Turkey: A Village Experience

On Friday night we went on a "Village Experience" to a village called Sazköy near Bodrum.  We found this experience far more valuable than the night before.  Firstly, we had our awesome guide Orhan from Peninsula Tours (that took us to Ephesus) and I have to say that I have never met a more knowledgeable tour guide before.  He also has great empathy with local Turkish life and told us a lot about how every day Turks might struggle to make ends meet and so on. 

The tour started inside a mosque.  It was a tiny village mosque and Orhan explained a lot of the traditions and rituals of the local Muslim people.  Then we went to the local coffee shop had awesome apple tea.  I became popular amongst some Irish children as I encouraged them to use my water to cool down their tea!  They were also serving the bitter black tea that Turkish people like to drink but the apple tea was definitely a good choice.  I had two glasses.  The temperatures were in the late 30°c's (over 100°f) but strangely enough the tea cooled us down.

Our host was on the far right.  Women don't customarily enter coffee shops as it is a place for men to play games and drink coffee.  Some men do work or have their own businesses but many of the men are retired or unemployed.

We then took a long leisurely walk through the village.  It is hard to explain the Turkish countryside.  In many sense, it reminded us of a very dry South Africa.  A lot of the plants and scenery were similar to what you would find in Sabie for example.  But whereas we experience a lot of rain in summer in Johannesburg or the Lowveld, it is completely dry and arid in Bodrum. 

We absolutely delighted in identifying all of the different trees.  I remember olive, fig, plum and lemon trees but I am sure there were more. 

Orhan then took us to a lady who was making carpets.

What distinguishes Sazköy carpets from others is that the carpets are double-knotted and are extremely durable and strong.  They are all hand made and the average time for completing a carpet is three months.  Like the ceramic bowls, no template is followed and therefore each and every single carpet is a one off unique piece of art.

Although standards of living are more modern these days, they have preserved a little cottage to show how people used to live.  I could not help myself by that stage - I had to take a bit of a rest.

Thankfully it wasn't too much further and then we were invited into the home of a villager and served the most delicious meal I have eaten in years (excluding Stephen's Sunday roasts of course).

We sat cross-legged on the patio to eat our meal and drink iced-tea.  It was really fabulous and with Orhan explaining all of the food to us, it was a real treat and introduction to Turkish culture.

After the meal we were given a show of all of the different types of Turkish carpets, explaining the different pigments and materials as well as some of the pictures on them.  It was lovely.  Here is a link to the finished products:  Sazköy Carpets.  Stephen and I were so conflicted because we really, really wanted a carpet in natural colours (I think it would have been €100) but we just did not think we could put it anywhere in our home.  With two dogs and two cats it is not always easy to keep our house clean, never mind adding lovely, expensive carpets to the equation!  Of course, we had no idea that the credit crunch would lead to our landlord giving us notice when we got back from holiday.  Still- I might just arrange to buy a carpet through Peninsula Tours once we settle in the new house.

To be continued...

Complete Turkey & Manchester 2008:

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Turkey: A Turkish Night

As can be expected, we got home on Wednesday evening (after travelling all day to see Ephesus) and we passed out.  We barely managed to eat dinner!

We spent the whole day on Thursday by the pool (bliss) and got ready later to go on a Turkish Night.

As we were waiting for the coach to arrive, we took in the beautiful sunset over the bay.  I don't think I have ever seen such an interesting coastline before (with my own eyes that is).

It was really lovely and even now, a couple of weeks after my holiday, it just brings a smile to my face and peace to my mind to remember it.

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Onwards then to the Turkish Night.  The tour consisted of a short coach trip to a restaurant on the outskirts of Bodrum town.  All of the seating was outside and was situated in semi-circle around a central stage.  The food was a self-service buffet of all sorts of Turkish foods.  The entertainment included four dances.  Unfortunately, not many of my photos came out for the evening even though I tried to use the sports setting on my digital camera!

First, there was a traditional folk dance from a more northern or central part of the country - perhaps the Black Sea region. 

This was followed by a traditional knife dance and then a dance by a male belly dancer.  He was really excellent and he really managed to whip the whole crowd up into a frenzy. 

Finally, there was a traditional female belly dancer but she wasn't very good and she certainly didn't entertain like Alex.

All in all, I would have to say that the evening was a great disappointment.  For a Turkish Evening, there should have had a better master of ceremonies to explain in detail what we were eating and (most importantly) the history behind the various types of dances.   I had known of the knife dance beforehand but was none the wiser after attending the Turkish Night.  The dances were very intricate and it would have been lovely to know some of the meaning behind them.

In the end, when we went into a village the following evening, we were able to come much closer to Turkish culture and to understand more about how people eat and live.

For an amazing evening experience, I would have to say that the Arabian Night we took in Dubai in 2005 was a million times better than this.

Before I leave you thinking that we were miserable, we weren't.  We had a great time and even met a nice couple from Yorkshire to share it with. 

To be continued...

Complete Turkey & Manchester 2008:

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Turkey: The Ancient City of Ephesus

"Ephesus ... was a city of ancient Anatolia. During the period known as Classical Greece it was located in Ionia, where the Cayster River (Küçük Menderes) flows into the Aegean Sea. It belonged to the Ionian League.
Ephesus hosted one of the seven churches of Asia, addressed in the Book of Revelation of The Bible, and the Gospel of John might have been written here. It is also the site of a large gladiator graveyard.
The city was famed for the Temple of Artemis (completed around 550 BC), and both were destroyed by the Goths in 263. The emperor Constantine I rebuilt much of the city and erected a new public bath. The town was again partially destroyed by an earthquake in 614. The importance of the city as a commercial centre declined as the harbour slowly filled with silt from the river.
Today's archaeological site lies 3 kilometers south of the Selçuk district of İzmir Province, Turkey." - Wikipedia

Link: The Ephesus Guide at kusadasi.biz

I simply don't know enough about ancient history to give an accurate description of Ephesus, hence the Wikipedia link. Next time I go to a site like this, I will definitely try read up more on it beforehand though. Nevertheless, we arrived at the site at about 11am in searing 42˚c heat. In a word, it was amazing. Absolutely breath taking. Hopefully some of my photos will show that.

That is the Eastern Gymnasium in the background. At first I marvelled at how they seemed to build the structure of the university into the mountain but then later I realised that they simply hadn't excavated the whole structure yet. (Please note: laughing at me at this point would be considered rude). This really is Archaeology for Beginners.

From the Greek or Roman word for "small theatre", the Odeion could sit about 1,400 people.

The Temple of Domitian was one of my favourites - the Emperor Domitian (51AD - 96AD) erected it in honour of himself and it was effectively torn down after his death.

These statues are at Heracles Gate, but if I understand correctly, these statues were moved here and used to occupy a higher place, perhaps over the Pollio Fountain.

The Trajan Fountain was my very favourite. I just loved the clean lines and beautiful architecture. I would have loved to see this structure at its original height of over 12 metres tall!

The Temple of Hadrian was awesome - it was so ornate. Like the Temple of Domitian, it was built to honour a person as opposed to a god and it was dedicated to the Roman emperor.

 

You would have to see the Celsus Library to appreciate its wonder and majesty. The son of the Roman consul Tiberius Julius Celsus Polemaeanus built the library as a mausoleum for his father.

And finally, at the end of a very hot day, you walk down Marble Street which is the main road between Ephesus and the harbour. You come upon the main Ephesus Theatre which could sit a massive 25,000 people and which is host to the Efes Festival each Spring. Elton John has even played here!

The road out of Ephesus has a couple of exhibits. I found the coffins and the milestones most interesting:

Turkey: the ceramics factory

And so, after procrastinating for two days I bring you day 3 of our holiday in Turkey.

We got up unbelievably early in the morning to prepare for a 6.30am start (Turkey is two hours before UK so we effectively woke up at 3am our time). The first stop was at a roadside diner for a Turkish breakfast. Let me tell you, when your idea of heaven is a full English breakfast then hell can quickly come to resemble seven days of Turkish breakfasts. Turkey is a predominantly Muslim country and therefore they serve no pork with their breakfasts. That means no bangers, no bacon and certainly no black pudding. In addition, the Turkish style of eating breakfast is very different to the English style of breakfast. The meal consists of slices of cheese, butter, olives, green pepper, cucumber, jam, honey and tomatoes. Every day we were served watery scrambled eggs and sometimes that was mixed with a Vienna-type sausage. To me, the point of travelling is to experience different cultures and cuisine but I have to be honest and say that I did begin to crave some bacon and eggs and while I tucked into the cold portions of the breakfasts all holiday, I was unable to stomach the scrambled egg after the second day. Suffice to say, I just had some bitter Turkish black tea with breakfast that day while Stephen tucked into a bit of everything.

By the way, there are Western restaurants and indeed hotels that you can go to that do serve pork but where's the fun in that?

We drove for about three hours out of Bodrum and towards Ephesus which is 3km south of Selçuk. When we were about 5 minutes away from Ephesus we stopped at a ceramics factory. Note to self: next time I go to a foreign country, I must take a notebook and write down all of the place names. The closest description I can give of this wonderful ceramics factory is that it is on the main road near Camlik which is just outside of Ephesus. (EDIT: I contacted the tour operator and got the details! Yay! They are ART Ceramics in Selçuk).

Turkey is famous for good quality ceramics but the factory we went to is especially good quality as all of the goods are fired twice.

 

You wouldn't believe how exquisite the finished pieces are. In any event, Stephen decided to spoil me and let me buy two 7" bowls which cost about £30 each. I've struggled to take a decent shot of my precious works of ceramic art (because of the glaze) but here goes:

Turkey: at the hotel and into Gümbet

The one thing you'll notice in Turkey if you vacation in the middle of summer is that it is hot and we chose to vacation in July! Therefore a mixture of heat, fatigue and steam resulted in us not taking any pictures on the second day of our vacation. In fact, I totally neglected to take any pictures of the pool area at all during our entire holiday!

Nevertheless, Tuesday was quite eventful.

The hotel had a hair and beauty salon and so Stephen and I went down on Tuesday morning for some treatments. I got a pedicure and a face mask. I was really happy with the pedicure as it was the first proper pedicure I have had in ages whereby they use a razor to remove dead skin from your heels. My feet were very happy afterwards that's for sure! The whole time my pedicure was being done, I wore a face mask made of completely natural products. It was blue and Stephen laughed at me for a short while until they slapped his on! It left my face feeling really smooth and detoxed - it was great. One thing you'll notice about some Turkish merchants (although many are the exact opposite) is that they are really pushy and won't discuss price with you when negotiating services. So, Stephen went down for a shave and landed up getting a face mask and hair cut. It was probably the best hair cut he has ever had though - I was watching the hairdresser and he made sure that every single hair was in the right place (or so it seemed). By the way - all of the staff in the salon and the spa were male, which I found interesting. The shave was done with a traditional cut-throat razor and the guy even went so far as to singe the hair off Stephen's ears!!! Add tot hat the face mask and by the end of the appointment, my normally clean-shaved and well-presented husband looked really, really neat (in more than one sense of the word)!!!

The only down-side of the appointment was that it cost YTL60 (that's Turkish Lira) and we'd already spent YTL60 on another Turkish-shopping experience (as mentioned above whereby you are pushed to buy things without being clear on how much they are costing) earlier that day when we bought flip flops for Stephen and beach towels. That meant that our holiday cash reserve of YTL120 (which is €60) was gone by the end of the first day! Being in an all-inclusive hotel we had figured we'd pay for tours by credit card and need very little other cash. Suffice to say, we were sorely mistaken.

We spent the rest of the day by the pool. These aren't my pictures, but they come from marketing sites for Grand Newport Hotel and I wanted to give you an idea of just how beautiful the pool area by the hotel is:

  

That is the Aegean Sea you can see in the background and our room was actually situated right under the line of pool chairs. There is a steep decline once you have walked through that arch and the rooms are all cut into that decline allowing the rooms some great views.

We had a fabulously relaxing first day of holiday by the pool. We don't really count being passed out in our room as the first day of our holiday! All we did was lounge under the pool umbrellas reading and take the occasional dip in the pool. I've always been a bit of a slow reader but I devoured four books on holiday: Shade's Children, The Wind Singer (Wind on Fire Trilogy), The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe (Chronicles of Narnia) and Raven's Gate (Power of Five). (Yes, those are children's books - all four of them - but I still consider it a reading victory).

We quickly took a trip into Gümbet as we had some time to spare. Gümbet is a lovely little resort town with loads and loads of restaurants and bars. There are also loads of shops with "genuine fake" goods in (if that appeals to you) with fake Prada, Gucci and other designer goods. Had I known that Prada handbags cost over £1,000 then I might have spent €30 on an excellent fake, but how was I to know? I did manage to get quite a nice bikini so that was good.

That evening,we went down to the Turkish bath and spa in the basement of the hotel. If our morning buying experiences were difficult, this was just the opposite. The nice proprietor took us around his baths to explain the treatment in full and how much we would be paying. In short, it was absolutely amazing. Once again, I didn't take any pictures of the baths but there is a picture on Bodrum Resorts:

The room appears to be all marble with the raised section in the middle and sinks all around the edge. There is under floor heating and so the room is almost as a hot as a sauna or steam room. The treatment started with you lying on the raised section and them dousing you alternatively with hot and cold water. Then you are giving a full body exfoliation with an exfoliation glove. They then mix a lavender treatment which is applied to your body with a cloth sack. The effect is that the sack fills with bubbles and the effect on your body is almost effervescent and gives you a feeling of slight buoyancy. The treatment continues with a full body massage and finally you are doused in more much needed cold water.

Well, given the day's activities, by the end of the massage we were absolutely relaxed and glowing from head to toe. We certainly slept well that night!

Arriving in Turkey

After a hectic and tiring weekend attending the O2 Wireless Festival 2008 it was finally time for our summer holiday to Turkey.

We booked through Teletext Holidays Online and got a fantastic deal for a week all-inclusive to the Grand Newport Hotel in Gumbet in Turkey.  For flights, seven nights accommodation, all meals and local drinks, all transfers plus an air-conditioned, sea facing balcony room, we paid about £750 for the two of us.  The hotel was four stars and the rooms were modern, clean and very comfortable.

On to the holiday then...

We got to the airport nice and early, which is to say we arrived at about 4.30pm when our flight was scheduled to leave at 10.30pm.  Well, you can never trust London motorways so we weren't taking any chances!  (I still have nightmares from spending 3 hours stuck on the M25 north when I picked my brother up from Liverpool in February).  We soon found out that the flight was delayed by one hour and so we settled down in the Frankie and Benny's for a yummy meal and airplane magazines for Stephen and Killer Sudoku books for me.

The flight left at 11.30pm and it was about four hours long which meant that we landed in Bodrum Airport about 5.30am (they are two hours ahead of English).  The flight was quite horrible and I didn't sleep at all despite having a seat by the door and hence lots of leg room. 

My first impression of Turkey was that it was really pretty and warm.  Unfortunately, it was a lot brighter than this picture shows and my poor sleep-deprived eyes could not take any decent photos.  Less than 45 minutes later, however, and we were in paradise.  This was the view from our balcony at about 7am on that first morning:

That is the Aegean Sea that you can see there.  It is very warm and very, very salty.

Mere moments after this photo was taken we passed out and only emerged at about 3pm that afternoon.