Baker's dozen

Day 13

We arose this morning and had breakfast, with plans to head over to the nearby Greek island which one of our friends had recommended to us. The island was called Meis in Turkish, and Kastellorizo in Greek.
Sitting out the front of our hotel and eating our breakfast, we saw the morning flotilla of ships departing the Kas harbour.

As we walked through the town, Sparkles headed in to see Ali to sort out how much shipping would be for our steadily growing pile of bibs and bobs.
Shakira and I headed around the corner to a tour place to organize our tickets to pop over to the island. We knew that we would require our passports to do so, but when we stepped into the store and spoke to one of the people working there, Vulcon (no relation to the contender in the show Gladiators), informed us that we needed to organize our tickets the day before we wanted to head to the island.
Shakira and I had a quick chat, while looking at the 3 cute turtles that were in a fish tank, and since we had been planning on spending 2 nights in Antalya, we had an extra night up our sleeve.
We decided to organize the trip for the next day, handed over our passports for the coast guard/police to look at and organize our visas, and trundled back to inform Sparkles of our executive decision to stay an extra night in Kas.
Once informed Sparkles was delighted as she was thoroughly enjoying Kas (as we all were), and was even happier when I later on that day discovered that Antalya had been going through a heat wave with daytime temperatures over 40 degrees, and evening temperatures above 30 degrees. Sparkles doesn’t do so good in the heat for extended periods of time.

Given that we now had the day free to do whatever we wanted, we wandered over to a cheap place and grabbed some lunch (as we had been rather tardy in leaving the hotel).
Over lunch, the question was posed what we wanted to do that day. With a smirk, I pointed over their shoulders to a Turkish Barber shop. They clapped their hands with glee, as they had thought all of my previous talk of getting a Turkish shave was just talk.
We paid for our lunch and popped over to the barber shop.
When we entered, a young lad probably not old enough to shave himself was standing by the chair. He ushered me into the chair and called out to somebody outside. I expected that he would be preparing me before his father came in to give me my shave.
How wrong I was.
Once I sat down, he asked me “All? Or some?” pointing to my beard.
Smiling, I said “All please.”
The girls clapped with glee again, and Shakira grabbed my phone and started taking photos of the procedure.
The young lad started to lather my face up, as the person he had called out to came into the store. I could see in the mirror that it was a Turkish fellow in his mid-thirties – not old enough to be the young fellow’s father, but still could have been the actual barber.
He and the young fellow chatted away to each other for a bit, and the man turned to the girls and asked if they wanted some tea.
Oh oh.
It was at this point that I realized the young fellow was the one that would be giving me my shave. He picked up the cut-throat razor and I realized that my life was in his hands.
He was holding the blade with confidence, so I figured I would give him the benefit of the doubt (not that I had any choice at this point in time, unless I wanted to run out of the barber shop with a lathered face, wearing the keep-clean apron and having a young Turkish fellow chasing me down the street with a cut-throat razor).
My fears were allayed, though, as he started by taking the razor to my cheeks and began the process of removing my beard with a steady and expert hand. In the mirror, I could see Sparkle’s face go pale, as she sat there with her hand covering her mouth with concern as he went to work on my throat. Shakira danced around, snapping away with the camera on my phone.
The other fellow brought in 2 apple teas for the girls at this point in time, and started to make some small talk with them, with a few comments in Turkish to the boy-wonder cleaning up my face.
Once he had finished removing my (by this stage overgrown and bushy) beard, the boy-wonder took out a device that looked like a large cotton bud on the end of a piece of wire, dipped it in a liquid and lit it on fire.
I was prepared for this, as Lapzang had gotten himself a Turkish shave after I commented on the number of birds that were laying eggs in his facial hair last time I visited the country, but Sparkles and Shakira let out a gasp of shock and surprise, wondering what the hell was going on. He swung his flaming mini morning-star around my ears and near my cheek bones, covering my eyes, to get rid of all of the small hairs from these areas.
Once he had done this, the boy-wonder asked me “Massage?”
Thinking that this was a facial massage, I nodded.
“Shirt, off,” he announced.
Right – I had expected the wrong type of massage. I took off my shirt, and he got me to lean forward on the sink while he gave me back massage.
I heard the other guy, who had been sitting down this whole time and making a few comments to the boy wonder, ask the girls whether they wanted a massage. They politely declined.
When the boy-wonder was finished, I put my shirt back on and stood up, getting a good look at myself in the mirror. It had been quite a while since I had a fully clean shaved face, and I felt very naked and very bald (as I had shaved my own head that morning, not trusting a stranger with a razor sharp blade with the top of my head).
I was expecting this to cost about 40 Lira, or maybe even more due to tourist prices.
“Shave, 10 Lira” he told me. “Massage, 5 Lira.”
Wow – I was quite surprised with how cheap this had been. I happily handed over my money and thanked him for a job well done.

The girls and I departed the barber shop (sans horrors fortunately) and wandered back to our hotel to lounge by the pool for a bit.
Attila allowed us to book for another night, as it was a week night and the hotel wasn’t full, and then we asked him to get us a few beers while we did not a lot for the rest of the day.

It got to about 9pm, and we were all bushed despite doing a hell of a lot of not much that day.
We opted to head to bed early (after one more beer, of course) in preparation for our trip to the Greek island.