One thing we all are going to notice when sailing in Turkish waters is how many French words there are in the Turkish language. Of a...

My intuition yesterday that Turkish Cuisine must have integrated dishes and recipes from all over the Middle East is probably correct....

Am very happy to confirm that our fabulous Turkish chef from last year will be with us again - as actually most of last year’s crew. To...

On this page, I wanted to write about another invention which travvelled east to west and which the Arabs - supposedely - brought to the...

On our journey along the Anatolian coast, we will not only see many old Byzantine churches. We are going to see many more mosques with...

With the fall of Egypt, the Mediterranean - for almost one thousand years a unified, cultural space - became a frontier. Commercial ties...

After “Christianity and inflation”, many of you may wonder whether “The plague and the rise of Islam” is another one of Hugo’s...

Over the last few days, we have seen how Christianity slowly spread through the Roman empire. In 313 AD Emperor Constantine the Great...

Under Alexander the Great, the Greek language spread quickly through his empire and became not only the language of the ruling class and...

The Phoenicians on the Levante coast did not only give us glass ware, purple dye, olive oil and cedar trees, their most important...

You may have noticed yesterday that Leonardo Da Vinci’s Last Supper is set in a family home and not in a church where Christians...

Do you remember my previous blog about the Roman fondness for wine? The upper class loved it for entertaining and their lavish banquets...

Last summer when sailing from Corfu to Rhodes, we noticed that Venetian harbours always came with a church and a fortress - the church to...

Was reviewing the Roman recipes i wanted to write about today and suddenly thought why writing about something we could actually prepare...

The word “household slave” seems strange to us today but in the Roman Empire it was a well known term. Half of all slaves (2.5m) worked...

Ever wondered why there are so many black street vendors in Rome selling fake Louis Vitton bags when - according to Italian authorities -...

One of the sorry side effects of wealth is that it also attracts thugs. When a trade worth almost USD one billion passes by your shores...

Yesterday, we learned that the citizens of Rome consumed around 300’000 tons of wheat per year and needed the equivalent of 500 Carpe...

When we travelled as young studente to Rome, my then girlfriend and me had of course no money. We had to put up our little tent on a...

Most of you may not have heard of Garum, the fermented fish sauce Romans used as condiment. The Roman diet was not based on barley, but...