Selcuk

Dateline: Kusadasi, Day 1 – Ephesus

June 28, 2009July 22, 2009
The Events that are: My Life

Kusadasi, Turkey
28 June 2009

The original plan was to take the bus to Selcuk and stay at the ANZ Guesthouse. The new plan, that Ali (from Mavi Guesthouse) gave me, was to go past Selcuk to Kusadasi. Ali (from Panorama Hotel, aka Ali II) would pick us up at the bus station.

The new plan didn’t really work though. We got kicked off the bus in Selcuk (because that’s were I said we were going…I probably should have said Kusadasi). We found a bus to take us to Kusadasi, however it dropped us off somewhere in town, not the hotel.

So we started walking. After asking a couple of people on the street, we finally found Panorama Hotel. Ali II wasn’t too pleased that we weren’t at the bus station as he had waited over an hour at the bus station. I explained our situation and everything seemed fine…more or less.

We grabbed lunch (as it was well past breakfast time at this point) and took a bus back towards Selcuk to visit Ephesus.

Getting to Ephesus is actually kind of interesting. It’s about three kilometers outside of Selcuk and there’s no bus (at least from Kusadasi) that goes all the way to Ephesus. Instead, you get dropped off on the side of the road and can either negotate with a taxi driver or walk the kilometer to the entrance. Being strapping young men with a budget, we opted for the latter.

Ephesus was pretty amazing, and it damn well should be considering we paid 20YTL¹ each to get in. It was also one of those super touristy things to do, and, for me, falls into the category of going to the Hermitage: Sure, I’ll see it if someone is going…but I’m not really going to go out of my way.

Ephesus is currently being restored, which takes away greatly from the cool factor. There are some areas, though, that have either had their restoration work completed (at least for now), or have yet to be restored; these were the highlights, as everything elsed clashed unfavorably with the modern industrial equipment.

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Selçuk, İzmir, Turkey

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Selçuk, İzmir, Turkey

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Selçuk, İzmir, Turkey

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Selçuk, İzmir, Turkey

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Selçuk, İzmir, Turkey

After a couple hours at Ephesus, we walked the kilometer back to the road and caught the bus back to Kusadasi. I was completly wiped out and went for a nap.

I woke up around 8 or 9 and when for a quick bite to eat with Charlie. I wrote some postcards, we walked the pier, and then it was off to bed for an early wake up call, again.

$13 USD ↩

Dateline: Cappadocia Region, Day 2 – The Better Tour

June 27, 2009July 22, 2009
The Events that are: My Life

Cappadocia, Turkey
27 June 2009

Sleeping felt great. Waking up, not so much. But we had to get an early start on the day as we day yet another all day tour before we had to run to catch another overnight bus, joy! Shazia had left for Istanbul last night, so we made friends with Cecilie and Finn.

We’ve actually been “stalking” them since Istanbul where we both stayed at the Mavi Guesthouse. They booked a tour with Ali’s help as well, and we (unbeknownst to either party at the time) booked essentially the same tour all the way to Samos. The only difference was Cecilcia and Finn had an extra day in Cappadocia before their tour.

We started with some more rocks just outside of town, but today’s tour eventually took us down to KaymaklÄ± to see the KaymaklÄ± Underground City.

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Üçhisar, Nevşehir, Turkey

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Derinkuyu, Nevşehir, Turkey

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Derinkuyu, Nevşehir, Turkey

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Derinkuyu, Nevşehir, Turkey

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Derinkuyu, Nevşehir, Turkey

Being almost 50 meters down was a nice change of pace from the beating Turkish sun, although the cool relief did not last long.

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Derinkuyu, Nevşehir, Turkey

We did a short (about 4 kilometers, or so) hike through Ihlara Valley and then stopped for a quick lunch over the river before finishing out our day. It wasn’t nearly as good at yesterdays buffet, but it filled the belly enough.

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, Aksaray, Turkey

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, Aksaray, Turkey

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, Aksaray, Turkey

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, Aksaray, Turkey

Funny picture of the day: What a bunch of tourist look like photographing a mountain in the middle of nowhere.

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, Aksaray, Turkey

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, Aksaray, Turkey

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, Aksaray, Turkey

We finally headed over to Selime Monastery to finish up the day.

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, Aksaray, Turkey

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, Aksaray, Turkey

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, Aksaray, Turkey

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, Aksaray, Turkey

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, Aksaray, Turkey

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, Aksaray, Turkey

Getting back before our bus left had its moments of excitement. The bus was supposed to leave at 19:00 and our tour was supposed to get back by 18:30. However, we had a late start in the morning because they didn’t have enough seats and had to get a second bus for the tour. It was pushing 18:50 by time we got back to the hostel. Fortuneatly our bags were packed and ready to go. However, I needed to check my email to see if Ali had sent me any last minute information. Meanwhile, Charlie went to go take a shower after we decided that he was no longer allowed to ride next to me without taking one.

Ali actually ended up calling the Shoestring Cave and leaving a message. So I called him back. It was lucky I got a hold of him as there was a change of plans. It basically boils down to this: We were going to stay in Selcuk, which is about 25 minutes from Kusadasi, which is where we catch the ferry to Samos. The ferry leaves at 08:00 in the morning. Ali thought that he could get us a ride, but he couldn’t. So he’s going to have us stay at a place in Kusadasi instead so we can just walk to the ferry!

I wrote down all the contact information for our new hostel and was off running to the bus station with Charlie 45 seconds behind me. As it turned out, this bus didn’t leave on time and we had an extra several minutes to spare.

We took the short ten minute ride to Nevsehir, where it started raining buckets. As we arrived, the streets started looking like Venician canals. This was unfortunate for the sheer fact that none of us, save Cecilie, had any sort of rain gear. Finn used his backpack as a shield, I threw on my fleece zip-up, and Charlie just sucked it up.

Once we got on the bus, it was okay though. The AC was on, Charlie had take two showers, and we on our way to the cooler coast.

Dateline: Istanbul, Day 3 – The Bath

June 24, 2009July 22, 2009
The Events that are: My Life

Istanbul, Turkey
24 June 2009

Having walked so much the previous day, Charlie and I decided that today would be a good day to take that boat right up the Bosphorus. After a bit of late start, we walked down to the pier in hopes of finding a boat that would take us on for a decent price. It didn’t take long for a guy to get us interested in a two hour boat cruise. It wasn’t the exact ride we wanted, which would have taken us up to Ã‡amlÄ±bahÃ§e or so, but it was good enough, especially given the amount of time we had. The asking price was 20YTL each; after walking away once, we were able to get him to go for 30YTL for the both of us, and probably could have gone lower.

The ride was decent; I was able to take some great pictures. It would have been nice to have a guide to give some background on what we were looking at, but alas we had no such fortune.

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İstanbul, İstanbul, Turkey

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İstanbul, İstanbul, Turkey

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İstanbul, İstanbul, Turkey

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İstanbul, İstanbul, Turkey

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İstanbul, İstanbul, Turkey

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İstanbul, İstanbul, Turkey

There wasn’t much to see on the Asian side of Istanbul, so I ended up falling asleep for the hour or so it took to get back.

Charlie and I decided that we were both pretty hungry. Charlie heard a rumor that the fish was pretty good here, so we set out to find something decent. We settled on a bustling fish house of sort right on the water.

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İstanbul, İstanbul, Turkey

The kitchen, and I use that term very loosely, was little more than a collection of grills on a boat docked to the pier. Ordering meant walking up to a guy right on the edge of the pier, handing over your 3YTL and getting a cooked fish sandwich handed to you. For another 2YTL each, we added two cans of Coca-Cola.

Overall, it was a decent meal, at least up until I starting getting bits of bone in my mouth.

We made our way back to the hostel, getting lost in the Bazaar along the way.

Despite my little cat nap, I was still dog tired when we got back. I spent the rest of the afternoon sleeping, which honestly isn’t such a bad thing to do in the hot Istanbul weather.

After I finally woke up, we spent the evening figuring out what to do in Cappadocia and really the rest of Turkey. Ali, the owner of Mavi Guesthouse¹, was very helpful in piecing together this section of our trip. It was going to be a grueling few days, but we assured him we could do it.

The plan was such: leave tomorrow night on an overnight bus to Gorme (which is in the Cappadocia region) and go on an all day tour of the northern region of Cappadocia. Sleep at Shoestring Cave for the night. Wake up and go on another all day tour of the southern region of Cappadocia. Then, catch another overnight bus to Selcuk. Spend a day in Selcuk (i.e. Ephesus), staying overnight at the ANZ Guesthouse, and leaving for Samos, Greece the next morning at 8am via ferry. Talk about a whirlwind tour of Turkey.

Content with our plans, Charlie and I headed off to a Turkish Bath, also known as a hamam, with Nick (one of our roommates).

Let me tell you something about hamam’s: they are utterly amazing and utterly scary. We got changed into single towel and slippers and were ushered into the sauna to sweat it out. There was some talk about crossing legs or not, but we decided that we were all mature males, comfortable with our heterosexuality.

Two older gentlemen² came to get us out of the sauna. They sat us down on the marble and drenched us in water before rubbing us down with a stiff glove. It actually felt good and I wished they went a bit longer.

Next, we were instructed to lay face up on a marble table. There, they gave us a soap massage, intermixed with sporadic slapping (for effect, I’m sure). It’s pretty much what you would expect, although a bit on the vigorous side. They had clearly done this many times before and were not afraid to go practically all the way up my thigh. To put it bluntly, one slip and this guys thumb was going right up my asshole. Seriously. Not an exciting thought.

I just stared straight ahead, looking at the single bare Philips florecent light bulb illuminating the room.

Philips…Lets Make Things Better

Reveling in our newfound cleanliness, we walked back to the hostel, grabbing some food and baklava on the way.

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İstanbul, İstanbul, Turkey

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İstanbul, İstanbul, Turkey

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İstanbul, İstanbul, Turkey

the hostel we were staying at ↩
men, yes; gentle…not so much ↩