Travels with The Rayman

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.

Viewing the Roman ruins in Ephesus was on our agenda today. And as all tours do, we also had surprise stops at a carpet weaving school that included a jewelry store, Mother Mary’s home according to a sick German nun who had a vision of this place and the church took her seriously for some reason I forget and then they went around Ephesus looking for a house that matched her description and they found it and pronounced it so and reconstructed it as most of it was gone and they called it Mother Mary’s house. I don’t know. Perhaps the Ephesus Chamber of Commerce was in cahoots with the church on this one because the place was jam packed with tourists of all persuasions. A museum was on the list of places to visit and also one site that had a catholic church, a mosque and a byzantine chapel, and a Roman temple to some gods. Secular took on a whole new meaning!!

We are happy to announce that no more rugs were purchased. No jewelry. Just one hat for the Rayman that is very cool.

So, I’ll just let the pictures do the talking. But before I share them I want to tell you that we were on this tour with a couple from So. Africa, a family of 3 from NZ who are sailing the oceans blue and are on their boat here and an eye surgeon and his daughter from India. A really interesting group of folks to break bread with and spend the day with. I know. I shouldn’t end the sentence with a with. But I’m too tired to rearrange the words at this point. And I know, dear reader, that you will get the point with or without a with at the end of the sentence.

With that, let me share some pictures.

A bed bug.

 
By the dock of the bay
Mother Mary’s house, reconstructed.
Sort of a catholic wailing wall, wishing wall full of notes they encourage you to hang. We didn’t.
Moi at a small coliseum.
A roman relief of Aphrodite, I think.
Rayman and statue.
Moi and the library at the end of the boulevard of ruins.
Me again, Rayman was on a tear with the camera, standing in front of what is left of the library. Really impressive.
This pictures puts the place in perspective.
The coliseum that sat about 25,000, where John spoke to the Ephesians. Sir Elton John performed here to a much larger crowd.
Loved this sign. May also apply to our new rugs.
Naturally died wool at the carpet school…drying out.
Relief at the museum.
Penis art from the ancients.
We saw thing from the 8th century B.C. Made us feel young. Rayman looking diminutive next to part of a statue.
View from the pool of our hotel. Oh, Aegean, you are beautiful.

Life is made up of ying and yang and we just had a big bite of the ying and yang sandwich.

After our tour of Cappadocia ended, the tour guide and his driver took us to the airport about an hour away. They played some violent movie where every other word was of the four letter variety on the overhead movie screen in the van. Since we had hiked and since we had late flights to content with, we wanted to sleep. Fat chance.

We had a flight back to Istanbul that left about 8 p.m. and a connecting flight to Izmir that was scheduled for 11:45 p.m. We were to arrive in Izmir at 12:50 a.m. Both flights were late and we did not arrive until almost 2 a.m. Then there was an hour long trip to our hotel in Kusadasi. We checked in at 3 a.m. Ouch. We got to our room, threw our clothes off, rinsed off the Cappadocia “fairy sand” we were covered in and crashed as we had an 8:30 pick up for a tour. I know. Crazy.

At 6:45 a.m. the Rayman woke me up when he said, “Dianna, We have bed bugs.” It took me about a nano second to roust myself out of a deep sleep and literally jump out of bed. “BED BUGS. I’m not staying here.” The Rayman agreed and after an inspection by the hotel management, we went after a shower down to the lobby to start complaining. The long and short of it is that the Rayman ended up in the front lobby registration desk having a very “direct conversation” with the OneNation the tour company on the hotel’s telephone. “No. If you would stop talking and listen to me” , he continued. As the man on the other end of the phone tried to terminate the tour by refunding us for the hotel in Istanbul two days from now and refunding us our valet service, the Rayman had a different idea. Pretty soon, any one in the lobby could hear him say, “Excuse me. I don’t think I’m being unreasonable…the first place you booked us had mold. This place has bed bugs. We want another hotel.”

About a half an hour later I was on the computer seeing if there was a way to return to NYC earlier, a man came in and said he was there to move us to another hotel. And off we went to a much better hotel with a balcony overlooking the Aegean Sea and with a distinct absence of bedbugs… so far. Our bed clothes are in a plastic bag, the bags have been inspected for the vile creatures and we’ve spent the day trying to leave Turkey… then trying to stay in Turkey.

As of now we have negotiated two extra nights at this hotel, rescheduled our tour of Ephesus for tomorrow, and return transportation to Izmir. We decided it was harder to leave early than it is to stay. Turkish Air would not reschedule the flight back to Istanbul without talking to the tour operator who booked the flight. The tour company found us a flight but it was another “midnight express”. With only 3 1/2 hours of sleep, we just couldn’t warm up to that idea. So. There you have it.

Observations: The Rayman and I have had a chance to travel by making all our reservations on previous trips. And we had a tour where they made all the plans. We never have been lost using this tour company but the mold and bed bugs episodes have us abandoning the idea of using tour companies in future travels. It hasn’t worked out, this tour company idea.

Oh, and did you know that these late night one hour flights are filled up with crying babies? It’s a flying nursery and you cannot sleep. One mother walked the aisle with her screaming child in her arms the entire flight. Another sat still but the child wailed away for 3/4 of the flight…in the middle of the night. OMG. Really, when they pre-board, half the plane is filled up by mothers and their children. The Rayman thinks they just live by a different clock here. Whatever. It’s much different than the U.S. generally.

The big ship just blew it’s horn. There is a Viking cruise ship (upright) moored here. They are on their way out so the city will be quieter tonight when we venture out to find a place to eat. It is warm and a bit muggy. The sea is sparkling. Quite charming, really.

And the tour guide tomorrow is the same nice fellow that delivered us to our second hotel this a.m. Did I mention he isn’t hard to look at? Perhaps things are looking up.

Oh, and the water heater has been installed. I learned how to use FaceTime at midnight in the airport at Istanbul. Our realtor, Tim, taught me how to do it and we had a good conversation. Amazing. So, Beau is returning to our house with Nancy and Ginger since the house is fully functioning again. Now all we have to do is figure out where on earth we are going to live in the future…both near and far (term). I can tell you one thing. It won’t be in Turkey. We have really enjoyed 95% of this country. And our dollar would go a very long way. The food is wonderful. But, we won’t be moving here. Perhaps Morro Bay or San Luis or Avila or Paso!!! Yes, that’s more to our liking.

Before I forget, the Turks have the best tow trucks we have ever seen. They only work on cars that are parked parallel but they are amazing. They drive up to the side of car. Two L shaped arms slide down and under the offending the car. Then it lifts the car up and on to the bed of the truck. The truck driver doesn’t even have to get out of truck as far as we could see. Never seen anything like it. It would work great in San Francisco and other large cities with narrow streets.

Today was our private tour where the possibility of getting lost was vanquished. We hiked, we walked, we climbed, we stooped. And we took lots of pictures. This place really can’t be captured on a camera but I’ll bore you with my pictures just the same. Here goes. Rayman in front of our hotel waiting for the guide.

 
Another view looking up from the street in front of our hotel..there is smoke coming out of that chimney. See below.

 

These cones are eroding unless they have basalt dark tops.
Grape vines and cave houses. Many of these caves had special holes for the pigeons. The collected the pigeon poop and carried it down in large carriers on the inside of these structures and fertilized their crops.

 
Inside one of the caves, a church.
Pigeon holes!!
A wildflower.
A site that is eroding. The sandstone is falling away exposing the caves.

 
The fairy structures. See the dark basalt protecting the underneath structure. Looks like something familiar. Mushrooms.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cappadocia

Check out the website above for a detailed accounting of the history of the place.