Day 16
We had an early morning flight out of Antalya, so the morning saw us getting up at 4am to get out to the airport in time.
Bleary eyed we staggered out of bed, had a shower and stumbled downstairs.
We had organized our airport transfer through the White Garden, and it was the husband of the lady that we spoke with yesterday that was going to take us in his car.
He was extremely chirpy for this time of the morning, but this was probably a good thing as there was someone that was staying in the White Garden that was also heading out to the airport, and he did nothing but whinge and moan the whole way out.
We arrived at the airport and took our bags out of the car. Like at the Antalya Otogar security was very tight, and we had to go through the metal detectors and security screening. The good thing was the guards there didn’t have machine guns. The bad thing was they were all wearing white gloves.
I’m not sure which terrified me more.
Sparkles was puckish so she popped over to Burger King and picked up a tactical snack to tide her over.
We then headed upstairs and went through another 2 sets of metal detectors before we were allowed to board the plane.
Given our early start, I slept most of the way to Istanbul, so it was a quick flight (well, it was only about 50 minutes anyway, like a flight from Melbourne to Sydney).
Getting off the plane, there was major confusion about where we needed to head to. There were two signs with arrows pointing in different directions telling onward international travellers to go that way. There was a massive crowd gathered around 3 Air Turkey staff, who were frantically waving their arms and trying to answer everybody at once. It was mayhem… until I saw the sign that we needed to follow, and I led the charge… well, I told the girls to start walking and a lot of other people followed.
Fortunately I got it right.
We had to go through another metal detector, up a flight of stairs, across the area that you check in your luggage, through passport control, and then through another metal detector. These Turks don’t want anything metal and unapproved getting through their security.
There was one amusing thing that happened (aside from all of the metal detectors) while we were standing in the queue for the passport control area.
Sparkles jumped in one queue, and Shakira and I jumped in another one. Sparkles’ queue started to move forward, so I jumped across (as we were at the back of the queue) and I poked out my tongue at Shakira.
Standing in front of her was a mother with her teenage son who had down-syndrome. He saw me poke out my tongue, and he had a bit of a chuckle to himself. I smiled and gave him a wink.
The line I was in took another step forward. I poked out my tongue again. The kid had another chuckle. Sparkles stepped up to the booth and got her passport checked. The kid turned around and poked his tongue out at Shakira. I chuckled.
I was then called up to have my passport checked.
And go through another metal detector.
It took Shakira 15 minutes to get through passport control, because the family that was at the front of the queue when we arrived seemed to be having major issues, and something major needed to be sorted out.
Once Shakira had made it through and joined us, we went for a wander through duty free, looking at what was on offer. We didn’t end up buying anything, because we figured we would just be able to get it at the Edinburgh airport before going through customs there.
Shakira and Sparkles headed off to get a coffee, and I had a case of order envy, so I went in search of a Burger King outlet myself. It was rather tasty, and filled a craving for Western burgers that I had been having for a little while now.
I went back to rejoin the girls, as time was rapidly approaching when we would need to get on the plane to Edinburgh. Shakira decided to go and have a tactical before getting on the plane, and Sparkles and I proceeded to the gate.
We were waiting… waiting… waiting there for her to arrive, and the last people to go through the gate before us was a family. Shakira finally arrived, and we headed onto the plane. One of the members of the family, though, had a bung leg and a walking stick, so the plane staff were checking it out.
Once again, I had one of the last person to have my ticket checked, but still manage to not be the last person to board the plane departing Turkey.
I fell asleep fairly early on into the flight again, and managed to doze through most of the travel. Which was a good thing, as I was sitting in the emergency door aisle and couldn’t keep my bag at my feet. Therefore I only had my notebook and a pen to keep me occupied. Needless to say, I didn’t get any more journal notes put down, just sleep.
I woke up as the plane started to fly over the Scottish coast. Right from the moment that I laid eyes on Scotland, I found it beautiful. Rolling green hills and mountains rearing up from nowhere.
I had loved my time in Turkey, and can see myself going back there many more times, although I was keen to try out a brand new country.
We think that the trainee pilot must have been flying, because as the plane was landing they had to slam on the breaks really hard at the end so that we wouldn’t run off the end of the runway. They also played a Turkish music track, just to get that last little bit of Turkey in for us.
I looked out the window and saw that it was sunny. Sunny? We thought we had landed in the wrong country, as the forecast had been 18 and raining.
Oh well. Not complaining.
We got off the plane, and went through customs almost straight away. Oh oh – no duty free before getting out of the airport.
Our bags took about 20 minutes to come through on the conveyor belt, and the three of us were debating whether we would need to declare the apple tea and Turkish delights that we had brought with us.
After collecting our bags, I decided to head over to the “Got something to declare?” booth… to find it empty. Right – so this was the day that I should have been a drug mule.
We all shrugged our shoulders and went to head out of the international arrival area.
As we were about to walk out, the doors were closed. And an announcement kept telling us “The doors are closed. The doors are closed. They will open shortly. The doors are closed. The doors are closed…..”
Well, you get the idea.
It was 11.40am at this stage, UK time. Turkey was 2 hours ahead, so local time we had been up since 2am. Urgh.
We walked out of the airport and headed to the bus stop. One of the first things that I saw was a massive banner saying “Welcome to Scotland. This is home.”
Sure, it was an advertisement for a bank, but that was a nice touch.
The bus arrived, and it had a storage area for luggage. Unfortunately, it was full by the time that we jumped on, so I carried my bag upstairs in the hope that there would be more luggage storage space up there. Unfortunately not.
Sparkles, Shakira and I took up 6 seats between the three of us, and the bus started to fill up quickly. It was a half hour bus trip into the city, and we had an older American couple sitting on the opposite side of the aisle to us, making comments along the way.
As we pulled into Edinburgh city proper, he pointed out the Royal Mile to her.
She said “No, that’s not it, it’s over there.”
They went back and forth with each other, saying that the other one was wrong. He pointed out the buildings that were on the Royal Mile (he was correct) but she kept arguing. I laughed to myself when he turned down both of his hearing aids and gave up the argument.
The bus pulled up to Waverly train station, where the girls and I would be getting off the bus.
The American couple had another interesting conversation. He asked her if they should get some directions, and she said “No, I know where we’re going.”
“But it wouldn’t hurt to…”
“No, I know where we’re going!”
Back and forth again between the two of them.
She was wrong, again.
We walked up a hill (of course), and my trundle bag struggled with the uphill and the cobblestones. I opted to sling the hand straps over my shoulders and turned it into a back pack, which made it much easier to transport.
We very shortly arrived at our accommodation, the Castle Rock hostel.
Unfortunately, it was too early to check in. We placed our bags into the luggage room, and headed to a pub that was recommended to us, the Bee Hive.
Given that it was such a gloriously sunny day, we sat out in the beer garden, soaking up the accommodatingly temperate day.
We had a bite to eat, some tasty UK pub grub. I got a burger. A real burger. With bacon. Mmmmmm.
The table next to us contained a group of Irish folk. One of them turned around and asked us if we were Aussies, and we replied in the affirmative. He had worked in Australia a couple of years earlier, and we had a good chat. He then volunteered one of the other Irish guys to do a stand up comedy act for us, which was quite amusing, but only involved 3 jokes, so I reckon he would need to expand his repertoire if he wanted to have a stage show.
I offered to show them a magic trick. I asked if one of them had a 5 pound note. They were a bit skeptical (I am Australian, after all), but one of them provided me with a note.
I told them to watch very carefully.
First, I tore the note in half. They all gasped in disbelief.
Secondly, I tore the note in half again. They all started to giggle in amusement.
Finally, I tore the note in half once more.
And I said the magic words:
“I’m sorry.”
Fortunately, I had a spare 5 pound note in my wallet which I promptly handed over, but the rest of the table were all laughing and didn’t see this.
One of the girls then took the pieces of the note and declared that she was going to try and find some cellotape to stick the note back together.
The Irish comedian later came across to my table and challenged me to a drinking game called “To the pub and back.”
You lay out 5 cards, you flip a card onto the first one and need to guess whether it is higher or lower than the first card. If you get it right, you move onto the next card. If you get it wrong, you go back to the start.
Should you get to the end card successfully, you are “at the pub”. From that point, you go back to the pub if you make a mistake.
Every time you make a mistake and go back to your last point, you have to take a drink. Needless to say, I finished two beers getting to the pub and back.
By this stage, it was about 4pm, and our rooms were well and truly ready to be checked into. We bid farewell to the Irish and wandered up to the hostel. We took our bags up to our rooms, and the girls opted to have a tactical snooze.
I opted to head back to the pub.
I wandered back down to the pub and had another drink with the Irish folk. Some of their local friends were there, and I had a chat with them as well. I saw the time, and opted to head back to the hostel to join up with the girls again. The Irish crew told me that they were going to head to a pub just up the road later on to watch some Gaelic handball if I wanted to join them.
I toddled back up to the hostel, and ran into Sparkles. She told me that her and Shakira were going to snooze a bit longer, so I opted to go and join up with the Irish mob… once again.
I toddled down to the pub again and met up with the Irish crew, and got an introductory lesson in Gaelic handball. It is a lot like Aussie Rules Footy, only with less kicking.
I then boozily headed back up to the hostel and met up with the girls. We were meeting up with our Scottish friend, Jenny “the Highland Lass” MacDonald. We didn’t have the interwebs, so we couldn’t use maps to figure out where we were, but I had a rough idea after looking at a map.
Admittedly, we did get lost at one point, but I figured out we had gone one street too far, so after doing a blocky, we found the venue we were supposed to go to.
We walked in the door, and saw a very nice restaurant ahead of us. Unsure whether this was the correct venue, we spoke to the lady at the front and said that we were here to meet a friend. She asked whether there was a reservation under our friend’s name, to which we replied that we didn’t know.
The Highland Lass had informed us that there was going to be a gramophone there, and after mentioning this, the lady smiled and directed us downstairs to their cocktail bar and outdoor garden.
When we headed out to the garden area, we were greeted by the sound of folk music consisting of a guitarist and a violinist. Just around the corner from the door, the Highland Lass and several of her friends were sitting in the corner. There were many squeals of delight as we were reunited with our friend, and introductions were done with her friends.
They were an eccentric bunch, one of them in particular. James. He is a taxidermist by trade, rather camp and was wearing a top hat, had a cane and coat. And he was the gramophone DJ. When the folk music players took a break, James broke out the gramophone records and played a few tunes.
Many gin and tonics were drunk that night by the girls, and I tried a few Scottish beers and whiskeys. The alcohol was so much cheaper than in Australia that we probably had a few too many.
Given that it was a liquid dinner, we needed to find something substantial to eat.
We opted to go old school and have some Pizza Hut.
Sparkles, Shakira, the Highland Lass, two of her friends and myself all headed out and stuffed our drunken faces with pizza. It wasn’t good, but when you’re drunk, pizza is sooooo good.
We said our goodbyes at that point in time, letting the Highland Lass and her friends head off to their pertinent houses, while Shakira, Sparkles and I staggered through a very crowded Edinburgh, arriving back in the hostel about midnight after 20 hours with no sleep.
What a fantastic start to Scotland.
Wednesday, August 15, 2012
Last night in Turkey.
Day 15
It was time to leave the great city of Kas. Our stay here had been fantastic, and I can definitely see myself coming back there again. I even spoke with Ali about houses there, and what the rough cost would be. He said that he would stay in contact with me and let me know when places go up for sale so that I can get an estimate on prices.
Note: Anybody that is looking to go in on a holiday house on the beautiful southern coast of Turkey, let me know.
So, we got up early and had breakfast, as we had bought tickets for the 10.30am bus to Antalya. I was a little bit concerned with the early morning, as Shakira operates on her own time-frame and I was worried we might end up missing the bus.
I had my bag packed early and I was ready to go by 9.30, as one of us had to go down to Ali’s store and pick up the books that had been sent overnight for us.
I left my bag in the foyer, informed Attila that the girls would be down shortly to finalise the bill, and thanked him for his hospitality.
I trotted down to Ali’s store, where he showed me 8 books that had been on the overnight bus. These books were blank journals with leather covers that ranged from ornate, to simple. They were sold throughout most of Turkey, but a lot of them were gaudy or just plain ugly. You could get one with a folded leather cover that looked like a baby’s head was trying to push its way out of the cover, there were some with the Blue Eye motif (a symbol in Greece and Turkey to ward off evil spirits), and some had etched metal logos. There were also journals with small kilim carpets on the cover. The patterns in the kilims ranged from flowers, to being mini-Turkish carpets, and a few even had the Virgin Mary on them.
The books that I chose had the more traditional Turkish carpet kilims on them, in a range of colours. Ali told me that they had arrived on the 5am bus, and he hoped that they were exactly what I was looking for. They were.
I also jokingly asked if he had had to purchase a seat for the books. He had a good laugh over that.
He also asked if I had time for a coffee before jumping on the bus, but I declined as it was now getting on to 10.10, and if I was concerned about the girls not getting down to the bus stop in time, I didn’t want to set a bad example.
I moved quickly up to the Otogar and started sweating profusely as soon as I exited Ali’s air-conditioned store. At the Otogar there was an undercover area with several fans circulating air. I purchased 3 large bottles of water for the girls and myself and crossed my fingers that the girls would get there in time.
10.20 arrived, and no sign of the girls.
10.25 arrived, with no sign of the girls.
10.28 arrived, and the man who ran the bus ticket office came out and asked me if my travelling companions were going to make it. I told him that I hoped so, and it was at this point that I saw a man carrying a back-pack that looked exactly like Sparkles’s. I then saw Shakira walking over with her heavy back pack, and Sparkles leading my trundle bag over as well.
Phew! They had made it in time.
We jumped on the bus and started our journey.
Now, one thing with Turkish buses that I don’t quite understand is that they will pick up people along their path. If they see somebody standing by the side of the road, they will honk the horn, and if the person waves to them, they will pull over and find out where the person wants to go. Often the driver will start driving before the person has finished speaking, other times the person will get on.
Passengers disembarking works in a similarly ad-hoc manner. A passenger on the bus can just call out, and the driver will stop the bus to let them out, even though there is no bus stop there. The system works for them, but I can’t see it working in Australia.
The bus headed along the Turkish Great Ocean Road, and drove for about an hour and half before it reached the town of Demre, where Lapzang, Doolittle and myself had disembarked from our 4 day boat cruise last time and made our way back to Kalkan. I looked out the window with a smile, remembering the various locations we had visited while waiting to be picked up.
The bus continued on, and we arrived at a place that I had heard of but was unsure of its actual location. There is a resort in Turkey called Olympos, where all of the accommodation is made up of tree-houses. I had thought it was closer to Demre, but it was about half way between Demre and Antalya.
At one of our stops, I had jumped out to have a cigarette, and a man leaned out of the window of his shop.
“Hey man” he called out to me. “Where from?”
“Australia,” I replied.
“My brother, Melbourne. Brunswick. You know?”
“Yes, I once lived 2 minutes from there,” I told him.
His face lit up with a big smile, and he reached out my hand to shake it.
“Australians, I like you!”
There is obviously a very strong warm bond between Turkey and Australia, dating back to the battle at Gallipoli.
I think this bond was developed by the general of the Turkish troops at Gallipoli, Mustafa Kemal Attaturk, who went on to become the president of Turkey, with this quote:
"Those heroes that shed their blood and lost their lives…
You are now living in the soil of a friendly country. Therefore rest in peace. There is no difference between the Johnnies and the Mehmets to us where they lie side by side here in this country of ours…
You, the mothers, who sent their sons from faraway countries wipe away your tears; your sons are now lying in our bosom and are in peace, after having lost their lives on this land they have become our sons as well."
Anyways, back onto me.
I reboarded the bus, as during this exchange with the shop owner the bus driver had embarked and was getting ready to leave. He stood at thee door of the bus and said “White man!” then whistled and waved me towards the bus with a smile on my face.
I grinned, gave him a wave, and jogged over to the bus.
The bus moved onwards, and I decided to have a tactical snooze.
After not too much longer (for me) the bus started its entry to Antalya.
The Old City of Antalya has been around since before the emperor Hadrian (of the Roman Empire) went there in the year 180.
The New City of Antalya sprung up in the 1970s, and it has sprawled out in an ugly manner since that time. It is not a pretty city, but the Old City (Kalici – “Kalichi”) is spectacular.
The bus arrived at the Otogar and we disembarked. I grabbed my bag to follow the girls and ran over my toes with the trundle wheel. OUCH! This put me in a bit of a frustrated mood.
I limped over to where the girls had put their bags down, and as we all needed to go for a tactical pit-stop, we tagged. The girls were getting settled, so I took first pit-stop.
I started to go into the complex, and stopped at the door in surprise as there was a metal detector and a guard wielding a rather large gun. I took my wallet and mobile phone out of my pocket and put it through the scanner, and then headed through the metal detector myself.
I set off the alarm, and the guard approached me and ran his beepy wand over me. It turned out it was my belt buckle that had set off the alarm. Whew!
Antalya is a coastal town, and a major shipping port, halfway along the coast of Turkey, but nowhere near the border of Syria, the neighbour which it is having a few issues with so I was surprised to see this heightened level of security.
Then again, Syria does have a coast as well on the Mediterranean sea, so it is not unfeasible that trouble could come off the water even that far away from the land border.
The girls and I decided to catch a taxi and get delivered directly to our hostel rather than faff around with trams or buses.
The driver was a pleasant chap who didn’t speak a lot of English, but gave me some pointers on how to say things in Turkish. Unfortunately, I wasn’t aware he was doing this at first, so most of them have escaped the cavity where my brain resides.
The hostel I had booked for was called the White Garden, a recommendation from the Emirates girls that we had met in Istanbul. It looked like a very nice place, with a fantastic courtyard and pool area.
The lady of the manor came out to us, and with a bit of a surprised look on her face asked if we needed accommodation. I told her I had made a booking the night before, and she clucked her tongue, asking me if I had a print out or email for this. I showed her the e-mail reservation, and she explained that her husband hadn’t told her about the booking, and that she had booked the last available rooms earlier in the day.
She did offer to ask her neighbour to see if he had any rooms available. She came back a couple of minutes later and told us that he did, and that it would be cheaper than staying at her hostel, although we could still use the pool area and their internet, which was gracious of her.
She led us around to her neighbour, who ran the Angel hostel, and we were led upstairs to our room. At the White Garden we had had 2 rooms, but here we had a triple room with all of us in there, which was probably a good thing since we had an extremely early departure the following morning.
We dumped our bags and wandered back to the White Garden (as our hostel owner spoke very little English) and asked for a recommendation of a good place to go and eat.
She told us of a place at the end of the street which had a nice cool outdoor garden with several fans circulating the air.
An older couple ran the eating establishment, and we ordered some fantastic food. Shakira ordered calamari, and I must say it was probably the best calamari I have ever had. Ever.
Sparkles and I both ordered the Turkish pizzas, which we were told to put on some lettuce and a little bit of salad, and roll up each quarter. Brilliant! So tasty.
We also had a few beverages with our lunch.
Several cats were wandering around, and the old man of the couple started yelling something out in Turkish. A dog that looked like a bitzer moodle ran out and started chasing the cats around and away. The dog trotted back very happy with itself, which had the girls and I laughing.
“You told the dog it was lunch time?” Sparkles asked. The man laughed and said yes.
Sparkles and Shakira wanted to have a tactical snooze, so I took the opportunity to make the most of the White Garden’s hospitality. Grabbing my towel and laptop, I headed over there and sat down to write a few blog entries and play around on the internet for a bit.
Sparkles joined me after about an hour, and we had a couple of beers and a good chat.
It got on to about 8.30 and we decided to see if Shakira had risen from her tactical snooze. She had just recently gotten up, and we decided to head out and grab a bite to eat and have an early night.
Shakira did complain about the air-conditioning in the room. For starters, it was terrible, and barely made a dint in the heat of the room. It also leaked water inside the room onto the bed below it. Sparkles offered to take that bed, as she suffered from the heat more than Shakira and would probably like the water dripping onto her feet.
We hadn’t seen any of the sights of Antalya, so I took the girls up to Hadrian’s Gate, and showed them a few other places around the town. The old town has a lot of exquisite architecture and extremely old buildings. A truly beautiful place.
The girls wanted to have one more authentic Turkish meal, as this was our final night in this beautiful country.
We found a restaurant that was a part of one of the hotels, as most of the restaurants we passed all had fairly Western menus. Given that Antalya had been going through a heat wave recently, they had a number of fans mounted on the walls that sprayed a fine mist through the restaurant area.
Quite a lot of mist.
To the point where I was glad that I had brought along my waterproof camera to take any last minute photos.
No joke.
Shakira put her camera away as she didn’t want it getting water damage.
The staff at the restaurant were an eccentric bunch, and despite the fact that Sparkles had also wanted authentic Turkish food, she got a spaghetti bolognaise. Shakira got a dish that she had quite fancied, a shish with aubergine and lamb, and I got a chicken pasta.
The food was quite tasty, but we were all very knackered and wanted to get a good night’s rest.
We turned on the struggling air-conditioning, packed our bags, and did our best to sleep in the hot room.
It was time to leave the great city of Kas. Our stay here had been fantastic, and I can definitely see myself coming back there again. I even spoke with Ali about houses there, and what the rough cost would be. He said that he would stay in contact with me and let me know when places go up for sale so that I can get an estimate on prices.
Note: Anybody that is looking to go in on a holiday house on the beautiful southern coast of Turkey, let me know.
So, we got up early and had breakfast, as we had bought tickets for the 10.30am bus to Antalya. I was a little bit concerned with the early morning, as Shakira operates on her own time-frame and I was worried we might end up missing the bus.
I had my bag packed early and I was ready to go by 9.30, as one of us had to go down to Ali’s store and pick up the books that had been sent overnight for us.
I left my bag in the foyer, informed Attila that the girls would be down shortly to finalise the bill, and thanked him for his hospitality.
I trotted down to Ali’s store, where he showed me 8 books that had been on the overnight bus. These books were blank journals with leather covers that ranged from ornate, to simple. They were sold throughout most of Turkey, but a lot of them were gaudy or just plain ugly. You could get one with a folded leather cover that looked like a baby’s head was trying to push its way out of the cover, there were some with the Blue Eye motif (a symbol in Greece and Turkey to ward off evil spirits), and some had etched metal logos. There were also journals with small kilim carpets on the cover. The patterns in the kilims ranged from flowers, to being mini-Turkish carpets, and a few even had the Virgin Mary on them.
The books that I chose had the more traditional Turkish carpet kilims on them, in a range of colours. Ali told me that they had arrived on the 5am bus, and he hoped that they were exactly what I was looking for. They were.
I also jokingly asked if he had had to purchase a seat for the books. He had a good laugh over that.
He also asked if I had time for a coffee before jumping on the bus, but I declined as it was now getting on to 10.10, and if I was concerned about the girls not getting down to the bus stop in time, I didn’t want to set a bad example.
I moved quickly up to the Otogar and started sweating profusely as soon as I exited Ali’s air-conditioned store. At the Otogar there was an undercover area with several fans circulating air. I purchased 3 large bottles of water for the girls and myself and crossed my fingers that the girls would get there in time.
10.20 arrived, and no sign of the girls.
10.25 arrived, with no sign of the girls.
10.28 arrived, and the man who ran the bus ticket office came out and asked me if my travelling companions were going to make it. I told him that I hoped so, and it was at this point that I saw a man carrying a back-pack that looked exactly like Sparkles’s. I then saw Shakira walking over with her heavy back pack, and Sparkles leading my trundle bag over as well.
Phew! They had made it in time.
We jumped on the bus and started our journey.
Now, one thing with Turkish buses that I don’t quite understand is that they will pick up people along their path. If they see somebody standing by the side of the road, they will honk the horn, and if the person waves to them, they will pull over and find out where the person wants to go. Often the driver will start driving before the person has finished speaking, other times the person will get on.
Passengers disembarking works in a similarly ad-hoc manner. A passenger on the bus can just call out, and the driver will stop the bus to let them out, even though there is no bus stop there. The system works for them, but I can’t see it working in Australia.
The bus headed along the Turkish Great Ocean Road, and drove for about an hour and half before it reached the town of Demre, where Lapzang, Doolittle and myself had disembarked from our 4 day boat cruise last time and made our way back to Kalkan. I looked out the window with a smile, remembering the various locations we had visited while waiting to be picked up.
The bus continued on, and we arrived at a place that I had heard of but was unsure of its actual location. There is a resort in Turkey called Olympos, where all of the accommodation is made up of tree-houses. I had thought it was closer to Demre, but it was about half way between Demre and Antalya.
At one of our stops, I had jumped out to have a cigarette, and a man leaned out of the window of his shop.
“Hey man” he called out to me. “Where from?”
“Australia,” I replied.
“My brother, Melbourne. Brunswick. You know?”
“Yes, I once lived 2 minutes from there,” I told him.
His face lit up with a big smile, and he reached out my hand to shake it.
“Australians, I like you!”
There is obviously a very strong warm bond between Turkey and Australia, dating back to the battle at Gallipoli.
I think this bond was developed by the general of the Turkish troops at Gallipoli, Mustafa Kemal Attaturk, who went on to become the president of Turkey, with this quote:
"Those heroes that shed their blood and lost their lives…
You are now living in the soil of a friendly country. Therefore rest in peace. There is no difference between the Johnnies and the Mehmets to us where they lie side by side here in this country of ours…
You, the mothers, who sent their sons from faraway countries wipe away your tears; your sons are now lying in our bosom and are in peace, after having lost their lives on this land they have become our sons as well."
Anyways, back onto me.
I reboarded the bus, as during this exchange with the shop owner the bus driver had embarked and was getting ready to leave. He stood at thee door of the bus and said “White man!” then whistled and waved me towards the bus with a smile on my face.
I grinned, gave him a wave, and jogged over to the bus.
The bus moved onwards, and I decided to have a tactical snooze.
After not too much longer (for me) the bus started its entry to Antalya.
The Old City of Antalya has been around since before the emperor Hadrian (of the Roman Empire) went there in the year 180.
The New City of Antalya sprung up in the 1970s, and it has sprawled out in an ugly manner since that time. It is not a pretty city, but the Old City (Kalici – “Kalichi”) is spectacular.
The bus arrived at the Otogar and we disembarked. I grabbed my bag to follow the girls and ran over my toes with the trundle wheel. OUCH! This put me in a bit of a frustrated mood.
I limped over to where the girls had put their bags down, and as we all needed to go for a tactical pit-stop, we tagged. The girls were getting settled, so I took first pit-stop.
I started to go into the complex, and stopped at the door in surprise as there was a metal detector and a guard wielding a rather large gun. I took my wallet and mobile phone out of my pocket and put it through the scanner, and then headed through the metal detector myself.
I set off the alarm, and the guard approached me and ran his beepy wand over me. It turned out it was my belt buckle that had set off the alarm. Whew!
Antalya is a coastal town, and a major shipping port, halfway along the coast of Turkey, but nowhere near the border of Syria, the neighbour which it is having a few issues with so I was surprised to see this heightened level of security.
Then again, Syria does have a coast as well on the Mediterranean sea, so it is not unfeasible that trouble could come off the water even that far away from the land border.
The girls and I decided to catch a taxi and get delivered directly to our hostel rather than faff around with trams or buses.
The driver was a pleasant chap who didn’t speak a lot of English, but gave me some pointers on how to say things in Turkish. Unfortunately, I wasn’t aware he was doing this at first, so most of them have escaped the cavity where my brain resides.
The hostel I had booked for was called the White Garden, a recommendation from the Emirates girls that we had met in Istanbul. It looked like a very nice place, with a fantastic courtyard and pool area.
The lady of the manor came out to us, and with a bit of a surprised look on her face asked if we needed accommodation. I told her I had made a booking the night before, and she clucked her tongue, asking me if I had a print out or email for this. I showed her the e-mail reservation, and she explained that her husband hadn’t told her about the booking, and that she had booked the last available rooms earlier in the day.
She did offer to ask her neighbour to see if he had any rooms available. She came back a couple of minutes later and told us that he did, and that it would be cheaper than staying at her hostel, although we could still use the pool area and their internet, which was gracious of her.
She led us around to her neighbour, who ran the Angel hostel, and we were led upstairs to our room. At the White Garden we had had 2 rooms, but here we had a triple room with all of us in there, which was probably a good thing since we had an extremely early departure the following morning.
We dumped our bags and wandered back to the White Garden (as our hostel owner spoke very little English) and asked for a recommendation of a good place to go and eat.
She told us of a place at the end of the street which had a nice cool outdoor garden with several fans circulating the air.
An older couple ran the eating establishment, and we ordered some fantastic food. Shakira ordered calamari, and I must say it was probably the best calamari I have ever had. Ever.
Sparkles and I both ordered the Turkish pizzas, which we were told to put on some lettuce and a little bit of salad, and roll up each quarter. Brilliant! So tasty.
We also had a few beverages with our lunch.
Several cats were wandering around, and the old man of the couple started yelling something out in Turkish. A dog that looked like a bitzer moodle ran out and started chasing the cats around and away. The dog trotted back very happy with itself, which had the girls and I laughing.
“You told the dog it was lunch time?” Sparkles asked. The man laughed and said yes.
Sparkles and Shakira wanted to have a tactical snooze, so I took the opportunity to make the most of the White Garden’s hospitality. Grabbing my towel and laptop, I headed over there and sat down to write a few blog entries and play around on the internet for a bit.
Sparkles joined me after about an hour, and we had a couple of beers and a good chat.
It got on to about 8.30 and we decided to see if Shakira had risen from her tactical snooze. She had just recently gotten up, and we decided to head out and grab a bite to eat and have an early night.
Shakira did complain about the air-conditioning in the room. For starters, it was terrible, and barely made a dint in the heat of the room. It also leaked water inside the room onto the bed below it. Sparkles offered to take that bed, as she suffered from the heat more than Shakira and would probably like the water dripping onto her feet.
We hadn’t seen any of the sights of Antalya, so I took the girls up to Hadrian’s Gate, and showed them a few other places around the town. The old town has a lot of exquisite architecture and extremely old buildings. A truly beautiful place.
The girls wanted to have one more authentic Turkish meal, as this was our final night in this beautiful country.
We found a restaurant that was a part of one of the hotels, as most of the restaurants we passed all had fairly Western menus. Given that Antalya had been going through a heat wave recently, they had a number of fans mounted on the walls that sprayed a fine mist through the restaurant area.
Quite a lot of mist.
To the point where I was glad that I had brought along my waterproof camera to take any last minute photos.
No joke.
Shakira put her camera away as she didn’t want it getting water damage.
The staff at the restaurant were an eccentric bunch, and despite the fact that Sparkles had also wanted authentic Turkish food, she got a spaghetti bolognaise. Shakira got a dish that she had quite fancied, a shish with aubergine and lamb, and I got a chicken pasta.
The food was quite tasty, but we were all very knackered and wanted to get a good night’s rest.
We turned on the struggling air-conditioning, packed our bags, and did our best to sleep in the hot room.
Tuesday, August 14, 2012
Is Kastellarizo, Is Meis
Day 14
So, the day had arrived where we were able to head over to the Greek island off the coast of Kas. We had our showers, ate our breakfast early and headed out to the store where we had bought our tickets the day before.
Vulcon met us there and then took us around to the office that the tour was going to leave from. What we discovered was that all of the ‘tour offices’ basically sold tickets for one boat that left and took about 100 people over to the island, as well as doing other private snorkeling and hiking tours.
It took a while for us to get onto the boat, as there were a number of people that apparently hadn’t handed in their passports the previous day and needed to be taken to the police station to very quickly get their papers organized.
Once the boat departed, Sparkles, Shakira and I grabbed a fantastic position on the top deck of the boat with an amazing view of the water around us, and of the island that we were heading towards.
As our vessel pulled into the harbor, the architecture and landscape of the island had a lot of subtle differences that showed that this was definitely a Greek island and not a part of Turkey. For those not in the know, there was a period within the last 30 years where the Greeks and the Turks developed a bit of bad blood, and a number of Greek citizens living in Turkish areas were forcibly removed and sent back to live on Greek sovereign soil. I must admit that I don’t know too many of the details, except that it is still a sore point for many Greeks, and not so sore a point for the Turks.
One of the things that I spied as the boat arrived was a long set of stairs leading up the hill behind the city. I decided then that I was going to climb these stairs.
We disembarked from the boat, noticing a duty-free store right next to the boat landing, and wandered along the waterside promenade, opting to sit at a café that served iced coffee (for Shakira), a massive glass of freshly squeezed orange juice (for Sparkles) and a nice big latte (for moi).
After our beverages, we went for a wander around the harbor of the island, wanting to find the beach/swimming area for the girls while I went exploring the island.
Around one end of the harbor was a hotel that had sun-lounges for hire as well as access to a designated swimming area. Sparkles opted to stay here and sort out 2 sun-beds for her and Shakira. Shakira and I wandered back around the harbor as she wanted to find a snorkel.
As we were walking around the promenade, I was amazed at how many Australians there were staying on the island. As we had been sitting down for our refreshments earlier, thee waiter and I had joked about this. He said that Melbourne has a large Greek population (I informed him that it was third after Athens and Thessalonica), and then he joked that this island had one of the largest Australian populations outside of Australia. He was exaggerating, of course, but I don’t think that I would be overstating by saying that at least a quarter of the people we walked past had Australian accents.
Shakira ended up finding her snorkel, and I headed on to climb the stairs up the mountain.
I will preface this next bit with the notification that I was a bit stupid doing this climb in the way that I did. Firstly, I had thongs on (flip-flops for my international audience – if I had been wearing a thong that would have been even more stupid). I did have 3 litres of water and my wide-brimmed-Gilligan-style hat, which I knew I was going to need, but the second stupid thing was that the temperature was 37 degrees, the sun was beating down, and there wasn’t a lot of shade up the stairs.
I started by climbing the stairs, posing for a timed photo in a Gollum pose (“Up up up the stairs we go, and when we reach the top we get to… THE TUNNEL!”).
I took some amazing photos at the points where there was shade, but the amount of shade was not huge. I quickly discovered that my footwear was completely inappropriate for this kind of walk, as my feet started to sweat and therefore were slipping around on the rubber surface of the thongs. I was very fortunate that I did have my hat and plenty of water.
After a couple of minutes, I reached a drawing on one of the stairs with an arrow pointing backwards saying “100” and an arrow pointing forward saying “300”. Sweet, I was already a quarter of the way there!
I wandered on in the hot sun, struggling more and more as I continued, passing through a rickety gate on my way. I reached the “200/200” mark again fairly quickly, and took some more photos, but from this point on I started to struggle, as the stairs got steeper, with less shade and more sun. My feet were slipping more and more on my thongs, and my stops more frequent.
After what seemed like an eternity, I reached the “300/100” mark, and looked up.
I realized that the marks weren’t for distance – they were for altitude, which was why they had seemed so oddly spaced.
The stairs had reached a point where they doubled back upon themselves several times, and I could no longer see the top of the mountain.
It was at this point that I almost gave up.
I was feeling dizzy and light headed, and I had gone through a litre of my water already, not knowing how much further I had to go.
I decided to push on. I wasn’t going to let the mountain get the better of me, and I knew I couldn’t be that far away. So I walked the 12 or so stairs to the next bend. Looked up. I staggered up the next 15 steps to the next bend. Looked up. Walked up the 8 stairs to the next bend… and saw that I had reached the top.
I had a great feeling of satisfaction that I hadn’t given up, since I had been so close to the top, but I was knackered and realized that I was probably suffering from either a bit of sunstroke or dehydration. I found a nice spot in the shade just below the top, had a mouthful of water and poured the rest of the bottle over my head to cool myself down.
I then cracked open my next bottle of water and drank about half a litre.
For any of you out there that have gone to the gym or played sports so vigorously that you feel terrible at the end, and then you throw up, you will know the feeling I felt.
Yes, I threw up at the top of the mountain, but after consuming another half litre of water and sitting in the shade for about 20 minutes I was still feeling knackered but truly buoyant at my achievement.
I took a few photos of the view and of the harbor laid out below me, and gave my parents a call. It was great to speak to them after 2 weeks of travelling, and share with them my recent achievement.
I made the trek back down with a much greater spring in my step than there had been towards the end of the ascent. I walked sections of the way without my thongs on, as I was slipping a bit more on the way down, but this was fine for me as there were no thorns on the path and also no glass.
I made it back down successfully and had a quick wander through the streets of the town behind the harbor esplanade.
After grabbing a bottle of water, I wandered around the harbor to meet up with the girls at their sun-beds. They had been taking it in turns of working on their tans and then going for a swim in the water. After arriving, I headed over to the bar and secured myself a sun-bed (under shade, of course, after my epic hike) and a beer, then rejoined the girls.
We faffed around for a bit, went for a swim, faffed around some more, and decided that we should grab a bite to eat before we had to get back on the boat to go back to Kas.
We headed to the place that I had bought the bottle of water earlier. The girls ordered a fish to share, and I ordered burgers. My meal came out fairly quickly, and it turned out to be 2 burger patties with some chips and salad. Interesting, but tasty.
The girl’s fish didn’t come out at the same time, so we spent a bit of time clock watching as the time got closer and closer to when the boat was supposed to depart.
It reached 10 minutes before the boat was supposed to leave, and Sparkles headed over and asked if we could take the fish away, as we didn’t want to miss our boat.
The waiter said we should have told him that we were going to catch the boat back, although he was kind enough to wrap the fish in foil and give the girls a fork to eat the fish on the boat.
We managed to make the boat, and pottered back over the water to Kas.
Sparkles was pretty wrecked after spending the whole day doing nothing in the sun, so she headed back to our hotel room, while Shakira and I headed over to get the bus tickets for the next day to Antalya. We stopped in to see Ali and find out if he had received a shipment of journals for our friend’s birthday, although Ali wasn’t there. His brother told us to come back a bit later on in the evening when he would be there.
Shakira and I headed back to the hotel room and had a tactical snooze, and then headed back down to Ali’s later on to find out what the story was with the journals. Ali was outside having a cigarette, so we sat down with him next door and had a coffee and a good chat. The journals hadn’t arrived, but he had spoken with his supplier, and he had organized for them to be placed on an overnight bus and shipped out to us.
I cannot emphasize just how helpful Ali was. If ever you are in Kas, you should head to his store. He will look after you fantastically.
He recommended a good place for Shakira and I to go and eat, as it was now getting to 10.30.
We headed to the restaurant and thoroughly enjoyed the food.
In Turkey, there are plenty of cats roaming around trying to get people to feed them part of their meals. Most of the cats are little bit manky, so it is easy to ignore them.
This night, a very cute cat came along and gave me one of those Puss-in-Boots looks that I just couldn’t ignore.
Shakira slapped me over the back of the head, and we wandered back to our hotel having a deep conversation about life, the universe and everything.
I got an average night’s sleep, so I spent my waking hours putting down notes for my journal for the previous couple of days so that I would be able to continue writing my blog.
If only I had been able to spend more time writing my blog as well as putting down notes for the blog.
Sigh.
So, the day had arrived where we were able to head over to the Greek island off the coast of Kas. We had our showers, ate our breakfast early and headed out to the store where we had bought our tickets the day before.
Vulcon met us there and then took us around to the office that the tour was going to leave from. What we discovered was that all of the ‘tour offices’ basically sold tickets for one boat that left and took about 100 people over to the island, as well as doing other private snorkeling and hiking tours.
It took a while for us to get onto the boat, as there were a number of people that apparently hadn’t handed in their passports the previous day and needed to be taken to the police station to very quickly get their papers organized.
Once the boat departed, Sparkles, Shakira and I grabbed a fantastic position on the top deck of the boat with an amazing view of the water around us, and of the island that we were heading towards.
As our vessel pulled into the harbor, the architecture and landscape of the island had a lot of subtle differences that showed that this was definitely a Greek island and not a part of Turkey. For those not in the know, there was a period within the last 30 years where the Greeks and the Turks developed a bit of bad blood, and a number of Greek citizens living in Turkish areas were forcibly removed and sent back to live on Greek sovereign soil. I must admit that I don’t know too many of the details, except that it is still a sore point for many Greeks, and not so sore a point for the Turks.
One of the things that I spied as the boat arrived was a long set of stairs leading up the hill behind the city. I decided then that I was going to climb these stairs.
We disembarked from the boat, noticing a duty-free store right next to the boat landing, and wandered along the waterside promenade, opting to sit at a café that served iced coffee (for Shakira), a massive glass of freshly squeezed orange juice (for Sparkles) and a nice big latte (for moi).
After our beverages, we went for a wander around the harbor of the island, wanting to find the beach/swimming area for the girls while I went exploring the island.
Around one end of the harbor was a hotel that had sun-lounges for hire as well as access to a designated swimming area. Sparkles opted to stay here and sort out 2 sun-beds for her and Shakira. Shakira and I wandered back around the harbor as she wanted to find a snorkel.
As we were walking around the promenade, I was amazed at how many Australians there were staying on the island. As we had been sitting down for our refreshments earlier, thee waiter and I had joked about this. He said that Melbourne has a large Greek population (I informed him that it was third after Athens and Thessalonica), and then he joked that this island had one of the largest Australian populations outside of Australia. He was exaggerating, of course, but I don’t think that I would be overstating by saying that at least a quarter of the people we walked past had Australian accents.
Shakira ended up finding her snorkel, and I headed on to climb the stairs up the mountain.
I will preface this next bit with the notification that I was a bit stupid doing this climb in the way that I did. Firstly, I had thongs on (flip-flops for my international audience – if I had been wearing a thong that would have been even more stupid). I did have 3 litres of water and my wide-brimmed-Gilligan-style hat, which I knew I was going to need, but the second stupid thing was that the temperature was 37 degrees, the sun was beating down, and there wasn’t a lot of shade up the stairs.
I started by climbing the stairs, posing for a timed photo in a Gollum pose (“Up up up the stairs we go, and when we reach the top we get to… THE TUNNEL!”).
I took some amazing photos at the points where there was shade, but the amount of shade was not huge. I quickly discovered that my footwear was completely inappropriate for this kind of walk, as my feet started to sweat and therefore were slipping around on the rubber surface of the thongs. I was very fortunate that I did have my hat and plenty of water.
After a couple of minutes, I reached a drawing on one of the stairs with an arrow pointing backwards saying “100” and an arrow pointing forward saying “300”. Sweet, I was already a quarter of the way there!
I wandered on in the hot sun, struggling more and more as I continued, passing through a rickety gate on my way. I reached the “200/200” mark again fairly quickly, and took some more photos, but from this point on I started to struggle, as the stairs got steeper, with less shade and more sun. My feet were slipping more and more on my thongs, and my stops more frequent.
After what seemed like an eternity, I reached the “300/100” mark, and looked up.
I realized that the marks weren’t for distance – they were for altitude, which was why they had seemed so oddly spaced.
The stairs had reached a point where they doubled back upon themselves several times, and I could no longer see the top of the mountain.
It was at this point that I almost gave up.
I was feeling dizzy and light headed, and I had gone through a litre of my water already, not knowing how much further I had to go.
I decided to push on. I wasn’t going to let the mountain get the better of me, and I knew I couldn’t be that far away. So I walked the 12 or so stairs to the next bend. Looked up. I staggered up the next 15 steps to the next bend. Looked up. Walked up the 8 stairs to the next bend… and saw that I had reached the top.
I had a great feeling of satisfaction that I hadn’t given up, since I had been so close to the top, but I was knackered and realized that I was probably suffering from either a bit of sunstroke or dehydration. I found a nice spot in the shade just below the top, had a mouthful of water and poured the rest of the bottle over my head to cool myself down.
I then cracked open my next bottle of water and drank about half a litre.
For any of you out there that have gone to the gym or played sports so vigorously that you feel terrible at the end, and then you throw up, you will know the feeling I felt.
Yes, I threw up at the top of the mountain, but after consuming another half litre of water and sitting in the shade for about 20 minutes I was still feeling knackered but truly buoyant at my achievement.
I took a few photos of the view and of the harbor laid out below me, and gave my parents a call. It was great to speak to them after 2 weeks of travelling, and share with them my recent achievement.
I made the trek back down with a much greater spring in my step than there had been towards the end of the ascent. I walked sections of the way without my thongs on, as I was slipping a bit more on the way down, but this was fine for me as there were no thorns on the path and also no glass.
I made it back down successfully and had a quick wander through the streets of the town behind the harbor esplanade.
After grabbing a bottle of water, I wandered around the harbor to meet up with the girls at their sun-beds. They had been taking it in turns of working on their tans and then going for a swim in the water. After arriving, I headed over to the bar and secured myself a sun-bed (under shade, of course, after my epic hike) and a beer, then rejoined the girls.
We faffed around for a bit, went for a swim, faffed around some more, and decided that we should grab a bite to eat before we had to get back on the boat to go back to Kas.
We headed to the place that I had bought the bottle of water earlier. The girls ordered a fish to share, and I ordered burgers. My meal came out fairly quickly, and it turned out to be 2 burger patties with some chips and salad. Interesting, but tasty.
The girl’s fish didn’t come out at the same time, so we spent a bit of time clock watching as the time got closer and closer to when the boat was supposed to depart.
It reached 10 minutes before the boat was supposed to leave, and Sparkles headed over and asked if we could take the fish away, as we didn’t want to miss our boat.
The waiter said we should have told him that we were going to catch the boat back, although he was kind enough to wrap the fish in foil and give the girls a fork to eat the fish on the boat.
We managed to make the boat, and pottered back over the water to Kas.
Sparkles was pretty wrecked after spending the whole day doing nothing in the sun, so she headed back to our hotel room, while Shakira and I headed over to get the bus tickets for the next day to Antalya. We stopped in to see Ali and find out if he had received a shipment of journals for our friend’s birthday, although Ali wasn’t there. His brother told us to come back a bit later on in the evening when he would be there.
Shakira and I headed back to the hotel room and had a tactical snooze, and then headed back down to Ali’s later on to find out what the story was with the journals. Ali was outside having a cigarette, so we sat down with him next door and had a coffee and a good chat. The journals hadn’t arrived, but he had spoken with his supplier, and he had organized for them to be placed on an overnight bus and shipped out to us.
I cannot emphasize just how helpful Ali was. If ever you are in Kas, you should head to his store. He will look after you fantastically.
He recommended a good place for Shakira and I to go and eat, as it was now getting to 10.30.
We headed to the restaurant and thoroughly enjoyed the food.
In Turkey, there are plenty of cats roaming around trying to get people to feed them part of their meals. Most of the cats are little bit manky, so it is easy to ignore them.
This night, a very cute cat came along and gave me one of those Puss-in-Boots looks that I just couldn’t ignore.
Shakira slapped me over the back of the head, and we wandered back to our hotel having a deep conversation about life, the universe and everything.
I got an average night’s sleep, so I spent my waking hours putting down notes for my journal for the previous couple of days so that I would be able to continue writing my blog.
If only I had been able to spend more time writing my blog as well as putting down notes for the blog.
Sigh.
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.
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.
Saturday, August 11, 2012
Dozen
Day 12
Ok – my current state emulates this blog.
I had a terrible sleep on the evening leading up to this day. I have been having some very vivid dreams that have given me a very Keanu Reeves experience.
After waking up far too early, we grabbed some breakfast and headed back to Ali’s store. Ali was a top bloke, and if ever you head to Kas, you should check out his shop.
We did a bit of shopping, getting more items ready for the ship back to Melbourne.
We took a short break, and had lunch at a nearby restaurant where Shakira and I ordered the lamb kebab, which Sparkles ordered something similarly delightful.
While we were eating, our waiter spun us a story about how he wanted to get into real estate development. We ignored him for the most part, but it was certainly interesting.
Post lunch, I purchased a Nargile. This nargile will be for business, while my current nargile will be for pleasure. I also picked up a few packets of tobacco, so I will be well stocked up upon my return.
At Ali’s store, I picked up a carpet and a couple of cushions, after being inspired by our night at Pamukkale and lounging around on the cushions there.
We hit up the supermarket for a few more drinks before heading back to our room, and had a beer or two by the pool to make sure that we were doing the right thing.
After a couple of beers, we headed out to a nearby restaurant to grab a bite to eat. It was nothing special – I ordered the spaghetti bolognaise, which was mostly pasta with a little bit of meat sauce, had a very tasty beer, and then we paid the bill and called it quits.
We headed back to our room, had a few more drinks, and called it a night.
Ok – my current state emulates this blog.
I had a terrible sleep on the evening leading up to this day. I have been having some very vivid dreams that have given me a very Keanu Reeves experience.
After waking up far too early, we grabbed some breakfast and headed back to Ali’s store. Ali was a top bloke, and if ever you head to Kas, you should check out his shop.
We did a bit of shopping, getting more items ready for the ship back to Melbourne.
We took a short break, and had lunch at a nearby restaurant where Shakira and I ordered the lamb kebab, which Sparkles ordered something similarly delightful.
While we were eating, our waiter spun us a story about how he wanted to get into real estate development. We ignored him for the most part, but it was certainly interesting.
Post lunch, I purchased a Nargile. This nargile will be for business, while my current nargile will be for pleasure. I also picked up a few packets of tobacco, so I will be well stocked up upon my return.
At Ali’s store, I picked up a carpet and a couple of cushions, after being inspired by our night at Pamukkale and lounging around on the cushions there.
We hit up the supermarket for a few more drinks before heading back to our room, and had a beer or two by the pool to make sure that we were doing the right thing.
After a couple of beers, we headed out to a nearby restaurant to grab a bite to eat. It was nothing special – I ordered the spaghetti bolognaise, which was mostly pasta with a little bit of meat sauce, had a very tasty beer, and then we paid the bill and called it quits.
We headed back to our room, had a few more drinks, and called it a night.
Ottoman's Favourite
Day 11
Ok – I’m not going to faff around.
Today was a lazy day.
We got up, had some breakfast, and given how HOT it was (so hot that if there had been little fellows in orange robes, they would have burst into flames) we decided to have a low key day.
We lounged by the pool, Sparkles and Shakira worked on their tan, and I… well, let’s be honest. I did fuck all.
We had lunch at our accommodation. Sparkles and I ordered a Hamburger… which turned out to be a rather large salad sandwich served in half a loaf of bread. We also grabbed several served of chips… which Shakira helped liberate us of.
We lounged by the pool during the afternoon, and then headed into the town of Kas for dinner in the evening.
We headed to a restaurant that specialized in Ottoman cuisine. The food was fantastic. I’m sure once I figure out how to do it, I will include a photo of the dinner.
Unfortunately for the girls, since there was a lot of cheese in the meal, I became Gassious Clay for the evening. I did notice Sparkles pull a rather odd face as she walked through my bedroom to the toilet, and I opted to burn a match to try to soak up the smell.
We had a few more beers before heading to bed, and thoroughly enjoyed our day.
Ok – I’m not going to faff around.
Today was a lazy day.
We got up, had some breakfast, and given how HOT it was (so hot that if there had been little fellows in orange robes, they would have burst into flames) we decided to have a low key day.
We lounged by the pool, Sparkles and Shakira worked on their tan, and I… well, let’s be honest. I did fuck all.
We had lunch at our accommodation. Sparkles and I ordered a Hamburger… which turned out to be a rather large salad sandwich served in half a loaf of bread. We also grabbed several served of chips… which Shakira helped liberate us of.
We lounged by the pool during the afternoon, and then headed into the town of Kas for dinner in the evening.
We headed to a restaurant that specialized in Ottoman cuisine. The food was fantastic. I’m sure once I figure out how to do it, I will include a photo of the dinner.
Unfortunately for the girls, since there was a lot of cheese in the meal, I became Gassious Clay for the evening. I did notice Sparkles pull a rather odd face as she walked through my bedroom to the toilet, and I opted to burn a match to try to soak up the smell.
We had a few more beers before heading to bed, and thoroughly enjoyed our day.
Day the Tenthe
Day 10
Ok – so, we’re in Kas, and I’m writing this drunk.
Sparkles, Shakira and I got up in time (just) to have some breakfast at the hotel. It was quite tasty, and we were surprised at the range. Normally in Turkish accommodation breakfast consisted of boiled eggs, tomato, cucumber and watermelon, but here they also had cereal, juice (albeit reconstituted concentrate), some kind of Turkish spring rolls (which were cheese based rather than meat based), and mezes. Mmmmmm.
SO, as I say we “just” made it in, we basically filled up a plate before having the staff come past to clean off our plates. Fortunately, they were quite gracious and allowed us to finish our breaky before taking shit away.
Post breakfast, we faffed around for a bit, and had to evacuate the room at 1pm when the cleaning staff came through and forced us out. We went for a bit of wander through the town, past the pier, and a few other local venues before heading into a store that a couple of quite English old ladies recommended to us. This was where we met Ali and his brother, who ran a very tight ship.
This store had all of the Turkish wonders that you could be after, and I was sure that there was a slim mark up, but Ali’s customer service style was very similar to what we would expect in Melbourne – a greet and then allowing the customer to look around before throwing a few questions out there to promote the sale.
Let’s just say that we spent a LOT of money at Ali’s establishment.
Sparkles and I lined up a couple of things, before we moved on to grab a bite to eat. We left Shakira in the store to browse.
Sparkles managed to find something that she had been craving (spaghetti bolognaise) at a restaurant a couple of doors up, and I had a fantastic chicken panini at Jimmy Jokers (the name of the place we grabbed lunch). Sparkles and I also grabbed a beer before Shakira met up with us, when she ordered her lunch, chowed it down, and then headed back to do some more shopping.
Following our post-lunch shop, the three of us found a supermarket and bought some beers and chips and various stuff to tide us over, and headed back to our room to stock up our fridge, chow down on some pippas seeds and play a game of ticket to ride (if you have an iPad, you should grab that game. FANTASTIC!!!).
We all had a tactical snooze, and it was quite late in the evening when we arose. The girls weren’t that hungry, so I decided to take a tactical walk through the town. Unfortunately I was unable to find anywhere that did take away kebabs. What I did find, however, was a roast potato stand that added in whatever miscellaneous bibs and bobs you could crave. So, I grabbed one of these and headed back to the hotel (even though the potato cost me 9 lira… which after maths came to $4.50).
Sparkles, Shakira and I had a very blunt conversation that evening, establishing some of the things that annoyed us with our trip concerning the other parties involved.
I think I got off pretty much Scott free (no pun intended), and while we were chatting Shakira hoed into my roast potato as well. Admittedly, I wasn’t going to finish it on my own, and we had a very good conversation while we put down the beers that we had purchased.
All in all, this was a very good first day in Kas.
Ok – so, we’re in Kas, and I’m writing this drunk.
Sparkles, Shakira and I got up in time (just) to have some breakfast at the hotel. It was quite tasty, and we were surprised at the range. Normally in Turkish accommodation breakfast consisted of boiled eggs, tomato, cucumber and watermelon, but here they also had cereal, juice (albeit reconstituted concentrate), some kind of Turkish spring rolls (which were cheese based rather than meat based), and mezes. Mmmmmm.
SO, as I say we “just” made it in, we basically filled up a plate before having the staff come past to clean off our plates. Fortunately, they were quite gracious and allowed us to finish our breaky before taking shit away.
Post breakfast, we faffed around for a bit, and had to evacuate the room at 1pm when the cleaning staff came through and forced us out. We went for a bit of wander through the town, past the pier, and a few other local venues before heading into a store that a couple of quite English old ladies recommended to us. This was where we met Ali and his brother, who ran a very tight ship.
This store had all of the Turkish wonders that you could be after, and I was sure that there was a slim mark up, but Ali’s customer service style was very similar to what we would expect in Melbourne – a greet and then allowing the customer to look around before throwing a few questions out there to promote the sale.
Let’s just say that we spent a LOT of money at Ali’s establishment.
Sparkles and I lined up a couple of things, before we moved on to grab a bite to eat. We left Shakira in the store to browse.
Sparkles managed to find something that she had been craving (spaghetti bolognaise) at a restaurant a couple of doors up, and I had a fantastic chicken panini at Jimmy Jokers (the name of the place we grabbed lunch). Sparkles and I also grabbed a beer before Shakira met up with us, when she ordered her lunch, chowed it down, and then headed back to do some more shopping.
Following our post-lunch shop, the three of us found a supermarket and bought some beers and chips and various stuff to tide us over, and headed back to our room to stock up our fridge, chow down on some pippas seeds and play a game of ticket to ride (if you have an iPad, you should grab that game. FANTASTIC!!!).
We all had a tactical snooze, and it was quite late in the evening when we arose. The girls weren’t that hungry, so I decided to take a tactical walk through the town. Unfortunately I was unable to find anywhere that did take away kebabs. What I did find, however, was a roast potato stand that added in whatever miscellaneous bibs and bobs you could crave. So, I grabbed one of these and headed back to the hotel (even though the potato cost me 9 lira… which after maths came to $4.50).
Sparkles, Shakira and I had a very blunt conversation that evening, establishing some of the things that annoyed us with our trip concerning the other parties involved.
I think I got off pretty much Scott free (no pun intended), and while we were chatting Shakira hoed into my roast potato as well. Admittedly, I wasn’t going to finish it on my own, and we had a very good conversation while we put down the beers that we had purchased.
All in all, this was a very good first day in Kas.
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