Georgia on our minds

İ have no pictures to offer you today, just a note on our whereabouts. We spent a week running across the Black Sea coast from İstanbul to the Georgian border. The land is mountainous and lush. There's a stretch even covered in tea leaves. Who knew? We met a Spanish couple on the bus and travelled together into the Kackar mountains to do some camping. Talk about back woods. These towns are in the middle of nowhere on poor mountain dirt roads to begin with, but there is a lot of road and dam building (really, the kind that floods small Turkish villages to create lakes) going on so everything takes a day. Somewhere on my laptop there is a picture of us waiting for a backhoe to finish excavating the road that we are driving on. Really.

We're now in a relatively large (20k) person town called Artvin ın the mountains near the Georgian border again mulling over whether or not we are sufficiently interested in Georgia and Armenia to sit through a few more long bus rides to really get into the countries.

Stuffed (American) football or potato, you decide

We went out on a limb and went to a baked potato bar for dinner one night in Istanbul. The guy reaches into the cooker and grabs two American footballs out. These tubers were Frankensteinian, something you would expect to win the county fair. After we got over that shocker we started pointing at all the toppings to add to our carbo 18-wheeler. There was butter, cheese (ewww), corn, olives, spicy salsa, bologne, pickles, mushrooms, lots of creamy stuff (eww again), pickled red cabbage, with mayo and ketchup (yuck and yuck) to drown it all. It was surprisingly good and not surprisingly very filling. These were seriously the biggest potatoes I have ever seen. You couldn’t look at them and not think growth hormones.
-Mary

edıtor's note - no comments necessary about the 'stuffed couch potato' ın the background.

İstanbul not Constantinople and definitely not Damascus

Depending on how you look at it, we had our first major trip setback here when we petitioned the Syrian consulate for a visa. They claim that starting July 1st, the only way for an American to get into Syria was by getting a visa through the Washington DC consulate. That’s a little bit out of our way, so after some half-hearted research we decided to just visit Syrian airspace on a flight directly to Jordan. Unfortunate, but perhaps somewhat safer. Although this does give us a bit more time to explore Georgia and Armenia. Azerbeijain also sounds interesting and untamed, but I can’t write blogs if I can't spell the country...

And in other news, Constantinople is stıll the home of Sultans. We ran into this kid on an outing with his family to one of the palaces. He had an entourage of tourists waiting in line to take a photo with him.

We start a Bookmobile

It started out as just one book for each of us to pass the time on our long travel days. Since leaving London there has been a scarcity of English books so we try to grab what we can. Add to that our growing reliance on guidebooks and now we have the beginnings of a small library. No wonder our bags are getting heavier.
- Mary

Editor's note – scarcity of English language literature is no excuse to punish me with Hemingway, Dickens and Cervantes. I paid my dues in high school. Sort of. How about some Archie comics? In Turkish is fine.

Gobble gobble...

We both had lost some blubber in Greece but being in Turkey has plumped us right back to butterball status. The food here has been too good. We cannot get enough of their grilled spicy meatballs and kebabs. Pide, Turkish pizza, is shaped like boat hull and has meat, veggies, and egg as toppings. The doners, gyro meat, are flavorful and seared just right before they slice it off the cone shaped spit. A Turkish pancake is essentially a thin tortilla/pita spread with smashed potatoes, spinach, meat and cheese then folded and toasted. Mine was without cheese and very good. They do amazing things with eggplants including stuffing them with meat then baking them to a tasty perfection. Also very popular with us is the salsa type side dishes they make by mixing various veggies together, typically eggplant, tomato, onions, and peppers. And boy do they like peppers. They’ve got them decorating the food and drying on their balconies. Mmm, good stuff. Meals are usually capped off by watermelon or apple tea.
-Mary

Snow Day!

One of the bizzare natural sites in western Turkey is Pamukkale. It's a spring bubbling up through calcium to create waterfalls dropping off stalagtite covered shelvess into travertine pools.

It really just looks like a hillside covered in snow or cotton. The name Pamukkale means 'Cotton Castle', but that actually may have as much to do with the ancient local cotton and textile industries as the fluffy white calcium patches on the hill. The Roman resort town of Hierapolis was built here to make use of the pools' rejuvenating affects and it is here that Marc Antony and Cleopatra honeymooned. We spent so much time laying in the warm pools and under waterfalls and playing in the mud that we never made it to the ruins, though.

Yes, the sign says 'hey tourist, get off the travertine'. That means we had to wait in a line to take this picture.

FrankenMary trying out the mudbath

Here a moque, there a mosque, everywhere a ...

Seriously, they are everywhere and they look like giants looming over a lilliputian town. The ones here in Istanbul are adorned with numerous domes and minarets so the roof line looks like a field of bubbles with toothpicks jutting out. Non-Muslims are allowed to enter but are required to remove their shoes and women must cover any exposed skin and hair. At the entrance I was adorned with a head scarf before let in. I find mosques to be very calming and restful. They’re dimly lit, quiet except for the occasional chanting, comfortably cool on a hot day, have wall-to-wall rugs, and you’re barefoot. All these elements evoke napping and some people definitely take this opportunity for their quiet time.
- Mary

Splish Splash...

Our first experience of Turkey was a water park. To mark Steve’s 35th birthday we had to do something unique. Adaland is touted as the biggest aqua playground in Europe (Turkey isn’t part of Europe last time I checked, but they really want to be). They had a good mix of twisting tunnels, speed slides and various pools, all of which were made even more fun, and dangerous, by the apparent lax in safety regulations and enforcement. Steve got some major air on one ramp, so much that you could see sky between his back and the slide. I thought he might actually land on the foliage. Towards the end of our 9 hours we had accumulated a gamut of injuries including lumpy heads, scratched backs, bruised elbows, stubbed toes and sore everything. Luckily the park was closing before we did any serious damage. We even managed to squeeze ourselves into their sand volleyball mini tourney and left unscathed. That night we were exhausted and, after stuffing ourselves with a cornucopia of grilled meats, slept more soundly than either one of us could last remember.
-Mary

Being of sound mind and body...

Now a little on our safari plans. The more we have learned about Africa the more concerned we are about traveling there, at least for the places we want to see. There are of course ALL the health issues, stories of unreliable public transportation leaving travelers stranded, and the fact that it’s HUGE. So for a plethora of reasons we decided to take an overland route using a tour company for parts of our journey to the southern tip of the continent. We would be stuck on a converted bus with 24 other people for 2x two month trips, camping every night, using shovels for toilets, and crossing through some questionable countries such as Ethiopia, Sudan and possibly Rwanda. We weighed the positives (yes, there are some) against the negatives until our brains were mush and both agreed this would be the best way. This is supposed to be an adventure, right? Now we just need to write our wills.
-Mary

editor's note: Mary makes it sound so bad. We do get to stay in hotels every now and then. And they do provide the shovel to dig the latrine when we are camping. Here is the itinerary -

Oct 29 - Dec 24: A safari from Cairo south through Ethiopıa and Sudan to Kenya. To Uganda and possibly Rwanda to Nairobi (Kenya).
Dec 25 - Feb 8: On our own to explore the game parks and coast of Kenya and Tanzania in more detail. This is a good time to join us if you are intersted in Africa.
Feb 9 - Aprıl 3: Safari of Kenya, Tanzania, Malawi, Mozambique, Zimbabwe, Botswana, Namibia and South Africa

All Decked Out

As soon as we landed on Mykonos we had a sinking feeling. Rooms were scarce and 3x the price of the other islands so we got the first ferry out of there. It happened to be 4:30am to Samos the next morning so we made plans to stay up til the wee hours. We explored the island, which was a disappointment after Paros and Santorini, then went to the port at midnight. There were people already sacked out on the long row of covered benches. We joined them with four hours to go. Steve stayed up and worked on the pictures for the website, powered by his Coke and iced coffee. I was ready to get in as much shut eye as I could so I laid down and drowned out the world. I was surprised how well I was able to sleep given the ruckus that was going on, including some drunkards playing soccer and ferries coming and going. The boat arrived and we were aghast to see the spectacle onboard. All available floor space was sprawled with people. Many had come prepared with sleeping bags or blankets, those that didn’t just slept sitting up or on any flat surface they could squeeze onto. There was even a tent pitched out on the deck. We were directed outside where a similar scene was found except the harsh elements of wind and wetness on wooden plank benches made the indoor mess seem like hot cocoa in front of a roaring fireplace. We got lucky and found a bench that Steve could lay down to sleep, equipped with eyeshade and earplugs. I sat up read and listened to my mp3 bundled in my hooded sweatshirt and watched the sunrise as we pulled into port at Ikaria three hours later. Steve was surprisingly still asleep and my eyes couldn’t fight staying open any more. After people departed at Ikaria I claimed a bench to lie down and slept on top of our bags.

-Mary

Cliff Notes

After long days of looking at ruins and reading inscriptions of Greek mythology we typically go back to the hotel to vegetate. This gives us the opportunity to enjoy the three American shows the Greek have imported: Hercules, Zena, and Charmed. The commonalities are striking: myth, magic, heroes, and epic cheesiness. It comes full circle when you see you the 2,500 year old marble reliefs depicting the trials of Hercules and then later that night watch Kevin Sorbo do it for real.
-Mary

Islands in the Sea

We're hopping through the Greek Islands now on our way to Turkey. We've been through Paros and Santorini so far. We head to Mykonos tomorrow and probably Samos after that. Samos is then swimming distance to Turkey.


The islands really do look like every postcard you've ever seen. The whitewashed cubist houses cling to each other and the cliffs. Walkways and streets form a maze

apparently meant to confuse pirates before tourists. The only part that I don't care for is that the popular islands we've been on are completely dedicated to tourism with maybe some agriculture in the back yard. It is a little sad to see villages made entirely of marble that have been whitewashed to fit into the postcard images tourists want to see. On the other hand, they do look pretty cool.


Here's a bit of the rest of Santorini. These first two are from the tiny inner islands of the caldera, one of which is still volcanically active and last blew steam in the 1920s or so and have warm and sulfur springs.

Red Beach on the southeast

These cool shades were found on the beach at Kamala. They're all the rage here.

Notes for Mazzocco and Johanson

Wine is everywhere in Greece. It make Italy look like an amateur. In Athens, there were wine supply stores and regular hardware stores selling equipment on the street.



And, of course, the monks in Meteora know what they are doing...

The best is still the fine wine sold in plastic water bottles. İ cannt wait until Trader Joes sees this

Fun with Marble

We learned very quickly that the Greeks take their statues very seriously. No flash photography, no touching, no posing near the statues and absolutely no putting your head on someone else's body.





We got a good talking to for this one. The museum guard lady was so angry for the picture but flustered she couldn't tell us to delete the picture in English that she finally just gave up yelling at us and stormed off.












This one is ok. In the outdoor parks, they just blow whistles at you when you're doing something bad. Come to think of it, I don't recall any signs that said no impersonating a statue.

History can be cool

You can't help but run into a few museums flaunting the cradle of civilization when traveling in Greece. They are full of the usual statuary, pottery shards, words and all, but you can only look at so much of that before your eyes cross. Here's some of the more interesting artifacts we found between Athens, Delphi and Olympia. Most of this stuff is from 2000-1000BC.

Gumby was ripped off from the ancient Mycenians.


They played ping pong (ok, it's really a mirror, but that's not interesting enough to take a picture of)

I don't recall what the real purpose of these was, but Mary wanted a pair as earings.

Good thing for me the museum shop was closed.

One theater had comical faces on it before they were stolen for the Athens Archeological Museum. Could this one be the inspiration for Yosemite Sam?

Domo Arigato Mr. Roboto. It's actually an infant burial garb.

I only have eyes for you...

Gyro-topia!

I cannot count how many gyros we’ve had in the two weeks we have been in Greece. They put french fries inside the pita, genius! So good and so cheap it’s suspicious. They have all kinds of yoghurt and cream sauces that they apply liberally. When school house rock said “don’t drown your food with mayo, ketchup or goo,” they were directing the goo at the Greek. We’ve grown a liking to moussaka, which is like an eggplant and potato lasagne. Souvlaki is also found everywhere and it’s basically shish kebab.

One of my favorite snacks, other than ice cream bars, is corn roasted over wood chips seasoned with a dash of salt. They have sour cherry juice that we are quite fond of too.

We did finally try grilled octopus yesterday and it was rather tasty. Not chewy at all and the suction cups were kinda fun to crunch down on, although they lose their suction when you cook ‘em.

-Mary

Stomping on ancient history.

They have a lot of rocks here. And they like to pile them up, especially way up on the tippy top of rocks and hills. Then the raids, earthquakes and gods messed up the neat piles so now ruins are scattered all over Greece. There’s so much of the stuff that you can’t build a subway or foundation without unearthing some millennia old artifact, much less walk down the street without tripping over some temple to Zeus.

We clambered our way up to the top of the Acropolis to see the Pantheon, dragged our feet up through Delphi to see the Temple of Apollo, braved the tour groups at Olympia to stand in the original Olympic stadium, used the fallen city of Mystra as our jungle gym, and threw caution high into the wind to explore the monasteries built on rocky cliffs in Meteora. Twice we hiked to the top of Meteora...

-Mary

It's all Greek to us

We landed in Greece July 15th and were faced with yet another language - and alphabet...

So our engineering degrees are finally coming in handy. We can decipher the road signs using mind numbing engineering mathematics to theorize that DLFI = Delphi. It’s slow reading but it works.

-Mary

Trapped in the land of Muggles.

They filmed the Harry Potter train scene at King’s Cross station a block from where we were stayed in London. Steve gave it a go, but apparently he’s too old for Hogwart’s. I’m actually reading my first Potter book, the latest one. It was either that or Dicken’s Oliver Twist. Yikes, I “saved” that one for Steve.

-Mary