I'm going to start talking about last week in opposite chronological order, because it's my blog and
As I told the few lucky souls that got to hear this story from the anxiety-filled horse's mouth, I feel like this spat of worrying may have taken a few years off my life. Sorryboutit, blood pressure.
Anyway. The last night of our trip we were relaxing at the hotel sharing beers and stories with some cool Canadians we'd just met. I asked Sezgin (the hotel owner) what the best way was to catch the shuttle to the Izmir airport. He told me that he would drive me to where the Atlasjet shuttle picked up (he was such a nice guy) and that we needed to leave 3 hours before my 11am flight. He walks away as he's saying we'll leave at 9, meet me in the lobby at 9. I guess I wasn't being the brightest crayon in the shed, because I realized that 11-3 is actually not 9 at about 9:30. Standing in the gas station parking lot where the shuttle was supposed to pick me up. After calling Atlasjet and discovering that there was only 1 shuttle per flight out, and they arrived 2hr45mins before your flight time. I had missed mine, and the next one wasn't coming for hours. QUE FREAKOUT!
I knew the airport was about an hour away, and it was about 9:45 now, and check-in for my flight was 11 sharp (sharp as in on the way to Izmir my roommate had missed check-in by 5 minutes and they wouldn't let her go to the gate). So I asked around the otogar if there were any other ways to get to the airport like a minibus or dolmus or several dolmus or something. Nope. So at about 10 I hop in a cab, in full-blown stress mode now. Can any of you picture me SCREAMING at a Turkish cabbie? It felt a little our of character. There I was, perched on the edge of my seat in the back of the seatbelt-less cab, yelling at this unsuspecting driver and at one point my thoughts stopped and my brain just turned into this. [Also I've been listening to this song on repeat all day. Yes the Top Gun version, is there anything else???]
But my fury paid off! I sprinted out of the car at 10:57 and slammed my ticket down on the counter asking if it was too late to check in for the 11:30 to Istanbul. The woman looked at me like I was insane and goes "Uh, yes of course." Cool.
And now the beginning of the trip! I feel as if I could write a small novel about those 5 days (if you couldn't tell from the massive story above). I played hooky from work Wed and Thurs (we already had Friday off) and met up with one of my favorite families from back home, the Brenners. Well actually about half of the Brenner clan, Benjamin (eurotrip travel buddy/ adorable child in the photo in my first post) his mom Karen, and younger brother Alex. I didn't see them until we were actually all on the plane and B come up to me and said "I could see your bow from way back there!" from then on I was just a happy happy camper. On to Fethıye!
What I loved the most was just feel like I was on a family vacation. I'm so close with my family and we have so much fun on vacations together. This whole trip I've found myself wishing that they were here to see everything I've seen. And listening to the Brenners' inside jokes and seeing the boys tease Karen like my brother and I tease my mom was just so refreshing for me after being away from that for a while.
Arriving at midnight to a hotel mixup was classic Turkey, but of course it was sorted out in the end. Little did we realize that mishaps like that would comprise most of the trip haha. From Hector the asshole paragliding business owner to the staff of our prepaid boat cruise attempting to squeeze every last dollar from the people on board. But we all had a ton of fun despite all the minor bumps in the road!
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One of my favorite parts of the trip was the night we went to this kooky bar called Car Cemetary (above) and all had a drink together (18 is legal to drink here but American families are always so funny about drinking with their kids). Then B and I went back to the hotel roof patio and did a classic "share-a-few-beers-with-other-travelers-at-your-hostel-and-trade-life-stories". It was the 4th of July and we met a charming Geology professor from Idaho who imparted some of his hard-earned wisdom on us. Got us super super excited to travel Europe and meet other travelers and just experience more new people!
After Fethiye I took a FABULOUS 4 hour bus ride (4 is heaven when you're used to 12) to Aydin then Ephesus to meet up with Emily. I opted for the slightly more expensive company which we hadn't done in the past and it made everything so much better. They even served ice cream! ICE CREAM! Bliss.
We went to the ruins of Ephesus and managed to avoid all of the scummy cab drivers that offer to take tourists to all of the sights and wait while you walk through, no thanks. We though we could walk from where the dolmus dropped off, but it turned out it was like 3km to the gate of the ruins. So we took a reasonably-priced horse-drawn carriage!
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| It was a bumpy ride |
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| We loved it! |
Of course our muzecarts got us in for free again, which we always bask in :)
After wandering through the ruins we took a dolmus to Selçuk to see one of the seven wonders of the world! We were forewarned that it was a bit underwhelming, "only one column left, and it has a heron's nest on it." But we enjoyed seeing it, nest and all!
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| The one remaining column! |
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| Fresh delight, nothing else compares |
Next stop: Barrrrrcelonaaaa!!
