Day 172: Coming Home to Istanbul

Abby wanted to capture the exterior of our little cottage in Selcuk before we left for the airport this morning.

We zoomed north through the picturesque countryside towards the large city of Izmir. I'd arranged to drop the rental car at the Budget rental car place at the airport there. When we got to the airport after abut forty minutes, it was hard to tell where to return the car. We eventfully noticed a little subtitle on the auto parking sign that said "car rentals". We rolled up to the parking lot entry, which required you to actually get out of your car and reach up to the ticket button that was five feet off the ground.

Finding the proper place to return the car inside the large, indoor parking lot was also tough - there were no signs anywhere - just row upon row of white rental cars (seriously, 99% of rentals were white!). After a few stops to ask directions ("go right, then right" the guy gestured while pointing left... This was a hilarious quirk of getting directions in Turkey that we have noticed quite a bit!) we found a Budget guy. I had crumpled the parking entry ticket with the rest of the garbage we had collected, and the guy turns to me in a thick accent "where is the ticket required to get in the parking lot". I explained that I'd crumpled it up and proceeded to show him where it was, and he turns to me and slaps me on the back and said in a kind of Arnold Shwartzenegger accent "I'm just messing with you!" - so weird yet so funny. This captured the Turkish people in a nutshell. Man we laughed.

We got through security predictably early. There wasn't much to do or see in the fairly modern domestic terminal of the airport, save for this large, weird, multi-cultural "portrait of selfie poses" that covered a huge piece of one wall. I see some duck face, some fish gape.... Very nice ladies.

Flight #31 is sponsored by Pegasus airlines.... I wish we actually had looked for sponsors come to think about it!

The taxi from the Asian side Istanbul airport was predictable - jerky, in and out of heavy traffic and when the driver finally saw daylight two kilometers from the hotel, he proceeded to try and break land speed records. That was a long transfer - about an hour and a half, and we're heading back to that airport on Monday....d'oh!

Coming back to a big city is a lot like coming home for us.... It's always been like that for me and the kids seem to feel the vibe too. It was like that in Tokyo when we came back after two weeks away, same goes with Hanoi, ditto Bangkok and now we were coming home to Istanbul. Choosing between Tokyo and Istanbul now feels a little like choosing a favourite child - I just can't do it for fear of overshadowing the other City.

We checked back into the fabulous little Basileus Hotel and were greeted like long lost family. It's always nice, in a big city, to have a smaller, more intimate place to stay with fantastic staff, and this place has been great.

We unpacked (hah.... dropped our bags) and took to the streets. We hadn't been on the trams yet, so we headed over to the Hippodrome area and got our tokens for the frequently running electric streetcar. The two, three or four car trains that run up and down the Main Street in the old quarter are very modern and seem like the best way to beat the traffic in Istanbul. Until now, we'd been mostly walking around the city as well as taking a couple of latish night taxis, but today we saw the real potential (?) for how bad the traffic can be in the massive city. Yikes, we thought Toronto was bad. Tokyo really is the grand champion of cities that have mastered traffic.... Provide trains that can pretty much go anywhere, and you don't need so many damn cars people! I've read that Istanbul has a bunch of massive public transportation projects on the go so that sounds promising.

We took the tram across the golden horn, to the end of the line. Once there, we switched to the funicular that is a one train, two stop line that takes people up the massive hill and deposits them at the bottom part of Taksim square. A quick peak to check for political demonstrations and we were off, walking once again down Istiklal Caddesi, the main shopping and people watching street in the city.

It's kind of funny, a lot of artwork you see in Istanbul that shows the more modern side of things, shows the red street car (they also call this a funicular, but come on guys, there are no counter balancing forces here so it obviously can't be defined as a funicular... Even the gravity plane is questionable here...gosh! (sorry for the gosh....the kids and I have been doing a lot of Napolean Dynamite bits lately)). For many people, that might scream "Istanbul" but for Torontonians it just looks like the Spadina line.... One more piece of art we don't need to buy. It is funny seeing the "red rocket" crawl through the tens of thousands of people that are moving up and down the long street at any given time.

The girls all headed to H&M as apparently we needed to do some back to school shopping (please tell me we don't have to ship anything else home!), so I looked around for some jeans (my plan to stick to shorts for the whole trip is being curtailed by slightly chilly evening time temperatures! Don't tell Beth she was right please, I will never hear the end of it....), then proceeded to people watch for the next forty-five minutes.

Bags in hand, the girls emerged from H&M, only to talk about looking for more stores for some jeans for Abby. Luckily, I spotted a Starbucks another 500 meters down the road, and Robin and I pretty much ran for our lives, high fiving all the way, to escape more shopping adventures. "Creg".... Hmmm.... We must be getting close to home - they're getting closer to spelling my name correctly.

We walked and walked - which is what you do in all great cities. We ended up having a late night bite to eat at the falafel place we'd tried a couple of weeks ago. When we eventually made our way past Galata Tower, then down the slopes to get near the waters of the Golden Horn, we hopped into another psycho cab for a very quick ride back to the hotel.

Just one more day in Asia, while we are just technically in Europe tonight. Tomorrow will be a fun day to experience a few of the things we missed on our last visit to Istanbul - I can't wait.

Day 171: Why did I get a hair cut??

Our last day in Selcuk. I'm really looking forward to getting back to Istanbul, but I will miss this place. I can definitely see coming back here and renting a place for a couple of weeks.... But that travel to-do list isn't getting shorter on this trip, is it!

We had a late start today. We let the kids have a late night last night - they watched one of the pirated DVDs from the collection here. It was funny how much it felt like home - Beth asleep and the three kids watching a movie well into the night.

There were a couple of things in and out of town that we could check out today, so we set off driving towards Ephesus to check out the seven sleepers caves. The legend of the seven sleepers permeates Christian and Islamic legends - you can read about it from the link, but essentially it involves people escaping from religious persecution, hiding and then going to sleep in some caves, and waking up hundreds of years later. It's interesting that it crosses over religions, and shows you how closely linked (historically) the bible and Koran are.

We left the cave and got to a t-junction....left to Selcuk, right to the house of the Virgin Mary. Surprisingly, Papa had recommended seeing the house and gave it an "interesting" rating. Now, that was a little like an Encyclopedia Briticanica salesperson saying to go look up something on Wikipedia, so of course we were curious.

The story goes that once Jesus was crucified, John the Apostle "took care of" his mother Mary. Since John lived in Ephesus, it was believed that Mary lived nearby. Yada yada yada, they located the ruins of a house on the top of a hill and called it Mary's house. So, based on Papas recommendation, we shelled out the 50 lira to get in (thank Jesus.... or John I guess that the kids were free!) and parked.

The wall of prayers was kind of cool.... It reminded me of the Hiroshima peace memorial.

The actual "house" was a chapel the was built in the last hundred years that replicates the style and size of the house they thought she lived in. It was a little underwhelming.

The grounds were nice and it was a very peaceful place to walk around, so we decided we would not send a bill to Papa for our entrance fees and time. We drove back down the twisting road to Selcuk. We had to drop off a bunch of stuff we were sending home at the Moonlight gift shop where our new friend Julia worked. It was a lot of stuff!

Julia recommended we eat at the little bistro next door, so we tried it. The moussakka, a local specialty and the Izmir Kofte that was made with tomato sauce, potatoes and onions was really good. The old man who served us added to the feeling that this was genuine, local food.

We decided to drop the kids off at "home" for a nap (remember the late night last night!) while we took to the streets to explore more of Selcuk. Just in front of our place, across the street was the site of the once spectacular Temple of Artemis. It was considered one of the seven ancient wonders of the world and an important adjunct to the city of Ephesus, however nothing remains of it today other than a tribute column assembled from pieces of many different columns found when they excavated the site.

Walking North a few minutes brought us to the really big Isa Bey Mosque. I always find the Mosques that have inner courtyards so beautiful.

It was Friday today, so for the first time we got to see a sermon in a mosque, rather than just seeing people praying. Watching the sermon for a bit, it struck me how similar a scene it was to the Sunday sermons in Christian churches.

We climbed up the cobbled street in front of the mosque to the gates of the Basilica of St. John, a huge church, now mostly in ruins, built in honour of John the Apostle. We got a good view of the mosque below.

Through the ruins of the basillica and up another slope was the old castle that overlooks Selcuk. It was built a long time ago, then repurposed and renovated by the Ottoman Empire when they conquered the country. I loved the huge flags draped down the front walls flanking the picture of Ataturk, the first elected leader of the republic.

There's not much inside the castle walls, but it did provide a pretty cool view of the city below.

We walked down the hill back to the cobbled street and down into the heart of Selcuk. It was one of those nice, weird moments not having the kids with us for so long. I wanted a haircut so Beth dropped me off at one of the many "berbers" in town and went over to Julia's shop to check on the stuff we had to ship.

When I got in the barber's chair, I thought... Hmmm.... Beth alone in a jewellery shop for half an hour...what could go wrong? Dude.... Hurry up - just buzz it all off!

By the time I got back to Julia's shop, the damage was done. Beth had a big smile and a small bag full of god knows what. Oh well, at least she was happy, but that turned out to be one expensive haircut! However, the real extent of our shopping wasn't revealed until Julia packaged up and weighed the things we had to send home - 30 kilograms of stuff! My god those Turksish towels are heavy. We tried taking some of our old clothes out of the mix to make it lighter, but it didn't really change anything. Well at least we could send this package directly to our house - Banka and Gram no longer have space at their house for packages!

We got home almost three hours after we left. The kids were safe and sound watching I, Robot on the biggish screen. They looked like they'd just woken up. Apparently after we left, Robin jumped into bed with Abby and they had a two hour nap - well done!

For dinner, we headed over to a bar called Cabare which was owned and run by Menekse's brother. We were sure the food wouldn't be anything special (it was really just western bar food), but we wanted to support her as she'd been so good to us. Sure enough, she was there to serve us when we arrived, so we had a good meal there and said our goodbyes. Apparently, there are quite a few foreigner owned places in Selcuk - we saw many people coming in and out of Julia's shop today and Menekse sounded pretty busy with the property management side of things. It would be a nice little place to have a home away from home.

We had some TV to catch up with at home - "uncle" Alex has been feeding us with Survivor and Amazing Race. Our race continues tomorrow when we drop off the car and fly back to Istanbul for the end of Turkey and the start of Europe!

"The Beauty Pole 3" Commercial

During this trip, we've seen lots of people out with their selfie sticks taking odd selfies. We were inspired by that, to make a commercial about what an "amazing" selfie stick can do to you. Introducing the all new, "BEAUTY POLE 3!":

Day 170: Ephesus and Sirence

It was Republic Day today in Turkey, a milestone celebrating the official start of the modern Republic of Turkey 92 years ago. Turks are very proud of their country, and that is partly evidenced by the Turkish flag appearing almost everywhere you go - in addition to the obvious places, we've seen the flag on cliffs, dangling over a small highway on a telephone wire, waving at the top of pretty much every small peak - pretty much everywhere.

It was time for us to check out one of the most important historic sights in Turkey today - the ancient city of Ephesus. The difference between Ephesus and the other ruined cities we've visited (Olympos, Xanthos, Hieropolis, Aphrodisias) was the obvious attention it has drawn over the years from archaeologists and restoration crews.

The amphitheater was the biggest we've seen - with a third level that rose above the standard two levels. It also had a really clear view to the old road that would have led to the sea. The Aegean and a nearby river used to meet right at the foot of Ephesus, but over the course of the life of the city, the bay silted up and the coast line moved west to its current location at Pamucak beach.

We sat in the seats for a while, doing some people watching. It was pretty hilarious seeing people come onto the floor of the theater and clap, stomp their feet and sometimes belt out an attempt at an operetic note.... One guy even yodelled! We also watched a couple try a "really cool photo" of the wife running and trying to jump and click her legs in the air to one side. Unfortunately, white women also cannot jump, and it was just painful watching them do take after take on Center stage, apparently oblivious that they were being watched by a hundred people or so. People watching is so fun....

The featured item at Ephesus is without a doubt the fully restored facade of the Library of Celsus.

The amazing building shows what can be done at important archaeological sights with a lot of money and expertise. Most of the pieces used in the restoration were the original thing. The process of restoration was outlined on diagrams around the building. Amazing.

I can't get over the colour of the sky in these pictures - it actually looks photoshopped!

The statues on the lower level of the facade were in great shape. Most of the damage to all of these important historical buildings in Turkey were caused by major earthquakes over the years as Turkey lies in the middle of a bunch of fault lines.

Walking around the restored cobbled streets of the city was amazing. Nowhere else did I get a real feel for the ancient city streets... With the number and length of streets excavated and restored here, you got a real feel for the layout of the place. Still, only 15% of Ephesus has been excavated, so there are plenty of opportunities for budding archaeologists for years to come.

The girls were also pretty enthralled with the dozens of cats that were posing all over the ruins. Man, Turkey has a crapload of cats - they are absolutely everywhere.

After a couple of hours of exploring, we got back in the car and headed out in search of a place for lunch. Our property manager had told us about a cute little town on the other side of Selcuk called Sirence (see-ren-chay), and Beth made what we have dubbed the "overstatement of the trip" by supposing that since it was a National holiday the village may be quiet and restaurants potentially closed.

As soon as we crested the hill and saw the beginning of the village, we were pleasantly surprised with the flourish of activity. The narrow main road was packed with people - 80% Turks and 20% tourists. I could barely get the car through the throngs of poeople as a I searched for a parking spot. We ended up having to drive right through the village in order to find a spot to park.

The town of of Sirence is special. The architecture is very Greek looking, the streets go from cobbled to rock hewn alleys, and everywhere you went were cute little restaurants and shops. First priority was lunch and we picked a good one.

I had the coldest beer I've had in Turkey (Efes of course) in the frostiness mug.... Yum.

We split a bunch of stuff, including Kofte (meat balls)...

...and the local favourite, cheese and spinich Gozleme. Kind of a thin, naan tasting bread.

All fed, we had our happy campers back with us!

Look at this place...it was so picturesque!

We walked and walked. The place wasn't too big, but it had a few nooks and crannies and alleyways that wound up and down the hill. In a trip full of superlatives, I'd say this was one of our favourite little towns.

I loved all the little open air kitchens in the restaurants, it makes the whole restaurant more connected with the seating area and brings a greater degree of "home" to the eateries. Layer a few restaurants right on top of each other and the whole place turns into a big social experiment.

I keep checking these pictures of Beth to see if she snuck off and bought a new scarf, but I'm pretty sure she.... Yes, this one was not new.

Wait, unless she bought one with the exact same colours and pattern.... Damn, there must be an app to track these things?!?

It seems like we can't pass a pomegranate juice stand without the kids begging for a bittersweet combo of freshly squeezed pomegranate and orange juice... Maybe pomegranates have nicotine in them too....

We stayed in Sirence for quite a bit... The place deserved it. Miraculously, we did not buy any scarves or anything else for that matter. I think we're finally getting shopped out on this leg of the trip [Editor's note: ha, wait until tomorrow!]. When we got home, Beth retired to the sunny deck on top of our little house for a little shut eye and the kids and I went in search of some veggies and gelato.... Not necessarily in that order.

The kids are still in full-on "restauranteur" mode, so they insisted on whipping up appetizer plates for us and serving us drinks.... The horror!

We ended up staying up on the deck until the sun went down. What a great day. We are really loving our time here in Selcuk and we still have another full day here to explore tomorrrow.

Day 169: Kusadasi and Cooking Class

We had booked in for an excursion later today - a cooking class in a small village near Selcuk, so we used the morning and afternoon to explore some areas outside our home base.

A 6km drive west brought us right to the Aegean to a sleepy place called Pamucak beach. The beach stretched really long and flat and the water lapped lazily up to the edge. Even though it's officially off season, we got the feeling this little beach was a little eclectic. The owner of the one Cafe on the beach came down and proceeded to tell us that it was free to sit on his chairs because it was not high season. Hmmm... Thx. He had a small mix of customers sitting on the beach in front of his Cafe, and they were very bohemian looking.

We weren't in to sitting too long, so we walked up and down for a bit. This place would be nice in the hot weather - the water looked amazing.

When we were walking back to the car near the top of the beach, we noticed a bunch of caravan-looking shacks and eclectic abodes. Hippies in Turkey - cool!

We drove south along the coastal road and took a pic of the beach where we'd been - the beach we were on continued south until it hit a resort area. The beaches, pools and water parks actually looked half busy. The water park reminded us of Papa and Uncle Steve who had inadvertently booked a four night stay at a kids water park hotel when they were in the nearby city of Izmir. At the time, batchelor Steve's description of being at a family hotel with his Dad sounded pretty hilarious.

We made our way to the nearby City of Kusadasi, a place that has 65,000 residents which swells to 500,000 residents in the summer... Perhaps Papa would describe it as "the Grand Bend of Turkey" (this stems from another papa story that I will get at later). Kusadasi is one of the most popular stops for cruise ships on the Aegean coast. Of course, what makes the city are free teeter totters....

Crack was bad in Istanbul, so I happily settled for Creed....

After lunch, we were putting in time before out cooking class. It was about twenty minutes away, and didn't start until 3pm. I emailed the guy named Yalshin who I'd been talking to to see if he had any specific instructions to find the place, as he had just said "go to the town and ask for me", lol.

The "Bazaar" section of Kusadasi was a crazy, outdoor hodgepodge of shops along nice cobbled streets. It would have been a miracle if we didn't end up with a scarf or two....

I imagined what it must be like to get the sudden rush of five thousand people coming off a cruise ship with two hours to shop.... What a feeding frenzy! There were actually two small cruise ships docked in the port, but the streets didn't seem too busy here. I imagine they go to Ephesus in the morning, then have the late afternoon to shop back in the city before heading out to their next destination. Beth and I go back and forth on the idea of cruises - maybe it's a blast with friends, but to actually "see" a place, I think it's not the option we would choose.

This lucky street had hundreds of "Evil Eyes" protecting them. Sometimes we joke about desperately finding a store that actually sells the Nazar. You can't go five meters in the country without seeing evil eye fridge magnets, earings, necklace pendants, wall hangings, etc etc etc.

There were also about four hundred shoe shops.... Abby and I produced many loud sighs every time the two shoe hoarders stepped into one of the clone shops.

Sigh.....

Oh.... I forgot. Beth bought just one scarf.

At just after two, I received an email from the cooking class saying they were ready for us if we wanted to come any time. We thought, oh, that's nice of them. So we drove out of Kusadasi following a crazy road that google had found - it went from two lane paved, to one lane paved, to a very rocky single lane road. The "path" wound through hills packed with olive trees on both sides - man did it smell good. We saw local families every once in a while picking the olives - it struck us all as a very simple, nice lifestyle here in the countryside.

When we arrived in The village of Kirazli, I called Yalshin and told him I was in front of a school - he said to keep driving and he would find me. Alright then. Sure enough, I drove another minute and a guy waved me down. We got out and made our introductions. He welcomed us into a building at the side of a road that opened up into a courtyard up a hill where there was an outdoor, covered kitchen. He introduced us to his daughter wife who would be teaching us. He then remarked how they'd been waiting and wondering if something had happened to us.... Huh? Beth looked at her watch and said it was 2:45pm, but Yalshin laughed and said it was 3:45pm. For whatever reason, Turkey had decided to postpone daylight savings for two weeks (some weird thing about the election this Sunday). We'd been running an hour behind for four days!! How bizarre that not only did we not notice, but it also did not affect us at all. Apparently, Beth had seen a headline in her daily "bad news headline scan" a few days ago but had not exactly delved into the details. Too funny. Oh well, we were glad we noticed it before our flight this Saturday!

We got to work - actually there was really only space for two or three people at a time. Unfortunately, our teacher, Yalshin's second wife apparently, did not speak very much English. Even on the cooking front, she had trouble getting anything more than simple instructions out to us.

The food, however, was excellent. Everything was simple, fresh, organic and delicious. Olive oil was fresh, homemade, cold pressed virgin olive oil. Cheese was from the lady down the street. Phyllo pastry was from the next village. Vegetables from her garden. It was all pretty interesting to see how everyday Turks eat.

The stuffed peppers used dry, uncooked rice inside, mixed with other ingredients. Cool.

Here we fried zucchini for a cold veggie dish for later, and sautéed a sauce to stuff inside eggplants.

Apparently one of the reasons Beth can't get enough of eggplant is because it contains nicotine (it's a relative of the tobacco plant). Surprisingly, it also contains almost no noticeable amounts of vitamins.... Weird.

Now for the important part.....cheese rolls! My Mum always used to complain about how annoying it was to work with the phyllo pastry to make Ross and my treasured "tiropita" cheese rolls...this phyllo pastry was really easy to use.

Abby and Robin made the hand squeezed patties for this cold lentil, bulgar and spices appetizer.

Fry baby fry....

Within abount an hour and a half, we'd finished our seven or eight dishes and sat down to eat. The appetizers were fantastic.

The mains - stuffed eggplant and stuffed peppers were great too.

We washed it all down with a local wine that Robin pointed out would be a great drink in Inappropriate World. This cooking class, though the food was great and the setting was really nice, was one of our least favourite. We've done seven (Japan, Vietnam x2, Malaysia, Thailand, India and now Turkey) classes on this trip - all have been very different. The ones we liked the most was where the host was able to really interact - explaining not only about the food but also about local customs and what was happening locally and nationally. You can really learn a lot over the course of preparing a meal, and we didn't really get much out of this one. Additionally, the recipes were just "listed" on the woman's website - not much effort was given in the presentation of the course.

Well, we left with full bellies, so there's that!