Tuesday, May 25, 2010

Day 5: Canakkale-> Kusadasi

Another early morning, but the buffet was a little dissapointing :( Cheeses, olives, eggs, some breads, juices, tea and coffee, yogurt and fruits, some cereal. I guess I just really enjoy the sweeter pastries for breakfast!
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And then it was bus time. After a few hours we stopped for a break at a gas station. I had a cay, which was of course lovely. Pleen and I also each bought a yogurt drink that we've seen people drinking everywhere. It tastes like salty yogurt and we didn't like it much at all. I also bought two bags of chips, an olive flavoured dorito and 'frito lay a la turca', I think tomato and poppy seed. Both flavours proved savoury and delicious.
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The bus ride eventually brought us to the acropolis at Pergamon. It was amazing. When we had been in Berlin two years earlier we had visited the Pergamon Museum and saw the magnificent altar (?), so it was really something to visit the place where the massive structure had originally stood. I loved also seeing the theater, which is situated on a steep hill! Scary, cool, amazing, from the top seat it seems almost straight down to the valley floor below! I think it might actually be the steepest? My favourite part, maybe of this whole trip so far, was standing at the top of this mountain/hugely tall hill, seeing sprawled beneath me the town, and hearing the call to prayer ring out from all the mosques below. It was amazing, magical, almost spiritual to have such beautiful chants/ music/ exotic notes float up from such a distance, I can't even put this into words!
Looking down from the top of the theater. Those are all the stone seats, kinda scary steep, eh?
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Back on the bus for a bit before stopping for lunch! This place must be used to buses of tourists, as they provided a quick but thorough explanation of the food provided. There was a bufe option or we could sit down to order meat and cheese 'pide' (turkish pizza) or kebap with chicken or spicy or not spicy lamb which would came with rice and salad. Pleen and I both wanted both kebap and pide, se we each ordered one and split them. I also ordered a Turborg. My meat and cheese pide was delicious and way better then Pleen's not spicy lamb kebap. The only unorganized part of this eatery was the paying, as it took a while for them to come to each person and finish the transaction. So I only had time to visit the washroom after eating and couldn't visit the shop for anything sweet for dessert. I really wanted icecream or baklava! Oh well, there's plenty of both around, though surprisingly enough I've yet to have a single icecream!
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Another bus ride eventually brought us to our hotel. On the way I saw out the window the theater at Ephesus in the distance taking up the entire one side of a hill! Huge! I tried to imagine how incredibly awe inspiring it must have been for those in ancient times to have seen such a marvel when approaching the town! Wow! We'll see it close up tomorrow.
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Our hotel room once again has an amazing view! Unfortunately our room was hot! And the airconditioning only works when we have the key fob in the slot. With only one such key, this means the airconditioning will only be on when we are in the room. I'm not sure the airconditioning even airconditions, it barely gets any cooler. By evening it's cooler outside so we might as well open the balcony door, which we did both nights we were there, even when sleeping.
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Since I reached the room first, I threw all my stuff on the bigger bed, haha, dibs. Good times.
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Dinner was at the hotel, another buffet of what I assume is traditional turkish food. Pleen and my favourite was the turkish pakoras with tzaziki sauce, though we didn't know what they were really called. The desert table was huge! I couldn't even get one of each on my plate! After dessert Pleen and I had more 'turkoras', sooo tasty!
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After dinner Barb and Jayde came over to our room where I'd had our beverages from the night before cooling, to finally drink them! We'd had a drink each at dinner. I'd ordered my first Raki! It comes in a tall type of shot glass with a second glass or ice water. You pour as much water as you'd like into the raki, which starts out clear but turns cloudy white with water added. It tasted like licorice, but kind of sweet, so I don't hate it, ha, an appropriate drink when in Turkey, or when celebrating Turkey, hehe. So, having taken some chairs from Barb's room, we sat on the balcony enjoying the view as the sun sat, chatting, and drinking. Pleen and Barb each had some kind of cooler, an orange one and a green one, Jayde had a massive 1L beer, and I drank two Tuborg. It was nice! Then to bed.

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