History, culture and cuisine - this Mediterranean voyage has it all

I can see it on my wife's face. These ancient walls of Istanbul are not doing for her what they're doing for me. I've been enthusiastically striding between massive stone gates, reading aloud from my phone descriptions of the siege of Constantinople in 1453. The spot where the walls were breached. The place where the last emperor of Rome fell fighting against Ottoman Turks. Where the course of history turned.

She seems strangely unimpressed by all of this, not to mention the skipping of breakfast to come out to a sketchy part of town where there isn't another tourist in sight but plenty of stray cats and rubbish.

"Honey, I've seen a few Roman walls," she replies when I note her indifference.

"You've seen a few Roman walls!?," I splutter.

"These aren't just any Roman walls. These are the greatest Roman walls. They stood for 1000 years!

"It took Mehmed the Conqueror using the world's biggest cannon to finally break them.

"This spot right here is where the Roman empire finally died."

A few seconds pause. "Yes. Very interesting," she says.

Using my keenest marital intuition, I concede defeat. We go in search of breakfast.

If you're into history it can be hard to fathom that other people are decidedly not. Especially when you're travelling to places like Turkey and Greece, and you can see and touch so much of the past. To me the mighty Theodosian Walls are the perfect historical entree to an 11-night cruise from Istanbul to Athens aboard the Azamara Quest.

To my wife, they have nothing on a good hammam and a stroll through a spice market.

Approaching this invitation to cruise for the first time, I reasoned that a ship must be big enough to let me take it on my own terms. I decide I will choose my own passenger identity. I choose Big History Nerd.

While not especially knowledgeable, I've always been enthusiastic about ancient history and to me it doesn't get better than this part of the world.

So this is my plan. On the pool deck, I'll read my National Geographic History magazine. While sailing between Greek islands I'll use an app that pulls up ancient texts relevant to wherever we are. On shore I'll stick super close to our tour guides to not miss a thing. Naturally, I'll go to the cabaret lounge for "enrichment talks" with the on-board history professor.

My wife? She'll be travelling with a completely different identity. She will be Normal Person Enjoying a Cruise.

Roles established, Normal Person and History Nerd set out on their odyssey.

Like most prejudices, my view of cruise ships had been formed by impression only. I've glared at them as they've loomed over Venice, disgorging hordes of passengers wearing their little stickers, obediently following guides waving their little flags.

The bigger the ship, the more intense my glare and loud my mutterings of disapproval. I look up there and I imagine water slides and go-kart tracks and pokie dens and day-drunk cruise people.

So I'm pleased to discover on boarding our ship we're among a mere 575 passengers. We're a minnow compared to the biggest cruise ships which can carry up to 7000 passengers.

If my theory is right that the bigger the ship, the stronger the gravitational pull to stay put, ours should release us from its orbit easily. One modest pool, one gym. No casino, no bowling alley. Definitely no roller coaster.

That's not to say there isn't plenty to keep us occupied on our ship, one of four near-identical Azamara sisters (the others are Journey, Pursuit and Onward). Some may favour the pampering options in the day spa, while the likes of cabaret shows, trivia competitions and even the shuffleboard court appeal to my vintage sense of what cruise entertainment should be.

As a company, Azamara makes a big point of itineraries to tempt you away from the ship, to explore the smaller ports they can get you to. This means our first hour on board is spent poring through an impressive shore excursion booklet. Normal Person Enjoying a Cruise eyes off winery visits and beach club excursions. History Nerd drools over Troy, Ephesus, Gallipoli and the homelands of Alexander the Great.

Ship, you're lovely, I say to myself, but we'll be parting company a lot. I'll be seeing you for cocktails later.

We leave port in Istanbul at sunset, journeying down the Bosphorus Strait that separates the Asian and European sides of this wondrous city, past the mosque-adorned skyline of Sultanahmet and towards the Marmara Sea.

I'm excited to be aboard and to meet the rest of our travel party, but more so for the first stop of our cruise, Canakkale on the Dardanelles Strait.

It's here that Persian king Xerxes had boats lashed together as a bridge to get his army from Asia to Europe on its way to invading Greece in 480 BCE. It's also right near here where you'd find the ancient city of Troy, ingrained in so many imaginations thanks to myth, legend and a ripped Brad Pitt.

But this area is best known to Australians - who make up the third-largest cohort on our ship after Americans and Brits - for the battlefields of Gallipoli.

No matter how much you've learned about April 25, 1915, and the terrible months of battle that followed, it takes being on the ground to fully make sense to you. You grab a handful of gritty sand at Anzac Cove and imagine the vulnerability of landing on the beach under fire. At Lone Pine you get a new sense of the carnage when you read gravestones that can only estimate where and even on what day a soldier died. If you're lucky to have a guide like Adem Bicer, you'll also really grasp the Turkish perspective for the first time.

It's the afternoon and we're nearing the end of our time on the peninsula, up on the ridge known as The Nek. It's here we experience a moment that will stick with us forever.

We've been walking through the shallow remnants of a trench network where the futile charges by the dismounted Light Horse Brigade were ordered on August 7, 1915. Almost 400 Australians were killed in that tragic waste, immortalised in the moving last scenes of the film Gallipoli.

Guide Adem stops and calls us closer, pointing out some dull white shapes protruding from the dry earth on the side of a trench.

At first glance they look like rocks. But as we lean in we see, there in the loose dirt, the shapes of bones. Adem identifies them as ribs and part of a shoulder. Given where they are, we can be sure these are the remains of an Australian who died that day.

It's hard for us to grasp.

It's hard to grasp that this man, whose family must have ached for him long after his death and who themselves are now long gone, is revealed to us after 108 years on account of some rain.

Adem explains this happens from time to time. When it does, the authorities are informed and the bones exhumed and reburied in a gravesite. As we walk on we're silent for some time. We leave Gallipoli in a reflective mood and return to the ship.

"I'm not much into old relics," an English bloke in his Azamara baseball cap says loudly to his friends in the pool on the top deck.

We're two days further down the Turkish coast from Gallipoli. It's beer o'clock and he's explaining that no, he won't be going to the special evening event put on for us at the ancient site of Ephesus.

The bus ride of 30 minutes to the ruins - among the most important and impressive in this part of the world - is a bit too long for him. He'll be staying on board, thank you very much.

We've already visited the site with a guide earlier that day, but it doesn't take being a history nerd to be lured back by the promise of a chamber orchestra performing for us in the Greek Odeon Theatre, a short stroll from the iconic library of Ephesus.

After a red carpet arrival, we're offered a welcome drink by staff dressed in tunics and I'm given a plastic laurel wreath to plonk on my head. We plant our backsides on the same stone benches that once hosted the backsides of ancient Ephesian politicians. Cicadas in the trees and the occasional howl of a stray dog give way to the sound of strings. As twilight turns to night this setting and the classical music combine to great effect. I wonder what our mate from the pool is doing that could top this.

In a crowded market, it's this kind of intimate, special experience that Azamara hopes will help it stand out and turn new passengers into loyal regulars.

Another of these is the White Night, a bit of a cruise ship staple where everyone dresses up in white for a huge party on the pool deck.

The area is cleared of sun lounges and replaced with tables and chairs, and an unbelievable buffet feast is laid out. With everyone frocked up in whites and creams, and party lights hanging overhead, it makes for a very pretty scene. We drink cocktails and we dance with new friends on deck. We stay out late, we laugh a lot and the next morning we sleep in.

Our captain is a Norwegian, Johannes Tysse. He's small, friendly and understated, just like his ship. He's there wishing us goodbye at the gangway most mornings. He pops by the terrace at dinner time some nights to say hello. He seems to revel in the relative intimacy his ship affords and the relationships he can build with his crew and passengers.

"People often ask me if it'd be a promotion to go on one of those big ships," Captain Tysse says one evening. "Some captains need a big ship to match their ego. I have no desire for a bigger ship."

In seas sailed by some monsters, Azamara pitches itself as a smaller, better alternative. It touts its ability to get into ports the big ships can't.

So yes, Captain Tysse is on company message. But he turns his words into action, too. We're supposed to be heading to Santorini on day five of our cruise but he learns there are a few other bigger ships headed there the same day. It'd be better if we delayed by a day, Captain Tysse decides.

So he switches course, taking us to the island of Patmos first. When we do arrive at Santorini a day late, we're one of only two ships there.

"Morning skipper, what a place," I say to him as our tender pulls up to where the Quest is stopped beneath the spectacular rising caldera.

"It's a nice place to arrive," he replies. "It's like the island is capped with snow".

I follow his gaze up to Oia at the northern tip of the island, where white buildings do seem to dust the ancient volcano's rim like snow, filling all available crevices before the sheer drop down to the water.

Thanks to his switch of plans, when we make our way up there we can snap our shots of the blue-domed churches without having to jostle with thousands of other cruise tourists.

We do that and then we hop back on our coach to continue our shore excursion to the ancient ruins of Akrotiri, a Bronze Age settlement at the southern extremity of Santorini.

We're impressed when our guide points out an upstairs toilet in the ruins, remarkable in a 3500-year-old very ancient Greek town. Akrotiri shares the same ironic fate as Pompeii - to have been destroyed but also preserved for all time by killer volcanic ash. Not good for the people of Akrotiri, but great for the likes of me.

Even with such a historically rich itinerary available to us, I make a point of not overplaying the History Nerd persona. In truth, we strike a very happy balance, treating our first extended kid-free break as a second honeymoon. We stroll through old towns or lay about on the beach. We eat lunch slowly at tavernas, getting our fill of saganaki cheese and ouzo. While I'm still curious to know the backstory of each place we visit, I'm satisfied to not be dragging either of us to every old fort or ruins we come across.

While we strive to do things the Azamara way and immerse ourselves in our destinations, we're always glad to be returning to the Quest.

Each afternoon we're greeted with huge smiles from staff at the gangway, who hand us cool, wet hand towels and cold drinks. "Welcome home," they say, which might sound corny if it didn't feel a bit true.

We meet plenty of cruise aficionados aboard, some who've sailed dozens of times with different brands and at different price points. Azamara isn't the final word in luxury, but it's what veteran cruise passenger Sandra, travelling solo for only the second time since her husband's death, assures us is "still very nice".

The verdict of those we chat with in corridors or at the bar is that this ship has got it just about right in terms of food, service, entertainment and atmosphere. It's not a place tailored for little kids, though there are a couple of big multi-generational Spanish families aboard.

The best evidence of satisfaction are the couples we often see seated at the sales desk booking their next trips. Where once we couldn't quite understand the appeal of cruise travel, now we find ourselves envying them.

Our Azamara host tells us some passengers tend to bond with a particular ship and its crew and "follow the captain" wherever they may go. This idea makes more sense the longer the trip goes on.

Whether it's the room attendants who, like magical pixies, tidy up our room or drop off little cakes without us ever disturbing them, the staff in the restaurants or the security guards who count us off and on the ship each day, all are unfailingly friendly and helpful.

There are people like bartender Ruby, who hosts us for an "Atlas" cocktail event one night. We try drinks like the Grand Bazaar, which transports us back to Istanbul by taste and aroma, or the London Fog - prepared with an elaborate smoking contraption. It's probably an admission of how much time we spend at the bar that by the end of the cruise we're taking selfies with her and hugging her goodbye.

In the cocktail lounge, singer and pianist Jose takes requests from the audience, including a lone American man who sits in the same seat every single night, nodding along appreciatively and requesting Billy Joel or some other cruise ship standards. Jose can search a seemingly infinite song catalogue and sight-read just about any request. I throw him A-ha's 1980s hit Take On Me as a bit of a curve ball, but he smacks it over the fence with a near-perfect rendition. I text my son back home in Australia to ask him what he'd like Jose to perform. He chooses Rick Astley's Never Gonna Give You Up. This one Jose takes on notice. He spends a day or two practising it and then gives a sweet dedication to our son before performing it. We record and send it back home where we're being missed.

It's 11pm on our last night and we're making our way towards port at Athens. That gentle sadness you feel at the end of a great holiday has been building all day, especially so because we'll be saying goodbye to new friends.

We've had our nightcap at the bar and returned to our room. I go out on our deck to soak up the last waking moments of a trip that has surpassed expectations in many ways.

The only sound out there is the wake of the ship illuminated below by the downlights running along the hull. Its frothy white is the only thing disturbing the smooth, inky black sea.

Out in the distance I see twinkling lights. Wondering which island it is, I pull up a map on my phone and identify it as Kythnos.

As History Nerd's last act, I open one of my apps to find out about this random island's ancient past. Its only claims to fame are an ancient copper slag heap and ruins of a small Byzantine settlement.

But so what, I say to myself as I put the phone away.

It's beautiful out here in the warm night air.

My wife, in her last act as Normal Person Enjoying a Cruise, comes out to share the moment with me.

We lean on the railing beside each other and she lets out a contented sigh.

We agree this won't be the last time we do this.

Read more on Explore:

THE SHIP: Azamara Quest

THE SIZE: 181 metres long, 340 staterooms, 694 guests

GOOD TO KNOW: Azamara has just launched its first World Cruise on the Azamara Journey. About 200 guests will be aboard for the duration of the 155-night voyage. Another world cruise is planned for 2025.

GET ON BOARD: A 10-night Greece & Turkey itinerary in a veranda stateroom on the Azamara Journey starts from $4234 per person.

EXPLORE MORE: azamara.com

The writer was a guest of Azamara.