No. 5 Kusadasi

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Today was my last day in Turkey. Tomorrow AM I head for the ferry across the street from my hotel and Samos for jaunt through the Greek Islands. I could stay another month in this country and have nothing but good things to say about the people, places, etc. I'm way under budget which is really nice as things will get progressively more expensive as I head west.

I think one of my favorite memories will be of the boat -- Catch 22 (a not so auspiciously named boat, I think) and the people I met on it -- I'm still travelling with Todd and Kellies. One night we all went to a disco in Kas, Queen Bar, with the boat crew -- Hakkan and Typhoon. [Typhoon loves to dance like Michael Jackson, and is disappointed to know that he is not nearly as popular as he used to be in the States. Hakkan's family owns the boat and he likes to drink Raki (Turkish ouzo). In the winter he fishes.] We decided that we and the other tourists were the only ones paying for drinks the whole night out of the 20 or 30 odd people in the club. But I had fun and danced til 3 am while Kellie got herself a job waiting tables much to the delight of all the Turkish men in the bar.

Today we went to the ruins of Ephesus which was included among the 7 Ancient Wonders of the World -- it was abandoned in the 6 or 7th Century AD as the harbor silted up and the sea is now about 7-10 km further to the west. I thought about Paul writing his famous letters from there and getting stoned by the pagans in the 1st C. Over 200,000 people lived there in Roman times.

As an extreme contrast, Kusadasi is just a huge tourist trap for everyone going to and fro the Greek Isles, but I was forced to get rid of my last liras in the shops here as they don't exchange liras in Greece (shopping is SO hard - you know).

Fethiye was a beautiful little seaside town and I much preferred it. We went over to Oludeniz for the day on Tues. to see the famous beach (The Blue Lagoon -- unfortunately Christopher Atkins and Brooke Shields were nowhere to be found), but I was rather disappointed about how resorty it was. There is paragliding off the 2000 M cliffs above the beach and it makes a beautiful sight to see them gliding above you -- you can ride for an hour or so down. We also saw the ghost town of Karakoy -- in the '20s Greece and Turkey exchanged their ethnic citizenry -- Thrace and other cities -- and there are a lot of abandoned Greek villages that have fallen into disuse in Turkey -- rather spooky.

I've decided my best job in Turkey would be to rewrite all the menus, tourist signs, etc. into good English as some of the typos we've seen are hilarous. Even the official sites have really bad translations.

Goodbye from Turkey. I say Allahasmarladik -- you say Gule gule. Elizabeth.