et sol

Aw...

Un po' di Roma...

Drafting entreis again because the internet is doing the same thing that it sometimes does when I’m at home--it gets the signal just fine, but then claims that it’s not connected to the internet. Of course, this happens the one time at which I sit down to blog.

Okay, first things first with Roma. Out hotel is beautiful--would def stay here again. We have a nice, big room with closet space and a little fridge, stove, and prep sink. There’s a hall that leads through a vestibule to the bathroom, which has a huge sink and a shower with a glass door and a head that changes water flow. It’s the nicest shower that I’ve seen in months. There’s a toilet AND a bidet, and let me tell you, Ryan and I both want these little suckers in our homes. I cannot begin to explain to you how handy they are when you’re menstruating.

It’s my blog, and I can write what I want.

Also, they help me solve the problem of never feeling clean when I use Western toilets. They’re pretty much miraculous, at that. Sometimes at night we wash our feet in it before bed, and sometimes we freshen up but save water. We could even give a bath to some of the babies that we’re planning on stealing. I want one. In each bathroom.

 

 

Our bed is supportive and comfortable, and we both sleep very well when we’re not being woken up by various things going on with out bodies, like feeling sick to his tummy or menstruating. Also, there’s no cock to wake us from four hours until ten hours, and there’s no call to prayer around four or five hours, although in three weeks, I never once woke up for that call to prayer.

Ha! Your god isn't great enough to reach me… It just goes to show you how much I love sleep.

We have to use three keys to get into our room, and we take turns doing sets. One opens the door to the annex part of the hotel, which is separated from the main building but only two doors down in the little alcove-thing (there are no words coming to mind to describe it properly) on the street. From there, we walk up the stairs and use the wicked awesome key to our hallway, and then the skeleton-key-like key to our room. The last one’s my buddy; I can always get it to work. The first two take some brute strength at times.

Even the ceilings in our room are beautiful; they’re dark wood expose beams, and the ceiling height has to be almost four metres.

The location is perfect as well. We’re within walking distance of everything, seriously. I’m glad that we’re staying at a hotel in the heart of Roma rather than a hostel on the outskirts. Yay Ryan’s idea! Walking back from a small spaghetteria at night, you can see il Colosseo at every intersection on the back streets. We walked to another country and back yesterday, even, and it felt like we were walking on Mass Ave (down a main thoroughfare where things were loud and a little dirtier, across a bridge over the city’s major river, to a different republic…).

We’re about two blocks north of il Colosseo, and our road dumps out at Augustus’s forum. Roma is interesting in that everything is important to someone or something, and you never fail to take a random corner and end up at a huge, important basilica or la Fontana di Trevi. As mentioned, the first day, I had to stop taking pictures because everything was so overwhelming.

Overall, we both decided that we could live here.

I’m so much more relaxed here than I was on any other part of the trip. As much as I hate to admit it, I may be a city girl. Don’t get me wrong--I’m totally at home barefoot in wild grass, meditating with mine eyes closed under the sun, but as far as travelling goes, I feel much safer and much more in control in a major city than I do in the countryside. It’s not even the language thing; everyone knows that I can get along (me la cava bene) in other languages just fine. Part of it is transportation: in Fethiye, we relied upon sleazy dolmuş drivers and bus and taxi drivers quite a bit, and sometimes you were accidentally kidnapped to Asia. I hate taxis. Here in Roma, we can walk to wherever we’re going, no problem. We also took the express train and the metro from the airport and had no trouble whatsoever and saved ourselves some Euro, because spending money on transportation feels like a waste. We’ll do the same thing back, but we might even walk to the train station instead of taking the metro that one stop.

I feel less out of place travelling in a city, even when I could get along in the countryside or a small coastal town just fine. I could barter and order meals in Turkish with no problem, but being in this big city, where I know that I’m not the most out of place person (and certainly neither look nor act like a tourist), I feel much more comfortable. The funny thing is, though, that we get English as a language guess much more often. Maybe people here are more used to our accent or something, but in Turkey, Turkish, Russian, Polish, and German would come up (usually in something like that order) before English almost every time (this made me very happy). Here, too, I’ve found the one association with America that I will not mind to take:

We were sitting at dinner one night. This means that we were across from each other at a little table, almost in the dark down a small alley a few streets from la Fontana di Trevi. The two Italians sitting at the end table to my left (the tables were only two deep from street to wall) bumped elbows with us. As the woman got up to pay, the man asked us if we had a cigarette, to which we replied that we were sorry that we didn’t, and he said, ‘O! You must be American. In America, you no smoke! No one smoke!’ and we laughed. That, itself, is an interesting phenomenon, but for another time.

Right now, I think that I’ll pictography before we head off to become completely enveloped in a world distances separate: two thousand years, and about five metres lower… (This city is dusty; Ryan’s nose was stuffed the first day. Things get buried faster here, I suppose, because the amphitheatre in Fethiye didn’t seem buried at all, but all of the ruins here look like they’re on display and you’re walking on bridges through them.)

On second thought, I will update the sightseeingy pictures at a later time. It's time to see le rovine...

...and end of airport Turkey updates

15.08.08 2205
Our breakfast, check-out, and ride to the airport went blissfully pretty much according to schedule, and even though I started to slip into Travelling Meaghan, as mentioned, once caffeinated here at IST, I felt much better, especially after being fed, watered, and a little bit napped on the short hop up to Europe’s largest city. It was on the bus ride to DLM that Ryan conceived the idea to camp in the airport all night, a plan that we are currently executing with much conviction. Ryan is currently napping on my knee (upper thigh, technically) on my scarf (after much coaxing to use my scarf as a pillow and to lie on his back) as I try not to move my right arm too much for fear of waking him. Parentheses are difficult, as is backspacing.

I am reminded of a certain caricature of someone’s typing habits, and how that would be impossible right now.

Some musings:
Moving things, like elevators and subway systems, here in Turkey are ridiculously deliberate. In the elevators that aren’t glass, I don’t realise that we’re moving until we’re stopping. On the metro systems, the train comes to a stop so gracefully that there is no backlash when we stop--everything unlike the T to which I am accustomed to riding. I’d rather have my red line surfing late at night, though, across the Salt and Pepper Bridge. Sometimes, I miss having my city--a place where I know all of the social customs, where I am no tourist, where I can help people who look lost with directions, and where I know where to go when and what is open at what times.

I know, however, that I will so thoroughly enjoy Rome, and especially being right in the heart of everything. I’ve wanted to go to Rome pretty much since the first days of high school, and Ryan rightly beseeched me not to die of excitement when we got there.

There’s still too much world to see to die upon my first sight of Rome, but I know that this will not be my last.

Ciao! In italiano, allora…

Time well spent, but time to be over.

15.08.08 2117

The next day, being our last in Fethiye, we wanted to make worth our while. O, it was. We started by taking a dolmuş (after breakfast, of course) to Kayaköy (lit. ‘rock village’) which Ryan had wanted to see since we first arrived. The town’s history dates to three-thousand BCE (I think that I might start using the founding of Rome as the date by which all are calculated once again), most of the buildings were constructed in the late eighteen-hundreds and early nineteen-hundreds. In the exchange of populations, though, the town was abandoned and remained so, with few inhabitants still remaining, until it was realised that there was potential to capitalise on tourism.

I HATE HATE HATE BOTTLED WATER.

Even though the dolmuş that we took seemed to run every ten minutes, we had to wait an hour for the bust after we were done walking. Luckily for us, the mayor’s house, the largest in the village, had been converted into a wonderfully beautiful restaurant, and we were able to have a personal wine tasting in the four-hundred-year-old wine cellar. Ryan had a glass of old sirah and I had a glass of something light that was strawberry-cherry flavoured, as it was a hot day, and I never get light drinks. It was still a red, though--don’t worry, Mommy. We ended up talking with some Brits on holiday who loved the place, and the woman and I ranted about how horrible Turkey would be if it changed from anything but what it is (read: either fell to the fundamentalists as it narrowly escaped by only one vote about a month ago or was forced to modernise and become even more western with things like health codes and liquor licenses and the like) and lost all of its charm and traditional rhythm. After paying and talking some more, we sprinted down the stairs and out of the restaurant to catch the dolmuş to Ölüdeniz.

The next few minutes of our journey were characterised by swindling Turks trying to make a few lira by telling us the wrong dolmuş, but then still charging us, chasing us down not once but twice on the beach after we didn’t pay, and stupid profiteers charging us to sit on the lounge chairs and use an umbrella on the beach, both of which were already there, and yelling at us and telling us that we couldn’t just sit on our own towels on the sand, which wasn’t sand, but smooth rocks.

We’re over that, though. Except for the comment that I understand, Turks, because you have centuries of mercantilism in your genealogy, and I would totally get hung up about some lira if I did, too. Luckily for you, I just have a flash temper in mine heritage, but some lira definitely isn’t enough to bring it out, so you can have it, and your profiteering, too. Harumph.

After nervously swimming in the beach with our few lira in our pocket because we didn’t trust anyone—wait.

This water, people, was amazing, really. It was crystal blue-turquoise, like looking into an aquamarine jewell (etymology, much?), and was fantastic in which to swim. O, my. We were continually in awe as we looked down and around. Huge mountains rose up out of the shoreline, and I think that this was the first soil that I’ve seen that’s rockier than that in New England. It is as if the sea vomited huge mounts of rock one day in a fit of disgust, and out of this rock barren coniferous trees grew with tall grasses in between them, begging for forest fires when combined with either careless nicotine addicts or Nature’s electricity.

The water was beautiful, and the sand was amusing because it was, as mentioned, ‘very small rocks,’ which wiped right off your feet and didn’t stick all over everything like the sand at home, or even the sand at Karadeniz.

We had dondurma--real dondurma, the gummy kind--and headed for the dolmuş back to Fethiye. On the dolmuş, we saw another one of those ubiquitous (even on sale at the bazaars, I swear) insignias of the empire of evil. If you can’t tell in the picture, then it’s because that horrid omen is obscured by the dolmuş pole, but it is, indeed, that accurséd overlying ‘N’ and ‘Y.’ Why this is everywhere, I’ll never know, but I kept being afraid that it would get me into some trouble, because, after being born and bred in Red Sox Nation, my first reaction upon catching sight of one of these symbols is to glower at the sign, and this may be misinterpreted as a glower at the wearer or seller, and I haven’t the language skills to explain how stupid it is to wear a symbol of that status when one doesn’t fully understand its implications.

After dinner at the same harbour local dive at which we had eaten second breakfast, we had a nice, relaxing evening full of me desperately trying to keep Ryan from procrastinating packing (I was all set already) and realising that our flight from Dalaman was two hours later than we thought--yay! When the time came, we walked down the hill to the hamam, where I was part of Ryan’s induction into that wonderful aspect of Turkish culture.

Squeaky clean and with glisteningly exfoliated skin, we walked back up the hill in the dark and reflected upon how wonderful our hostel and its owners are.

Times that I was enjoying too much to take pictures...

15.08.08 1957
The next day, as we had been informed by Tuna (who, as mentioned, let us on to the boat tour and organised our passage to it), was market day in Fethiye. We got up for breakfast and then had a nice long morning that eventually became an early afternoon walking around town. It was very different on this Tuesday than it had been on Sunday in town; everything was alive and vibrant with persistent energy. We ate and wandered, bought some nice things at a little ethnic gypsy-like store that I can say are from Turkey, and pretty much finished with market day, thank you very much.

2111
We had dinner again at Paşa Kabap, which was a wonderful, a bit off-the-beaten-touristy path restaurant that served delicious traditional Turkish food at extremely reasonable prices. The staff were also very friendly, and smirked with us (or a least me) at silly tourists. We took our time again and ordered starters and our meal, and this time we even had coffee after, but I think that it could have used a little sugar to keep it from being grainy. The best Turkish coffee that I’ve had is still that which Gözde made. I’m pretty sure that we just went back and went to bed again, maybe after some more backgammon. There was one night where Ryan totally started falling asleep on me as we were talking, which never ever ever happens, as I’m the one who always gets to the point where all of my responses are either ‘mm-hmm’ or ‘uh-huh’ (one or the other, though, as I never mix two in the same night) as I drift off to bed but still want to seem like I’m paying attention. I can’t help it! When Ryan’s sleepy, he starts talking about random things (or singing random song bits), so it’s not my fault.

Boat tour...

15.08.08 1902
First of all, this was the hostel at which we stayed. Monica and Tuna were absolutely amazing, an invaluable resource, replete with connexions and helpful information and advice, and a welcome sight after a long day or serving (included!) breakfast. Our room was quaint and small, but very clean and nice. There was a little line of ants that ran from the hot water tap, behind the mirror (but didn’t have a home in it) an across the wall to the door, and we didn’t bother them and they didn’t bother us. It was actually rather nice to see them there all the time. Our room had air conditioning, which we used in moderation, but appreciated very much after sticky summer days. There was a little dipping pool in the sun lounge landing outside our door, and the swimming pool ended up being up to my neck, but I still don’t understand how. Down a small flight of stairs, the lobby was covered in vines and plants, a little verdant space that felt all tropical at night. Down the walkway from there, you could go right up to the dormitory or down a few more stairs to outside, which was a little walk from town, but closer than some hostels. We would 100% stay with them again, no question.

 

 

After our first night there, we asked Tuna some questions about the area and our plans, which he answered succinctly and without hesitation. For the boat tour that we wished to take, he pulled out his cell phone and arranged our free pick-up for the next morning in under a minute. We paid him fifty lira total and went to bed after backgammon.

The next morning, after our breakfast (I will miss turkish kahvaltılar (breakfasts)) we waited until the van came to bring us to Ölüdeniz. Now, I can’t remember if it was on this drive, but I’m more certain that it was walking into town at some point, but Ryan said to me, ‘I like when you worry; it makes you seem human.’ ‘As opposed to?’ and as I was about to offer ‘superhuman,’ he said ‘goddess-like.’ I’ll take it. By this, he correctly surmised that whilst I’m travelling and have the bulk of the language and communication (read: stubborn haggling and arguing) skills, I feel tremendous pressure. I feel like I have to know where we’re going and what we’re doing at all times, and if anything is uncertain, then I will be working it out (‘thinking’) in mine head. Ryan is very good at telling with I’m thinking. The constant picking of the hair is another tell. I worry in cabs and dolmuşlar that we’re going somewhere unintended or that as he tries to pass that truck we’re going to die. I worry that we’re being had or cheated or tricked or that someone’s stealing something. I worry that we’ll be late or too early to start things or that I left something behind or we forgot something important. I worry about money. I worry that I’m in charge and I have to have all of the plans all of the time, and when anything is up in the air, I’m a bit of a worried wreck.

Human.

This worrying got better over the course of our stay in Fethiye, but on that little van ride to Ölüdeniz, I was worrying that we wouldn’t get to where we were going (we didn’t even know where we were going, technically), or when we got there, we would be late. Or to early. Is someone stealing something? Miraculously, we arrived onto the boat without being hit in the head by a paraglider and with funny British companions. We got a seat on the boat and moved when we realised that we were right in front of the speakers.

This boat cruise cost us only twenty-five lira apiece, and was totally worth it. We took off from Ölüdeniz (which some consider the most beautiful beach in the world) in a two-story boat. The first story was a bunch of benches and tables, and the second was benches along the edges and tanning cushions in the middle, with the entrance to the water slide (yes!) at the bow and the captain’s little bubble at the stern. We sat near the bow on benches. From Ölüdeniz, we travelled to Five Stone Beach and swam in the beautiful Mediterranean. The waters were unbelievable warm and salty, keeping us afloat with ease. You could see the rocky bottom through the blue-turquoise water, and I dreamed of scuba diving in this haven. Because of the rocks and the bays of the coast, I think coupled with the fact that there aren’t really tides in the Mediterranean, the waves were few and, when they were, they were at most a foot high. Lying on my back and staring into the cloudless sky, I kept mine eyes open to the aether without getting them salty. We swam around before climbing back onto the boat and heading for Cold Water Spring.

Now, we had been told that five minutes in this water would take five years off your appearance, but the water was definitely warmer than the Atlantic. It is probable that we were the only ones on the boat who found the water a comfortable temperature, and granted we didn’t get the chance (due to another tour boat) to swim directly over the spring, but there seemed to be pockets of still-warmer-than-bath-water (okay, because I like warm baths, maybe not so, but still) floating up from the sand, and while funny and cute British little girls chattered their teeth in the cold, we told them that this water was nothing, dear.

After swimming all the way around the boat and climbing back on, we travelled up the coast line to St. Nicholas Island, WHERE SANTA CLAUS WAS BORN! That’s right, we’re way cooler than all of you put together, because we got to walk around the ancient Lycian settlement where your very own St. Nick was conceived, birthed, and raised. Boo-yah. Apparently, too, when the weentsy Suez Canal opened, because of the connexion with the Red Sea and thus the Indian Ocean, the water level of the Mediterranean rose three to four metres, and parts of the ancient settlements were sunken below the new sea level. We wandered around the island and were very amazed at all that we saw. Luckily, the heat got to us a bit, and I realised that I wouldn’t be able to walk to the top of this

peak and get back down in time (unfortunately), so we walked back down to the boat and jumped into the water again. We met a nice honeymooning couple from Pennsylvania, too, so that was cool. They were the first Americans that I’d seen all trip, methinks--maybe not all trip, but definitely Ryan and Meaghan’s trip trip. We got back onto the boat and were happy that we were early, because the captain left ten minutes before he said that he would, and as cool as Santa Claus is, he certainly wasn’t visiting his relatives, and wouldn’t have been able to sleigh us off the island any time soon.

You can see the outlines of buildings under the water.

The most Mediterranean picture, ever:

And o, don't worry, this was the colour of the water:

O, we also had lunch (included! and vegetarian for me!) on the boat, so that’s good.

We travelled again out and around the water, passing another island and not really caring what it was anymore, because is was more ancient Lycian stuff, and cool as they are, tending to sunburns and fatigue was more important at the point, and all of the pinkish torsos around us agreed. Our next and sort-of last stop was Butterfly Valley, which was beautiful and hippie-like. We paid an entrance fee and hiked in horrifically inappropriate shoes through narrow paths and rock passes to a pitiful summer waterfall and back, not seeing a single butterfly the whole time, but seeing and picking up plenty of littered plastic water bottled AND there were trash barrels provided on the paths. (Meaghan smoulders.) We didn’t have time to stop at one of the small houses to buy desserts or drinks and economically support the local hippie people, unfortunately, because the captain didn’t give us enough time. On our way back to Ölüdeniz, we saw the big Blue Cave, which everyone mumbled a bit of awe at, and then willed the boat back. It was around 1730 or so by the point, and we had been picked up at 0930 (well, they were a bit late, so 0945) in the morning and waited on the boat until a little after 1100. In other words, it was time to go home.

We took our (included!) ride back to Fethiye after getting real Turkish dondurma, which I will miss very much. After appreciating air conditioning for a bit, we dressed to drudge into town for dinner. Seeing that Monica was cooking behind the counter in the bar/lobby/garden/sitting area, we asked when dinner was, and she told us that she could cook for us. Problem solved; Monica’s Sexy Dinner on the way. I think that I lost a few games of backgammon before sitting down to FANTABULOUS TURKISH HOME COOKING, Monica’s little dance included!!!

I can’t even remember all that we ate--some sort of yoğurt with something green and whole garlic cloves that you couldn’t even taste as garlic as you are it together, a tomato garnish, really yummy fried phyllo wraps of ak paynir and something green--that cabbage/spinach stuff like I had before again?--that was my favourite, what else Ryan? Um, well he had the chicken. O yeah, potato and vegetable stew thing that was also delicious, pilaf (the only word that rhymes with Ihloff!), you got the stuffed grape leaves? Nope. Stuffed grape leaves, which were so good that Ryan and I really really liked them, both of us only somewhat liking grape leaves and most of the time not; for me they’re too oily and the insides aren’t good enough. There was also a basil leaf garnish that I had with the salad, and I think that was everything, all piled onto on plate of deliciousness. Yum.

We went to bed shortly after that, methinks, and slept very well again. I was very happy to see that Ryan was sleeping so well on this leg of the journey (he didn’t the first night in İstanbul, and not at the resort, but after his five hour nap when we arrived at Ferah Pansiyon, he slept the whole night through and was over his jet lag after that).