Mill and it is from their site that I got its history.

This photo is the widest view of the complex that I have, so I decided to start with it. As you can see, someone went to a huge amount of work decorating the buildings. Stay tuned for many photos of the complex I took in 2008, 2009 and one last shot of what the street side looked like in 2018. The Science Mill was established in 2012.

The Taos area is very interesting, but the Taos Plaza itself is, for me, a one-time visit place. It is an artsy community, so if you want to look at or purchase local art, and view New Mexico art in galleries, you will find it interesting. Articles about Taos after saying art, museums, shops, restaurants send you out of the square to what I agree are interesting places: the Taos Pueblo, Rancho de Taos Plaza, and the Rio Grande Gorge Bridge. I’ve already done a post for Rancho de Taos and I will prepare one (or more) on the Taos Pueblo.

This is not the town of Taos itself, but an area outside of town called Ranchos de Taos. The Ranchos de Taos Plaza is easily accessible and I think very interesting. The centerpiece is San Francisco de Assisi Mission Church. The original mission church was begun in 1772 and the current building was completed in 1815. It is a National Historic Landmark.

In 1840 Matt Field ¹ wrote of Ranchos de Taos during his travels through New Mexico: “This town called the ranch lies at the base of a gigantic mountain and is watered by a swift stream that rushes from the ravine… It contains about 300 houses, and those are built completely together, forming a wall, enclosing a large square, in the center of which stands a church.”