Bathing Among the Greek Gods

NOTE: revision to this posting below.

We arrived in Olympos yesterday afternoon. From Antalya, we took a minibus into along the coast and the mountains. It dropped us off at a random station along a main road, and when we got out another minibus beckoned to us: 'Olympos! Olympos!' Confused, we got on and continued riding through the mountains until we reached a clearing full of treehouse pensions. There seemed to be nothing around but pine trees & noisy cicadas, whose deafening buzzing had been following us around Turkey since Cyprus. I hope they are mating successfully. There are many that serenade us at night.
We came to the Şaban Family Treehouse Pension and decided to try out a real treehouse. It was built from real tree branches and sat on stilts about 7 feet off the ground. It had a rudimentary door with no lock and only 1 lightbulb. We would have to use shared bathrooms and showers. We dropped off our belongings & returned to the patio to talk to the patron, an Aussie who convinced us to stay until Friday (we arrived on Tuesday) for his friend's cruise to Fethiye. So we tentatively set up some activities with his help - lounging on the beach today, visiting the Chimera Flames tonight, & kayaking tomorrow. When we returned to our 'romantic' treehouse, I found the bottom half of my pack covered in black ants. Apparently, I set my pack on a crushed berry & they swarmed all over my pack devouring it. Of course, I freaked out & swatted my pack until every last ant was gone. I commenced to squealing when I saw the entire carpet covered in ants, though Robby's pack was left untouched by the critters. Robby went back to the patron & requested that we transfer into the plush private bungalow with private bathroom. He even showed the patron the video he took of my frantically flicking ants off my pack. All I can say is, hey, I'm from the 'burbs & I concede to the fact that I can't rough it like a real backpacker! Robby agrees that he doesn't either.
Today we walked through some interesting ruins - a 2nd century BC Roman gate, a 2nd century AD mosaic temple, a necropolis filled with sarcophagi (large stone tombs with Medusa's head & garlands carved on the outside, plus a lid, into which entire families - rich ones - would be sealed), and Marcus Aurelius's sarcophagus. The end of the ruins walk lead us to a long beach full of rocks & pebbles. We went swimming in a cove with the REAL Mount Olympos* in sight. The water looked oily beneath its surface, which unsettled Robby, who claimed that the handful of gülets (traditional boats), yachts, and small motorboats caused the water's strange consistency. Nonetheless, the beach was beautiful and it was certainly surreal for us to swimming beneath Mount Olympos, where the Greek gods once dwelled.**

Robby said that he saw Zeus wink at him from the mountain top.***

*, ** upon further research, we learned that this was not the "real" mt olympos (which is in greece). Olympos means mountain in Greek, so many mountains take this name. The dude on the minibus led us astray. Our faith in minibus dudes has been broken.

However, the evening of writing this posting we went to chimera, a place about 5 miles from our bungalow where flames constantly pour out of the side of mt olympos because of the methane gas that is emitted (we'll add pictures of this strange phenomenon later). More importantly, a sign at the foot of the mountain said that the original olympic game (in anatolia) was a race from these flames to the city of olympos (near our bungalow) in which the runner carried a burning torch the whole way(lit with the chimera flames). Supposedly, this is the origin for the tradition of carrying the olympic torch. Hence, OUR mt olympos is significant for some reason. ...or the sign lied as well, in which case our faith in signs would be broken too.

***That must have God (i.e., Allah). ...or a large Turkish man with a white beard (i.e., Santa Claus)


1. Jeanne walking up to tree house
2. Jeanne lounging in tree house with foot against tree ...before said tree was overrun with ants.
3. Robby cowering under Roman temple from second century BC (according to the sign)
4. Jeanne munching on our Mt Olympos
5. Sitting above the flaming mountain, wishing for a marshmallow.

Alanya and Antalya = beaches and ruins

after a lovely 6 days in cyprus, robby & i have returned to mainland turkey. cyprus was definitely the perfect place to relax. i think that's all the brits do there: go to the beach & lie out. robby & i discovered a place to rent a scooter & explored the western tip of cyprus one afternoon. being mobile again was a breath of fresh air. you can imagine how much robby loved riding (and steering) a moving vehicle. from the back, i constantly whispered to him, 'stay to the left, the left...' because in northern cyprus people drive on the left side of the road. very disconcerting for us at first.
for days, i dreaded the boat ride back to turkey. luckily, we bought some dramamine. i popped two pills, fell asleep, and felt no nausea. thank goodness for dramamine! the boat was not only rocking up & down but side to side as well. sometimes, i felt like we were airborne. some people could not take it & spent all their time in the restroom throwing up.
we reached a beach town called alanya & were impressed by its relaxed environment & sandy beaches, so we decided to spend a night there. lots of tourists - british, german, swedes, & russians. there are so many bronze-skinned, platinum-bleach-haired women that we had no idea what their nationality might be. after a dip in the salty mediterranean, a wander through the nightclubs (the largest is a 4-story club called 'robin hood'), a plate of spaghetti & grilled fish, we checked in for the night & left for the otogar (bus terminal) in the morning.
we headed west for antalya (2 hours from alanya). antayla isn't known for its beaches but for its ruin. there's a 200AD church (later converted into a mosque) in the center of the old town which is surrounded by an old fortress wall. we found a pension (aka 'motel') run by a woman who tells us to call her 'mama' & pushes us to eat snacks on her terrace.

we finally took a trip to a hamam. we were the only ones in the whole place - pretty sad, we thought. business wasn't so good because most of the tourists are set on a packaged tour & their large hotel offers its own hamam. this hamam in the old part of Antalya is 700 years old. i was able to be in the hamam with Robby (many are gender segregated). first, we sat in a towel on a marble slab in a steam room with taps all around. we washed ourselves & soaked in the humid air, which was just a bit more humid than the air outside. then two men led us into another room. we laid down on two marble slabs & each man scrubbed our bodies with exfoliating pads. It was the first time I've ever been topless in a massage parlor, so that was a temporarily weird feeling for me. Then they gave us a soap massage by pouring soap suds all over our body & massaging our muscles using their iron finger grip 8i don't know how to else to describe it). the massage was superb; i felt like a loose noodle afterward.

we are anxious to eat japanese, thai, chinese, vietnamese, mexican food again. we're getting rather tired of turkish food, and i know that munching on hamburgers here won't satiate my need for the variety of foods that california offers...

by the way, VERY few american tourists here. actually, we've only met around 4 on our whole trip!

1. Jeanne with the yummy fish that Robby made and the bratwurst-flavored burger that the resort made (we ordered it to complement the fish, naturally).
2. Robby kissing the fish head.
3. Us with trusty scooter near Bellapais monestary.
4. İn front of strange artwork at a dance club in Alanya (we forgot the camera on our walk down the BEAUTİFUL beach).
5. At Roman harbor in Antalya

111 degrees Fahrenheit in Cyprus!!

hi, everyone. we are passing lazy days in cyprus, catching up with reading, sleeping, and swimming. robby has been making delicious pasta for the past 3 days. yesterday he grilled lamb chops on a pan, and we fed the pieces of fat to the resort's cats. yesterday's temperature got as high as 111 degrees fahrenheit, so we stayed in and read all day before heading out later. we've been very good about eating in - both of us are tired of eating out and eating döner kabaps, which is what we in america call 'shwarma' (spelling?). we have them in pita wraps and in frech rolls. turkish people eat frech rolls with everything. it just sits - sliced - there on the table.

i got severely nauseated from the ferry from taşucu to girne (cyprus), so i'm a bit wary about getting on the ferry again when we leave cyprus on sunday. but this time, i'll be armed with dramamine, which i will be taking again when we take our cruise from olympos to fethiye. people tell us that the 4-day cruise is one of the best parts of turkey, so i am determined to get on the boat and NOT get sea sick.

we'll email again from mainland turkey.
i hope it's not as hot back home as it is here!

1. Robby makes lambchops & pasta.
2. We love the inflatable ring when we get tired of treading water.
3. Robby dives into the pool like a pretty ballerina.

Still in Cyprus

As the title suggests, we have not left Cyprus yet. The weather is very hot - over 100 degrees Fahrenheit. We haven't had to set any alarms. We get out of bed when we want, stay in the air conditioned room, have muesli for breakfast, and read. When the sun is not so brutal, we set out for a walk. Yesterday we headed to a small beach called Camelot, which was a kilometer away from our reseort. It cost about 10 dollars to sit at the beach, so we said thanks and went to the grocery store instead. Robby has been making delicious pasta dinners for the past two nights. We've also been eating good fruit: watermelon, grapes, bananas, etc. We've also been able to drink fresh milk. We've grown accustomed to the humidity. Tomorrow we're taking a dolmuş (minibus) to Girne to find a post office so we can send out postcards with all this redundant information.

On Sunday, we'll be heading to Alanya on mainland Turkey, beginning our journey west to Olympos, Fethiye, and then north to Ephesus and eventually İstanbul. We can't believe our honeymoon is only half over. We're getting pretty tired of one another, and we ignore each other by reading. Robby will be pulling out his Nintendo DS pretty soon. ;)

1. Robby stands on Girne Castle with the town beneath him.
2. Jeanne on Girne Castle with Mediterranean below.
3. Robby gets shaved at a barber shop (his first time).
4. Jeanne with new goggles on. Robby says she looks like a fish (in and out of water :).

Britons Everywhere!

We spent 10 hours traveling from Göreme to Mersin to Silifke to Taşucu. Then we spent a night at the Turkish beach town Taşucu before setting out for Cyprus the following day. The air here is humid but good for Robby's lungs (he says). We are about 15km from the capıtal of Cyprus, Girne. The resort that Ramesh and Nancy gifted us is WONDERFUL!!! The room is very large - bigger than anything we've stayed in so far - and there is a great pool and very attentive staff. Our trip finally feels like a honeymoon! After getting over our sea sickness (lots of vomiting on Jeanne's part), from the express ferry ride, we jumped in the pool, played some games, and then went out for groceries and dinner. We met a slew of British expats at the restaurant and grocery store. There are 4,000+ Britons here, according to Lonely Planet. Plus, there's an American University in Girne, so of course there is a Burger City and Kentucky Fried Chicken Cafe, all written in English. People look at us strangely when we use the Turkish phrases we've learned over the past few weeks.
We finally reached the Mediteranean.

1. Sweet bed & bıg room!
2. Robby eats muesli for breakfast today & loves it.

Secret Hideaway in Capadoccia

We spent 3 days in Göreme, a magical small town that caters purely to tourists. It takes a while to get here (11-hour bus ride from Istanbul, 5 hours from Ankara). It is full of oddly shaped stone hills into which homes & churches are built. We went to the Open Air Museum on day 2 in Göreme, which is filled with Byzantine (5 century) churches depicting biblıcal stories. We stayed at the Elifstar Cave Hotel, which means that our room is dug out of the side of a hill. The scenery is both serene & breathtaking. During our last few days, we got pretty ill (probably from the water or the food), and I spent an entire day incapacitated in bed. On our last evening, we took a guided sunset tour on an ATV. It was SO exciting - definitely the best part of Göreme.

1. At the Open Air Museum
2. Robby kisses Göreme
3. Our cave hotel room
4. Pigeon Valley

Fırst Week Highlight Pics

1. Blue Mosque Backdrop (it's blue on the inside).
2. Black Sea Backdrop - ahh, so close to mother Russia.
3. Robby thrusting medieval sword.
4. Jeanne beseeching Robby to ignore the allure of being a sultan with a harem at Topkapi palace.
5. Eating dinner with Micha, Robby's EBF buddy who now lives in İstanbul.
6. Turkish çay ("chai") - tastes like tea!
7. Daily breakfast with a view of the Bosphorous - egg, olives, bread, tomato, cucumber, cheese, jam, and annoying cats.
8. Fresh fish sandwich, yummy!
9. On a castle in the sky - looking down on Ankara.

Stop 2: Ankara

robby and i are currently ın ankara & wıll be leaving thıs afternoon. yesterday mornıng, we went to ıstanbul's bus terminal (ötogar) & hopped on a 6.5 hour bus to ankara. wow, the bus system in turkey ıs amazing - more spacious than airplane seats, comes with snacks & drinks, even 2 american movies (but dubbed ın turkish), & one stop at a clean & well-supplied rest stop. the bus ride was heavenly.
ankara is not so heavenly. fılled wıth smog, the center of city is crowded, dusty, & dirty. the streets are 99% men & they stare at us (we're tryıng to figure out if it's our REI hats, clothes, glasses, or heavily buckled day packs).
we've seen the only 2 sites worth visıting ın ankara, the citadel & the museum of anatolian civilizatıons. the museum is especially interesting; it contains remanants from 2.3 million BC!
robby & i are very tired of döner kebaps. we're hoping to encounter new foods in capadoccia. untıl then...
take care!

Merhaba from Turkey!

Hello from Istanbul, everyone! Robby is currently trying to pull some photos from a USB flashdrive that contains my camera's SD card. Interesting contraption we found here.

Anyway, we've spent almost 5 days in Istanbul, we've seen all there is to see, and we're ready to head off to Capadoccia. We've visted the Blue Mosque, the Aya Sofia, the Grand Bazaar (which reminded us of the LA shopping district), the Chora Church, Taksim Square & the cool Ishtiklal (full of young, fashionable Turkish people), & a cruise up the Bosphorous Strait toward the Black Sea. We've met one loquacious Turkish tourist police officer who followed us as we looked for our hotel, gave us directions, and invited us to dinner, one Floridian who is teaching English in Moscow, a middle-aged Dutch couple, and Canadian newlyweds who are on their belated honeymoon. The Turkish people are extremely kind and helpful, and the ones who speak English try to help us in every way when we look like we're in need for help.

We're looking forward to exploring other parts of Turkey. Beaches, underground cities, chartered buses, here we come!

Bye for now!

More pics

Of the wedding

and of the rehearsal dinner

Lost and Found

1 blackberry bluetooth ear piece, gray and black, cylindrical, extraordinary battery life (still blinking 3 days later).

Please email or comment if it's yours.

In a blur, it seems...

The day is done.
Oh yes, furshur,
it was tons of fun.
All the guests concur.
Our married lives have now begun.
And luckily, there is more fun to come!


And pictures too! Here are just a few:

We'll post more links, soon as they come through.
(we'd also love to have all those taken by you!)