Selcuk - Murat and His Shop

Kati and Me with Murat at His Shop

Throughout our travels, we have met people that really go above and beyond being helpful and really make our experience in a given place amazing.  Murat was one of those people.  We stumbled by his shop our first night in Selcuk and, admittedly, quickly became his favorite customers.  He was one of the best--meaning honest and fair--salesmen we've run into in Turkey.  (Don't worry, we had several outside confirmations to say that he was the best in the area)  It definitely paid off with us because we bought an absurd amount of stuff from him over the course of our stay.

He was great.  Every time we walked past his store he would invite us to sit down and have some tea with him.  In fact, it was one time when we sat down to have tea with him and a friend that his friend suggested we look for bed bugs.  And when we abandoned our first hotel in the middle of the night in search of a new place, Murat told us where to go and, once I told him why we were moving, he enlisted one of his friends to carry our  bags to the new hotel and make sure we got there fine.  The next day he even went out of his way to make sure we were happy with the new place and that they gave us a good price.  Murat really made what could have been a completely miserable experience in Selcuk into a very enjoyable one.  Plus now we have all sorts of cool Turkish stuff!

Ephesus, Selcuk, and Sirence

The Four of Us at Ephesus

Our second day in Selcuk was much more pleasant than the first.  In the morning, at our new hotel, we ran into Jill and Nikita, the South Africans from our cruise.  We decided to abandon our planned tour--due to our crummy experience the day before--and explore Ephesus on our own, with the South Africans.

Our first stop was at the Ephesus museum, in Selcuk.  It was pretty neat.  By far the two highlights were a giant statue of Artemis, from the fertility cult in Ephesus and a small effigy of Priapus, the son of Aphrodite and Dionysus, a minor god of fertility who, cursed with impotence in the womb by Hera, eventually became depicted with an absurdly large erection.  Priapus is the namesake of priapism, the medical condition of having a prolonged erection, often warned about on the label of Viagra.

After the museum, the four of us headed up to Ephesus.  It was so crowded!  We found out the evening before that there were a few cruise ships that had just landed and would be in Ephesus the same day we would be, but there was nothing we could do about it.  The ancient city is one of the coolest set of ruins I've been to.  With my trusty guidebook and the absurd amount of material I read before the trip, I played tour guide for the day.  There were more than a few interesting places in Ephesus.  We saw the men's latrine, which was even used by those with private bathrooms so that they could engage in social discussions and gossip (Giving rise to the eventual English vernacular expression of "shooting the s**t").  There were also a number of temples to former emperors.  It was a great honor for an emperor to raise to the level of cult worship and have a temple built in his honor.  One notable temple was the ornate Hadrian's Temple--Hadrian being the namesake of Hadrian's Wall in England, the most northern point the Roman Empire ever reached.

The Library of Celsus

One of the coolest things we saw in Ephesus were the terrace houses.  These are a collection of around 6 houses that have been excavated, are in very good shape, and are gradually being put back together to show what they would have looked like in their full glory.  This restoration consists of Turks working day and night to take shards of earth and paintings to assemble the original artwork, in its original condition, and restore it to its original location.  The houses were unbelievably well preserved and some of the mosaic work on the floor was incredible.  One of the houses even had its own personal basilica, where the owner received his guests!  While the Terrace houses were cool, the clear highlight was the Library of Celsus, the most famous sight in the ancient city.  The facade of the ruined library, once the third-largest in the world, is breathtaking.

The Four of Us at Lunch

From Ephesus, we went back to Selcuk for lunch.  On the recommendation of my guidebook, we stopped by a place near the bus station that supposedly has the best kofta, Turkish meatballs, in the region.  It definitely lived up to its reputation.  It was really cool because you walked up to a giant case of meats, picked what you wanted, then they cooked them and brought them out to you.  The meatballs were fantastic, as were the fried zucchini patties we had.  The last sight we took in on our Selcuk tour was the Temple of Artemis, one of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World.  While there is but one column left of the temple's original 127, in its glory it was the largest temple in the world, eclipsing even the Parthenon in Athens.

After a quick rest back at the hotel, we rallied and caught a bus to the nearby town of Sirence, often referred to as a Turkish Tuscany.  It's a small town with many shops, one jewelry shop even produced most of the jewelry used in the movie Troy.  But what drew us to the town is that it's known for its fruit wines.  The town produces a variety of fruit wines: sour cherry, blackberry, strawberry, raspberry, melon, pomegranate, etc.  Some of the wines were great while others tasted more like cough syrup than wine.  We walked up and down the streets for about two hours, stopping in the various shops to have free shot-sized samples of their wines.  It was a lot of fun.

Most Miserable Day Ever

We've had bad days on this trip before.  We've had to endure unnecessary travel fines in Hungary, we've gotten lost a number of times, and I even got food poisoning in Dubrovnik.  Yet the horror from those days pales in comparison to our first day in Selcuk.

We traveled from Fethiye to Selcuk by bus, which took about 6 hours.  Emerald and Phil had told us about a hotel they stayed in while they were in Selcuk, so we were going to look up that hotel when we got into town.  However, the agent at the bus company suggested a different hotel and offered to make a reservation for us, so we went with that option because we weren't quite sure where the other hotel was in the city.  It was one of the worst decisions we've made in the last two months.  Our first evening in Selcuk was actually fantastic, but I'll talk about that later, now I just want to address the horrors of our first day.

We arranged for a day trip to Pamukkale, which was a 3 hour drive, each way, from Selcuk.  After a nice dinner, we turned in early so we could wake up in time for our tour.  Everything was fine.  At 3:00 am I woke up to go to the bathroom and found that I had a bug bite over my eyebrow.  It itched pretty bad, but I didn't think much of it.  Then I woke up again at 5:00 am.  This time I had a bunch of bug bites all over my body, some of which had swollen into giant welts.  I didn't know what was going on, but I grabbed some after-bite cream from my first-aid kit and rubbed it on.  The worst part though was that my right eye was really swollen, presumably from the bug bite.  When I woke up at 7:30 to get ready for the day, most of my bug bites were gone, except for the one over my eye...and my eye was even more swollen.  We figured that I just got bitten by a mosquito.  I wasn't about to let my eye ruin our day.  It didn't hurt and I could still see, it was just a bit uncomfortable.  I loaded up on antihistamines and Advil, and over the course of the day the swelling started going down...a little

**************************************

Kati and Me at Pamukkale

Our trip to Pamukkale was absolutely horrible, which is a shame because we were both really looking forward to it.  On the drive there, we made several unnecessary stops.  First, the tour guide forgot all of the tickets and his lists, so we had to wait for someone to drive them out to us.  Then, the bus driver decided he wanted to stop by the bank...it took 25 minutes!

The people on our tour were also insufferable.  The guide spoke horrible English and felt the need to repeat himself constantly, even on mundane matters.  In addition to the guide, there was an Australian girl who was completely obnoxious and unnecessarily feral.  The foul-mouthed Aussie had befriended an equally obnoxious Asian-American guy.  To round out the perfect tour group was a middle-management couple from Seattle.  Let me give you an example of how moronic they all were.  Seattle was at lunch and the Asian asked him why he was in Turkey.  Seattle responded that he came for work--for a risk management conference in Istanbul.  The Asian, with as much hauter as I've seen anyone muster, said knowingly, "Ah, you work for Pfizer."  No, he didn't work for Pfizer, but for some reason the Asian believed that Pfizer is the only company in the US that worries about risk management...the questions and the company only got worse from there.

Following lunch, we finally made it to Pamukkale.  In Turkish Pamukkale means "cotton castles."  The bedrock of the entire area is limestone, much like the great state of Kentucky.  The limestone beneath the surface coupled with the hot springs that rise to the surface creates travertine, a sedimentary rock that's really just a name for limestone deposited by hot springs.  The calcium carbonate from the limestone dissolves in the water and, when the water reaches the surface it's "degassed," resulting in the deposition of calcium, in the form of travertine.  Over time these travertine deposits have created terraced pools.  It's the calcium that gives the travertine pools their stark white color and creates the unique landscape.  It's also the white color of these pools that led to the area being called Pamukkale because from a distance it looks like a castle made of cotton atop the hill.  If you've ever been to Yellowstone National Park, a similar phenomenon (Though less impressive) has occurred at the Mammoth Hot Springs

Our completely incompetent tour guide only told us two "facts" about Pamukkale: (1) that it's called Pamukkale because there are lots of cotton fields in the surrounding towns and (2) The crazy rock formations and travertines result from sodium hydroxide (lye) in the water.  The rest of our tour, and I use that word loosely, consisted of him walking us around the area, pointing to something on the map, telling us what it's called, and telling us we can explore it later during our free time.

The painful tour lasted only 45 minutes, though it seemed like hours, and then we were released to explore.  The travertine pools are really cool so Kati and I spent about 40 minutes walking down the hill of cascading pools and watching all of the European girls make fools of themselves by posing in ridiculous looking "model shot" pictures, yelling at their unhappy boyfriends about the quality or angle of the shots.  Afterwards we walked through the Hieropolis, the ruins of the ancient Roman city, and saw the bath house that Cleopatra used to use all the time.  Finally, after about two hours of exploring, we got on the bus and headed back to Selcuk.  While I say that the tour was horrible and I was pretty miserable with my eye, Pamukkale was still pretty amazing and we enjoyed our free time in the pools.

**************************************

I dreaded getting back to Selcuk, the mosquitos had been so bad the night before that I didn't think I could stand another attack.  My swollen right eyelid had gotten a little smaller, although it was still uncomfortable to keep my eye open and I still looked physically deformed.  I told Kati that if I got more bug bites that night or if my eye swelled back up that night, we were going to have to call our trip early and head home.

We grabbed dinner at our restaurant hotel, which was very good.  Then we walked over to Murat's shop (I'll talk about him and his shop when I talk more about Selcuk next time) to hang out for a little bit.  There we met an Aussie who had been living in Selcuk for two years and running a pension.  After we got on the subject of my eye, she told us that there aren't any mosquitoes in Selcuk because the city sprays everywhere for them.  In fact, she said that in two years she hasn't once been bitten by a mosquito in town.  She also told us that my bug bites look an awful lot like...bed bugs.

I struggled to not panic when I heard her tell us we should check our hotel room.  We immediately went back and checked the mattress and the sheets...no bugs and no black stains indicative of their presence.  Confused, yet reluctantly satisfied, we got ready for bed.  Right before bed my paranoia set in again and I decided to do another sweep of the room, a more thorough sweep.  I pulled the cloth headboard away from the wall and I saw black spots, not many, and not all over, but there were a lot on the corner near my side of the bed.  This discovery prompted further inspection and, when I turned up the seam of the cloth I found one.  They're unmistakable, especially when you have a picture of them from Wikipedia in your other hand.

Immediately, we took everything off the floor and the bed and walked downstairs to tell the owner.  He seemed concerned and got his mother, it was a family-run pension, to come with him and I showed them the bug...then we found more.  Jeff, the owner, picked one up in his hand and examined it while his mother tried squishing them against the back of the headboard.  Jeff, translating for his mother, said they were just cockroaches and that there was nothing to worry about.  In a true showing of ignorance he said, "You can't kill bed bugs, but my mother killed one of these.  They're just cockroaches."  Putting aside the fact that finding tons of little cockroaches crawling in your room is disgusting enough, the sheer fact that he thought bed bugs were immortal baffles me.

I told him that I know it's a bed bug, and when he stubbornly refused to believe it, I grabbed my computer to show him a picture.  It took him a minute as he compared the picture to the bug crawling around in his hand, then his face went white.  Apologizing profusely and assuring us this had never happened before, he moved us to another room, right next door, and sealed up our old room.  After a very thorough check of the room and the bed, I reluctantly said it would work.  Not 15 minutes later we freaked out, packed up our stuff, and left.  The fear was too much.  We struck out across the city in an attempt to find Hotel Nazar, the one that Emerald and Phil had recommended.  The only problem is that we didn't really know where it was.

Luckily, my good friend Murat saw us walking past his shop with all of our stuff.  He asked me where we were going and I quickly relayed our horror story to him.  He snagged one of his associates and insisted that he carry our stuff and walk us to the hotel.  By the time we arrived, it was 11:30 pm.  While we were checking in I heard a very distinct voice from behind us, "Hey guys."  It was Nikita, one of the South Africans from our cruise.  They were staying in the hotel as well (As were John and Linda as we found out the next morning).  The hotel was a bit more expensive, but it was clean and much nicer.  After several intensive searches of the room, we laid down to try to sleep, still very paranoid about the situation.  I don't think I'll ever be able to stay in a hotel again without thoroughly checking for bed bugs first.

Blue Cruise - Our Last Day

Kati and Me at the Rock Tomb

Our last day on the cruise was more like our first day in Fethiye.  We woke up, had breakfast, drove to a bay just outside of Fethiye to swim and have lunch, and then we went to the harbor in Fethiye.  Fethiye is a much larger city than I had expected.  Emerald, Phil, Jule, Manu, Kati, and I set out together to find a place to stay.  We found a pretty dumpy hotel near the harbor, but the rooms were cheap, they had air conditioning, and they had internet.

After a beer and a good shower, all of us set out to climb up to the rock tombs.  In one of the hills above Fethiye, you can see Ionic columns built into the rocks themselves.  I had heard that these tombs are a really great place to catch the sunset, so we timed it to be able to sit up there and relax while the sun fell.  After paying 8 lira ($4.50), we climbed a set of stairs to the only tomb that was accessible.  The tomb itself could not have been more disappointing.  While the outside facade is very cool, peeking into the tomb itself reveals only a very small room covered in graffiti.  Additionally, the sun set too far to the left so it fell under a high mountain outside of Fethiye before it really lit up the sky.  At least the views were great.

Kati and Emerald at Our Seafood Feast

Our next stop was the famous Fethiye fish market.  It's a really unique set-up.  There's a small fish market in a somewhat octagonal shape where you can buy a wide array of seafood.  Then there are a whole slew of restaurants surrounding the fish market itself.  These restaurants all offer to help you select the seafood and then cook it for you, for a nominal fee of 6 lira.  The six of us grabbed a sea bass, a sea bream, some squid, and a bunch of prawns.  The meal was delicious, and to make it even better, the German/Czechs ran across us as soon as we sat down to eat.  The sea bream was especially fantastic.

Emerald and Phil had befriended a Portuguese couple in Olympos and we happened to run into them in Fethiye.  They told us about this great bar in the center of the city called the Car Cemetery Bar.  We happened to stumble across it while we were wandering and decided to camp out there for a bit.  Most of the rest of the crew got a nargile (water pipe) and we all had a few beers.  They even had a pool table so Phil and I played a few games to pass the time.  We finished off the night relaxing on the terrace of our hotel, drinking a few beers.

Blue Cruise Day 3 - Butterfly Valley and Oludeniz

Kati and Me on St. Nicholas Island For Sunset

I was awoken at 6:00 am as our boat started crashing over the waves.  We were supposed to leave at 4:00 am for the 5 hour ride to Butterfly Valley, but apparently the captain decided he wanted to sleep, which was fine because the trip only took us 3 hours.  We're still not sure how that worked or if he was just lying the day before to help his cause.

Well before we made it to Butterfly Valley I had forced myself to move to the deck of the boat in hopes of easing my newfound queasiness.  Being on the boat didn't phase me at all the first two days, but I'm sure that the drinking from the night before coupled with being on the "open ocean" with bigger waves was to blame.  We had breakfast in Butterfly Bay but I couldn't eat anything because by the time the food came out I was dangerously seasick.  Renee, the Australian girl who was shacked up with the cook, told me that Butterfly Bay was the worst because it wasn't sheltered from the waves and we were in the back of the cove which somehow amplified them and made it worse.  I skipped breakfast and jumped in the water, swimming to shore as fast as I could so that I could wallow in my misery on dry land.  By the time everyone else came ashore, I was feeling a little better.  After talking with the others, we learned that it wasn't just me.  While I probably had the worst of it, Jule was pretty sick as well, and many more talked about not feeling well too.  Kati started feeling pretty sick after reaching the beach, but felt better once we made it to the waterfall.  We struck off into the valley.  The waterfall was about a 30 minute hike from the beach.  The views in the valley were amazing, and it was early morning so we had made it there before all of the crowds from Oludeniz took day trips into the bay and valley.

Me Cliff Jumping

From Butterfly Valley, we went to Oludeniz, the blue lagoon.  It was here that I had hoped to go paragliding--people travel a long way specifically to paraglide over the lagoon--but my stomach was still too unease to make it sound appealing, so I decided to pass.  We parked in a shelter behind rocks, providing us with smoother water.  After lunch, we decided to swim to the lagoon.  It was actually quite a swim from our boat to the small hole in the rock peninsula separating us from the lagoon.  When we got to the rock barrier, Phil and I stopped to climb one of the cliff faces and do some cliff jumping.  The cliff, which didn't look that imposing from the water, was deceptively high--at least ten meters (~33 feet).  The jump was so much fun.  Afterwards, we crossed the threshold into the lagoon itself, which was a gorgeous blue.  We swam around the lagoon for a little and then headed back to the opening to do some snorkeling only to find a giant sea slug  and a whole slew of sea urchins.  It's a good thing that we were looking underwater before climbing on the rocks, otherwise I almost certainly would have gotten a foot full of urchin!  Before heading back to the boat, Phil, Manu and I decided to do one last jump.  I climbed up, I jumped off, and I screamed (underwater).  Somehow my foot had gotten contorted in the air and I landed on it badly.  With one foot, I pathetically paddled over to the rocks to assess my injury, convinced that I had broken my ankle.  Luckily it's not broken, but even days later it's still very tender.  Needless to say, making the long swim back to the boat with one bad foot that I couldn't kick with was no small task.

We ended our third day at St. Nicholas Island, an island where it's reported St. Nicholas lived for a number of years.  The mountainous island is covered with the ruins of old churches that we hiked through to reach the summit just before sunset.  The view was stunning despite the fact that a nearby mountain almost completely obstructed the last 20 minutes of the sunset.  Although we didn't get to actually see the sun fall under  the horizon, the sky was still painted all kinds of reddish hues.

The Blue Cruise - My First Moon Rise

The Moonrise Over Kas

Did you know that the moon rises?  No joke.  At this point you probably think that I'm as stupid as everyone on our boat did during our second night, but I'll get to that in a minute.  We spent the day playing catch-up from our Captain's selfish change in plans from the day before.  There was mass confusion and perpetual mutinous mutterings from the passengers.

First we went to a city with a really cool mosque for breakfast.  The captain told us that we could go ashore into the town after we ate, but then after our meal he pulled the anchor and we left immediately.  Next we stopped by Ucagiz, which is another coastal town with a really neat fortress on a hill.  We parked there, without any explanation and then the captain mysteriously disappeared.  His two assistants, neither of which spoke any English, proved themselves barely capable of navigating the boat and completely incompetent when it comes to anchoring the boat.  First we were told that we could go to the town, then we were told that we couldn't and that we couldn't even swim there.  After an hour the captain finally showed up on another boat and we left immediately.  When we protested, he asked why we didn't go into the town and swim.  It was very frustrating.  From there we saw Kekova, the ancient Roman city, destroyed by earthquakes, that's now referred to as the sunken city.  The ruins weren't nearly as breathtaking as I had hoped, but it was still crazy to think that a once great city was turned to rubble by a few earthquakes.

After Kekova, we went to Kas.  That's where the real trouble with the captain started.  We were supposed to stay in Kas our first night and in a bay further up the second night, but because the captain wanted to pick up more passengers, he changed our plans.  When we got to Kas he informed us that we could either spend the night in Kas and leave at 4:00 am or...yet when we asked him, "Or what?" he got very belligerent and threw a fit.  It was clear that he wanted to stay in Kas to party despite the fact that all of us wanted to continue on.  The "compromise" was to anchor the boat in the bay outside Kas so that we still had nature around us, but we didn't have to continue traveling.  It's a real shame because we were supposed to stop in a really nice bay that night and, due to his time-crunching, we didn't ever get a chance to see this bay.

After dinner Sylvia came back to the table and said that there was a really great moonrise.  I thought she was kidding.  I really didn't know that the moon rose.  I'd never seen the moon rise before and I'd never really thought about it.  You see the moon hanging in the sky during the day and I always thought it just kind of always stayed up there. (Yes, I know I probably sound like a complete moron right now)  It was really cool!  Yet for the rest of the night, and for the rest of the trip, everyone was making fun of me for seeing my first moonrise in Kas.

Blue Cruise - Day 1

Smuggler's Cave

September 15 -- Today we departed Olympos on a four-day cruise up the coast of Turkey.  We got picked up from our hippie commune at 10:00 am and took a bus for about an hour to Demre.  Demre was an interesting place.  It's home to a very famous bishopric because it is where St. Nicholas (Yes, that St. Nicholas) served as bishop.  However, the town is pretty horrible.  Most of the town is run down and, outside of the museum and church of St. Nicholas, there isn't anything worth while in the town.  From the strange presence of Cyrillic signs, the absurd number of Orthodox icons, and the absolutely ridiculous fashions being sported by the tourists, it's clear that Demre is nothing more than a religious Disney Land for Russians--St. Nicholas is, essentially, the patron saint of Russia.

Our ship departed from Demre.  When we left there were 3.5 crew members (Renee, an Aussie girl, was shacking up with the cook and did a little work so I count her as .5 people) and 12 passengers.  Jill and Nikita were from Capetown, South Africa.  Just from the ride to Demre we thought they were going to be insufferable, but they both turned out to be really pleasant.  We later found out that Nikita grew up in Hong Kong, used to be able to speak Mandarin, and played basketball.  There was also a German-Czech couple--Alfons was German and Sylvia was Czech--who lived in Belgium.  John and Linda, both Aussies, lived in Jakarta, Indonesia despite the fact that John is high up in the Australian government and works on the budget.  They're giving us tons of information on Indonesia so that we can plan one of our future excursions in that area.  There were two other Australians on the cruise, Phil and Emerald, who were closer to our age and are starting a 7 month trek that will take them across Europe, to the US, Canada, and Central America.  Between all of the Aussies, Kati and I learned all sorts of crazy new words.  Finally, two Germans, Jule and Manu, rounded out the group.  Manu didn't speak great English, but Jule spent a year in South Dakota of all places and has an amazing "American" accent.

Our first day was supposed to be spent seeing Kekova, relaxing near a castle, and spending the night at Kas.  However, in what would become a problematic theme of the trip, our captain (Only 25 himself) was more concerned about himself and making money than he was about doing what we wanted to do and what he was supposed to do.  He decided that we were going to change the itinerary so that he could wait and pick up three more people (Germans) later in the afternoon.  So instead of following the plan, we wasted most of the day in a cove just outside Demre, picked up the three Germans, stopped by Smuggler's Cave, and then spent the night in a nearby cove, not more than 5 km from Demre.  Despite the fact that these issues with the Captain would cause serious problems later in the trip (Which I will address in a later post), we had a very good and relaxing day.

Smuggler's Cave was moderately cool.  We got to swim inside the cave, but because of our expedited schedule we only stopped at the cave for about 10 minutes.  Afterwards we went to the cove where all of the boats tied up.  After a few drinks on the boat and a solid meal, we all went to Smuggler's Inn, a bar nearby.  At the bar the drinks were ridiculously priced, 7.50 lira ($3.90) for a tiny can of beer!  Thus, not long after we arrived, half of us headed back to the boat.  Jule, Emerald, Alfons, Kati, and I went back to the boat to drink some more and relax.  Kati and I called it a night around 2:00 am after drinking some Becherovka Apertiv and some of Alfons's homemade spirits.  There was a boat parked next to us that was really getting rowdy and, after Kati and I turned in, Emerald and Alfons swam over to the party boat.  We learned later that our captain didn't get along with that captain and kept screaming, "You are not even humans, you are animals!"  Thus for the rest of the trip Emerald and Alfons were dubbed the animals.  All-in-all it was a very good first day on the cruise.

The Treehouses of Olympos

Treehouse

Olympos is hands-down one of the most unique places that we’ve stayed on our trip.  It’s definitely as close as we’ve gotten to living on a hippie commune, especially when looking at many of the other people staying here.  We’re staying in a “treehouse.”  It’s not really a treehouse, as it’s not built in a tree, but it is a wooden cabin lifted about 6-7 feet in the air.  It’s very much like camping in the trees.  Within our little treehouse are two mattresses, placed on a carpet that covers most of the floor.  The only modern “amenities” in the place consist of a light bulb in the ceiling and a power outlet by the door.  The only downside to the treehouses is that the communal showers are miserable and can’t maintain a stable temperature for more than a minute or so, yet that’s just a minor annoyance.

Our treehouse is one of many in an entire complex, we’re #49.  It’s a really big place, and there are dozens of similar complexes, some even larger, in the area.  The treehouses are situated in what appears to be a garden—there are a number of citrus trees surrounding our treehouse and vegetables up the way—with chickens running free around the entire place.  I imagine that the owners of the complex grow most of the food they serve on-site.

Common Area

Near the entrance to the complex is the bar/restaurant/common area.  Scattered across the area are what I would call Turkish gazebos—essentially raised wooden platforms (6x6) with roofs, three sides of which have decorative couch-cushions pushed up against them, and a short table in the middle.  Being able to relax in these little gazebos and pass the hottest hours of the day is absolutely wonderful.  Our board, 35 lira ($20) per person includes both breakfast and home-cooked dinner every day.  The food is fantastic and there’s more of it than I could ever eat.  For example, our first night we had salad, white cabbage, a vegetable medley, potatoes and vegetables, barbeque chicken, and a chickpea soup.  What’s better, breakfast consists of fruits and made-to-order omlets!

Today is our last morning in Olympos and both of us are quite reluctant to be leaving, yet the next leg of our journey should be equally as enjoyable.  While we had planned to slowly trek our way along the Southern Antalyan coast to Feithye, once we arrived in Olympos, and on recommendation from a pair of Australians we met in Cappadocia, we have decided to take a cruise along the coast to Feithye instead.  That way we’ll get to see even more of the coastal sights and relax in the sun along the way instead of being cooped up in a bus every other day.  Cruise is probably a very loosely applied word, we’re taking a mid-sized wooden sailboat along the coast, which should be a lot of fun.  We’re stopping at all of the same places we would have gone anyway—Kaş, Kekova (The sunken Roman city), Butterfly Bay, the Blue Lagoon, and Öludeniz—and additionally get to see a few other cool spots, like the city where St. Nicholas was born and the island dedicated to him, as well as a cave used for pirating in the old days.  It should be a lot of fun!  It should go without saying, but we won’t have any internet access for the next few days.  I’ll update on our travels as soon as I get a chance.  It’s pretty crazy to believe we only have two more weeks over here!

Olympos - The Land of Hippies and Treehouses

The Olympos Beach

From Urgup we caught the night bus to Antalya.  I had been dreading this leg of the trip, but there was no way around it.  It was a 10 hour bus ride and we had to change buses along the way.  The bus left at 8:00 pm and we switched buses in Nevsheir around 9:00 pm.  We were both a little relieved when we got on the bus and found that it was significantly more comfortable than most buses we've been on over here.  Yet it wasn't an easy night's sleep by any means as the seats only slightly reclined and the bus stopped hourly (Or what seemed like hourly) along the way.  We had been planning on spending a night and day in Antalya, but somewhere in the wee hours of the morning Kati and I decided to skip Antalya and just keep going to Olympos.  We arrived at the Antalya Otogar (Bus station) around 6:10 am and quickly switched to a mini-bus that would take us to Olympos...or the side of the highway near Olympos.  At around 9:00 we got dropped off at a seemingly random cafe/shop on the highway to wait for a different mini-bus to drive us the last 9 km down to Olympos.  After a quick pancake with potato and cheese, our bus showed up and took us down to our lodging.  After over 13 hours and four buses, we finally made it to Olympos.

Olympos is a very interesting place.  It was never on my radar until a girl I went to law school with, who lived in Turkey for a while, told me that it was her favorite place in the country.  It's about as far off the beaten path as possible.  In the 1980s a local opened a place with treehouses and the hippies have flocked here ever since.  I'll talk about the place we're staying in a different post.

Me at the Eternal Flames

Olympos was a very important city in Lycia, the ancient name for this area.  There are tons of Roman ruins scattered around the area that you have to walk through to reach the beach--which conveniently lets them charge you for access to the beach under "historic" pretenses.  The beach is fantastic.  It's not overly crowded, the water feels amazing, and the backdrop of the mountains and ancient ruins is absolutely breathtaking!  The only problem is that it's still a pebble beach, but that hasn't stopped us from thoroughly enjoying ourselves and relaxing.  Being here is almost like a vacation within a vacation.

Additionally, the nearby Mt. Olympos is renowned for its eternal flames--literally, flames rise from the side of the mountain without any discernable source and cannot be extinguished.  They say that the flames on Mt. Olympos likely gave rise to the myth about Prometheus giving fire to man that we all know so well.  The eternal flames were incredible!  Seriously one of the craziest things I've seen around here.  After a 20 minute walk up to the top of the mountain, we caught a glimpse of the flames.  They seriously just rise out of the rocks themselves, from nothing.  While we were walking around, the dark coupled with my lack of glasses got to me and I took a really nasty spill into a hole with flames.  While I did survive, I've got a pretty bad gash on my right elbow.  Nothing to be too concerned about though, it's merely a flesh wound.

Cappadocia - A Second Day of Tours

Kati and Me with Some Fairy Chimneys

September 12 -- Today was our second day in Cappadocia, but before getting on to our tours for the day, I have a quick addendum to the post about yesterday regarding last night.  We had dinner at a fantastic second-floor chic restaurant in Urgup.  As soon as we walked in the waiter latched onto me, both because we were American and because I was wearing a Fenerbache jersey (His favorite team).  We started with this great little pastry appetizer filled with meat, cheese and vegetables, almost like the Turkish equivalent to a spring roll.  Then we had the kebap house specialty, which was good but a little heavy on the yogurt and a little light on the meat.  Our meal ended with a surprising dessert on the house, semolina pudding with ice cream, which was very tasty.  The waiter then proceeded to have about a five minute conversation with us about our favorite American TV shows.  He asked what my favorite show was and when I told him that it was How I Met Your Mother, he lit up.  Apparently he watches it every night, along with a laundry list of other American shows...and the Turkish version of Desperate Housewives that just started.

Now, onto today.  Sadly, Gorkhan wasn't our tour guide again.  Instead we had some young girl who was not nearly as good of a guide.  She was adequate, but nothing more than par for the course.  We were definitely spoiled with Gorkhan.  Our first stop for the day was at Monk Valley, better known for its "Fairy Chimneys."  These fairy chimneys are some of the iconic rock formations in the area, and they were absolutely amazing!  Again, you really just have to look through the pictures to appreciate how unbelievable these valleys were.  The rock formations are the result of three volcanoes in the area erupting constantly over millions of layers and forming different layers of ash/dust along with layers of hardened lava.  Through both wind and water erosion the layers were mostly eaten away, leaving these crazy formations standing in their various valleys.  What's really cool is that you can tell the prominent chemical in each eruption.  For example, in Imagination Valley, our second stop for the day, there are distinct reds (Iron) and greens (Copper), and even yellow (??).  I had never seen rock formations that had such a green hue to them before.  Imagination Valley was pretty neat, but not nearly as impressive as Monk Valley.

Our next stop of the day was at a pottery workshop where we got to see the masters working on an ancient Hittite pottery wheel, that is spun with your feet, and painting designs on the finished pottery.  Pottery is a huge deal in Cappadocia.  In fact, until not very long ago if a man couldn't make a pot, he wasn't allowed to get married because he wouldn't be able to support his wife.  This was one of the coolest workshops we saw on our trip but the prices were a little outrageous.  I've been looking for a Cappadocian-style wine jug for about a week now and these are the most expensive, but also the nicest, I've found.  Unfortunately, I couldn't justify spending $600 on a ceramic wine jug.

Lunch followed our visit to the pottery workshop.  We had the traditional Cappadocian kebap, a pottery kebap.  These are really cool...they cook the kebap in a small ceramic pot for 13 hours, sealing the lid to the pot with bread, and then bring it out to your table and, with much showmanship, use a big knife to sever the lid from the rest of the pot.  Sadly, the pot for our group was too big to do this with, so we didn't get the show.  However, over lunch Kati and I befriended an American couple from Arizona that was on our tour.  It was a nice change to find some Americans in a sea of Australian tourists and foreigners.

Picture of Constantine and Helena
in the Snake Church

After lunch we stopped by the Goreme Open Air Museum.  This museum, in the middle of Goreme, has the best examples of cave churches in the area.  It's really neat to see the churches both from the iconoclastic period, when images and pictures weren't permitted, and from after the iconoclastic period.  Some of the churches had fantastic murals painted on their walls.  It was very frustrating because we weren't allowed to take pictures of any of the artwork in the churches.  Yet, when we got to the Snake Church and I found a painting of Constantine and his mother Helena I knew that I had to find some way to get a picture (For the sake of Sigma Chi), so I snuck back into the church between tour groups and snapped a candid shot, without a flash of course.

From the open air museum we went to a carpet workshop.  The Cappadocian region is very impoverished and it doesn't lend itself well to agriculture.  To help the residents of the area, the government encourages the continuation of traditional crafts, like pottery and carpet weaving.  The shop we visited doubles as an academy.  The shop provides women in the surrounding rural areas with looms, materials, and instruction, and then the women return to their hometowns where they weave rugs and give them to the shop, receiving payment when the rugs are actually sold.  Like with men and pottery, a woman wasn't permitted to get married if she couldn't weave a rug because she was seen as worthless within the community and incapable of taking care of a household.  The particular shop we visited is very respected, having won the International Rug Competition in Atlanta, GA in 2007-2010.  The carpets were beautiful.  If I had several thousand dollars and a hardwood floor in our apartment, I would have bought one!

Our final stop for the day was at Uchisar Castle, the highest point in Cappadocia.  The mountainside in which the castle is built is entirely natural, but it was carved out by men and used to defend the area from pillagers and Muslims.  After the tour we stopped by a small restaurant by the bus station and got some pretty good kebaps before catching the night bus to Antalya.  Our trip to Cappadocia has been incredible, I'm so glad we let the travel agency take care of everything.  While we could have done it ourselves, the valleys and other sights are so spread out that having it all organized and having transportation provided was a huge help and relieved a lot of unnecessary stress.

SIDE NOTE - I apologize for being back-logged with uploading pictures.  Our internet connection is pretty slow.  Additionally, I have very limited (and dwindling) space on my server for pictures.  I'll try to get them up as soon as I can.  However, let me know if you're interested and I'll make sure all of them are posted in a much more compact format once we return to the states and I'll let you know where to find everything.

Cappadocia - Ballooning and Our First Day of Tours

Kati and Me in Rose Valley

Our trip from Istanbul to Cappadocia was relatively uneventful.  The airport is nice, the flight was a little under two hours, and the travel agency took care of all of the logistics.  It was also really nice being able to carry my water bottle into the airport and onto the plain (and to not have to take off my shoes when I went through the X-ray machine).  We really do need to reclaim some of our privacy rights in the area of air travel.  On the drive from the airport to our hotel, we shared a van with an Australian family.  As it turns out, Paul is a senior barrister (litigator) in Australia, so we kind of bonded on the law stuff.  Although, he was pretty taken aback when he got me on the subject of law schools and I couldn’t resist talking about how broken and horrible the US system is.

Our Cave Hotel

Our hotel is in Ürgüp, one of the four main towns in the Cappdocia region.  It’s a cave…literally.  Our room is built into the mountainside and everything, from the walls to the ceiling, is stone.  Not only is our room a cave, but it’s cavernous.  I don’t know how we got such a giant room, but we’re not complaining.  Our Charlotte apartment could fit inside just the bedroom, with space to spare!  We had a giant double bed, an additional single bed, and a wall-length (built-in) Turkish-style couch.  The only issue with the hotel is the bathroom.  I took a shower after we arrived and small bits of the cave ceiling started falling down on me.  Now the bathroom floor is covered with little dust/rock particles.

Panoramic of Cappadocia From the Balloon

The morning of our first full day here was long.  I had to wake up at 4:30 to go on a sunrise balloon tour over Cappadocia.  Kati had been going back and forth about whether she would accompany me or not but ultimately decided that the height coupled with being scrunched in a basket with nowhere to go would be a bad idea, so she caught up on some sleep instead.  The balloon ride was really cool!  There are tons of companies that do these trips in Cappadocia and when we were going up (5:45) so there must have been dozens of these balloons lighting up just before sunrise.  It was truly a sight to see.  They fit about 20 people in our balloon basket, which had four compartments—one for the pilot in the middle and four on the sides where they allocated us evenly.  We were up in the air for just over an hour.  The pilot was amazing, he could take us down to such a low altitude that the bottom of our basket was brushing against the grape vines and bushes below.

The rest of our day was spent seeing various sights in the area.  We started with a 1.5 hour walk through Rose Valley, named because of the reddish hues of the rocks.  Despite the fact that our feet were covered with dust by the end of the hike, the scenery was absolutely gorgeous!  Cappadocia is one of those places that’s very difficult to adequately describe in words.  It’s also one of those places that, when you’re there, you feel like you have to take pictures constantly, which accounts for the absurd number of pictures during our trip.  Our tour guide, Görkhan, was amazing!  He taught us all sorts of interesting tidbits, like despite the fact that most tour guides tell you Cappadocia means “the land of beautiful horses” they are completely mistaken because the origins of the word are much older and completely different.  He also gave us the full history of the iconoclastic period of Christian art and the true origins of the ictus symbolism.

Our hike through Rose Valley terminated at Sinasos, an old Greek town in the region.  After World War II, Turkey and Greek engaged in a resident exchange program, whereby Turkey removed over 850,000 Greeks and sent them to Greece in exchange for around 400,000 Turks residing in Greece.  The cave houses in these old Greek villages are hard to maintain and, seeing as the only people who knew how to maintain them were shipped away, the newly relocated Turks could not live in the cave houses and most of them fell in.  Sinasos is one of the dilapidated old Greek villages in which you can see all of these neglected and collapsed cave houses.  Right before lunch we made a pit-stop at the ATM because Paul, the Australian barrister, needed some cash.  About 10 minutes after our stop, en route to lunch, Paul stopped the van and had it turn around because he had forgotten his debit card in the ATM machine.  Unfortunately for Paul, Turkish ATMs will suck in a card that is left in the machine within a minute!  By the time we got back, his card was nowhere to be found.  Luckily, his wife had a card that they could use for the rest of their three-week trip.  I’m just glad that it didn’t happen to us!

After the excitement surrounding the ATM, we finally stopped for lunch in Pigeon Valley.  One of the interesting things about Cappadocia is that its residents have used pigeons in agriculture for centuries.  They would build pigeon houses in the sides of the cliffs in which hundreds of pigeons would live.  Then, the farmers would climb up to these houses and collect all of the pigeon droppings to use on the fields below.  In fact, pigeons are still used in agriculture in the area today!  Pigeon Valley is so named because it has some of the largest pigeon houses and populations in the area.

Our first stop after lunch was an Onyx workshop.  I never really thought about onyx being anything more than a mass-manufactured gift-shop trinket, but apparently the stone is from Cappadocia and they take it very seriously.  We got to see a master carving an onyx stone which was really neat, and then they set us free in the onyx gallery to buy whatever we wanted.  The other interesting stone-related fact about Cappadocia is that it is famous for its turquoise.  In fact, the word turquoise means “Turkish stone.”  It was so named when the English would bring the stone back to London and didn’t have a proper name for it, so they started simply calling it the Turkish stone.

Me at the Kaymakli Underground City Winery!

The last stop we made on the first day of our tour was at Kaymakli, an underground city.  In the Cappadocia region they have found over 20 underground cities, but archaeologists believe there are over 100 underground cities in the area!  These underground cities were built by Christians who sought to escape persecution and torture from the various Muslim oppressors that came through the area.  Kaymakli is not the largest of the underground cities, but it still consists of eight subterranean levels!  We saw everything from stables to wineries and kitchens to personal living quarters.  It’s crazy to think that people actually lived down there.  While it was never necessary to occupy the city to its maximum capacity or for extremely long time periods, archaeologists have calculated that Kaymakli could house over 5,000 people for over two years!  Kaymakli was hands-down one of the most unique and coolest places we saw in a region renowned for its lunar landscapes.  (In fact, we were told that George Lucas even filmed some of the Tattoine scenes from the first Star Wars movie in Cappadocia because of the scenery!)

Istanbul - Day 2

The Blue Mosque

Our second day in Istanbul was jam-packed!  We woke up early to grab breakfast on the rooftop terrace of our hostel and then headed out to see the sights.  Our first stop was the Blue Mosque, which had been unfortunately closed for prayer when we stopped by the day before.  The inside of the Blue Mosque is just unbelievable.  I ardently believe that it is the most beautiful and magnificent building in the world, inside and out.  The intricacy of the artwork and tiles inside is just unbelievable.

Then we spent the morning walking around the Grand Bazaar and the Egyptian Spice Market.  I told Kati that if there was one place on this trip that she would undoubtedly fall in love with, it was the Grand Bazaar. (I was right)  Despite the craziness of the Grand Bazaar, I think that the Egyptian Spice Market is even cooler.  You just walk down the aisles of shops and there are barrels of spices (More saffron than you could use in your life), tea, and Turkish Delight.  Afterwards we made a quick walk across the Galata Bridge and I showed Kati where all of my previous shenanigans with the Ankaran shoe shiners happened last time I was in Istanbul, but that's definitely a story for another time that must be coupled with a lot of Raki.

Egyptian Spice Market

Our afternoon was spent at the Topkapi Palace, where the sultans of the Ottoman Empire lived.  The palace itself is gigantic and really cool.  However, the outrageous price to go in (and other fees inside) coupled with the unbearable crowds made it one of my least favorite places we'd been in the city.  Until now, I didn't realize how spoiled I was the last time I came, in November, because there weren't any tourists at all!

The evening was one of the best parts of the whole day.  We had heard about this Dutch ex-pat who opened an Anatolian cuisine restaurant right near our hostel.  She's a classically-trained chef from Cordon Bleu and serves a fixed four-course meal every night.  We tried to go the night before, but her restaurant only has 22 seats and she only does one sitting, which books up very quickly.  The food was amazing!  Our first course was a red pepper and lentil soup, with a nice kick, followed by an eggplant stuffed with all sorts of vegetables.  I was really skeptical about the eggplant going in, but somehow she managed to eliminate the bitterness of the "blue tomato" and I actually enjoyed the dish.  The main course consisted of meat fingers (lamb and veal) wrapped in vine leaves coupled with yogurt and was absolutely delicious.  Finally, she couldn't decide on a dessert, so she gave us two: a fig stuffed with candied walnuts and some sort of pudding with roasted nuts in it.  While we had planned to get a Turkish massage after dinner, both of us were too stuffed to even think about it, so we went to grab an apple tea and headed back to the hostel instead.  It was a fantastic day!

Today (August 10) we leave for Cappadocia.  We decided to book a two-day tour of Cappadocia to eliminate the stress of planning the logistics and to get rid of one of our longest bus trips.  We're flying from Istanbul to Cappadocia this evening around 6:00.  The travel agency is taking care of everything from getting us to the airport, to our hotel, to transportation and tours for two days, and most of our meals.  It's going to be fantastic.  From there we'll move on to the southern coast of Turkey and slowly work our way back up to Istanbul.

Istanbul - Our First Day

Inside the Aya Sofia

I felt as if a huge weight had been lifted off of my shoulders when we got off the train in Istanbul.  Maybe that's because we arrived 5 hours late and we were both just anxious to get there, or maybe it's because arriving in a place that I already know and love is significantly less stressful than showing up somewhere I don't know anything about.  Regardless, our first day (half-day) in Istanbul was fantastic.

Our hostel is in Sultanahmet, right down the street from the Blue Mosque and the Aya Sofia.  After checking in, we set out to explore the major sights.  But first, we had to get some lunch.  I took Kati to the kebap place I went almost every day last time I was here.  Sadly, it appears that the small hole-in-the-wall place I loved has been over-commercialized and the quality of the food has suffered.

We stopped in the Aya Sofia to see the gigantic church Justinian built in 537 which, for a long time, stood as the largest building in the world.  Upon walking into the Aya Sofia for the first time Justinian reportedly said, "Oh, glory be to God!  Solomon, I have outdone you!"  After seeing the church (now a museum) and it's golden mosaics we headed to the Basilica Cistern.  The Cistern can hold over 80,000 cubic meters of water and just looks really cool.  The locals had forgotten it was under this part of the city for a long time until it was rediscovered in the 1600s. (Why they didn't think about a cistern being there when they could get water from a hole in the floor of their home is beyond me)

One of the Whirling Dervishes

Next we tried to go to the Blue Mosque, but they were in the midst of prayer so we walked through the nearby Hippodrome instead.  It was there that they used to have chariot races.  In Constantinople chariot races were very significant because there were two "teams" that essentially amounted to political parties, so there was a lot at stake in those races.  In the center of the Hippodrome are three columns: one strange spiral column that nobody can explain, an out-of-place Egyptian obelisk, and Constantine's Column, one of the very few remaining monuments to the great Roman Emperor.

After a quick rest at the hostel, we struck out again, on a mission: to find the dervishes.  The whirling dervishes are a branch of Islamic (Sufi) monks who, like the Franciscans, take a vow to live a life of poverty.  The particular monks that whirl are part of the Mevlevi order, started by the Persian poet Rumi in the city of Konya.  It's a very religious and sacred ceremony, but its uniqueness has led it to become a very sought-after tourist activity.  Luckily we found a less-touristy place with real monks.  Both the Sufi music and the whirling itself were really neat.  I don't know how those monks spin for so long without falling over or getting dizzy!  Then we had a good Turkish meal at the restaurant below our hostel and then I took Kati to my favorite tea bar for some apple tea before calling it an early night.

Plovdiv and the Balkan Express

Waiting...in Plovdiv
(One of My Favorite Pictures I've Ever Taken)

Yesterday was our last day in Bulgaria.  Seeing as we had seen just about everything in Sofia, we decided to head south to Plovdiv, famous for its decorative houses and ancient ruins.  We were still a bit exhausted from the miserable train trip from Belgrade, so when our alarm went off in the morning we decided to put off waking up and catch a later train.  The train ride to Plovdiv was about 2.5 hours and it was right on the path to Istanbul, so it shortened our night train trip for that evening.

Plovdiv was a pretty neat city, although there is almost a complete lack of any English comprehension among the locals.  Plovdiv presented the most intense language barrier we've faced since Hungary.  It was especially trying when we tried to get information from the train station employees, but somehow we managed.  The part of the city near the train station is kind of crummy, but after walking to the main pedestrian street, we stumbled upon a great old town.

Kati at an Old Bulgarian House
(Now the Ethnography Museum)

We arrived in Plovdiv around 1:30 and were only spending the afternoon there, so we didn't have too much time.  First we saw the ruins of an old Roman ampitheater that's still used for cultural performances in the city. Then we saw some of the traditional Bulgarian "painted" houses.  They were really cool.  The outsides were brightly painted with some subtle designs on them, but the insides were absolutely stunning.  Each room was assigned a color and everything in the room played off of the color.  The intricate ceilings and the wall paintings were unbelievable.  We finished our tour of Plovdiv by seeing the ruins of the ancient Thracian city and making a quick stop in the oldest mosque in the Balkans.

By 5:00 we were exhausted.  Yesterday marks the first (and only) time that we've legitimately been ready to go home.  But don't worry, we're both totally enthusiastic again today, I think that after finishing 1/2 of our longest traveling section and staring straight into the other half just seemed a bit too daunting when coupled with the language barrier that unexpectedly hit us.  We quelled our temporary anti-Europe sentiments with some McDonald's.

Our night train was scheduled to leave Plovdiv at 9:08 pm.  We were at the train station, exhausted, by 7:00, passing the time reading our books.  9:08 rolled around and there was no train.  9:30...no train.  9:50...no train.  I went to check the boards to make sure we hadn't missed it.  It was still listed and, after some nifty translation work and the help of a Gypsy woman that took an uncomfortable liking to us, I realized that the board said our train was 150 minutes late!  We settled in for the long haul and broke out some cards and a bottle of Bulgarian wine.  That night we had a bottle of a Mavrud Rose, a Bulgarian specialty.  The night before we had tried Melnik, a Bulgarian grape that was supposedly Winston Churchill's favorite wine.  At 10:30 I decided to check the board again, just to make sure it wasn't delayed further.  My quest eventually led me to the information booth where the Bulgarian women flat out laughed at me...the board wasn't wrong...our train was running 300 minutes late!  5 HOURS LATE!  I felt an awful lot like Vladimir, waiting for a train carrying Godot that was never going to show up.  We just sat there, waiting, all night, unable to depart.

Our train finally arrived around 2:00 am.  Luckily, this train was much better than the one we took from Belgrade to Sofia; it had couchettes--cabins with six cots (3 on each wall).  We got a compartment to ourselves.  The conductor brought us sheets and pillows, I was so happy/exhausted that I almost cried!  The Turkish border was relatively painless, just unnecessarily long.  We bought our visas (nothing more than stickers), got our passports stamped, and after having our passports/tickets checked at least 5 times, we were on our way again.  Unfortunately, the delay hurt.  We were supposed to get into Istanbul at 8:30 and have a full day, but we finally arrived at 1:30 in the afternoon.  Luckily the couchettes were surprisingly comfortable and, despite the interruptions, having a private cabin allowed both of us to catch up on some much needed sleep.

Rila Monastery

Kati and I in Front of the Monastery Church

Yesterday we took a day trip into the nearby Rila Mountains with one of the owners of our hostel.  I've been looking forward to this trip for a long time, but I'll get to that later.  The Rila Monastery was founded by St. Ivan in the 10th century.  Additionally, St. Ivan lived in a cave above the current monastery for 12 years before founding it.  We got to go to both the cave and the monastery.  Originally Kati and I had planned to sleep at the monastery, but the logistics of getting there and back by public transportation were going to be a nightmare, so we settled for a day trip.

Our group consisted of Kati, myself, Nadia (our tour guide), and a young Slovenian kid named Eric.  When we met Eric and he told us he was from Slovenia I couldn't believe it.  Yet he couldn't believe I knew where Slovenia was, much less that it was my favorite country in the world.  He kept asking me things like, "You know there's a difference between Slovenia and Slovakia, right?"  Finally I think I sufficiently proved my knowledge of Slovenia to satisfy him.  Later he told us a pretty funny Slovenian joke:

One day the Slovenians got tired of their bad economic situation.  They got tired of not having any jobs, so they made a plan.  They decided to build a nuclear bomb.  After building the bomb, they sent it to the US and requested that the US fire it at the country and erase it from the map.  A few days later Obama called the Slovenian President and said, "We'd be happy to destroy your country, there's just one problem, we don't know where it is."

He was a pretty strange guy, but it was very interesting listening to Nadia and himself comparing cultures and traditions on the drive up to the monastery.

First we went to the cave.  It was about a 15-20 minute hike from where we parked.  The cave was tiny!  It's pretty unbelievable that somebody lived there at all, much less for 12 years.  There is a belief in Bulgaria that if you write a wish on a piece of paper, leave it in the rocks at the bottom of the cave, and then squeeze up through the cave's top entrance, your wish will come true.  Seeing all of the folded pieces of paper wedged into the rocks was pretty neat.  Coming out of the top entrance of the cave was a lot more difficult than I had anticipated.  It was a very narrow and wavy vertical path through the rocks, yet we made it through.

Afterwards we went to the monastery itself.  It was incredible!  The architecture and the colors are unlike anything I've seen before.  The church has paintings covering the porticoed  terrace that surrounds it and the inside is breathtakingly beautiful.  After visiting the church, I was a little confused because I hadn't been able to find what I went there to see.  Hoping for some guidance, I walked outside and asked Nadia, "Isn't there supposed to be a wooden cross here somewhere?"  She responded in sheer amazement and kept asking me how I knew about the cross.

Rafael's Cross

The wooden cross I'm talking about is called Rafael's Cross and it's the story that makes it so cool.  A monk at the Rila Monastery spent 14 years carving this cross out of boxwood.  Both sides of the cross are covered with intricate biblical scenes that include over 600 individual figures!  It took Rafael 14 years to finish the cross, and the day after he finished it, he went blind.  Nadia said she didn't know where the cross was, but that she didn't think it was at the monastery...my heart sunk.  Yet she got on the phone, made some calls, and found out it was in fact at the monastery, in the back museum.  Excited, Kati and I practically ran over to the museum to check it out.  It was everything I'd hoped for, although much smaller than I thought.  Kati and I had both envisioned a pretty large cross, but it was only about two feet tall, making all of the intricate carvings even more impressive!  You're not allowed to take pictures in the museum, but we had to make an exception for this.  Kati acted as a human shield as I quickly took a covert picture of the cross.  It really is amazing!

When we came out of the museum it had started raining!  Amazingly, this is the first time that we've seen rain since we left Hungary so many weeks ago.  It wasn't too bad though, we were about to leave anyway.  Before getting back in the car we got some Bulgarian donuts, which turned out to be hand-sized funnel cakes.  They were really good.  It was a great trip.

Right now we're about to leave our hostel and figure out our next step.  We're catching the night train to Istanbul, but we may catch an early train south to Plovdiv to explore the ancient city there and kill time before our train leaves.  Hopefully this train won't be nearly as bad as the one to Sofia...the Alaskan couple told us that at least this train has couchettes and not just coach seats.  Crossing our fingers!

Sofia - The Edge of Europe

Me at Alexander Nevski Cathedral

They call Sofia the "edge of Europe," the last European city before reaching the distinctly oriental villages and towns of Turkey and the Middle East.  Once in Sofia, we stopped in the hostel to try to take a quick nap, but it didn't work.  Then we went out to catch a free 2-hour walking tour of the city.  The free walking tours here are an effort by residents to promote a better image of Sofia and Bulgaria, intrigue people with its history, and dispel misconceptions about the country in the hopes that it will increase tourism and the country's international reputation.

The tour itself was fantastic.  We saw all of the major sights in the city and our tour guide was the most knowledgeable, albeit idiosyncratic, tour guide I've ever had.  He showed us the Holy Sunday Church, where the largest terrorist attack in the world pre-Oklahoma City occurred.  The Communists assassinated a beloved general and then rigged explosives on the dome of the church during his funeral.  We also saw the Banya Bashi Mosque, the oldest mosque in Bulgaria, built by the same architect who created Istanbul's Blue Mosque.  Along the tour our guide told us about all of the ancient ruins that have been discovered in the city.  Sofia has a problem building anything because, no matter where they build in the city, during excavation they uncover ruins they didn't previously know about.  The coolest of these ruins was the only surviving section of the major road that connected the Eastern and Western Roman Empires.

While the tour was fantastic, it was too long.  It started at 11:00 and was supposed to take 2 hours.  At 2:00 we looked at the map and were only half finished.  Kati and I were both exhausted, so we decided to ditch the rest of the tour.  We stopped a few more places on the way back.  Most notable was the Alexander Nevski Cathedral, the giant Orthodox church that Sofia is known for.  It was incredibly beautiful but surprisingly dark inside.  We also saw the Russian Church, which looks very similar to St. Basil's in Moscow. The other church of note that we saw was the Catholic Church.  There is only one in the city and it's hideous. The outside looks alright, just very modern, but the inside doesn't look like a Catholic church at all.  The windows all looked like cheap stained-glass imitations that depicted trees and lakes instead of saints and religious scenes.  The most interesting thing about the church is that Pope John Paul II laid the first brick.  The former Pope's involvement is significant because it was a Bulgarian Turk that attempted to assassinate him in the 80's.

One more final interesting sight in Sofia: there's a giant office building with a balcony uncharacteristically jutting out of the top floor.  As our tour guide explained, apparently after the fall of communism there was a very large banking bubble the burst and most people lost everything.  The building in question was built after that crisis for a new bank coming into the city and the architect purposely put the balcony on the President's office so that if they ever screwed up again he would have the very clear option to jump.  This story brings up an interesting political point that I feel required to mention, but won't labor on.  It's amazing to me how many similarities there are between the fall of communism and the current state of the US.  From starting an impossible war in Afghanistan (like Gorbachev) to having an excessively high national debt (the adjusted US per capita debt now exceeds that of Romania when communism fell, the highest of all of the Eastern Bloc countries), the parallels are stark and cannot be ignored.  What amazes me most is that we watched the USSR make the same mistakes 30 years ago and we're still making them, despite the fact that many of the same people are still involved in our government!

Anyway, back to Sofia.  After the tour we stopped in at the hostel for a little nap before heading out for dinner.  Dinner was an experience.  We went to a place recommended by the owner of our hostel.  It was called "beloved" and we were told would give us an authentic Bulgarian dining experience.  It was definitely authentic.  We showed up and there was no English on the menu at all; there wasn't even a Latin alphabet translation of the Bulgarian on the menu, only Cyrillic.  On top of that, our waitress spoke very little English.  Despite the massive language barrier, we managed to order two beers and told the waitress what kind of meat we wanted, leaving the choice up to her.  I had pork, covered with pancetta, peppers, and cheese, and potatoes.  Kati got a chicken and potatoes dish and a chicken salad with pineapple and candied walnuts.  Save Kati's chicken and potatoes, which were mediocre, everything was really good.  The waitress kept laughing at us because we couldn't finish that gigantic Bulgarian portions.  After dinner we stopped in a bar for a glass of wine and then headed back to the hostel, still exhausted from the night before.

The Night Train to Sofia

I'm going to try to make this post brief.  Our trip to Sofia was ridiculous!  Our train left at 9:15 pm from platform 3.  At 8:40 a train pulled into platform 3...a two-car train.  I went to confirm that the train went to Sofia with the conductor and he said no, it was going to Skopje, Macedonia.  Immediately after I walked away, another American woman (Alaskan) asked him the same question...apparently one of the two cars was going to Skopje and the other one was going to Sofia.

We had seat reservations, but there were no seat numbers.  Apparently they sell reservations but then let people sit anywhere on a first-come-first-served basis.  Luckily we got two seats because there were a number of people who spent the entire 9 hour train ride standing up in the hallway.  We were sitting by the window and my folding table didn't fold...up or down.  If you tried to put it all the way up, it just fell down.  If you tried to fold it flat against the wall, it wouldn't work.  It was perpetually stuck at a 45 degree angle...awesome.  We had a nice thing going with four people in our car.  However, then a very big Serbian man came in.  He didn't cause too much of a problem..  Our sixth person wound up being a tiny blonde French woman who had, not one, but two giant suitcases and a huge bag and a giant purse.  To make matters even worse, she snored like a banshee!  The wheels screeched constantly and it got really cold in the cabin in the middle of the night.  Kati and I, sitting across from each other, just pushed our chairs together to make a cot-like bed.  It wasn't very comfortable.  Somehow I slept alright but Kati couldn't sleep at all.

We had an interesting experience at the border.  I was awoken by Bulgarian police several times as they pulled off paneling on the train, checked in vents, and everywhere...except inside our bags.  We learned after we got off the train (From the Alaskan couple) that they were searching for cigarettes.  Why they looked all over the train but not in people's luggage is beyond me.  We finally got into Sofia around 8:30 in the morning (After crossing a time-zone, so now we're 7 hours ahead).  It was a rough night, but we made it through.