Blue Cruise - AbsoluteAstronomy.com

A Blue Cruise, also known as a Blue Voyage ("Mavi Yolculuk" in Turkish

Turkish language

Turkish is a language spoken as a native language by over 83 million people worldwide, making it the most commonly spoken of the Turkic languages. Its speakers are located predominantly in Turkey and Northern Cyprus with smaller groups in Iraq, Greece, Bulgaria, the Republic of Macedonia, Kosovo,...

), is a term used for recreational voyages along the Turkish Riviera

Turkish Riviera

The Turkish Riviera is a term used to define an area of southwest Turkey encompassing Antalya, Muğla and to a lesser extent the provinces of Aydın, southern İzmir and western Mersin...

, on Turkey

Turkey

Turkey , known officially as the Republic of Turkey , is a Eurasian country located in Western Asia and in East Thrace in Southeastern Europe...

's southwestern coast. The term, which is used in Turkey's tourism industry

Tourism in Turkey

Tourism in Turkey is focused largely on a variety of historical sites, and on seaside resorts along its Aegean and Mediterranean Sea coasts. In the recent years, Turkey has also become a popular destination for culture, spa, and health care tourism...

, has its origins in Turkish literature, deriving from the title of a book by Azra Erhat

Azra Erhat

Azra Erhat was a Turkish authoress, archaeologist, academician and translator.-Biography:...

.

The term was first introduced into Turkish literature

Turkish literature

Turkish literature comprises both oral compositions and written texts in the Turkish language, either in its Ottoman form or in less exclusively literary forms, such as that spoken in the Republic of Turkey today...

by a handful of writers, such as Cevat Şakir Kabaağaçlı

Cevat Sakir Kabaagaçli

Cevat Şakir Kabaağaçlı was a Turkish writer of novels, short-stories and essays, as well as being a keen ethnographer and travelogue.-Biography:He is deeply associated with Bodrum where...

(alias The Fisherman of Halicarnassus). The author, who had been exiled to Bodrum

Bodrum

Bodrum is a port city in Muğla Province, in the southwestern Aegean Region of Turkey. It is located on the southern coast of Bodrum Peninsula, at a point that checks the entry into the Gulf of Gökova. The site was called Halicarnassus of Caria in ancient times and was famous for housing the...

in 1925, fell in love with the beauty of the local landscape, with its fishing villages and sponge divers

Sponge diving

Sponge diving is the oldest known form of the original art of underwater diving, in order to retrieve natural sponges for human use.-Background:...

. He began taking trips with his intellectual friends on the sponge divers' sailing boats, called gulet

Gulet

A gulet is a traditional design of a two-masted wooden sailing vessel from the south-west coast of Turkey, although similar vessels can be found all around the eastern Mediterranean. Today this type of vessel, varying in size from 14 to 35 metres, is popular for tourist charters...

s. These excursions became known as "Blue Cruises". Author Sabahattin Eyüboğlu

Sabahattin Eyüboglu

Sabahattin Eyüboğlu was a Turkish writer, essayist, translator and film producer.- Biography :Sabahatttin Eyüboğlu was born in 1908 on the Black Sea coast town of Akçaabat near Trabzon...

(together with his circle of family and friends) participated in Blue Cruises, as did Azra Erhat

Azra Erhat

Azra Erhat was a Turkish authoress, archaeologist, academician and translator.-Biography:...

, who translated Homer

Homer

In the Western classical tradition Homer , is the author of the Iliad and the Odyssey, and is revered as the greatest ancient Greek epic poet. These epics lie at the beginning of the Western canon of literature, and have had an enormous influence on the history of literature.When he lived is...

's Iliad

Iliad

The Iliad is an epic poem in dactylic hexameters, traditionally attributed to Homer. Set during the Trojan War, the ten-year siege of the city of Troy by a coalition of Greek states, it tells of the battles and events during the weeks of a quarrel between King Agamemnon and the warrior Achilles...

and Odyssey

Odyssey

The Odyssey is one of two major ancient Greek epic poems attributed to Homer. It is, in part, a sequel to the Iliad, the other work ascribed to Homer. The poem is fundamental to the modern Western canon, and is the second—the Iliad being the first—extant work of Western literature...

into Turkish. Those who united around the literary revue "Yeni Ufuklar" (New Horizons) in the 1950s and 1960s have also contributed to the popularity of the Blue Cruise, and guidebooks have been published in Turkish and German.

Quite popular among tourists from various parts of the world, particularly tourists from Italy

Italy

Italy , officially the Italian Republic languages]] under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages. In each of these, Italy's official name is as follows:;;;;;;;;), is a unitary parliamentary republic in South-Central Europe. To the north it borders France, Switzerland, Austria and...

, a full Blue Cruise generally starts in Didim

Didim

Didim, home of the antique city of Didyma with its ruined Temple of Apollo, is a small town, popular seaside holiday resort and district of Aydın Province on the Aegean coast of western Turkey, from the city of Aydın.-Geography:...

or Kuşadası

Kusadasi

Kuşadası is a resort town on Turkey's Aegean coast and the center of the seaside district of the same name in Aydın Province. Kuşadası lies at a distance of to the south from the region's largest metropolitan center of İzmir, and from the provincial seat of Aydın situated inland. Its primary...

, although tours may also depart from Bodrum. They usually terminate at the port of Antalya

Antalya

Antalya is a city on the Mediterranean coast of southwestern Turkey. With a population 1,001,318 as of 2010. It is the eighth most populous city in Turkey and country's biggest international sea resort.- History :...

.

"Carian Cruise" is the term used as a synonym by a number of sources internationally, by the name of much of the same region of south-west Turkey in ancient times: Caria

Caria

Caria was a region of western Anatolia extending along the coast from mid-Ionia south to Lycia and east to Phrygia. The Ionian and Dorian Greeks colonized the west of it and joined the Carian population in forming Greek-dominated states there...

. This term generally defines the starting point and terminus of the tours with more precision, with Bodrum as departure point, and its coverage of the whole coastline to Antalya will actually also include the region known in ancient times as Lycia

Lycia

Lycia Lycian: Trm̃mis; ) was a region in Anatolia in what are now the provinces of Antalya and Muğla on the southern coast of Turkey. It was a federation of ancient cities in the region and later a province of the Roman Empire...

See also