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In August of 1999 it was time to see another total eclipse of the sun.
A total eclipse of the sun is the most spectacular natural phenomenon you can see. Some say it beats all the man-made phenomenon as well.
There's no way to readily describe it, and no way to photograph it, though people keep getting better and better.
To see this eclipse, which would cross Europe, I decided to take a special eclipse cruise to watch it on the Black Sea. The weather odds for that Black Sea were good, and I had not been to that part of the world.
The cruise, on board the Orient Lines only ship, the Marco Polo, started with a stay in Athens. It then moved to the Greek islands of Delos and Mycanos, then stopped at Kusadasi in Turkey to visit the ancient city of Ephesus. From there it cruised to Istanbul, but did not stop. Instead it sailed through the middle of the City in the Bosphorus strait, and from there into the Black Sea.
In the Back Sea we first visited the Ukraine (birthplace of some of my ancestors) stopping first in Yalta on the Crimean peninsula, and then in Odessa. From there we spent a day at sea to see the eclipse, and the next day visited Nesebur in Bulgaria. After that it was back to Istanbul, but this time to leave the ship and spend a few days there.
We departed Istanbul on Sunday morning. The next Monday night they were rocked by a devastating earthquake. It would have been ironic to leave California to experience a quake in turkey.
The actual pictures of the eclipse itself are on my Eclipse Page. These pages here document the rest of the journey.
Note: These rolls were scanned by Wolf Camera. They did a terrible job and got a lot of dust on the scans. I'm not going back there.