Destinations: The Long Voyage Home

A brochure in the day’s pile of junk mail offered an irresistible opportunity: a Mediterranean cruise following Odysseus’s path (more or less) home from Troy. My wife and I took the bait. Aboard the Clelia II, we sailed around a Mediterranean world that juxtaposes past and present, history and legend, and particular and universal like no other place on earth.

Day 1, Troy

From Istanbul the Clelia II made for Homer’s Troy on the northwestern coast of Anatolia. I grew up in the small upstate New York city of Troy, so ancient Troy has always fascinated me. Homeric and classical names abound in upstate New York: Athens, Utica, Syracuse, Ilion, Ithaca, Rome. My high school teams were the Trojans, our yearbook was the Dardanian, and one of my classmates was known as Helen of Troy, though her name was the only similarity to the original.