saturday, may 2nd, 2010.
So basically, the rest of the Turkey write-up goes like this… I didn’t write it up while still in Turkey, and now I don’t really care. So I’m just going to half-assedly summarize…
Went to the corniest tourist trap dinner ever. It was a bellydancing dinner with a chick named “ASENA” who was voted best bellydancer of the year the previous year or something. She was in fact very good. In the words of our tour guide, Al: “You will not believe your eyes.” There were also these really cool Russian dancers — the ones that turn in circles and junk! The closing act, though, was this super corny dude. He opened off with a Frank Sinatra song or something and butchered it completely. It was horrible. Then, on each of our tables, there were country flags. He would point at each table and sing an anthem or famous song from that country. I guess it was impressive in a way, but it became obvious very quickly which languages he knew — Japanese, French, Spanish — and which he didn’t, because he would sing entire songs for the ones he knew and parts for the ones he didn’t. When it got to one group of people, he was like, “Where are you from?” and they were like, “DUBAI!” and he just moved on without singing anything — or even really saying anything. It was kinda funny.
For the rest of the evening, we kept whispering, “Asenaaaaaaaaaa” in a whispy voice because that’s the kind of name that needs to be said whispily. It ended with a cool like, ’50s song medley, and then turned into a really horrible music club. It ended with the horrible song “Mambo #5″. The conversation going home was pretty hilarious. Excerpt:
Sherry: “It’s appropriate that they ended it with Mambo #5, though.”
Kirk: “More like Purgatory #13.”
Mosque. I actually forget the name of it off the top of my head at this very moment.
Kirk had shorts on, so they made him wear this wrap. Sarong, if you will.
Love.
Trying to photograph the ceiling.
Palace… reminds me of ornamentation in Russia:
Mmmmmmm.
The famous Hagia Sophia:
That thing on the left — the imam stands there and preaches from there, but the top of the point represents Muhammad, so the imam can never stand that high up.
Rents.
Basilica Cistern.
Sweet random Medusa head.
They really like these bath towels. Like, really. They were everywhere. Grunge.
These guys from the rug shop were really hitting on us. Trying to get us to give them kisses and stuff. Sherry got the better-looking guy for sure. Mine was weird and touchy and no thanks.
I’ll pretend, though.
Look, no groping.
In fact, we were hit on a million times while walking around. Some didn’t even want to hit on us; they just kind of wanted their pictures taken.
I looked in vain for a very long time for a Turkish flag. Impossible to find, but some random Turkish guy — who I asked to tell me where I could buy one — asked his friend, who grabbed a random toy flag off the wall, literally. So that’s the Turkish flag I got, a little postcard-sized flimsy one.
Playing with my food, as always. This was during our last group dinner. The dinner was OK, they made me a special vegetarian spaghetti cause it was meat dishes (as always). Across the street from where we ate, there was a HUGE May Day celebration — five stages of music with thousands of people. I wasn’t allowed to go. I was fucking pissed. Whatever.
friday, may 1st, 2010.
Super early wakeup to go hot air ballooning. The aim was to go in time for the sunrise but that was a mega fail, because even though we got picked up at 5:30am or whatever, that’s too godamn late to see the sunrise! They’re total liars! I must say, though, the sunlight was PRETTY good… almost as good as magic hour, though not quite. We were also one of the later groups to get off the ground, which was kind of a bummer. Ah, well.
For a while, I’d been skeptical over whether or not to ride on the hot air balloon, since I’m scared of heights. It was a bit remarkable how un-scary it is, though. I could even look nearly straight down without feeling fear at all. It was weird. And I’m not over the fright; in Troy I’d climbed some fairly steep steps in the Trojan Horse and it was a bit scary. Not debilitating, but there was definite fear there. But the hot air balloon… I dunno, man. Not scary at all. It’s weird, though, these baskets have to be hopped into; they don’t have doors! I’m sure some do, but not these.
When we got back onto the ground, some champagne bottle was popped and people drankz da joose. It was pretty interesting watching the crew pack up. Going on a hot air balloon ride is pretty expensive, definitely, but at the same time there DO seem to be a lot of costs around. I think the crew for our balloon alone had like six people in it, and they were there to follow the balloon where it landed. The beginning spot is not the ending spot, and the actual spot is kind of random, depending on how the winds are blowing that particular day.
They also gave out these corny little paper certificates… it’s funny… I wrote my name on a list as “Vivian Hua!” but because I is actually a character in Turkish, they thought that I wrote i. Funny. So my name ended up being “Vivian Huai”.
Anyways, we went home for an hour to eat breakfast and then headed out again. Sherry and I got to ride in the front seat of this van on the way back. Woooooo.
Btw, the Turkish word for stop is DUR!
First stop in Cappadoccia this day was the viewpoint of Pigeon’s Valley. A ton of pigeons live in Cappadoccia’s valleys because farmers use the pigeon shit to fertilize their crops, since the terrain is kinda unwieldy. Funny. This is a weird rest stop with an evil eye tree and a pot tree.
There, some guy is selling these peanuts covered in honey and sesame (delicious!) as well as dried elderberries (never had them prior to Turkey, but the texture is great!)
Next, we went to a co-op where they weave rugs and carpets, mostly. The Turkish government sets up co-ops for country gals to weave in so that they earn a living and those living in cities can purchase goods from the country, since the major cities do not produce the rugs. We learned all sorts of stuff about rugs, like how to determine quality, and how the Turkish double knot is stronger than a single knot and yadda yadda. Watching those girls work was pretty insane. They are machines, and quick ones, at that. Crazy.
So there was the first room which was the weaving room. The second room was a silk room. SICK! SICK! SICK! Luckily, it didn’t smell as bad as the pan-fried silkworms being sold on the streets of Korea, but it was still really disgusting smelling. Luckily, I had a neck piece on my zip-up that I could shove my nose into and breathe out… cause I am a pansy when it comes to smells! BLAHHHHGARRR!!
The third room was a dye room. Some cute little old lady was the dye technician at that particular co-op. She ruled!
The brown color was created using walnut shells. The host guy said that the secret part is not where the colors come from, but how to fix the colors… and the lady wouldn’t share that with us, because that’s a dye tech’s secret.
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But what was neat is the indigo color. Indigo, when inside the color pot, is green!!!!! It’s the parts that touch the air that turn blue. So, when you pull indigo-stained wool out of the dye vat, it’s initially a light green and gradually turns blue. Fascinating.
Next, we went to the carpet showroom where they tried to sell us shit. There were people — Kirk and Jenny in particular — who bought extremely expensive rugs. Shit was nice, though.
This guy was pretty cute and kept talking to Sherry about how to double-knot (which is the technique they use to make stronger rugs).
After that, we went to the Goreme Open Air Museum. An amazing thing with lots of indoor churches cut out of the rock and such.
One of the early churches.
One of the newer (but still fucking old) churches.
Hermaphrodite saint. No kidding.
Sherry and I explored the area near the church in our free time and it was really fucking awesome. Lots of non-guarded open areas to explore, some of which have little frescoes and things. Mostly they’re just little man-made caves, which is dope.
Ughhh what’d we do next this day. Who knows. Man. I think we just went back to the hotel.
thursday, april 30th, 2010.
Kervan Saray was our first stop the next day. Sounds like Caravan Saray, but I think it’s Kervan Saray. Might be wrong, though. What it is is something built up by the Celchuck Turks to protect traveling caravans. There were a whole bunch built throughout the country, at distances that were on par with how far a caravan could travel in one day, and caravans could just stay here for a night in safety. It was to help trade. There was one guy who was in charge of everyone’s valuables before the iron gates of the saray were locked for the night, and the valuables would be returned in the morning. If anyone was missing a valuable, everyone would remain locked inside the saray. Safety!
Drove to Kapadokya (Cappadoccia) next. First stop: underground city where people carved seriously an underground city. Layers and layers of tunnel and tunnel. How they would carve is – carve from the surface straight down to the groundwater shaft and then build tunnels out from the air shaft that was carved. I guess how the rocks there work is that when they’re wet, they become slightly softer and can be carved with tools, but then get harder as they get drier. I THINK. Anyway, it was a bit cool – a bit like caving… only got to see a small section of it, though, and I was amazed at how little it was adorned with decorations. I guess the people who lived there lived in the dark mostly.
Vendors selling these scary little dolls,
Turkeys in Turkey!!
Next, we drove to a viewpoint of Cappadoccia where Al’s childhood friend had a shop. He claimed that he didn’t ever tell his friend when he was coming – he just showed up and we just got tea from his friend’s family. Not sure if that’s true or not, but Turkish hospitality is great. You get free tea and drinks everywhere.
So we went into his friend’s house, which is one of twelve or so rock-cut houses still inhabited legally by people. There are tons more rock-cut houses throughout Cappadoccia, but apparently when the site got turned into a National Park, those other rock-cut houses got stuck to the government. Ah, well.
After that, we went to a shopping area because some people were asking, asking, asking about places to go shopping to buy presents for friends. Instead of going to shop, I went mini-hiking up a side hill. It was quite fun. I just kinda went by myself, but Ed and Kathy saw me up there and soon followed. It was a good side-quest, although hiking in flip-flops was noooooooot easy. Kirk and Jenny came up soon after. It was a pretty good view, but mostly it was just fun to explore. When I got to the top of the touristy area and the nice-looking carved out houses, it was just normal residential streets – a bit unexpected for me.
Hills looking like lemon meringue!
That evening, we stayed at the Dedeman in Cappadoccia – the only 5-star-hotel in the town. It was the beginning of a string of disappointments related to the Dedeman hotel chain. Let me just start by saying that Dedeman’s shampoo and conditioner combo suck ass and are a bunch of weird chemicals I’ve never heard of. Even worse – their body wash does that thing where if you squirt it out of the bottle but let go soon after, the whole gel sucks back in because it’s so weird and gelatinous. GROSS. Anyway. Dedeman in Cappadoccia was a fucking nightmare. It was dirty, for starters, and you couldn’t throw toilet paper down the toilet – which is weird in a 5-star hotel. The food was also mediocre. But the worst was the pool!!! There was an outside pool which was BEAUTIFUL, but it was freezing! Ed was swimming in the inside pool when we went down, but it was DISGUSTING. I jumped in the pool without looking, but then I saw the sun shining into the pool and was completely horrified. First there was white fuzz from the trees which reminded me of throw-up, but that wasn’t the bad part; the bad part was the fucking CLUMPS – and I do mean clumps – of hair. OMIGAT I’ve never seen a more disgusting pool.
We went upstairs and told the front desk to clean the pool. Then I asked about tennis racket rentals. Guess how much? 50 lira! WTF! Fuck that.
That evening was the Whirling Dervish optional tour. It was a pretty neat ceremony, definitely. We weren’t allowed to take photos until after the performance because it is a spiritual activity. Probably a good thing, because I think if I’d been able to take photos, I’da only been half paying attention. And it was definitely something worth paying attention to… I was a bit tired so I did close my eyes… I didn’t fall asleep, but I let myself completely get into the zone and meditated aurally on the Arabic chanting and beautiful singing. There was one guy in the 4-member “band section” who was completely not paying attention, it seemed… he was constantly clearing his throat and looking around. He was the best singer, though, but that’s kinda disappointing.
There was one whirling dervish – out of six – that had the most amazing fucking posture. They were all amazing in their own way, but that guy… he was like the face of whirling dervish beauty. Seriously.
Afterwards, because Al has the mad hook-ups, we had a Q&A session with aforementioned “face of whirling dervish beauty.” We were quite thrilled to see that it was him doing the Q&A, because he just exudes some kind of radiance. Turns out he’s like the head of that particular chapter or sect or whatever, which makes sense. I’m going to have the transcription of the Q&A soon… (no, more like the video…)
What I liked best about the ceremony is that a lot of thought seems to go into every move of it. But beyond that, what’s amazing is that there are basic moves everyone has to do, yes, but there’s enough freedom where it’s not like a dance recital… everyone has their own style and flair within the necessary basic moves. There is individuality inside the conformity. I don’t know. It’s just cool.
We went back to the hotel and ate up some dinner. The downstairs of the weirdly-layouted hotel had a pool table, so we tried to go play at it, but it was soooo crowded. People were watching soccer en masse, but the pool table was being claimed by a dude who was trying to teach a girl how to play pool. Snore and a half.
thursday, april 30th, 2010.
First stop of the day: the Roman theatre in Aspendos! Only it was re-built and didn’t have 100% Roman characteristics. It was pretty big… not a huge stop, but it was very intact.
The highlight of that for me was probably:
1) Ant carrying a dead bee!
2) An entire class of kids chatting with me! Turkish kids are extremely adorable and very, very friendly. They will talk to anyone and everyone. They were very, very cute.
Lunch stop on the way to Konya! There was a proper restaurant, but there was also these pancakes, called gozleme, being sold out of a tent. I mentioned gozleme previously; it is sold on road sides throughout Turkey, and is a really cheap, delicious crepe-like pancake. The particular one we got here was like 4 lira and had cheese and potato in it (you could mix-and-match cheese, meat, and potato).
When we finally got to Konya (I think it was a long drive), we went to the Qu’ran School. I thought it was literally a Qu’ran School, but it was not. It was an old relic of a building that USED to be a Koran school. It was pretty nice, though. Lots of neat architecture:
Next was Mevlana’s Mausoleum. Mevlana was the founder of the Dervish order, and he’s a well-revered guy. It was a really radical building; photos weren’t allowed in it, but it was eye candy everywhere. A bit overwhelming, really. In the last room, there were a bunch of hand-illustrated Korans… inspiring, inspiring, inspiring!
We stayed in Konya that night, at this weird ass RiXor hotel. It was vastly surrounded by tons and tons of new constructions – mostly apartment buildings. Its entrance revolving door had a print of a whirling dervish guy on it. Hahahahaha. It was a very strange hotel that was absolutely humongous!
Over dinner, my parents complained a huge amount about the dinner that was served and the live percussion-based music; we were sitting fairly far away from the music so really what you could hear was the beat, but yeah. Whine, whine, whine. They also complained because the previous hotel in Antalya had –amazing- service (too amazing where it wrapped around to non-amazing, I’d say, because they were constantly taking stuff away that you were still eating) and RiXor was packed full-up with people and the service was mediocre. In fact, when they cleared our plates, they didn’t take them anywhere; they just moved the plates to the table right next to us. Haha. Pretty lazy, but whatever, man.
We embarked on hotel exploration after dinner. It was a weird place. Huge, like I said. Conference rooms and shops on the main level (where I had a conversation with a blonde-haired, green-eyed worker in one of the shops who kept talking about my lip piercing). Went swimming afterwards in a huge pool. Only… there was a Jacuzzi connected to the pool, but it wasn’t hot! Most disappointing. There were a shit to of people in that pool.
While we were swimming, a Japanese lady slipped and fell. Lot of people wen to go help her. For a long time, she was just sitting her and there, in random places, as she was directed… but she just kept smiling in her bath towel and had this silly look on her face. She seemed okay. But eventually (after moving seating positions to three different places), she ended up in a stretcher and an ambulance came (this was like, an hour later, after we were done swimming). One of the workers there – who we assumed was a Chinese-imported masseuse – is the first Asian we see in Turkey… first and only, really – and he speaks Turkish!
wednesday, april 29th, 2010.
Woke up super early and went swimming before our wakeup call, and it pooped us out for the rest of the day, haha.
We woke up the next day and headed to Pergamon. By today, I was still pissed about last night and feeling kinda sick or whatever, and frankly, I was super tired of ruins. I really did not give a fuck. Til the animals.
There was a little turtle on the road, which Al pointed out. I’m SO glad no one crunched it! The turtle walked off the road and was coming to me. Awwwww. I moved him off to the side of the road. I was soooo happy. That turtle made me quite happy. And I spent the rest of the time there trying to find animals – of which there were a lot. I was totally out of it and completely not in the mood to look at more ruins. So instead, I went animal-hunting. And it turned out good.
So many aminals!
That day was kinda a blur because I was so tired and they were completely unspectacular ruins compared to Ephesus. And I was not in the mood, as I mentioned.
We ate lunch at a somewhat fancier restaurant that was more for locals. It was a pizza place; I didn’t feel like eating an entire pizza, so I just ate the free side dishes, of which there were a lot. There was some spice there – this black, kinda spicy kinda nutty spice – that Auntie Ruby really liked, so she asked our waiter what it was and they just gave her a bag of it.
After lunch, Sherry and I went to walk around; there was a nearby DVD/CD store and a market. I got some Swedish film for 1 lira or something – just for fun. When we got back to the restaurant to use the restroom, the parental had purchased some Turkish ice cream and we ate that for the first time. It’s interesting and much thicker than normal ice cream. The texture is great; the taste is pretty usual, I’d say.
We went to the Archeology Museum that exhibited a lot of the findings from Pergamon. It wasn’t a very big museum, but there were some pretty neat statues and stuff. I wasn’t terribly super into it, though. Before we went in, there was a whole bus of schoolchildren. Schoolchildren there wear these bright blue outfits. Al affectionately labeled the students as “Smurfs”; he would constantly say, “The Smurfs are coming!” Anyway, I was wearing a blue zip-up top the same day in almost the same shade, so I went over to blend in with them. Haha. Apparently, Lanny gave all the kids American pennies. Woo!
Some shots of stuff in the museum.
Mr. Ed.
Evil eye spoon!
Awesome Arabic calligraphy!
After the museum, the bus dropped off the people who wanted to take a walking tour in the city center, and we walked back to the hotel. Other people just went straight back to the hotel. It was a pretty fun walk – nothing super notable other than this one guy who walked after us, babbling fake-Asian language to us that sounded not even close to any kind of Asian language. It was like speaking in tongues or something; it was completely non-reminiscent of any language I’ve ever heard. Gross! Not sure what he was doing!
Al got us a bit lost on our walk, but whatever. We passed this square (like the one we passed on the waterfront in Antalya) where there were a shit ton of skaters. Good shit. Why don’t we have more open squares for people to socialize on? Seems like such a simple community-building thing.
That evening was buffet as usual, and then a really epic pool night. After dinner, Sherry and I went to the business center to do some work because there was free internet there. The parentals found a pool table that was open, so we joined them after doing some work. There wasn’t really anyone else trying to play, though, so we ended up playing a few games with them and then just played a zillion million thousand games by ourselves. In total, Sherry and I played four HOURS of pool.
While we were playing with our parents, this guy came and watched and was just smiling goofily. We later found out his name was Achmet and he was a Turkish guy studying university in Antalya. We couldn’t really speak with him cause he didn’t really speak English, but then one of the hotel workers heard us bumming around there and being really weird and loud and it wasn’t particularly busy in the hotel that night, so he came and talked to us and served as translator for a bit. He said he was going to come back and play with us, but mentioned that he was kinda professional. I didn’t really take him super seriously… til later. In any case, Achmet wanted to play with us, so I played him first. Except he was wearing sOo much cologne it made me pretty sick. I was losing to him, too, much to the surprise of all parties involved – possibly except to Achmet – because he played pool like a totally narb. He just kinda hit the ball as hard as possible all the time. So dramatic! So actually, I was losing pretty bad, but then he made the 8-ball into the wrong pocket and was totally celebrating and thought he won even though he lost. I just let it go and let him play Sherry. When Emitz (worker guy) came back to check on us, I told him the situation and from there on it was slated that I’d play the next match with Emitz, and whoever won between Sherry and Achmet would play the winner of the game between Emitz and I. Sherry won the game between Emitz and Achmet. Anyway, when Emitz (worker guy) translated for us the guy’s name, and the guy said his name was Achmet, Emitz was like, “Oh, man, just like everyone else,” or something. Emitz was really, really funny…
So I played him, and he made in all of his balls except for 3 (including 8-ball) on the first break ~__~ He was definitely pretty good. Luckily, I got in like 5 in a row, too, so it was fairly close… cept then he demolished me in one turn, and it was the fastest pool game ever. After that, he played Sherry, but he kept acting like she as handicapped and didn’t know how to play pool, and was trying to teach her… only he kept moving the ball so that she would get an easy shot instead of just telling her where to hit harder shots. It got kind of irritating for Sherry, I’m sure; I was getting irritated just kind of watching! He was good, but still!
Oh yeah, it was funny, because he was working upstairs in the bar / front desk and he told us to call him when we wanted him to come. His number on the tele was like 654 or something, and he would say stuf like, “Call me! You know my number!” purely in jest. Or he would call us from the top of the stairs while looking down at us and tell us to pick up the phone. He was quite funny. When he played the two games with us, someone called him and required him to get back to work, so he kept asking if we wanted free drinks or anything, but we said nah. He ended up sending us two cappuccinos anyway. I don’t think I’ve drunken too many cappuccinos ever!! He wrote our first initial in the foam; for Sherry’s name, he wrote an ____, and for mine, he wrote a W… hehehe! He thought it was Wivian! Or maybe even Wiwian! Wiwian’s my evil twin… like Wario!
Later on, he came to talk to us again and asked if we wanted any cocktails. He ended up giving Sherry a free drink he made, calls Angels And Demons (or something). It was blue and melony! It had rum and whiskey! It took second place in some contest, but he said that second place winners are never remembered anyone, so it’s pointless. I actually really liked it.
When we left – and I don’t remember this – Sherry said he said, “Maybe we’ll meet again… in our dreams.” Haha. He wanted us to go out with him at 1 in the morning, after he got off work, but we declined. Good ol’ Amitz. We had to get up ass early the next morning, anyway.
tuesday, april 28th, 2010.
The next day, we headed to Hierapolis in Pamukkale first thing in the morning. First off: lovely grave sites! Woo! Is it a bit morbid to be walking around grave sites and shit and taking photos? Probably. They were really cool above-ground graves, though. We went there REALLY early in the morning and beat every other group to the punch, which was really nice. In fact, a lot of our tours were planned in such a manner that we were the first groups there – quite an advantage, especially in the more crowded sites like this one.
There was one particular one where people had crossed into that had a warning sign that said bad luck would befall all who crossed into it. Dun dun dun! (Below)
An earth-covered tomb.
A building that was collapsing. A particular tour guide crossed into it and was having his group hanging around inside it, even though there were signs everywhere saying not to go in there. Al saw him and started having an argument with him in Turkish about how he wasn’t supposed to be in there, and the other tour guide denied that there were signs, even though we were all staring the sign saying you couldn’t be in there. He came over, saw it, and then said he was trying to respect our group by not going in the same section we were; Al said not to respect us, but to respect the site so that it could be saved for our children. Ha. When they left, everyone in our group clapped. One lady in their group thought it was cool, I guess, and she waved as she passed; another guy, at the very end, stuck out his tongue at us. Haha. How old are you, man?!
Random pics:
In fact, the most interesting part of Hieropolis were the tombs, and then this theatre, which was a traditional Roman theatre. The differences between Roman and Greek theatres, Al taught us, are as follows:
1) Roman theatres have a height difference between the lowest level of seating and the stage, because they had gladiator matches; Greeks did not.
2) Greek theatres were built into cliff-sides or something whereas Roman theatrs weren’t.
3) Forget.
4) Forget.
This was pretty fucking impressive stage, I must say. It was pretty intact, and they had guards on hand. Theft is a huge problem in some of these larger archeological sites, which is pretty nuts; Al had mentioned briefly that some larger museums hire people to illegally dig up finds, and that’s pretty messed.
On the way there, we walked through a trail and there were a SHIT TON of snails being crunched. It was really quite horrifying, if I do say so myself. :[ One was crunched by the person right in front of me, and I definitely heard the sound clearly and saw the remains. Blah. I ended up trying to save every snail I saw – I ended up saving two – but Ed and Kirk started doing it, too, making the grand total 4. Too bad those snails will probably end up back on the road to be crunched on a later date anyway, but who knows. Maybe not.
Cleopatra’s pool is this swimming area – you have to pay to enter – which has ruins on the bottom of it. A little bit nice, but nothing super special.
Next up, The White Cascades of Pemukkale. Really cool. I saw a bunch of little tadpoles in this body of water, but didn’t really think they’d be full-grown… but then I saw this little froggy (really little – smaller than a penny)… it was floating around in the water, which I initially thought was a little sad, but later on, I would discover that that was a great thing. Stay alive, little froggy!
The water and calcium deposits formed these nice little bathtub-like things of water. They were pretty warm. Massive photo shoots ensued.
So yeah, it went on for a really long time, and a lot of it was dried up. In fact, the park people had created a bit of a canyon to divert what little water there was into certain areas; most of the bottom parts of this were all dry. Kind of a bummer. Along the way, I was SUPER paranoid, because there were TONS and TONS of smushed mini frogs. It was really kind of disturbing. There was one frog being tossed around by the water, like he was stuck in a waterfall. I kept saying it was “horrible,” and some guy passing by said, “Well, save him, then!” so I got out a business card and he jumped on it and I tried to pick him up to bring him to another place, but the problem with picking up frogs is – their first instinct is so jump. So he jumped off the card a couple times, and splatted pretty hard once. He was still alive, but I’m not sure for how long. I saw another frog later on, and I tried to put him on the card, except when I poked him, I saw that his little intestines came out… ;[
Group photos!
Just some texture shots.
Charles decided to put a tadpole and a frog in one of the bottles, but then got bored of it and threw them away. I wanted to rescue, but wasn’t sure what to do with them, so I just left them. He threw the bottle in the trash; I picked it back out. The frog’s intestines had come out. :[
Honey, yogurt, and poppy seed dessert at a later lunch buffet stop. Pretty expensive at 5 lira, but it was delicious. I’m going to start eating plain yogurt with honey.
Drove to Antalya next, which was a beach town on the Mediterranean. Our hotel had a super nice view of the ocean… tried going swimming right away in the ocean but it was too cold. Then we tried the pool, but there were a buncha creepers staring at us.
Random hotel photo shoot.
We were staying in Antalya for two nights, so that night, we decided to go look for some hookah / shisha action. There were a whole buncha places on the main strip. We invited our parents along. Big mistake. Anyway. Got elma (apple) –flavored hookah, and it was pretty good. Played a whole bunch of checkers – well, Sherry did – with random people like my dad and her mom and her dad. I think checkers is boring as SHIT. Like, so boring!!! Anyway, some hookah pics:
Funny word.
Fancy buildings.
The facade of our hookah place.
LOL!
The hookah lasted fucking forever, and the ah-yees were freaking out about us not bacterially disinfecting the mouth of the hookah because the worker had to suck on it initially to get it to work. Even though we had plastic mouthpieces. Stupid, man. It’s not that big a deal. Whatever. Sherry’s mom was also SUPER fascinated with how it worked because all of the coals and tobacco are hidden, and the guy had to take the stuff apart to show her. I don’t even think we ended up tipping him, which is fuccccked. Anyway. At some point, my dad lost checkers against Sherry and decided that we all needed to return back to the hotel because it was – oh no – like 9:30 and “getting late.” We refused; the hookah wasn’t even done yet! He then said that he would play Sherry in checkers, and if she won, he would leave and we could stay. We didn’t agree to the terms, for starters, but he kept talking the entire time like those WERE in fact the terms. And then Sherry won, but he still demanded that we all needed to leave. We said no. I was PISSED. Finally, Sherry’s parents said they’d stay with us; my parents and Shariah and Charles left to go back early. Stupid. We played checkers with Sherry’s parents for a while and then my parents came back later on cause they felt bad for making Uncle Stewart and Auntie Ruby stay being to accompany us while they went home. Meanwhile, I had super tobacco’d myself out because I never smoke anything, and I was pissed, and no one else was smoking, so I was smoking a SHIT TON of hookah. I would pay for it later with some sickness and some throat pains, but for the moment, it was excellent, and I actually got a tobacco buzz for the first time in my life. It felt weird. Anyway. GRRR. So pissed. We started walking back, and I will admit that I was quite pissed the whole walk back and thinking how my parents are ridiculous and are like little babies and how I travel all the time by myself and they’re not around to freak the fuck out and ruin my time. The next day, my mom asked me if I was mad at my dad from the previous night, and I said, of course. She said that I’d understand when I had kids, and I said, “I would never do that.” Because I wouldn’t. it’s ridiculous. He’s like a 12-year-old throwing tantrums and shit. So weird.
When we got back, Sherry’s parents invited her to go downstairs for a drink. I decided to stay in the room and have some alone time, which was nice. I watched mindless television – freaking “High Tension” was on, actually, in original French with Turkish subtitles – so I watched that and concluded I don’t need to watch it again, haha. Because I kind of watched all of the part that gives it away. Ah, well. In any case. I painted my nails and vegetated, and it was much better. The hookah had TOTALLY made me tobacco-nauseous, so it was a good thing.
monday. april 27th, 2010.
Started the day by going to the Home Of Mother Mary, which was “proven” via a number of ways: well, shit, I don’t really remember the ways and I can’t find it out on the internet (not like I looked very hard – I looked for like a minute literally) but one of the reasons was that some bed-ridden nun who had been in bed all her life wrote a book describing in detail where this “Home of Mother Mary” was, and when people finally went through what she detailed in her book, they found the place they found.
The home itself was pretty unexciting, and you couldn’t take photos, and you had to go in via single file line because it’s really quite tiny. I’d say that the reasoning for it being the Home Of Mother Mary are more interesting than it actually being the Home Of Mother Mary. This particular wall was one where young women would tie pieces of paper, and the purpose was to try and get a husband from that wall. I tied a napkin, just for hoots, and wrote on it, “This is a test to see if it works. If it does, find me a good one.” So maybe it’ll work. Maybe not.
Here’s mine, of course.
This lovely WC sign.
The Home Of Mother Mary had post office right next to it, but unfortunately, I only had my roommates’ address on me. I would have gotten it the previous night, but that hotel we were at didn’t have internet, and all my addresses were on the internets. Ah, well. Got other postcards so I can mail them at home, in the States, like I always do.
Next, we went to Ephesus. A HUGE site… the hugest Roman site, I think. and I’m quite sure that’s true, because just the part we can see, which is like 13% or something, is HUGE!
But first… cool bug!
Terra cotta pipes.
Tour guide!
Ram column.
Stray cats galore.
Two types of columns… Doric and ?
I love this guy.
Nike, the goddess from which Nike got the swoosh logo.
Ephesus was, without a doubt, the place with the most tourists. For good reason, really, but it got a little bit ridiculous. This is our group, mostly.
More random photos of the site.
Ancient Roman toilets! Across from it was, seriously, a courtyard in which people would sing and perform for the people who were on the toilets. The Romans also often brought their slaves with them to the toilets, because the toilets were made of marble – hence, were really cold – and they wanted the seats to be warmed up, so they would have their slaves sit on the toilet first. Genius! (Horrible!)
(The courtyard is behind the cat… )
Sexy muthafucka!
This is a plaque, in Latin and Greek, which served as the local newspaper to the Ephesians. It was a really thick marble slab, and they would just shave off the surface whenever the needed to write a new entry into the news board.
Portion of translation as follows:
“We have decided that it would certainly be useful to blend your experience (knowledge) with the information we have gathered as a result of an extensive investigation to determine the quantity (as well as the quality) of the land the public has in Asia, and the annual (tax) payment they could make.
All over Asia Minor, 6737 1/2 luga with fertile soil suitable for agriculture, that supplied an extra 3000 solidi (units) of crop over the pre estimated (calculated) quota of 8000 solidi, and 703 luga of infertile land will be protected under your control with no objection whatsoever.
You should, on your will, distribute the (luga) land among the delegates. In order to keep the hands of the grudging state officials away the entire crop, and to provide additional aid to the cities, you (your clerks) should immediately send the remaining assets to our posession after you retain the share to be donated to each city…”
The library of Ephesus. One could seriously stay here forever to take photos because it was truly, truly remarkable. Here are just some of the zillions of photos I took. It was made by the same dude who made that famous facade of Petra.
This is supposed to be the first advertisement, and it was an advertisement for a whorehouse. I don’t really know the details, but yeah…
More photos of Ephesus. A seriously remarkable place.
I took a lot of photos of bugs and stuff. Here are just some of them from Ephesus.
More cats.
This is a partially Roman theatre or something within Ephesus. It was the biggest theatre we saw, I think, even though it didn’t look very big while we were there.
This is a symbol that the Ephesians drew to tell other Christians secretly that Ephesus was a Christian city, because they didn’t want to say it outright. The reason is that a lot of people would go to the theatre (in fact, Elton John performed there eight years prior, funny, right?) and go to the Temple Of Apollo (off-site because if it was built in the city the city would get too crowded), and they didn’t want to openly say they were a Christian city because it would hurt the economy. So this symbol is IXOYE in Greek, which is the word for fish, as in, the Christian fish. But when the letters IXOYE are stacked upon each other, it makes a Christian cross.
So everywhere in Izmir, there were flags of Senor Ataturk. I really wanted to buy this flag, and I asked Al about where could get it, but he said that they were printed by the government and the government just gave it out to people in Izmir. Grrrr. Dreams dashed!
We had a buffet lunch in Izmir somewhere. I was pretty tired eating buffets, but this was our first day eating buffet for lunch, so I just went with it (but made sure not to get dessert). Blah. Three buffets in one day is not okay!!!
This city had storks in the main city center!
While everyone else was waiting to use an ATM or was sitting on the bus, I was walking around the city center area trying to take some photos. It turned out to be surprisingly fruitful.
There was a school there, and these kids saw me trying to take photos of the first picture below, with all the Turkish flags, and they were playing soccer and wanted me to take photos of them. Quite cute. Posing and everything.
That night, we went to Pamukkale and it was a thermal pool. So we got there pretty early. It was a four star hotel – the only on the trip – but it was very FUN. It was like camping, and there were six separate buildings for the rooms instead of one giant skyscraper. We were in #5, and it was funny because each block had its own WiFi! Crazy! Anyway, we jumped into the pool right away and it was fucking freezing, but it warmed up after a while. Again, we needed swim caps, but they were selling them for 1 to 2 lira. Huk huk huk. Some people used shower caps, which I had suggested for the previous place we needed swim caps. But we never did that. They were using the shower caps for the hot springs, though; I doubt they woulda worked out for the swimming pool.
So the hot springs had a lot of iron in them that would turn everything red. It was quite nice and there were many levels to it (and sometimes a rocky bottom). It got hotter the higher and closer to the source you went, so Ed and trucker guy and I slowly made our way up level by level… Ed and trucker guy took the plunge into a pretty hot one but I could barely even put my hand in it.
There was a group of Russians and another group of Italians who didn’t have swim caps on yet refused to leave when the worker told them to leave. I thought I was talking to the Italians and asked them if they knew the needed caps on, in Spanish, and the girl (who was actually Russian) said that she knew but didn’t have money. She then proceeded to argue with the Turkish worker about how it wasn’t her problem because she didn’t have money, and that it was a problem to take up with the tour group. He said in Russian that it wasn’t HIS problem. It took forever for them to leave. Some people in our group started chanting for them to leave… it was a bit bizarre… but they finally did.
Later on, after dinner, the parental came into the hot tub. I let my dad borrow my swim cap and it was hilarious. Barely fit on his head…
Shortly thereafter, at 9:30pm, the hotel had a bellydancing thing for free. Nyce! The girl was really freaking hawt.
She called up some people to dance with her – 4 guys and 6 ladies. The four guys were all from our tour group; only two? of the women were. Breakdown of the dancers:
GUYS:
Uncle Stewart –A little embarrassed the whole time but he tried a little!
Wally – Australian guy with a huge tummy and can barely move! Haha.
Kirk – Tried to get down for sure.
Tom – Despite being extremely chubkins, really, really, really got down. It was amazing. He was amazing.
GIRLS:
Faith – Tried minimally to get down, but couldn’t really move her body. It’s okay, though, at least she went up there!
Serious Russian Girl – So serious! She took everything so seriously and didn’t smile the whole time and fancied herself a really good dancer, but she was just OK.
Grandma – This grandma lady who obviously knew how to bellydance or something similar. She kind of went on a solo move rampage, and it was quite nyce. Some people didn’t like her show-off ways, though.
The girl first came to Auntie Ruby, and then asked my mom, and then Sherry, and then me, and I thought about it for a long time and probably would have gone but I closed my eyes to think about it, and by the time I opened them again, she was gone. Probably a good thing, as my later on-stage demonstrations were pretty bad news…
sunday, april 26th, 2010.
Drove to Troy bright and early. Prior to the trip, I had read that we would go and see the infamous Trojan Horse and actually told people, “Did you still know the Trojan Horse exists? That’s crazy!” That’s a fucking lie is what it is. Yes, A Trojan Horse exists, but it’s a total lie and not even a replica. It’s like a tourist sample with windows that are wide open and stuff, haha.
What’s interesting about Troy is that it’s really hard to excavate because there were nine different civilizations that built upon it. Made it kinda interesting. See photos below.
Tour guide rockin’ it! One particular sunny day, he didn’t wear a hat (he never did) and he got the craziest sunglasses tan hahaha. It was hilarity.
Troy was our first time seeing examples of Roman-era ruins. Such as these!
Mud brick structures from the very early incarnations of Troy. It’s funny, though, so many people used these adobe mud/straw bricks! Like we saw the same thing in Peru! And so many other places! In fact, Turkey reminded me of Peru a lot, and I knew that my Peru trip was great and fun, but after going on this Turkey trip, I definitely realized how much I really loved being in Peru for such a long period of time. It was such a good trip. Initially, too, Turkey seemed to me a mixture of parts of Peru/Mexico and parts of Eastern cities like Taiwan. I still kind of think that’s true, but then I thought about it, and those are points that are kind of… just in my own head. I was going to express them, but it’s kind of pointless. You can make the most abstract comparisons like that which might mean nothing to anyone else. Anyway. Digression. Back to mud bricks…
Examples of different civilizations of Troy, in excavacation.
This is a main entrance ramp for nobles or something. Huge! And in such great condition… it’s kinda nutso.
Side-of-the-road vendors… lots of which sold gozleme and ayran!
This particular rest stop we stopped at was really cute in a kind of funny way. Lots of Disney characters all over their bathroom. Funny thing. Kathy bought a whole of these embroidered bookmarks for 1.5 lira each, even though I told her that I’d seen them for 1 lira each. Later on… early in the next day… we found them for 3 for 1 lira. LOL LOL LOL. She felt really bad about it for quite a while. :X
Moar junk food. Banana oreos. And they were kind of good.
We ate lunch at this place that sold Turkish Pizza and kebabs, which is where we had Turkish Pizza for the first time. Everyone else got a meat pizza, and I got just a plain cheese and potato or something pizza and it was a zillion times better. But man, Turkish Pizza is fucking delicious. It’s like the closest thing to NY pizza outside of NY. SCORE. FUCKING SCORE!
Later on that day, we went to the Acropolis? It had been raining but stopped, which made the sky really, really nice for photogaphs:
Roman ruins!
This area was like… ridiculously photographic delights. So many ornamented items, lines, shapes, etc. HEAVEN!
This was a really strange tile. In fact, found all these kinds of weird tiles and columns which seemed out of place. Like, there’s the traditional straight Roman columns seen in so many photos and drawings (and in these photos), but there were also really weird ones, with spiral lines, and weird patterns, in unmatching colors, and they completely don’t match! And it’s weird!
This section was really, really exciting. I took a zillion photos.
Huge section of archways, and our group was in there forever taking photos. This French couple was trying to pass by and we took forever to leave and all they wanted to do was take a photo of the hallway with the arches, haha. :[
Rubble robble.
There are stray cats everywhere in these sites… and stray dogs, too! It’s kinda nutty. One of the things our tour guide, Al, would say whenever there was a stray in the site, was, “Do you have a ticket, my friend?” I heard him say it at least three times. Haha.
This was a Greek Theatre, I think, and it was the first of many theatres we would see. It was pretty cool, and the main point of it is that it is the steepest theatre in the world at a 45 degrees (I just wrote “something-something degrees – I’m writing this on the bus – and Sherry verbally filled in the blank for me, hahaha). We decided to walk down the stairs of the theatre, which was quite excellent and a lot more fun than walking down the regular trail.
This snail was in the middle of a road. Jenny, of Jenny and Kirk, moved it, because I was debating whether or not to move it but didn’t know if it would be OK to pick up a slug from a surface it was adhered on. Anyway, she picked him up and moved him to the side but flipped him upside-down and left him there @_@ so I had to move him after all… hopefully that was not a debilitating shock on the system. Haha.
Someone else was snapping this photo and I swooped in. Hell yeah! Assistant bus driver, bus driver, tour guide!
That night, we stayed at the Hilton in downtown Izmir, the hometown of our guide. We walked around after dinner… the waterfront was quite nice and funny, and Sherry kept saying it reminded her of Miami even though she’s never been. But lighting up palm trees with green lights in nighttime is a great idea!
Random photo in a rug store that I really loved...
Phone building which was really dark and freaked Sherry out when she was walking by, because there were people behind one of the doors... haha.
Near the hotel, there were a lot of nice restaurants. We then decided to walk down the main strip and there were a lot of touristy shops (and a lingerie shop), and then we walked around this block area and it was pretty interesting because it was all local people. I stopped to take this picture of these goats (I think it’s goats) and the store worker and a passerbyer laughed at me.
what the fuck are they? look at those tails...
This guy started following us. He didn’t really say much, which made it even weirder that he was following us around; it would have been less scary had he tried to say hi, but he didn’t, really. He just kind of stared and then would go ahead of us when he thought we were heading in a particular direction, and then he would wait for us… or he would trail behind us. It was really bizarre. And at some point – really far down the line – he said, “Sorry, sorry,” and then made a shape of a pie. My thought was that maybe he was trying to invite us to eat pizza, but I have no idea. See video:
We passed by some nightclubs and then he trailed off before we got close to our hotel. The nightclubs were a little strange; they had sliding doors, and when we walked by, the person at the front would slide open the door, we would hear techno music floating out, and then they would close it again when they saw that we were uninterested. Furny.
By the way, we swam in the Hilton’s pool, and I tried for once to swim with my eyes closed underwater and went completely sideways in the pool. We managed to scare everyone away. Yay!
saturday, april 24th, 2010.
Wake up at 6:30. Breakky. There’s a delicious flour-sugar-nut concoction called halva, which is a bit like green bean cake thing (lu dou gao, yum!)… Sherry and I go down late and get one of the last seats in the house, which is at the very back of the bus, which turns out to be nice because there are some lovely couples surrounding us. The youngest ones on the tour, which is nice. Take a ferry to Bursa, on the first day of our official tour!
Random Turkish dude sharing snacks with the parentals.
Our bus.
Drive-by video of downtown Bursa.
Our first stop is at the Green Mosque in Bursa. And the tomb of some guy. The next three photos are from the tomb:
We have to wear head scarves in the mosque, and some people – including my mom – are not into that.
Inside the Green Mosque is not green. Nor is the outside, really.
The outside of it is actually white…
The call to prayer, as we are leaving to head to the Silk Market, is extremely nice. Extremely calming. There are two Turkish girls with head coverings outside of the Green Mosque that my mom insists on taking photos of. Then she tells Auntie Ruby about them, and the other ah-yee that’s with us, and they all go take pictures of them, as if they’re not people, just zoo animals or something. But the girls are nice and don’t mind it, and say that Turkish people love travelers. It seems to be very true.
Our guide explaining cleanliness, prior to praying, in Islam.
The call to prayer I mentioned. IT WAS AMAZING.
We head to the Silk Market, and everyone splits up. Sherry and I spend the majority of our time at the food market, and barely even enter into the Silk Market until later on. Find some other funny things, like:
Hookahs!
Clothing that you dress your kid up in for circumcision ceremony (which is actually just a ceremony — most circumcisions are now done at birth).
Delicious walnuts!!!!!!!!!!!
People are generally very nice about you taking photos.
Lunch with a plate of vegetarian randomness at this one small shop with home-cooked food. The waiter is young and very, very cute, and he doesn’t really speak English, but speaks enough to understand, “No meat,” and gets me a delicious vegetarian plate. Another couple from the tour, Eva and Trevor, I think, entire the restaurant behind us. Both of us say no dessert and no coffee, but the waiter comes bring both groups of us rice pudding anyway, and it’s delicious. He’s so cute!
Inside the restaurant. Oh yeah, there was this bee on the inside of the window, so I ended up catching him in a water bottle and bringing him outside. I caught another fly on the trip, too — except that fly I caught in the bus, in a plastic bag, and I poked it air holes… and kept it as “Pet Fly” until our next rest stop break, which was like, two hours later. Hahahaha.
Sherry’s food.
My grilled veggie delights. (Side note: I’ve like, never seen a Turkish restaurant before, but since I’ve been back — the first day out in the real world, no less — I saw TWO today! WTF!)
Sherry loves the free dessert!
We go back to the food market and get a half kilo of strawberries, which is like 1.5 lira or something. Soooooo fucking worth it. Best strawberries I’ve ever eaten, I think. While we are there, this old man insists that Sherry take a photo of the workers of the stall – two young dudes, fairly good-looking – and she does. Then he says a bunch of other stuff, but of course, we don’t understand.
Turkish ice cream video Haha, half of all my Turkey posts is about food :X What can I say? Their food is fucking good. And really vegetarian-friendly.
After the time’s up, everyone meets up at the Silk Market. Take forever for everyone to arrive. It’s generally a boring market, though, and it’s funny, because most of the other people were ONLY in the market and didn’t go anywhere we did.
Cups and saucers hanging from a window of one of the cafes in the Silk Market.
I shared the strawberries with a lotta people, but Lanny from Olympia said something like, “If we get sick tomorrow, it’s your fault!” Oh!!! ANOTHER CONVERSATION with her went like this.
Lanny: So you went to UW too, huh? My son went to UW.
Me: How old is he?
Lanny: Oh, well, he’s married.
Me: ?!!!! That’s not what I meant.
Once everyone arrived, we all headed towards the Grand Mosque. The Grand Mosque is strangely something that is not on the general Trafalgar itinerary, which is weird, because it’s fucking amazing and seriously better than the Green Mosque. Its walls are covered with a huge number of amazing calligraphies of prayers in Arabic (the first language to invent calligraphy!) and everything is aaaaaaaamazing. Mind-blowingly creative, some of them.
I mean look at this! Writing forming buildings! It’s mind-blowing.
Forming a boat…
Altay Gur, our guide – fabulously named as Al – tells us about something that Turkish people do, in the name of Islam – which is something about a Giving Tree. What it is is, there are trees in the outskirts of cities where people put their extra goods, and at nighttime, other people go and pick up whatever they need in secret so they don’t have to feel ashamed of needing things. Anyway.
Dude making candy outside of Grand Mosque.
Not sure what kinda candy it was, but it was like, hot in those vats, he would scoop them up, and then use a lemon to push it into a ball-type shape. Now that I think about it, I think it’s flavored honey… Damn. Wish I’d tried it!
That evening, we return to the hotel in Bursa. Swim for the first time in the indoor/outdoor connected hotel pool and vow to swim in the pools of every hotel from that day on. The pool provided massive people-watching opportunities. Breakdown of the most interesting people loosely as follows:
1) Couple who were originally in the pool by themselves. Soon after we got in, a shit ton of other people came, too.
2) Kids who kept trying to splash water on us and figure out if we were from Japan or Korea or whatever, but never asking us, of course.
3) Three extremely hairy middle-aged Middle Eastern dudes who were swimming like clowns and being extremely homosexual with one another, hugging and climbing and who knows.
4) Dude from more Eastern turkey with his two kids. Younger kid is SO CUTE and keep bellyflopping into the pool at full speed. Older kid is tossing ball back and forth with his dad.
5) Argentinians… they had an interesting accent — it almost sounded Italian — so I asked one guy where they were from in Spanish and he said Buenos Aires. Probably shoulda talked some more but uh, nah, apparently.
Have a fucking amazing dinner (probably the most epic-looking dinner). A great start to a whole bunch of dinners in hot
els.
An awesome amazing super fantastic synth guy plays songs, and there’s funny dancing…
we’re really full afterwards, because it’s the first night of buffets, and we overeat. We learn throughout the course of the vacation that that’s a horrible fucking idea. So, Sherry and I return to the hotel later and literally just lie down in an attempt to digest and listen to Ted Talks. I show her the one about the brain-studier (haha) who had gotten a stroke, and we listen to another one about symmetry (amazing! Amazing!) and it’s all very interesting. I’m not in the mood to rehash that one, but man. Fascinating. It’s basically about a guy in the 1800s who devised a way to study the methods to calculate symmetries. Because one would think there are only a few symmetries, but there are actually many. Anyway. I can’t explain because I can’t really think right now.
friday, april 23rd, 2010.
We stayed overnight at the Dedeman Hotel in Istanbul and eat a buffet breakfast in the morning. Then we head to the Spice Market.
A pillar of Turkish Delights.
The shop owners there are very funny and friendly, and sure, it’s their “job,” but I definitely got the vibe right away that Turkish people are extremely kind. Glad that after the vacation, this still held to be true. But more on that later. Some lines they gave Sherry and I:
Dude: “You dropped something. My heart.” (He recycled this joke again later on when we passed by. FAIL!)
Another guy who speaks Japanese makes some really funny jokes, to my mom, and she doesn’t understand them at all, or doesn’t think they’re funny (she says later she understood but didn’t find it funny), but doesn’t even pretend to be amused at all, and just looks pissed. Meanwhile, he’s making funny “Ummm? Does she understand?” faces at me in the background, and it’s quite hilarious.
Another guy says we need to watch out for Sherry or he’ll kidnap her.
I keep asking for them to give me free stuff – including like, a sixty pound block of cheese, and the shop owners’ answers are always, “Sure! Take it!”
A sign at a place that has Spanish-speaking owners: “Te de manzana y limon y te de puta madre.”
In the spice market, we try a zillion thousand samples of things – mostly Turkish Delights. Get Turkish Delighted-out quite fast. It’s funny, though, for the rest of the trip we didn’t really get fed samples of Turkish Delights whatsoever…
One of the earliest stalls we went to was stall 14, and one of the guys there was very friendly and nice and told us to make sure to buy apple tea in the bins instead of the packages because it was fresher. Hopefully that’s true. He made a positive impact on me, and gave us the number of his stall (#14) before we left, and I decided to go back and buy some apple tea from him. He said, “How long has it been since you’ve been gone? Three hours? I’ve been waiting for you! Where were you?” He was quite insistent on asking me why I went with my parents, and that I should go back by myself when we come back to Istanbul later on in the tour and we would go clubbing. He suggested shisha, and I said yeah, and he said, “Promise?” I said, “I can’t promise, but that sounds good.” His co-worker told me, “He likes you!” I replied, “Excellent,” with a thumbs up, and peaced outta thurr. To be honest, if my parents weren’t around, I probably would HAVE taken him up on his offer. Cause why not?
Outside of the Spice Market.
Anyway. We go on an ambiguous walk afterwards and see some funny things:
Some board game thing that we saw in another store later on as well, even though they look printed on someone’s home printer or something. Ghetto!
Scary baby doll birth celebration things. SCARY.
I had fun editing. Obviously.
Tulips originated in Turkey; who woulda thought? The ones in Holland were originally imported from Turkey!
Turkish flags galore.
Ferry ride afterwards. It’s like an hour and a half long, which is way too fucking long because honestly, I don’t see what the big deal is. I always hate ferry / boat rides on rivers in countries. Boring as fuck. Only Venice was entertaining, but that was because the buildings are so close and you can actually see them in detail. Everything else just dries out your eyeballs and sucks big time.
Some of the younger girls wearing pashminas wear some really silky, expensive-looking ones…
Uncle Stewart squatting so Sherry can take a photo of him in the rearview boat mirror thing.
These are all drive-by boat shots…
Some Turkish dude sitting next to me on the ferry strikes up some conversation and he’s quite friendly. He’s not really Turkish, but was born there and lives in London now. I guess he was in the wool-exporting business, with wool mostly going to Eastern Europe (Russia, mostly), but he said because of the bad economy, that industry was suffering. His brother owned a family fruit orchard in the eastern part of Turkey or something. He was nice for the most part, and bought me this snack (below) which was like, an ice cream cone wafer with vanilla sandwiched in the middle of it. It was a little strange, but yeah!
The only bad thing he said was, when I said that Turkish people were really nice, he said to watch out for the Kurds – the “dark ones” – because they were bad and mean and caused crime. Later on, we would realize that our bus drivers were Kurdish, and they were quite nice! But maybe there is some truth to what the guy was saying; it’s hard to tell, not knowing any Turkish people and all.
Anyway, we walk around for a bit afterwards and check out these fishermen that are hanging out on a bridge. Turkish flags are flying EVERYWHERE. My dad and Sherry’s dad buy cowboy hats. LOL.
Gotta show in a junky shot I like
We decide to go to lunch, and it was supposed to be Sherry and I’s day, so we decide to go to this one grungier looking bar underneath the fishing bridge because there are a shit ton of Turkish people there. Sherry’s parents are okay with it, but mine vehemently oppose it, saying there’s no one there. We come up the bridge and my dad just arbitrarily picks a restaurant. There’s NOTHING for me to eat there, so I end up eating a grilled cheese. It’s lame, and he pisses us all off because he just makes the decisions by himself with no regard to anyone else – without even asking anyone else, really. Luckily, the pomegranate juice (granata) I had was really quite delicious. But Sherry and I are peeved, man.
Later on, we walk by the area underneath the bridge where our lunch plans were denied, and it is hugely populated with people. Swarms of people, honestly. It was hard to even get to the restaurants. And we say, “SEE?????” It was just early when we attempted to go to eat lunch. Bunk…
Underground walkway, heading between the Spice Market and the waterfront.
Turkish graffiti! This guy’s stuff is everywhere in Istanbul.
Afterwards, we go up this stupid tower thing, the Galata Tower, which is a huge tourist trap; it has a restaurant inside it offering a “360 Panoramic View” and dervish dances – only the thing is so fucking crowded that even if you’re in the restaurant, you wouldn’t be able to see outside, because the view is completely obstructed by other tourists. Like, in the part of the tower where you walk around, it’s like a single file line amount of space, and you were constantly waiting for other people to finish taking photos of themselves. One group of girls were taking photos of themselves at literally every 30 degrees of the tower or something. It was ridiculous!!!!!!!!!! Took forever. And it was boring as fuck. Views are boring. Ferry rides are boring. Zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz.
We walked around back near the spice market again after the lame ass tower and found a dessert place; Auntie Ruby had a list of desserts she wanted to try, and we got them there. Little did we know we’d be eating a shit ton of them later on, but it was good to know the names of the places… Kazandibi (below) rules the school, man. It’s like a rice pudding gelatiny thing or something with a caramelized top.
Pretty straight-forward rice pudding hea.
Anyway. The workers there were very, very nice, and when Sherry went to the bathroom, I taught one of them Sherry’s Chinese name – just once – and Sherry came down after a long time, and the dude was even making drinks and serving people in the interim… but he still remembered her name! I was pretty impressed. Said waiter also asked for his name to be written in Chinese. I wrote it in Korean; Uncle Stewart wrote it in Chinese – kinda – but it didn’t really translate. Crap, I forgot his name. Bummer. It was a nice name, though. They had a Spanish Lonely Planet book some other tourists had left behind in the café and I tried to scour it, looking for a carpet bazaar place we wanted to go to, but no dice – no mention of it – and the employees of the café had no idea about it either. I was pleasantly surprised I remembered the word for carpets, though – alfombras – cause wtf, that’s a weird word to remember.
Anyway. We return afterwards to the hotel and just take a quick nap. There’s a briefing for the tour in one of the main rooms of the hotel, but I’m tired as hell and almost fall asleep. Dinner at Kebabi, which is just like a block away from our hotel. Get appetizers because there’s no veggie-friendly entrees, and get this amazzzzzzzzing spicy parsley salad with an eggplant thing. Lots of Europeans call eggplant aubergine; I assume that’s a French word… not really sure. It’s weird, though, because I subconsciously remembered the word, but not solidly.
Sherry and I take a late night excursion around the neighborhood and find this gas station which doubles as a pretty big local market. Buy a bunch of snacks! Go home! Eat! Work! Go to bed! Here are some of the snacks we bought, because that’s how Sherry and I roll on vacation!
We just liked the packaging.
Yogurt-flavored doritos. They really didn’t taste like much.
Banana cream cake (delicious omgggggg too bad I didn’t try it til after I was on the plane heading back to the States, or I woulda bought it again!) and chocolate cookies (only 0.90 lira each… like fifty cents!).
Caramel chocolate, chewy fruit candy, and not-very-good chocolate pistachio candy (the chocolate was poor).
It ended with a cool like, ’50s song medley, and then turned into a really horrible music club. It ended with the horrible song “Mambo #5″. The conversation going home was pretty hilarious. Excerpt:
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People are generally very nice about you taking photos.
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