Cinque Terre: Italia! Italia!

Ahh….Italy. My homeland. Well, sort of. Even though I’m only a quarter Italian, it’s always been the most prominent part of my heritage, (even if the prominence is only established by the non-existence of any other cultural presence within my family).

Surely, visiting Italy would be like a homecoming. My somewhat thin Italian bloodlines would come rushing to the surface and I would be recognized and embraced by my fellow Italians as they cried out “Mamma Mia! What took you so long! Welcome home!”

You see, I was no longer the blonde, fair-skinned woman that left Canada in June.

I was now a blonde, olive-skinned woman. The kind of woman whose hair is naturally brunette and dyed blonde for reasons of fashion. The kind of woman who slathers on olive oil in the sun and has spent the last three decades eating pasta and swimming in the Mediterranean. I looked Italian. As Italian as antipasto, artigiano gelato, or one-year-old Pecorino cheese.

This may be a bit of an exaggeration.

In reality, I looked about as Italian as vegetarian prosciutto. But for the first time in my life, I HAD A TAN. Despite slathering on 30+ sunblock everyday my skin had darkened. In the past, I had only ever burned. It doesn’t take more than morning sunlight reflecting off a stainless steel kitchen sink to turn me a lobster shade of red. But finally, after a month and a half in Spain and Turkey, I had a tan.

We excitedly met up with my sister Suzy in Milan (despite my tan, she was still able to recognize me) and we took a train to Cinque Terre on the West coast. The five villages of Monterosso, Vernazza, Corniglia, Manarola, and Riomaggiore are all connected by walking trails... and, they are beautiful. Postcard-pretty towns with colorful houses lining steep inclines, perched on top of rocky seaside cliffs, or overlooking terraced vineyards and lemon groves.

Vernazza



Corniglia



Manarola
View from the walk between Riomaggiore and Manarola.

Riomaggiore

This cart is what farmers use to lug stuff up and down the tracks that run along the terraced hillside farms.


One day we rented a boat and Shane, now fully recovered from our last boat experience ferried us up and down the coastline. We took breaks to swim in the open water (which was weirdly terrifying for all of us) and tested out the underwater features of Suzy’s camera.



Each night at sunset we would walk down to the water and Shane and Suzy would share a bottle of red wine and I would nurse a hot chocolate (hey, it cools down at night!)

The crowd at sunset.



Our accommodations were spotless and we loved our terrace looking over the quaint main drag of Riomaggiore. We looked out over the produce markets and restaurants and watched the fat cats about town sleeping in the shade.




Yes, we enjoyed all the romantic elements of Riomaggiore. But we also enjoyed less romantic things…like the pod-coffee machine in our room. We had heard from fellow travelers that they were all the rage in Europe but had yet to experience one. And now here we were left unattended with one in our room!

We felt like we were eight years old and had just unwrapped an Easy Bake oven. Except “You can bake a cake with a lightbulb?” was now “You can make coffee with a pod?”

And the verdict from Shane and Suzy (the only coffee drinkers in the trio) is, “better than drip, worse than hand-pulled.”




The Duomo in Milan.


Marizpan "seafood" in Milan. We saw this right after we visited a deli with 3200 kinds of Parmigiano.

Final days: Saying goodbye to Turkey

There is no host like a Turkish host.

After spending time with our new friends Serkan and Kamal and their families in Bursa, I can happily declare that I have more Turkish friends than I can count (but my difficulty with the Turkish language may have something to do with it).

We were guests in their homes, but they made us feel like family. They fed us, served us copious amounts of tea, and gave us many gifts. We were overwhelmed with Turkish generosity and hospitality.

Here I am with Kamal's sister and mother eating fresh chickpeas right off the pod.


While no one around could speak much English, both parties knew enough language basics that most of the time we understood each other, although occasionally we did resort to Google Translate, drawings or wild gesturing to get our point across.

On the second day we got to see a lot of Bursa, the old silkworm market where years ago you could witness fierce bargaining over the valuable silk cocoons, a famous museum of Ottoman shadow puppets, an old Ottoman village, and even a house where a well-known Turkish soap opera is filmed.

Famous Ottoman shadow puppets.






Our hosts would proudly announce that we were visiting from Canada to just about everyone we encountered. The person at the ticket office, the waiter at the restaurant, and even the man singing the call to prayer in the Mosque.

Our hosts wouldn’t let us pay for anything. One time when Shane tried to reach for the hesap (bill) and our hosts whisked it away, our new friend Penar summed it up by saying “In Turkey, everyone is a gentlemen.”

The highlight of the day was a trip up a nearby mountain where we stopped for lunch. Fresh from the oven sesame bread was served with honey, cheeses, a red pepper spread, butter, salad, olives, cheese-filled mushrooms caps, fruit, tea, and cold water from a nearby mountain spring.


Beautiful 600-year-old tree.



Exchanging flags.


After Bursa we hopped a ferry back to Istanbul and took in a few more sights.

Beautiful patterns in the Blue Mosque.


Aya Sofia showing its age.



The "weeping column" in Aya Sofia. Supposedly if you stick your finger in the hole and it comes out wet you will be healed of whatever ails you.

In Istanbul we met up with more friends we had met in Olympos, Umut and Emre. We spent a night with them exploring the lively İstiklal Avenue.

Emre's family hails from the Black Sea region so he stopped to dance with some people that were playing Karadeniz (Black Sea) music.

Emre (in blue). Emre also has a wonderful singing voice and serenaded us a few times.



The whole crew hanging out at Taksim Square.


Hanging out with our new Turkish friends and their families was the perfect way to wind down our trip to Turkey. Truly unforgettable Turkish times.

While I will miss our friends the most, there are other things I will miss about Turkey.

Baklava.

Delicious frothy Ayran. A slightly salted yogurt drink.


All our sleeping critter friends. This one was catching some Zs in the Ankara bus station.


This one is a modern day resident of Ephesus.


Backgammon. Shane and I played at least four games a day. This was a particularly good game for me.



Hoşçakalın Türkiye!

Blue Cruise: Highlights & Lowlights

While we were in Olympos we booked a 3 night/4 day cruise to Fethiye, a town about 5 hours or so up the coast. These "blue cruises" are a popular way to explore the Mediterranean coastline and there are many cruise companies to choose from.

We had done some research and picked one of the companies that the Lonely Planet guidebook recommends. We felt pretty confident about our decision when we parted with a good chunk of lira for this excursion.

But that's pretty much where our confidence ended and the red flags started to pop up.

The bus transfer that took us to the dock (about an hour and a half away from Olympos) was disorganized. We made stops for no apparent reason, we backtracked, and the driver gave the impression he was improvising the whole affair. First red flag.

During the ride we were told that we now had to buy our own drinks to bring on the boat AND we had to pay an extra 20 TL each for ice to keep our drinks cold. We exchanged disgruntled looks with the other passengers and I told Shane that I think this is what is meant by the term"fleecing." Shane joked that with the driver collecting the equivalent of 160 Euros for 4 days worth of cubes the boat darn well better be carved out of ice. Second red flag.

Next we were dropped off at a dock and abandoned for 45 mins. Eventually someone came and picked us up in a dingy and brought out to the yacht we would be sharing with 14 other passengers. Our yacht was blaring obnoxious techno music and a young shirtless crew member with his underwear half out of his shorts asked if any of us in the group were the passenger names scrawled on a ripped looseleaf piece of paper he was holding. Nope. We weren't. Third red flag.

At this point, I stopped counting.

He went down into the galley for a bit and left us all on the deck with our luggage. A young Russian man in the group remarked the whole thing was like the beginning of an Agatha Christie novel.

Eventually shirtless underwear guy came back and showed us to our cabin.

I would like to tell you that this is the part of the story were everything started to go smoothly, but unfortunately, things were just getting worse.

Firstly, our room smelled. If you mixed one part moldy, one part musty and one part sewage-y, you'd get the idea.

Secondly, it was dirty. The whole boat had a shoes-off rule so I was not too excited about walking barefoot into our dirty room for four days. Parts of the floor were rotting away and the bathroom was in bad need of repair and some serious scrubbing.

Thirdly, it leaked. Every time the boat traveled our room would fill up with 2 inches of water and we would have to wade shoeless through the stagnant water and some unidentifiable floaties to navigate the cabin.

At this point we realized the boat may actually be sinking faster than our hearts.

No one on the boat ever wanted to go down to the cabins therefore we spent as much time as possible on the top deck, even at night. Everyone slept on the sunbeds, which is customary on this type of cruise anyway. But in our case, it was kind of a necessity. One of the other passengers on the boat took the sheet off their bed to use on the sunbed and revealed a black mold-covered mattress.

But we could still enjoy a nice ice cold beverage in the sun right? Nope. As it turns out, there was no ice on the boat. There was freezer for drinks but it was only turned on once a day so that the drinks were warm or lukewarm most of the time.

The cruise turned out to be more green than blue for poor Shane. Shane experienced the ultimate in unfortunate trifectas when he had food-poisoning, sunstroke, and motion sickness for 2 days. He was in a terrible state and I even considered hiring another boat to take us back to the mainland to see a doctor.

But there were highlights too. The water was amazing. It was wonderful to be able to jump off the side of the boat anytime for a swim and a snorkle. We enjoyed being free of the beach crowds.






The idea for the people on this yellow-banana thing is to hang on.


The idea for the people driving the boat is to try and knock off the people on the banana thing.


As it turns out, we were in good company on the boat. Shane played chess with the Russian and we bonded with our fellow Canadians on board. I talked design with an Industrial Designer from Spain and we had many late night chats with Efe from Izmir who had a strong interest in paranormal and occult topics. We discussed everything from ghosts and reincarnation to astral projection.

Efe also had a background in Marine biology and assuaged one of the Canadian's fear of shark attacks in the surrounding waters. Sharks were around in these waters but they were quite small and fearful of humans. He said that his diving friends told him that if you stick your nose in the water and it smells like watermelon, that means there are sharks nearby. Apparently shark oil smells like watermelon, but I couldn't get past the whole smelling underwater thing.



While we adored the swimming and the sun, we were more than happy when our boat finally docked in Fethiye. The cruise was actually cut a few hours short because the boat was taking on too much water - in our room - so it had to go in for repairs.

Shane was still sick and we were both feeling grubby. A Turkish bath was actually sounding like a really good idea...

Olympos: Night Swimming and Turkish Friends

Onward to the coast. The Mediterranean coast that is!

We took an overnight bus from Göreme to Olympos. We stepped off the coach and waved a weary, squinty, hello to the blazing hot sun of the south coast.

Olympos is a beach town. Well, not really a town per se. It's really just a single dirt road lined with budget pensions, bungalows and treehouse accommodations.

The beach in Olympos was beautiful, but very, very crowded during our peak season visit. We rented a scooter and explored the beaches a few towns over and found this piece of heaven.



The water was bathwater warm and so salty there was no need to even swim. Just float in the water so blue it looks like someone was waaaay overzealous in Photoshop. But they weren't. It really just is THAT blue.

Scooting around Olympus from katie lapi on Vimeo.

We stumbled through the overgrown ancient ruins nestled in among the forested valley leading to the Olympos beach.





At night we explored Chimera, a geological phenomena where fires are scattered across rocky terrain. An unknown mixture of gases is emitted from rocky crevices that burns and will apparently reignite if you try and extinguish the flames.



But the best thing about Olympos was none of the above. The best thing about Olympos was the friends we made. The chilled out common area at our pension, filled with comfy sitting lofts and hammocks was the perfect place to meet people. It was here that we met Umut and Emre from Istanbul and Kamal, Serkan, and Furkan from Bursa.



We had two wonderful nights of moonlit swimming, fires, dancing, and singing. Lots of singing. Each night the ring of people around our beach fire would grow bigger and bigger as people joined the group. Our new Turkish friends passionately sang traditional songs about Turkey with a level of patriotism I have never seen before. Everyone seemed to know all the words to every song.

Turkish people LOVE Turkey. And it's infectious. Shane and I hummed along and tried our best to mimic the word sounds so we could be a part of the gigantic sing-a-long.

Olympos Sing-a-Long from katie lapi on Vimeo.

At one point Shane and I were asked to sing a Canadian song. Like a traditional one. Like one that every Canadian would know. Hmmmmm.....

Knowing that there was no way I could get through the entire national anthem (yah, I don't watch hockey, okay?) I quickly struggled to remember all the words to the land-of-the-silver-birch-home-of-the-beaver song but Shane had never even heard of it. I joked that we both knew the chorus to Crash Test Dummies "Mmm Mmm Mmm Mmm" but we knew that wasn't a strong pick. We both felt a bit - I don't know - culture-less. We weren't able to represent our country as tunefully as our Turkish friends.

Luckily, by night two, a large British contingent joined the group so together we were able to think of some English songs to sing. We contributed stirring renditions of Queen's Bohemian Rhapsody and Pink Floyd's Another Brick in the Wall to the evening's entertainment.

Olympus Fire Dancing from katie lapi on Vimeo.

Göreme: Land of the Fairy Chimneys

The bus ride to Göreme was remarkable for two reasons.

Reason 1: I had a breakthrough with my Turkish. I had been trying to use simple phrases from our Turkish language book but had been failing miserably. Single words were no problem but every time I tried to speak like an adult in full sentences my attempt at communication was met with a blank stare. I had to resort to phrasebook pointing, my least favorite and most shameful form of communication.

But at a stopover in Ankara I met a young Turkish man with great English so I got him to repeat a few of the phrases I had been trying to say and realized my problem. I was speaking waaaay too slowly. The secret seems to be slurring all those syllables that are so clearly delineated in the phrasebook together into a nice mush. The first time I tried it and was understood (meaning someone responded back to me in Turkish with three sentences that I didn't understand) I was giddy. Giddy with language power (well, just a little bit of power). It felt good and I was encouraged to lean farther outside the safety net of the English language that so many Turks use to speak to us.

Reason 2: This baby.




A mother was traveling alone with her wee babe. To my surprise, the mother happily passed off the baby to be entertained by fellow passengers on the bus, including us, the foreigners. We played with the baby for at least 2 hours of the 5 hour bus trip before the little one fell asleep on our laps. It was nice to see that kind of trust and it's fair to say it made an impression on me.

I would be remiss if I didn't spend at least one paragraph describing the comfort and near luxury of Turkish buses. Turkish buses have the conveniences of modern commercial airplanes, just with pit stops along the way. Most of the better buses have Wifi and personal screens with radio, movies, and TV. There is a bow-tied attendant who patrols the aisle with ice cream, pastries, and drinks. He even doles out lemon cologne to keep us all smelling like a refreshing citrus breeze. It's all very civilized and lovely!

And just where did we end up after this journey?

Göreme! Göreme is in the Cappadocia region, known widely for its rock formations known as "fairy chimneys." This strange other-worldly landscape is the result of erosion and volcanic ash. Inside these "chimneys" are centuries old rock-cut houses, churches, monasteries, and - wait for it - pigeon lofts. Pigeon excrement was once a valuable fertilizer so the lofts were built so it could be easily collected.



It's a fascinating landscape that we found was best explored via scooter. We were able to explore many of the amazing valleys of these formations and the surrounding historical sites and towns on our own.






Now for the dramatic introduction of the video portion of this blog: flying high in a hot air balloon over Cappadocia!

It really just looks like I'm doing a slow pan over a still photo but I assure you, we are balloon cruisin' at sunrise.

Göreme Balloon Ride 1 from katie lapi on Vimeo.

Göreme Balloon 2 from katie lapi on Vimeo.

One of the most memorable experiences we had in Cappadocia was meeting this family.




We were on the outskirts of a small town and saw two ladies making something on a rug outside of tents. We pulled over on our scooter to see what they were doing and were invited for tea. We had many, many cups of tea with this family (who spoke no English) and Shane and I exhausted our Turkish vocabulary visiting with the mother, grandmother, and three children.

A few locals we met along the way.




New contender for cuteoverload.com found napping in Göreme.