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
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