Gentle readers, I know that reading about our Turkish adventures is probably boring you. A quick Lucy update: she is in El Paso with Baga and Opa. When I talked to her this afternoon (for the 30 seconds she deigned to speak to me), she was on her way to get a manicure. Seriously. She spent a week with Nini having all kinds of fun, and now she is very busy between visitations and viewings by her adoring El Paso public. Aren't we so mean for not taking her with us?
Meet the Flintstones
We are in Central Anatolia/Cappodoccia staying in a CAVE HOTEL. And lest you think we are roughing it in any way, notice that it is a very nice cave.
Among the fanciest hotels we have ever stayed in. In a CAVE. Did I mention the part about the cave? And the twin faucets of red and white wine? We are a modern stone age, very fancy family.
Leaving the Aegean Today
St. John's tomb.
The garden of our hotel in Kirazli. We are sad to leave it.
A Very Old Building
This is the library at Ephesus. The books didn't make it.
Dolmus
That is the Turkish word for stuffed -- they use it to describe grape leaves stuffed with rice as well as local taxi-buses. And us, after all this Turkish food. We have eaten:
--Lamb stewed in tomatoes
--Chicken kebabs that put all others to shame
--Lavosh bread right out of a wood-fired oven
--Baba ghanoush, yogurt sauce, hummus and spicy couscous
--Tiny lamb-filled ravioli in yogurt sauce
--Tomatoes! Oh, the tomatoes!
--Cucumbers, olives, peaches, melons, all grown near where they're eaten
--Fresh fish right out of the Bosphorus
Writing this list has made me hungry and I just finshed eating my eggs...
Wedding Day in Kirazli
We awoke to the sound of gunfire this morning. This, a mere hour after our predawn awakening to the call to prayer blast sung by a tone-deaf imam. We heard the first shots and Jason wondered if it was gunfire. Surely not, I said. Then, unmistakably...gunfire. We didn't panic (well, I did a little, but only thinking my mom would KILL me if I got myself shot in Turkey). Jason went out of the room to check it out and he ran into the hotel owner, a darling Welshman who said, "Not to worry, we haven't gone to war. There's a wedding in the village and that's how they celebrate." Here comes the bride...heralded in a hail of gunfire.
We are near the South Aegean staying in a gorgeous little hotel. The village, Kirazli, is remote at best. If I asked a movie scout to find me the quintessential rural Turkish village, this is what they'd come up with. Goats, donkey and toothless old neighbor lady included.
Today on the Bosphorus
We rode a big boat, a ship really, up the Bosphorus Strait to the place where it empties into the Black Sea. We ate at a restaurant on the dock: the prettiest salad of arugula, tomato, carrot and radishes with just olive oil and lemon. And fried calamari and whole bluefish (the head and all). Then we climbed up a smallish mountain to the ruin of a castle for a dramatic view of the Black Sea. I watched the colorful ships headed to their exotic ports and I found myself forming Lu-like questions: where are they going? What are they carrying? I even made up Mom-like answers: maybe they're going to Albania and they're carrying amethysts. On the boat ride home, we called Lu and told her we were calling from a SHIP and we'd seen a CASTLE.
Now I am back at the hotel on the rooftop restaurant. There's just a little dusting of sunset left over the Marmara. Jason was taking a nap, but the call to prayer (and accompanying barking dogs) woke him up, so maybe he will join me soon.
I can't believe I am here writing something you all will be reading in a place where it is lunchtime. I never stop being impressed with how big and small the Internet can make the world.
Turkish Bath: Not So Spa-Like
Jason and I went to world's oldest day spa yesterday: the ancient Cemberlitas baths. In the ladies' area, there's a giant slab of steaming travertine where you sit and wait (prudishly, if you're an American), wrapped in your table cloth of a towel, for one of the bath women to start your service. The bath women, regardless of their age, build or amount of body hair, where nothing but string bikini or thong bottoms. This shocked me, but put me somewhat more at ease with my own table cloth situation. My bath lady came over, roughly freed me of my table cloth and started scrubbing me with a dry loofah. She removed 34 years of dead skin, plus some that was still alive. Then she soaped me up and washed me like a dog. A well-loved dog, but without any ceremony or regard for my modesty. She rinsed me, then sent me to another lady who was wearing more clothes. This lady covered me with so much oil I could barely keep myself on the slab of travertine. The massage was great. I went back to the hotel clean, greasy and happy, if liberated of my dignity and some of my skin.
Sunset on the Sea of Marmara
We are sitting at the rooftop cafe of our hotel. The sun is setting on the Blue Mosque behind us. We can see across the Sea of Marmara to the Asian side of the city. It's so weird that we are here.
Istanbul? Constantinople?
Is hard to believe that in 15 hours, we will be in Istanbul. We will be gone for two weeks, traveling throughout Turkey. I don't know how we'll manage to be away from Lucy that long. I must have kissed her 42 times this morning. She was annoyed. "MOM, stop. I am trying to make wonderful music." She continued banging chopsticks on a pot.
Jason dropped her off at school, then called me as he drove. He said, "My heart hurts." Mine does too.