A Real Turkish Delight
Istanbul:
Though it may be hard to believe we actually met compatriots in Istanbul. What i mean is that we met fellow American travelers and they were cool, liberal, and had travelled alot more than us. In fact we met one couple that was taking 10 months to travel around the world for their honeymoon. In the end we enjoyed the company so much that instead of spending a single night in Istanbul before heading on to Goreme we ended up staying for 4 days. Check out Anthony and Shan’s blog at http://blogs.bootsnall.com/Shan+Lee if following our blog has gotten to boring. So some of the highlights include:
The Sultan’s Palace: Here we saw the royal jewels which included gems so large you were convinced that they were fake. What I found the most impressive was a pill box cut out of a single giant emerald, just like in the Count of Monty Cristo. We also saw the infamous harem which was quite lovely though perhaps not as enlightening as I would have hoped. But we still ended up with some cool photos.
The Blue Mosque (and every other important mosque in Istanbul as they didn’t charge entrance fees) The blue mosque was stunning, decorated entirely in blue painted tiles it is beautiful to see and is a nice calm and cool respite when looking to avoid carpet dealers.
The Egyptian spice bazar: which surprisingly did not have great spices but did have plenty of people trying to get you to visit their cousins carpet shop. The craziest part is that the central isle of the bazaar had stand that sold only jewelry it ended up looking like a turkish rodeo drive.
But perhaps the most fun we had was sitting at a cafe on a bridge over the Bosphorus, the meeting point of Europe and Asia, drinking beers and playing team backgammon while the waiters just laughed at us.
Goreme: Smurf Village ok not really but it sure did look like it. Goreme is a village in one of the valleys that was used by early christians to hide from persecution. In order to avoid detection people lived in caves carving entire churches and monasteries into the rocks. Even today many of people continue to live in caves, we followed their example and stayed in our one cave hotel room. It was really nice although a little damp and mildewy. while in goreme we went on a great hike through three of the valleys, Honey Valley, white valley, and Love Valley which was absolutely beautiful. We also went to a Turkish night, a performance at a cave restaurant which consisted of an all you can eat meal plus 5 hours of traditional folk dancing including the famous whirling dervishes. We happily joined in the fun and joined in dancing around a bonfire.
Olympus: Site of the eternal flames and referred to in Lonely Planet as summer camp. Well we had to go because that was where you can catch the blue cruises. It was fun though unremarkable we stayed in a tree hous, hung out at the beach and then hiked up to the eternals flames at night. The flames form naturally as gas escapes from the rock it combusts, a really cool phenomenon but in actuality they just looked like campfires.
Blue Cruise: Our 4 day cruise along the Turkish coast ended up being somewhat of a hit and miss adventure. Extremely fun and gorgeous scenery but a bit of an uh.. eclectic crowd. A brief description of a few of the sailors on board sums it up. Captain. only had one arm, named the ship “Mr. Hook” and consistently worried about the coming storm which is why we never stayed in one place long enough to enjoy it. Jerre. questionable alcoholic who ended up with a 150 lire bar tab. Beers were only 3 lire so you do the math. Teresa. 60 year eternal hippie woman who only talked about spirituality and everything Berkeley. Honey. 20 year old hot Iranian girl from Canada who belly danced her way around the ship and into the crews quarters every night. Yeah so it was an interesting but fun crowd and some of our swimming spots were as scenic as could be. Steve also caught some fish one day using only string and bread and had em pan fried for dinner. Yum yum!
Tags: Travel, Turkey
Steve
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