Today we left Fathiye fairly early and made for Patara. Herladed as one of Turkey’s best beaches and also owner of some of the finest ruins in the country. This may well be our southern-most point. We were planning on making it to Antalya but we’re just going too slow. Oh well, it just means we’re having too much fun and we’ll save some money on gass.

The drive was only an hour or two and on the way was Letoon, some cool sounding ruins, so we decided to check them out. These are tricky to get to so it took a little work to find them on our maps. Not that it really mattered. Turkey is so well signed we found our way there just following arrows. Letoon was actually very cool. Big in the ancient world: temples and theatres. Letoon had impressive specimen of both, and no one else around! (besides the guys who collect the 8 lira each to walk in of course). Big theatres are always built on a vaguely theatre-shaped hill. They carve out the dome shape and then add seats. On the sides, when they run out of hill, they use massive blocks to comlete the desired 180degree viewing area. This theatre wasn’t only cut into a hillside it was cut _out_ of the limestone hillside. The middle seating was almost entirely intact. The sides, which had been made out of blocks were falling apart. It was really neat to sit in such well preserved seats and walk such well preserved stairs and isles. You could really imagine you were meeting some friends there for a play and had to squeeze past other patrons and wheedle your way to some choice seats. Also impressive was the Nymphaeum. I gather that’s, like, a temple to a wattery god? You can go look that up. It was excavated by french acheologists and has since become a small waterlogged pond. Which is pretty cool, and fairly appropriate considering the watery nature of it’s original use. There were frogs GALORE in this pond as well as teeming teams of tadpoles, turtles, fish and birds. It was really neat hopping around on the bits of the site that stuck out of the water startling frogs and turtles.

From Letoon we set off back again for Patara. On the way though we spotted a decrepit looking arrow to “Letoon Beach” (or, “Letoon Plaj”). Sounds like a secret beach! Arrow ho! Well the rest of the route to the beach wasn’t signed so we made a few bad 50/50 guesses and ended up driving throught the copious tomato growning-countryside. Tomatoes here are taken seriously. They are grown in the tons and tons of greenhouses blanketing the country and are _delicious_. Unlike the watery mosters that are so common back home. Driving through two or three little towns We eventually made it back to the main road (thank god for gps navigation!) and headed to Patara.

When we arrived we were surprised to find out that access to Patara and the ruins is only 5 lira each! What a deal! No matter that the very idea of a pay-beach is antithetical to my very Canadian soul.

The beach is very very long (like 20k) and all sandy with dunes running into the hills where the old city lived. It is quite a place but you have to walk a good distance to get away from the tourists clogging the closest bit of beach. Patara is a relatively hard place to get to so I’m not sure how all these people ended up here. I think we’ve stumbled into some traveler subset. Aparently the beach made it onto some best-beaches-in-the-world lists or something and that is irresistable to a dedicated group of travelers. There are tons and tons of pensions and hotels here. More I think than people’s houses. Most of them are empty now as it’s the low season. The temperature is still cresting 30c and it’s too hot to do much but swim for a while and then hide in the shade of the scrub growing on the dunes. Still, it’s pretty fun. There were enough waves to do some body surfing and we played in the water for a few hours before spending another few hours recuperating from the weeks exertions in the shade on the back-side of a dune. When we reapeared the wind had kicked up and I was jonesing really hard for a kite. Good god, so much beach, perfect wind, waves to play in. Yarg, the best time and place I’ve ever seen to kiteboard. If the wind is common I could seriously see comming back here and spending some quality time with the Mediteranean.

Since we paid 10 Lira to get in we might as well check out the ruins. They are actually very impressive. Patara was second in size only to Ephesus in Anataolia. A massive “metropolis” of 20,000 people (man there used to be alot fewer of us around). The theatre is grand and has been around for thousands of years and many empires. It’s final use was by the Romans. The theatre used to have well-constructed seating going right down to the floor of the theatre. But the Romans weren’t into that artsy-fartsy theatre crap. They wanted blood! Fights! Tigers! So they built up some (pretty shoddy looking) stone walls over the first row of seats with tiger-cages built into them. It’s really something to see a place made so majestically for such a peaceful art form turned into a circus of glood and gore. Also very impressive was the currently-being-excavated senate building (it’s not a senate building, but it’s something close). And the old main road into the city which french archeologists have re-erected a bunch of the pillars that flanked the road. It was the easiest place yet to imagine yourself in the place of a tourist in 500b.c.

After thta we returned to find a place to stay. This is the first place I’m going to shout out: stay at the Delphin Hotel. 60 Lira (50$) for a room for two with a gorgious low-chlorine pool, a room with a balcony and view, plus free tea and cakes at tea-time. Great place for the money. Totaly the place to stay if you end up in Patara. I’m also going to shout out the place we had dinner:… uh… the Gozleme place run by the nice woman in the run-down shack. It probably has a name but I forget it. There has been a lack of good thai-style home grown restaurants run by someone part-time because they love to cook. This was one. So great. She made us some terrific Gozleme (kind of a Turkish crepe) while we watched and we had another one for desert. I highly recomend it… It’s next to the Pede place.

So now we are back in Delphin, writing up a storm trying to catch up on the travelogue. Which this sentence we are caught up! And I can sleep. Night!

Og it’s quite hot just now. Got to be 30 in this hotel room by Patara. I kind of wish I was on a boat in the mediteranean instead. That was yesterday though. We spent two days in Fethiye since it seemed like there was so much cool stuff around it. Fethiye is one of the Turkish cities that does a lot of boat tours. The tours are pretty cheap (like 50 bucks for both of us for a 8 hour cruise including lunch). The day looked like it was going to be rainy and we had some serious sun exposure to recover from so we decided to try out a cruise.

The proprietor of our pension arranged the tour for us over breakfast and the boat owner showed up at about 11:00 to whisk us off to the dock. The boat was quite nice. We ended up paying an extra 6 dollars to get on a sailboat instead of a power boat but there were definitely no sails put up that day (dispite a perfect breeze). Still, the boat was very nice. There were 20-30 people aboard and it swallowed us all up nicely into different corners and decks. Getting started was a little tricky as a half-dozen people had somehow boarded our boat by accident and had to be shuttled off, then the anchor chain fouled while we were leaving, and _then_ we had to motor back into our slip to pick up two late arrivals. But eventually we got going (the owner spent the next hour dealing with the fouled anchor chain).

The itinerary was up in the air. We knew there was a market on one of the islands, mud baths on another, roman ruins on another, and a bunch of remote swimming spots. It’s to the captain’s discretion to decide what ports to stop in. Turns out we only stopped in remote swimming spots. No culture. Just jumping off the boat and swimming around, then back on the boat to motor to the next swimming spot to jump off the boat some more. Sarah was less than impressed with this. I had a blast!

The cargo of the boat consisted of one german group of about 6, one turkish group of about 6 and mabey another 6 loose fish. The turkish group was the only one that was really into jumping off the boat. I think everyone else felt they had not quite gotten what they bragained for. They pretty much just lounged around on the boat for 8 hours. A few of them went for a swim. But that’s not a bad way to spend a day and I think for 50 bucks it’s hard to complain.

Me and the turks however had such a good time leaping off the boat all day. I quickly insinuated myself into their group when I charged up the stairs to the top deck on the first stop. There were two of them looking a little sheepishly at the water and when I looked at them with eyebrows raised they motioned that I was welcome to go first if I wanted to: Cannon Ball!

I have learned that few nations like swimming like Canadian’s do. In Canada I’m always one of the weakest swimmers and one of the least likely to set the bar for height-jumped. But in Turkey I’m the most water proficient guy on the boat! The other guys were either diving or jumping straight legged into the water. I was rocking front flips and back flips and big leaping dives. It’s pretty hard to hurt yourself jumping 3 meters into the water. Only once did another guy step over the railing and turn around backwards to do a back flip. He chickened out though, leaving me the undisputed king of leaping into the water which is a title I have never held before. Sarah did a jump off the boat’s high deck too! Which I was very impressed with! She stood at the edge and wavered, wrestling her extreme fear of heights. But when she did leap off into the sea all the Turks cheered and clapped for her when her head bobbed back to the surface. She had such a beaming smile it was a great moment for everyone. Luckily the water was warm and the rain didn’t darken our swimming.

The trip started pleasently rainy. Listening to the rain dab on the cloth covering and watching it ripple in the calm Mediteranean was calm and peacful. Very lovely. But it largely cleared up as the swimming started making the day a perfect mix of sun and shade, hot and cool. The boat also acted as a bit of a ferry. We would pick people up and odd spots. Those people would hang out on the boat, and then at the end we deposited them in a new port. Pretty interesting way to get around.

After we got back we made a trip into the hills behind the city to check out these tombs that are cut into the rock Petra-style. On the way a little girl ran up to us and offered us a branch with 4 perfect fruit on it. I didn’t believe she was so nice. Turkey has been chock a block with people playing angles and trying to get you to spend your money. I took the fruit and looked at her parents who were smiling and motioned to take it. We thanked her in English and Turkish and loved the fruit. It was so great to have such a genuinely kind experience. They have been generally missing in Turkey. I’ve offered a couple of rides to locals we’ve met so mabey I’ve just built up enough good karma.

Anyway, when We did get to the tombs it was back to good old Turkey: 8 lira each to make the short walk up (that’s like 6 CAD). These things are not that impressive, 8 lira was crazy. Luckily it was unmanned and the locals just motioned for us to walk up for free. Which is pretty damned lucky. They were like stage jewelry, very nice from a distance but not much to see up close. I did get to putter around on some of the limestone. The climbing in this country must be amazing! I think the summer heat and the winter cold makes it hard to really enjoy it though.

Curiosity satisfied we got into the touristy bit of Fethiye to find some food. Lonely Planet suggests a couple of places so we decided we were probably pretty safe with one of them. Turns out some of our australian pension-mates had picked the same restaurant. We ate with them, talking about traveling and Turkey, it was a very nice meal. When we got back we had a few back-gamon games, argued about gambling, and talked about Australian politics. It was a really nice evening. It’s great to chat occasionaly with people who aren’t us.

So one missrepresented boat trip, an unexpected act of kindness, and a good chat about John Major later: another pretty damned good day in Turkey.

One thing Colin forgot to mention about Izmir: the delicious Izmirian breakfast sammiches called veggie Kumru. A sesame loaf filled with slices of tomato, salty cheese, and a spicy green pepper. Vendors everywhere sell them for just 1 TL (70 cents!). They also make meaty and baked flaky pastry versions. I am definitely buying a dozen on our way back through Izmir.

As Colin mentioned our first couple days with the car worked out marvelously; Selçuk is a nice little town and the day of swimming and rock skipping at Deltasi Milli park will be hard to beat. That night however…

I consulted our GPS device “James” who said our next destination of Fethiye was too far to make by nightfall, but that local capital Muğla (Mooola) was along the way. And a non-touristic university town to boot – fun! Well, let me explain something about finding room at a hostel in a Turkish university town: good effing luck. We spent hours canvassing Muğla, visiting pension after pension and were told each one was full (of students), but you should try the next place up the street. The students giggled at our big backpacks but unfortunately few knew much English and nobody seemed to want to hang out with some lamo tourists on a Friday night.

Resigned to our fate, we rejected the one overpriced “luxury resort” hotel in town and agreed to spend the night sleeping in the car. We found a quiet street, cranked back the seats (they go waaay back in our Renault) and covered ourselves with every piece of clothing we had. It did get a little chilly in the wee hours and Colin was kept awake by barking strays, but with the help of all that sun earlier in the day (and a sleeping pill), I managed a few winks.

We awoke groggily at dawn to the now-predictable urban sounds of dogs barking. We kind of hate the stray dogs here as much as we loved our little pack back in Thailand. We were on the road and in Fethiye by about 9 am, and very happy we hadn’t attempted the mountain switchbacks the night before. We made a beeline for the pension district and got a room at the first place we tried (Duygu Pension). It wasn’t going to be a problem in such a touristy harbor town during the off season, but we weren’t taking chances this time. Duygu had a lovely rooftop terrace, a pool which we convinced them to fill with water (yes 25c is hot enough for swimming people!), and some very friendly hosts and guests. Fethiye itself was unremarkable, but it’s a launching point for boat tours of many nearby coves and islands. Oh, and like many towns down here, it’s chock-a-block with ruins. Tombs in the middle of roundabouts, tombs carved into the cliff above, a Lycian amphitheater and a Crusader fort right in town.

Feeling better after the Duygu proprietors filled us with tea, we headed up the road to the nearby beach. It was pebbly and had a few bars and sunbathers, but a 5 minute walk through the woods brought us to a totally secluded cove where we could jump off the rocks (I took a slower approach) and swim in the intensely turquoise Mediterranean. The water was a little chilly so we swam alternated swimming and sunbathing. At one point a guy on a little boat pulled up to our rocks to sell us ice cream. After a few hours we tried to hike farther in around the area but were foiled at every turn by yet another species of prickly, prickly plant. Instead we chased pretty little jumping spiders and grasshoppers around and tried to take their pictures. Next we drove on to another but far more modern set of ruins: Kayaköy (Levissi).

Levissi was a craftsmen village of 2000-some Christian Greeks, who had lived for generations perched in their stone houses above the fertile valley until the population exchange of 1923. I am fascinated by this event in Turkish history. After the Greco-Turkish War, the Greek Orthodox people who hadn’t already fled Turkey were forcibly moved to Greece, and Muslim citizens of Greece were punted to Turkey. They settled in eachother’s towns and houses, but as 1.3 million people moved out of Turkey only 350,000 moved back in. So places like Levissi became ghost towns overnight. Over the years people took stones from the houses to build new ones in the valley, but the churches were nearly untouched and much of the old town still stands today. I was creeped out by a few parts (the shed where the Greeks had collected ancient human bones taken out of tombs so they could reuse the tombs for their own dead), but mostly it was fascinating to imagine how they must have lived in the early 1900’s without modern machinery. I think that the pace of life must have been slow, and people must have spent a lot of time admiring the view from their little walled-off gardens.

We had a good takeout meal that night and met some of our fellow “pansiyon”ers. We made it to 17:00 (I’ve finally gotten the hang of 24 hour time) then crashed hard on a soft bed after one seriously long, long day.

Ahh the Agean and Mediteranean coast. I really don’t want to spend hours and hours writing this but it covers three pretty big days. We just haven’t really had any down time to sit and write until now when we’re both too exhausted to do much else. I’m going to try to just hit the hilights.

First hilight: extreme personal mobility. We rented a car in Izmir, a Vancouverish city on the Agean coast. So now we can go wherever we want whenever we want, way off the tourist trail. Although we can’t go into any big cities because I refuse to drive in any big cities after seeing traffic in Istanbul.

The first place we decided to go with our new found mobility was Ephesus, one of the best preserved roman cities of antiquity and also smack right in the very middle of the tourist trail. We knew the turn-off because we could just follow all the massive tour busses. It was, of course, pretty stunning. The real show-piece is the restored facade of the library. But you can google it to find pictures and infos. Suffice to say, in person, pretty cool. As was the giant theatre and the plumbing system. Although you sort of had to work out and admire the plumbing on your own, there weren’t a lot of plumbing related interpretive signs. Actually the craziest thing about Ephesus is that it died as a city when the Agean sea retreated several kilometers away from its port. I don’t really understand how that could happen, but aparently it did.

After that we stopped in Selcek which is off the package-tours map and very nice. We hit up the Kiwi Pension to stay at. We decided to book no hotels before hand so we could rome wherever we wanted. Kiwi Pension was our first test of this philosophy. I had consuted the Istanbul indies about the wisdom of this decision and they seemed to think it would be fine since it’s not the high season. Well anyway, Kiwi worked out fine, we just walked in and they gave us a room for 40TL which is like 30 bucks. Not bad!

“Pension” is a phrase I had not encountered before. It is a place with rooms to let which has a common aream, may or may not have a bathroom/shower, and may or may not have a shared place to prepare food. Kiwi had a shared kitchen but we had no food to prepare in it so we had to go out to find sustenance.

We made it down the street when we got mobbed! School was letting out, or something, when we were walking past the middle school and a group of ten students about 12 to 13 years of age spotted us. They then ran at us at full speed shouting “Hello!”. It was a great little cultural exchange as they pestered us about Canada (does everyone have blue eyes, what’s the weather right now, do we eat pork) and we had no way to pester them about Turkey since our Turkish is non existent and their English was pretty bad. It was really fun though. When they were trying to ask about pigs we had no idea what they meant, “pink? my shirt is orange”. Until one of them broke out the international word for pig and started oinking. They were also extremely pleased to find out we were married. Like they had assumed all westerners were living in sin. A group of 13 year olds actually cheered us for being married. Very odd. Some handshakes and hi-fives later we were back on our mission. Until we got distracted by a Roman aquaduct in the middle of the city square.

They had an aquaduct in their main square like we might have a modern statue. So obviously we had to then follow the aquaduct. A lot of pillars were still up and had been restored a bit with modern concrete but most of the links between them were gone. Each pillar had a stork nest atop. Which was pretty neat. Anyway, we followed the aquaduct across the trains and into the more residential part of the city. This was small windy roads and low white-plastered houses. We followed the aquaduct to its extinction, but then we (well *I*) noticed a big hill at the back of the village which was sure to have an amazing view. Which I then decided needed to be climbed. Sarah was not so sure, but did agree to the venture and we started wandering through the town to find a way onto the hill.

The way was not obvious, whith a lot of streets totaly cordoned off by houses. Luckily, a young boy guessed our goal and helped us find the way! All communicated without language.

Once up Sarah and I agreed that the hike was worth it. The view was amazing. I’m sure we’ll get a picture up soon that won’t do it justice. We could see the whole little city of 25,000 people as well as a big-ass Crusader fort we had no idea was there. We could also see the back side of Ephesus and could imagine so easily where the water level used to be when it was still a living city. As the sun threated to set we picked our way back down the hill, eventually, to sleep.

The next day was one of the best days of my entire life.

It was full of simple but overwhelming pleasures. We decided to check out this park south of Selcuk called Deltasi Milli. It’s quite a large park. It contains a couple mountains, a vast amount of coastline, squirles, deer, wild horses, wild cattle, wild boars, and allegedly flamingoes and anatolian leopards! We saw boar, but no leopards. So that’s pretty cool, seeing boar for the first time. They seemed friendly; looking for garbage and handouts. I avoided getting to close and personal since I have to idea what kind of temperment they have (I did think about how Justin from Departures would handle the situation differently). But boars were no match for the view!

As we rounded onto the coast road of the park the trees receded and left us with a brain-taking view of the Agean sea. Below us spread out a bright tuqoise sea laping against a shore of yellow rock capped by brilliant green pine trees. I’m sure we have a picture that won’t do it justice.

We drove down to a beach we knew it was hard for tourists to get to and we ended up having it to ourselves. It was a kind of pebbly/rock beach. All the rocks were sort of the size of a rock you’d use to skip rocks with. Actually, they were also all perfectly flat. Making it an entire beach full of rocks that are perfect for skipping. No hunting for rocks, you reach down and pick up the most perfect skipping rock you’ve ever seen. Rock after rock after rock. When we got there the sea was being perfectly flat as well so I skipped the best skips I have ever skipped skip after skip after skip. Sarah got to learn how to skip rocks. Talk about the best place to learn.

It might seem that skipping rocks isn’t such a big deal and that skipping rocks making up a big component of the best day ever is an over-valuing of rock skipping. But think of it this way: if you died and went to rock-skipping heaven this is exactly where you would go. You don’t get a lot of those moments. The icecream equivalent would be a place where you never get full, the icecream is never drippy and there are all the flavors in the world. It _was_ rock skipping heaven and I just haven’t been to many places that are a perfect heaven of anthing.

Then we went swimming! And the Agean was a wonderful temperate counterpoint to the perfect 28c weather. Chilly perhapse at first, but then ideal. And so clear it was like swimming in air. The beach gave-way to a coast of two meter and three meter high limestone blufs which fell about a meter into the sea. That means: bouldering! Of course the perfect day involved some rock climbing. Great, sold, limestone rock with interesting imperfections just like the rock back home in Nanaimo. Every missed move or blown hold resulted in a satifying splash cooling off all the exertion.

We found a flat rock jutting out of the sea floor and sunned ourselves until we were ready to swim back to the beach and eat our picknick and drink our fill. Rince and repeat. The whole day spent in the ocean skipping rocks, climbing on rocks, there was probably some naked swimming in there somewhere. It was faaantastic. One of the best days ever.

And actually just recalling the memory I am so calm and satisifed I’m going to write about the next day tomorrow and bath in the still radiating bliss for a while.

Next instalment: more beaches but also not finding a hotel and an abandoned village.

Our first last day in Istabul has arrived. Tomorrow we leave for a 10 day road trip down the coast from Izmir to Antalya and back. There and back is like 1000km by road and we have 10 days to do it in. Should make for a nice ten days. After that we come back to Istanbul and stay in the Bond House for a week. We took this first last chance to see our apartments from the water.

Everyone has been saying that the Princess’ Islands are great and that we should visit them. Who are we to fly in the face of everyone’s advice? Time to catch a ferry. After some initial confusion with the ferry website we just rolled down there and found a schedule posted to a board. Indeed there was a ferry leaving for the islands in 20 minutes. First leg: smooth. Istanbul really knows how to run a ferry business. Everything is right on time, confusion is to a minimum and there is hot tea and cold bread hawked on board. Also a live infomercial for a cucumber slicer! Exiting!

The ferry visits four islands. Lonely Planet says the small two aren’t worth visiting, everyone says the big one is the one to see. Everyone also says that the islands are crazy packed becuase they are where everyone in Istanbul goes to get away from it all and there are 20 million people in Istanbul. Anyway, when the ferry butted up against Heybeliada, the smaller of the two main islands, we leapt off hoping to avoid crowds.

Before getting on the ferry we packed a backpack with sausage and beer and we bought some bread and pastries. Our plan was to find a little stretch of beach and make it our own. That didn’t really happen. We walked from the ferry into the park and it was exactly like walking onto Newcastle Island (which is a little island that everyone takes the ferry to to get away from it all in Nanaimo). People and picknick benches everywhere, well trod trails and well tromped grass. Not a super interesting place and no sign of any beach. Let alone our little personal bit of beach. The one big difference was packs of wild dogs.

I am not shitting you. There was a pack of wild dogs that came and started growling menacingly at us as soon as we got there. Which scared me! I had a pair of sandles on and no stick handy, I had no usable weapons in this standoff! A horse drawn carriage interupted the standoff long enough for us back our way to some barbequing Istanbullers who took little to no notice. Although the dogs mellowed out as we got ourselves safely surrounded by members of our fellow species. We eventually managed to lose them when one of the picknickers started throwing leftovers for the dogs (this is why we don’t feed wild dogs in Canada).

Dogs lost, we decided to wander beyond the park and see if there was a bit of unclaimed seafront elsewhere on the island. We ended up wandering around the outskirts of the town and then up into a pleasent looking grove of pines. Coming down from the grove we realised we had circled the entire half of the island and were back in the park (although from this point on I was carrying a big rock around with me in case of dogs). The circular route had given us a good view of the accessable side of the island and we decided to bite the bullet and find a nice place to sit down sans private waterfront. The spot we did find was downright idylic. Under a tree surrounded by a small meadow of wildflowers with a view of the blue Marmaris sea we ate our fill of delicious Turkish food. We drank our beer and chatted about Turkey. It was, in the end, incredibly pleasent.

After we finished we decided to explore the town some. It is a small town. There is almost no reason for it to exist and aparently in the winter months it almost doesn’t. But they have one thing going for them. One fantastic thing: they have banned cars and combustion engines! Heybeliada means “saddle island” and the city is right in the saddle stretching up both sides. The main side is quite steep. That means poorer people live higher up because it’s more work to walk up and down to your house every day. This is an interesting inversion I have read about but never seen. San Francisco had this in spades. Nob Hill was a poor neighborhood until the cablecar went in. Then it was upscale all the way. Heybeliada is still cheap on the hillsides despite the fan-Tastic view.

We ended up walking all the way up to the top of the city and the 2nd mountain (hill, whatever, it was steep and much higher than the first). Where we found some actual peace and quiet in the form of a dirt road across the top of the island. This was really nice. We could just walk and chat about the island and how it has no cars and an amazing view and probably costs nothing to build on. But time was ticking and we had to catch a ferry home.

Down down we walked and when we got to the bottom there was a ferry loading up right there! About to leave! I am a sucker for this situation so I just ran us to the ticketer and then on to the boat. I was succesfully very fast about it. So fast, in fact, that we didn’t have time to discover that this particular ferry wasn’t going where we wanted to go. A fact we didn’t actually discover until it docked where we didn’t want to be and everyone got off. Actually Sarah had guessed earlier but I held out in vain hope until the end.

So now we were in… I don’t even know the name of the place. But luckily it was a major ferry port and an attendant at the wrong ferry dock helpfully told us how to find the ferry home to Kabatash. Which we did and here we are. Sun baked and preparing for our first last night in Istanbul and the flight to Izmir. At least that’s the hope. If we get to the airport and a plane is just about to leave we could end up anywhere.