Travels with The Rayman

We are busy packing. And packing. And packing. At this point it time, it seems reasonable to suggest that we may never finish going through all the stuff we have apparently dragged into this place over the years.

Books. We have donated hundreds of pounds of books to the local Morro Bay library. Stuffed them into shopping bags so that we could actually lift them. And when I say lift, I mean lift. You lift the bag into the car. You lift the bag out of the car. You lift the bag to place in on a hand dollie. You lift it off and put it in the store room with all the other books that have been donated. And then you notice that you are single-handedly responsible for most of the books in the room. 20 bags perhaps. Or 30. Who counts?

And I discovered today that we have not one, not two, but three bags of organic plant food tucked away in a cabinet. And Miracle Gro coming out our ears.

Nails. Ray has a collection of ancient nails I never knew about. They appear to have been collected for the past 40 years. All shapes and sizes. Some rusted, some not.

Old cords to long ago appliances. We are especially rich in cords from electronics of the music variety. The appliances…gone. But we kept the cords. Just in case, I guess.

Hats with stains. Sweat stains. Paint stains. Wine stains. Hats just faded from the sun. Why did we keep them? Who knows. But we did and now we get to throw them away.

And did I mention my tea cup collection? OMG. I must have over 100 antique tea cups from England, mostly. These tea cups, like so many of our things, are well traveled. They started in Paso Robles, moved to the bay area, moved on down to San Diego still wrapped in newspaper from Paso Robles Press circa 1953, back to Cayucos and here they reside. These are going to be put in an antique shop and I’ll see if anyone in the entire universe wants a fancy tea cup…or 100.

Heritage Santa Village porcelain xmas trees, santa’s workshop, elves, boxes and boxes of this stuff. An entire village I guess. They were gifts from his ex and we won’t have room or the inclination to display them…so they too will get the antique shop booth routine. Maybe someone wants this stuff. Who knows. Not me.

We have spent a day now in Istanbul having arrived yesterday mid-day and retrieved from the Ataturk airport by Cenk (pronounced Jenks). They drive on the same side of the road as we do so the ride to the apartment felt normal.

The flight on Turkish Airlines was uneventful except that the Rayman spilled red wine on his white pants…never a good combination and as I write this, he is traipsing around looking for detergent, heavy duty detergent for his wine-stained pants. We flew on a 777 in comfort class which is just above coach class. More leg room and very comfortable. The food was very good and somewhat Turkish…think pistachios, canapés with hummus etc. Wine wasn’t bad either. A very good flight. No turbulence and not too long. Out of JFK it took us 9 hours.

When we arrived we visited and took naps. It is hot here and humid. And we were tired even though we slept on the flight. Then we went to dinner and took a walk along a street that stretches a mile or so and is closed to cars. Music blared. Everyone in Istanbul was there as it was very crowded. All the shops were open on both sides of the boulevard…shops like Verizon, Quicksilver, Starbucks. There were lots of local stores but I was surprised at how the multinationals have penetrated the marketplace…at least on this street.

We rode an elevator to a restaurant and we had a communal dinner, all 11 of us. My cousin, Susie, and her husband, Larry. Their two daughters, Ali and Kristen and Kristen’s husband, Cenk, their 2 month old baby Layla, Cenk’s brother and girlfriend (names escape me). Larry’s brother, Phil, from San Francisco. Oh, and us. Excellent food. Then back down the elevator (which comfortably holds 2 but we crammed 5 in on the way up) and Rayman got that claustrophobic feeling so we limited it to 4 going down. The elevators here are incredibly slow with no visible sign of a phone or a camera. Perhaps a person could be trapped for days before being discovered…well, probably not because everyone uses the elevators…it’s too hot to walk up.

After dinner we went back to our apartment which is located on an alley of a street and it has a police station (think steel and glass box that just big enough to hold about 2 people). A rabbi lives up this street a few doors and requires constant protection. Yikes. The apartment is very small but adequate and air conditioned. We’re on the 6th floor but it is numbered 5 because the ground floor is number zero. Quite inventive if you think about it. The basement would be -1 if it had a basement. No guessing what button to push once you figure out their scheme. An elegant solution to an age-old problem. On the top floor is the “suite” where Cenk, Kristen and Layla stay. it has a big balcony and that is where we gathered after dinner and stroll to drink wine and eat double pistachio candies. Yummy. And cool because the sun was down. And that was our first day.

This a.m. I got up and visited with Susie. Rayman was still sawing logs. Larry was showering. This is when I found out that my cousin has a few pet peeves in life and one of them is mildew in the shower/tub. “There are sprays for that and they should use it.”, she exclaimed. Second pet peeve…knee high socks that don’t stay up. Third pet peeve. I forget. I’ll have to ask her again. That made me wonder what my pet peeves are. But then I complimented her. Having gone through many years on this earth, her pet peeves are very simple and not very serious in the grand scheme of things. When that thought popped into my head, I stopped wondering what my pet peeves were. I’m sure they will be enumerated as blogging goes on!!

After breakfast on the patio where I ate the most incredible honey dew melon of my life, we took to the road. Ali, Larry, Ray and I headed out for some sightseeing. Ali and Larry have been here before. Ali is a history teacher in a high school in Portland and traveled the world. So…we got a first rate tour led by Ali. It was fabulous. Hot but fabulous. It involved a lot of walking at a clip that is comfortable for a 30 something. It also involved a fair amount of tripping (think cobblestone streets). Here are some pictures.

 

 

Me, myself and I was very interested in seeing the Blue Mosque but before we reached that mosque, Ali lead us through the spice bazaar into a tunnel and up to a mosque tucked above the bazaar. Here’s a picture of fabulous dome. The “strings” hanging down support low low-hangling candelabras of sorts. We were provided long skirts and scarves for the visit and we were required to take our shoes off. There were few people here.

And then we went to visit the Ayasopya. It took 6 years to construct and for the life of me, I don’t see how they could have done it in 360 a.d. It was built as a church out of wood and burnt down a time or two or three and the final product which stands today was commissioned in 520-something. It is now a museum. What is amazing is it’s size. Built as a church originally, the muslims conquered the area and they converted it to a mosque and covered up much of the interior with, I forget, but I think cement. It also has a minaret and other pious buildings on the grounds. My camera battery was running low so I only took a picture or two. We may go back…it’s that spectacular. Pictures, please.

My camera could only get the bottom part. There is a huge dome not pictured here…but the Rayman is in the picture.

A fabulous mosaic of the Byzantine period. Much of it was destroyed by the cent. The tlles were tiny and were they gold? I don’t know. May take the audio tour when we return. Fabulous.

As an aside, around 5 a.m. I was awaken with the call to prayer. It is fascinating. One mosque starts and then one by the one the others join in and it lasts 15 minutes. It fits the place. And they just had another one. It’s about 11 p.m.

So, today was very hot and humid and it was tough to be out and about sightseeing. However, I don’t dare complain because we saw so many muslim women in scarves, burqas, full length coats with scarves. And that’s what I mean about a city of contrasts. Here’s a picture I snapped. Don’t know if you can it…but her naked back is showing. Go figure.

And this. I snuck a picture of this woman on the tram. She has sunglasses on. The only skin showing was her hands. There is a woman behind her without the garb. Look closely. Why didn’t she have gloves on? Complete the ensemble. When I first saw her (there was a whole flock of them together) I thought I was looking at her back and she had sunglasses on backward. Further glance and I was amazed.

I’m convinced this is a form of torture. These women are tortured. Dressing like this in the noon day sun with the humidity. OMG.

On a lighter subject.

This is the Blue Mosque. It smelled like sweaty feet. The mosques are carpeted and people are required to remove their shows. Hence the order. After seeing Anaopya, the Blue Mosque was a let down. Still, it was quite beautiful. And it is used today, closed for visits during prayer time.

The spice bazaar was fabulous. Here’s a pic of Ali, Larry and Ray at the spice bazaar…complete with Turkish flag hanging behind them.

What I loved about the bazaar was that there were no Bed, Bath and Beyond, no Albertson’s, no Ace hardware. All the shops were small business. You can buy everything from belly dancing outfits, to wine, to fresh fish, to Iranian saffron, to a hammer, to an ice cream cone. The variety was fabulous and it went on and on. Could have spent hours just looking but didn’t.

And finally, just an interesting contrast. The roasted chestnuts and corn on the cob offered up by a cell talking vendor.

Oh, and being a muslim country, there are bars and liquor stores everywhere. Sort of reminds me of Salt Lake City except the people have dark hair (not blond) and they don’t have goofy rules about drinking in bars, and no state owned liquor stores. So, you see the women in their layers of clothing on one hand and bars with women drinking while wearing very modern clothes on the other hand.

Tonight we had wine on the patio again and helicopters kept flying over. The Queen of the Neatherlands was here a few doors away visiting her embassy. They were commemorating 400 years of friendship or relations. Remarkable.

Before you get all excited about the title of this blog, I’m just kidding. Looking for attention, I suppose.

Yesterday was our first big day in NYC on the way home from Turkey. We were tired. Things didn’t go so swell. First, it rained and we had lightening and thunder and the thought of traipsing around was a non-starter. It literally took us until noon to brave the city.

Being the intrepid travelers that we are, we went to the subway and rode into Manhattan with the intention of seeing the Statue of Liberty. Well, we did see her but from afar. In a moment of inattention and confusion, we hopped on the Staten Island ferry. Then as the ferry left the dock, the Rayman announced, “We’re on the wrong ferry.” So, we did what any old person would do, we just stood there and watched the statue from afar as our ferry chugged along toward Staten Island. When we arrived at Staten Island, a man came through announcing that everyone had to disembark as the ferry was not returning to Manhattan. This reminded us of the time in Paris when the train conductor expelled us from the train because the train was not going any further that night. We have a knack.

We spent the next 30 minutes in the terminal waiting for the next ferry. A muslim family apparently was attracted to us because they came and plopped down across from us. The mother was in the full regalia. Older daughter in head scarf. Too funny. Felt like Turkey all over again.

When we got back to Manhattan, we jumped on an hop-on, hop-off bus which drove us all around the city and pointed out all the sights. We sat across from a man and his daughter, about 11 years old, I’m guessing. They were fiddling with their camera when we heard dad say, “Gina. You just erased all our pictures.” She tried to convince him it wasn’t so. But it was so. Mom and brother were sitting behind us. Dad couldn’t bare to talk to his daughter. The steam coming out of his head was almost visible. She didn’t try to talk. Pretty sure she felt horrible. But what could she do? (At this point, people, please make sure you download your pictures on a daily basis. It is just to easy to screw up and erase everything and there is no way to get the pictures back.) We felt really badly for them. Then it stopped, the bus that is, at Times Square and the guide said the bus was not going any further, that we could catch another bus up the street. Really? Really.

Then it started raining. We made a mad dash to the Metro and rode it back to Brooklyn. Rain had stopped and we walked to the hotel. My back was killing me. Why? Probably from pushing bags around. I found it exceedingly difficult to get going. Once I started walking things got a bit better…but this was not a good situation.

Back at the hotel, we received a great restaurant recommendation and took a $7/5 block ride to the restaurant because it was raining again. At the restaurant, we spotted Kristen Schaal who appears on the Daily Show as one of the correspondents. As soon as we were seated, I ran over and said, “We watch you on Comedy Central. You’re a scream.” She looked up at me with a big wad of bread in her mouth and replied, “Thanks.” I retreated to my table and we had an excellent meal…Italian Trattoria.

We walked back to the hotel, no rain, and threw ourselves into bed and spent the rest of the evening reading. No Broadway plays for us. Not even a movie. Hell, not even TV. And that’s how we spent our day in NYC.

It’s 6:00 a.m., Tuesday and this is our last day in Brooklyn. Tomorrow we move to Newark as we have an early morning flight out of Newark on Thursday.

Why didn’t we see any dead cats on the roadways? The cats of Turkey are wily. Everywhere you go you see cats. They all look emaciated, bones sticking up around their collars. We watched them dodge the cars everywhere we walked. So, why don’t they get hit once in a while? Just wondering?

Why do they spell Turkey…Turkey? The official Turkish spelling is Turkiye and to my eye, that looks much better than the englishized version. It looks more exotic. And Turkiye is exotic.

Turkey is not a cheap date. We did not live high on the hog in this pork adverse country so why did it cost so much? To this question I have an answer. They do a lot of business in euros. The euro is strong against the dollar and much stronger against the Turkish lira so we found ourselves getting charged euros when we thought we were being quoted Turkish lira.

Does TV work here? Don’t know. Never turned a TV on the entire time in Turkey.

Will escrow close? I think it will. The buyers are in most days measuring for new carpets, getting estimates for interior painting. Sounds serious to us. Just wondering just the same.

OMG. Where will we live? Who knows? And where will we stay until we buy another house? Who knows? Rent? Who knows but probably.

And why do we charge and imprison Sandusky while all these priests run around scot free? The priests should be in jail too. I know about Sandusky because of computer, not the TV. Apparently it made headlines back home. What made headlines here was Syria downing a Turkish plane. Glad we’re flying west today.

And why do they have Turkish squat toilets in modern buildings? It seems archaic, dirty and unsanitary. Came across one yesterday in the Izmir airport. Let a woman in a head scarf go ahead of me while I waited for a modern toilet. And the modern toilets here are wonderful. They have a squirt feature in the back just below the rim that is plumbed for water. You can clean up with it…use the imagination if you have never encountered such a device. They are marvelous. May need one in the new house.

Turkey is a long way away. Almost 10 hours from NYC. We flew over Belgrade, top end of Germany, Copenhagen, Scotland, the Atlantic, Greenland, Canada and into the U.S. Asia Minor is not next door. Asia Minor has a certain ring to it, doesn’t it. But perhaps in this age of global smallness we shouldn’t have been shocked. We had hiked about 2 hours in Cappadocia to a high spot where we came across a Turkish rest stop. Yes, a man peddling fresh squeezed orange juice (you can get free squeezed orange juice everywhere and it is good, fresh, healthy, and cheap). He also had an assortment of Lay’s potato chips, post cards…really anything the hiker could possibly need. But we were not the only people there. A young couple and their guide arrived while we were enjoying OJ. She was in news. He was in banking. Now there’s a pair to draw to…they were both beautiful. He was from Austin and she from Colorado (in the news world apparently Colorado is a city). Oh, I kid her. They live in NYC. And he trades, are you ready for this….derivatives. “Well, there are two professions to draw to,”, I exclaimed. After each pronunciation following that, I gave out a hardy hoop. Really. This happened. He was a currency derivatives trader for a hedge fund…or in other words, a hocus pocus trader. OMG. We had a lively discussion and we took advantage of our age to tease them unmercifully. It as great fun. But what are the odds?

The Marina Hotel warned us not to bring food from other places into our room. If we did, they would charge us? What’s that all about? Didn’t ask. Didn’t care. Funny notion.

The Turkish people were warm and friendly. Most are secular. The women in black are mostly older so that may be a tradition that is dying. The head scarf women can be any age. Will that custom ever vanish?

One senses that the Turks really want to do the right thing in the tourism department…they just don’t know western ways in some regards…so they take a stab at it and hope for the best. They are completely approachable. The young people wear t-shirts that are written in english, they listen to western music, they eat McDonald (horrors of horrors). They have iPhones, blackberries. Never saw an ipad. Saw computers in the airports and in our internet cafe. Deodorant at times seemed missing in action. Quite a bit of body odor in confined places such as trams.

Riding to the Ataturk airport for our flight out, our driver of the van from the Holiday Inn ran a red light. Apparently that’s just a suggestion? The Rayman yelled at a man and his young son because he thought they were going to be run over. They crossed half way and paused in the middle of the street and laughed at him. The Rayman clearly didn’t know how to cross the street Turkish style. We joined in the laughter and waved at each other. Rayman’s kindness and concern was appreciated and acknowledged.

It’s raining with thunder and lightening in Brooklyn. We are exhausted. No one has made a move this a.m. to sight see. Yesterday was brutal. Watched the Black Swan (dark…people with no sense of humor are dangerous to others and themselves) and some movie about a birding watching competition with Steve Martin and Owen Wilson (sweet and silly). Rayman watched war movies. Didn’t sleep much on the flight. Took a 1/4 of an ambien and it didn’t work very good so awake I remained most of the smooth flight west.

Anyway, I have bored the dear reader long enough. Here’s some pictures.

This photo above is the mocha stop…Ray is converting currency on his iPhone before he drinks his drink. Having never ordered a mocha before, we were stunned and delighted with the drink. Notice we were the only people inside in the air conditioning. Everyone else sat outside. Their music was great…lots of Beatles, Radiohead. Fun.

At Ataturk airport after yet another flight.

Notice our driver straddling the line. He was not, I repeat, not changing lanes.

Snapped a picture of these living flower murals at the entrance of the airport. Very ingenious.

So, this picture shows you how they drive. Notice it’s willy nilly. And see that van turned sideway? He just decided to turn left, back up and heaven knows what? Each driver has his own set of rules. Really, folks, a passenger was in the front seat and he said, “I’ve spent the last couple of days riding with my eyes shuts.” He was happy to arrive unscathed.

And finally, there are two interpretations here. Man robbing bank or the bank robbing man. Nice of the bank to provide shade. What they need is to add a fan to their ATM. There’s another money making idea for some entrepreneur.

Flying to Istanbul was our only must-do for today and our flight was from Izmir (1 hour way) at 8 p.m. First thing this morning the Rayman inquired at the front desk about a late check out. They had no earthly idea what that was and so the answer was no. So, we languished in our room until noon, asked them to hold our bags and went out into the heat to find food, make a phone call and kill about 5 hours. No easy task when you’re done, kaput, ready to leave.

Found a phone, arranged passage to the airport by private car so it was door to door and looked for food. We asked a merchant in the heavy tourist area where a good Turkish meal could be had. She asked a man stationed outside her shop to show us and led us down an alley for 2 blocks and that’s where we ate. In an alley of a street. On stools outside the tiny establishment. While we were eating, Ray’s stool gave way and he almost hit the deck. Rayman mentioned that the stool felt wobbbly when he first sat down. He was right. The owner and his mother who did the cooking were very concerned. We had a good laugh about it and they relaxed.
Here is the place we had lunch. See the stool? That’s the type of stool that the Rayman was sitting on that gave way. The woman with her back to us owns the next store front. Many proprietors and workers sit outside if there is no business. She was selling a little bit of this, a little bit of that. Notice the blond hair. Turks don’t have blond hair. Notice the motorbikes. They were everywhere. Notice how they park any which way…typical.

It was so hot and we had so much time we decided we should go to a movie. The man in the restaurant said we should catch a bus that went to the Kapi shopping center so that is exactly what we did. The shopping center had what looked like a Turkish Target. There were a few other shops but it was pretty sad by our standards. We had to walk through security x-ray machines to enter. At this point, we were in the burbs and almost no one spoke english. It took us about 10 minutes to figure out that we needed to return to city center. None of the movie times would work. So we hopped another shuttle and rode back in but not without incident. Our driver was approaching a bus stop, a young woman at the back of the bus was just getting up to disembark when a car backed out from somewhere…causing the driver of our vehicle to slam on the breaks. The young woman was catapulted toward the front with the violence of the stop. Luckily she was young and was able to stop the forward motion without injury. Had it been us…well, does smashed bug have any meaning to you? Also, I was sitting exactly here the car would have hit the van. I’m not sure a sheet of paper would have fallen through the gap. It was that close.

They dropped us further from our intended stop because it was the end of the route so in the heat of the day we made our way through the streets until we found a coffee shop/cafe with air conditioning and we flopped down after ordering an iced mocha coffee and water. There I proceeded to secure our seats for our flight to NYC in the comfort of cool air…however, using an iPhone for this type of activity is a real pain…birthdays, nationalities, reservation numbers, expiration dates, passport numbers, frequent flier numbers…it went on and on…my mocha was calling and I was trying to get it done without losing a connection. Success was achieved. We loitered as long as we could and then headed up to the hill to the hotel. Rayman suggested we cross the street and look in the clothing stores to cool off. We selected the last one in a row of shops because it had beautiful windows…we opened the door and a woman ran out from the bowels of the building to tell us the store was closed. “What time do you open?’, we inquired. “We won’t open again.”. see said. Turned out they were going out of business TODAY. So out the door and into the heat to finish our trek to the hotel. The hotel wouldn’t sell us water. So we dipped our feet in the swimming pool to cool down and then sat in the lobby until our driver arrived 30 minutes before our time was booked and off we went.

Turkey, between Kusadasi and Izmir (a city of 3.5 million) is really interesting. It’s like driving throughout the Salinas valley but not as pretty. There are crops everywhere. Hot houses. Which reminds me. The Turks peel their tomatoes, a very french touch. But I digress. Orchards. Fertile ground, I presume. Large mountains on one side. The coast on the other…but a miles away perhaps. We didn’t see any of this when we arrived at 2:00 a.m. in the morning. So looking around was fun. Here is a vista.

 
So, here we are and away we go to Istanbul…to a Holiday Inn which hopefully will have a pool, shampoo, hand towels, faster internet service. We had no shampoo in our room at the Marina Inn. We couldn’t use the pool after 7 p.m. The innkeepers are not use to our tastes. On the plus side, the internet was free, the hotel had elevators. Mold in bath was free as well. Susie would have been upset…we just got philosophical and put up with it because moving again looked like work. Plus we had an ocean view and if we complained, the ocean view might disappear.

OMG. The shortest flight known to man (about 40 minutes in the air and 30 minutes cruising the Istanbul airport) ended when I was closing up shop (putting my computer away for landing) and noticed the smell of vomit. Yes indeed. The little girl sitting directly in front of me threw up on the side of the fuselage. Remember, you can’t make this stuff up.

We retrieved our bag and looked for our driver. He was tall and skinny and very nice. For reasons that are entirely unclear to us, we had to wait and wait for the car to pick us up. Then we drove and drove and drove. We had personally booked the hotel, Holiday Inn – Airport Hotel. It was miles and miles away from the airport…and the Rayman started getting concerned when we left the freeway and ended up on dark deserted streets. A song was on the radio and I adroitly suggested it sounded like the theme to the Godfather. Nervous snickering ensued. The longer this drive took the more we laughed…albeit with fear and trepidation. But, alas, the Turks did not disappoint. We arrived at our destination intact. And here we are drinking a glass of red wine, eating chocolate that we’ve hauled all over the country. The entire time we have been gone, this is the first chocolate in Turkey. Opps. We had mocha coffees today so it is the second time in two weeks. A record of sorts for moi.

While sitting in the coffee cafe house sipping those mochas it occurred to us that if someone wanted to make a lot of money, they would start a Water Mister company. Go to all the hot spots and install misters. They do not have them here. They don’t have them in Greece (Samos anyway). They didn’t have them in AU or NZ although they might have…we were there in winter. They probably don’t have them in Africa. These people need misters. It could change their lives for the better. Did I mention it is really, really hot? Good grief. We really live in a sweet spot.

Beep, beep. We’ll really miss the beeps. Actually, Rayman won’t but I will. Their driving is unique. They turn 1 lane into 2. Two into 3. The lines in the roads don’t mean anything. Well, maybe they mean “straddle”. And they beep all the time to warn people…”Here I come, watch out.” Rayman really noticed it to the point of mentioning it constantly. It just became background noise to me and I filtered it out….like my wind chime at home. I can tune that out too.

But one more thing. We were informed that Beau has bonded to Nancy in a way that is really upsetting. She is spoiling him and he has fallen in love. This prompted an email to Beau to tell him that she would leave him in the end and we would soon be home to spoil him with walks and a new house. He’s fickle but he’s still young…so hopefully he’ll remember who we are and be glad to see us when we return…I know we’ll be glad to see him!!

Yesterday we boarded a ferry for Samos, a Greek island about 1 1/2 hours away from Kudashi, where we are staying.

So, we deduced that sitting up top was too sunny and hot so we installed ourselves inside the ferry for the voyage. Our seat selection positioned us to watch the drama at the bathroom door. The W.C. was located directed across from the concession so the man that sold the tea and water also took care of the W.C. Ugh. Anyway, the people who boarded must have all waited to expel breakfast until they boarded because quite a queue formed around the W.C. door. The W.C. was marked for women but that meant nothing. Men were happy to be in line. And each person took longer than the last to vacate the W.C. so the natives got restless. Finally a man reappeared from the W.C. and then no one could enter. Banging on the door ensued until the man behind the concession bar interceded with a key in hand and opened the door. Apparently there was quite a mess. A few desperate people entered and then turned around and left while shaking their head. A big burly man appear and went in and fixed the toilet then the concession man hosed the thing down before going back to tea brewing. It was a scream. From that point on the concession man monitored the usage by keeping the key and making people ask for entry.

Samos was beautiful. We had a few hours to kill so we roamed the streets until lunch time and then we found a lovely garden cafe that was really hopping. Once seated we noticed that there were a lot of Greek Orthodox priests in attendance under the big tent. Then I noticed a woman approach one of the priests and she kissed his ring. Then the priest at the end of the table whose ring got kissed stood up and all the people under the tent stood up. He must have been the grand pooh pa because he was carrying an elaborate stick and because, well, they all stood up for his departure. Looked like Congress when the President enters the chamber. People clambered to talk to him. Before he stood up he was seated with anyone and everyone who was a big deal in the military…generals/admirals and the like. As tourists, we had hit pay dirt. VIP table is the one on the left.

 

 
After splitting a Greek salad and some tea, we found a museum and spent quite some time viewing all kinds of artifacts from before Christ. This little town on this island of about 35,000 people had a really great archeological museum that they had not figured out how to cool. It was very hot inside, especially upstairs. This required a cold beer so we installed ourselves in a cafe near the water and drank. Then we roamed some more and then we had ice cream. Then we went back to the dock, boarded the ferry and returned to Turkey. The Rayman was glad he did it because he proclaimed he wouldn’t fight me if I ever wanted to do a Greek island someday. He approved.

 

 
On the way back to the hotel, we managed to get gouged by a taxi driver who wanted to take us to the airport tomorrow. Fat chance. We tried to take a dip in the pool but the pool was closed for the day…it was about 7:30 p.m. Funny rules. And then we cleaned up and went out to dinner at the same cafe we had eaten the previous two nights. We were family. Everyone in the place ran up to greet us and shake our hands…could we have been gouged there too? Probably but what the hey. It was delicious. Skewed calamari grilled again. We were addicted. We concluded our dinner close to 11 p.m. Here is the Rayman in Greece.
Greek habitat.
Octopus drying in a wire cage. Didn’t smell.

 

Huge radish in my salad above, calamari below.

 
And here we are. Our last day in Turkey. Our plane doesn’t leave Izmir until 8 p.m. and we have not idea how to fill the day schlepping luggage around. Decided to negotiate with the front desk for a late check out. We have to get a ride to airport (1 hour away). And then away we go to Istanbul. We actually tried to rent a car…too expensive because of drop off fees. We’re hopeless at squabbling so we keep paying too much and the same would be true for the ride back to the airport. But pay we must if we want to get back to istanbul for our flight to NYC on Sunday.

So this is the time where reflection becomes necessary. As with every trip we learn something. Here’s what we have learned.

1. Never do business with a travel company that is not U.S. based. Suffice it to say…OneNation travel will be receiving a long letter.

2. Be the first one off the ferry. The line for customs is likely in the sun and it takes FOREVER to get through. The 1%ers don’t put up with this. The plebes do.

3. If you don’t haggle, you’ll be sorry. We’ve been sorry too much.

4. Bed bug bites don’t necessarily itch.

5. Actually, avoid tours. Too structured, the guides are hard to understand because of accents and they cost more.

6. Avoid selling your house and then going on vacation.

7. Avoid destinations that get hot in the summer in the summer.

Things we observed include the following.

Turks drive with their horns. Tooting, tooting, tooting all the time. That’s because they drive to just almost kill pedestrians or hit other cars. It’s their blood sport.

Turks litter everywhere they go. Plastic bottles can be found everywhere on the streets along wit cigarette butts. They love to smoke. They smoke cigarettes, cigar, hukahs. They smoke indoors, outdoors. They smoke constantly. Boy, do they smoke.

Turks don’t care for Greece. Greece was playing German in the semi-finals soccer and we asked our waiter who he was rooting for and he replied, “Germany”. Oh, and the lady, Mrs. Merkel was on hand for the game. When we asked why, he replied, “I don’t like Greece.” Later Rayman reminded me that Greece after WWI took over Turkey…that didn’t go so well and the Turks revolted and got their country back and I guess relations have been rocky ever since.

The Turks don’t go overboard with safety. Trails without railings abound. Jumping off bridges allowed. They don’t stop motorists and give tickets as far as we could tell. And their building codes leave something to be desired.

Turks are often multi-lingual. We even heard one young hustler at a market speaking Japanese. They are industrious and hard working. They seem to all get along. If there is a lot of homelessness, we didn’t see it. The Turkish people are friendly and approachable and helpful.

Turkish religious women are hard to look at because it is so hot and they are so overdressed and in black. They rarely smile. The head scarf only crowd has more fun that the orthodox set but I’m thinking that is a universal truth.

So, I think I will leave it at that unless, of course, some funny thing happens on the way to the forum.