turkey...great food and a great country
Our first day was basically 24 hours of flying to get to our first destination. From JFK to Heathrow to Istanbul to Bodrum (southern coastal city on the waters)First two days spent Bodrum\Gumbet...where we encountered south beach\cancun like bars and people (except instead of 20-something's it was mostly families and 70 year old British women)...apparently the high season isn't until July and August which suited us just fine , the sight of 5-6 Turkish men dancing in fairly empty bars to backstreet boy moves to draw customers was not what we expected. Two days in Bodrum\Gumbet was definitely enough and got us energized after work\finishing school to put us in vacation mode.
Our third day in we bused over to Marmaris (which is an amazing port city) where we commenced our 3 day Blue Voyage on a gulet (chartered boat) . The rest of the travelers we sailed with consisted of two other Americans and 10 ozzies. It was great to on the deck at night and to hop from cove to cove during the day. The crew consisted of a captain, skipper and cook. It was a rough life of waking up by sunrise every morning and having bfast prepared for you, swimming in crystal clear blue waters and sleeping on the deck as we moved from island to island.
Our captain spoke no English, but, was amazing in that he steered, ported, basically did everything and was everywhere all at once. He allowed us to have a very comfortable and awesome time, our skipper did not impress us too much, seemed like he just steered every so often and mostly sat around smoking up until we ported on our last day and maneuvered the boat very professionally between two other boats, Our cook, Aşhmet, was our translator and definitely an amazing cook, humored us all by calling himself Rocky Balboa and made amazing food every meal. Oddly enough, none of the crew knew how to swim! I would definitely recommend doing a Blue Voyage to anyone else who visits Turkey - it was an amazing experience to get to know so many people, we were fortunate to have had so many English speaking companions .
We ported on Saturday in Feıthıye, and very luckily found a direct bus to Cappadocia where we would spend a day and a half. It was a 15 hour bus ride overnight to go inland, we thought for sure we would have to transfer to multiple cities and buses. The buses are every very reliable here as the major mode of transportation for Turks.
We arrived at 5am in Cappadocıa waking up our hotel manager and sleeping in the lobby till 8am when we could grab bfast and check in. We immediately booked a tour since Cappadocıa is a region not just a city (we're currently staying in Goreme in a Cave Hotel - Pasha Han). Our tour brought us to many cave churches, a hike through a gorge , visit to Pigeon Valley.
By Monday we flew out to Istanbul (short flight) where we spent the rest of our week viewing the very beautiful Hagia Sofia/Blue Mosque and Topkapi Palace, bargaining in the Grand Bazaar, going to the Turkish Baths, sailing up the Bosphorus, visiting the Princes Islands (their version of the Hamptons), and generally roaming the streets of Istanbul. Most interesting and lively spot in Istanbul is Taksim square - their equivalent of the e.village and lower east side. Very active live music and jazz scene, lots of writers and cafes and bars. While Istanbul is not up to par with the more modern day European cities, it's gaining momentum though.
And now, back to work....
posted by ilennovy @ 7:05 PM
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