Istanbul to Amsterdam

The flight was entirely uneventful. We pushed back from the gate on time, and my girlfriend was asleep before takeoff. They brought around orange juice and hot towels early on, and I read the inflight magazine. Breakfast was Turkish-catered, and included what seemed to be scrambled eggs and something like mashed potatoes packed into tight triangles. There was also a nice hot bun with butter, strawberry jam, and Turkey’s version of Laughing Cow cheese. The breakfast also included a strange cup with what looked like white cheese, something made with spinach, a tomato, and more things beneath that - but I didn’t take off the plastic wrap. They brought a tray of pastries after a bit, then later in the flight a tray of candy bars and cookies. The last service was a choice of water, orange juice, or apple juice. We landed on time in Amsterdam and while we did have to wait a bit, it wasn’t too hard getting off the plane.



Schiphol Return

We had about 90 minutes to kill before we were due at the gate - much better than racing to make the connection - so we wandered through Schipol’s “See Buy Fly” duty-free shopping areas. We picked up a couple of small trinkets in one shop for the equivalent of about $25, and then wandered around again. Only once did we encounter the other member of our group who had been on our flight from Istanbul; we later heard his flight to Atlanta being called for a 10:55 departure. We peeked at the airport’s casino and I wanted to see the chapel but for some reason the signage stopped abruptly - you’re directed to the left, and then find neither the chapel nor another sign. We headed back downstairs and my girlfriend decided to stop at a cafe. I had a raspberry yogurt drink and a fruit tart, and she had a doughnut and water. When we finished, we headed to the gate and waited by a wall. Airport staff emerged from the waiting room and began setting up a large security area with six lecterns, forcing the passengers to crowd between the rope and a moving sidewalk (which you couldn’t lean on because the handrail was moving). We were fairly close to the head of the line, and I would have let my girlfriend go first but they wanted us together. The security officer gave us an extended version of the “have your bags been with you at all times” question given at check-in in the U.S., and wanted to know about electronic battery-operated devices. my girlfriend mentioned the camera and that we each had Palm Pilots, and he entered something into an electronic keypad sitting on the lectern. He then asked where we had been prior to Amsterdam, and I told him Istanbul. He asked us more questions - how long were we in Turkey (three weeks), where did we go (western Turkey’s tourist traps)? He went off and talked to someone, then when he came back put stickers on the back of our boarding passes. He asked if we spoke Turkish, and I said not more than hello, goodbye, and where is the bathroom - the last of which he repeated in Turkish and waved us on. We waited a while in the waiting room, and when they called rows 32 and higher we headed for row 36. I had managed to get seats A and B, which are a pair on one side of the plane. There’s an aisle, a row of five seats, another aisle, and two more seats. my girlfriend let me have the window, and we sat at the gate for 45 minutes or so before pushing back around noon.



Amsterdam to Washington

We didn’t have to wait long on the runway; we taxied into position, waited our turn, and took off. I declined the first beverage service, and when it was time for the meal I was alarmed that they didn’t bring our vegetarian plates, and it didn’t help when my girlfriend confirmed that yes, on occasion they really do give away special meals to people who didn’t order them. It turned out that the regular pasta plate was vegetarian, though, so we had what was supposed to be pasta with tomato sauce but was more pasta with overcooked vegetables and light reddish-orange goo. The dish also included a mix of salads, a room temperature bun with margarine, and a strange dessert. It was partly chocolate so I didn’t have any, but my girlfriend didn’t finish hers. The pink grapefruit juice was a bit sweeter than I would have liked, but it was still good. Because we were awake, we both watched the movie. It wasn’t very good, but it did kill at least 90 minutes, and maybe as much as two hours. Around the time we hit the East Coast and turned south, they served a snack of pizza and ice cream. My girlfriend determined the pizza was worse than school pizza, and while the ice cream pops were okay, they were dipped in chocolate. She tried eating off the chocolate and letting me have the vanilla ice cream inside, but all we did was make a mess. We were just a few rows from the back of the plane, so when we landed it took forever to get out. We went under the sign for US citizens and had our customs declarations stamped, then went to wait by a luggage carousel. One of our suitcases turned up fairly quickly, but we had to wait a while for the next one. We each took a bag and went up to a customs agent. The only thing she asked was if our bags had been with us since arrival, but when I passed through she pulled my girlfriend’s declaration back out and looked at it, probably because we had the same address and each family only needs one declaration. We found the taxi counter, and I went to get some cash from an ATM. There was nothing unusual about the ride home, and we deposited our suitcases right inside the front door.

Extension Day Two

I had breakfast in the hotel again, and when my girlfriend woke up we went to McDonald’s. Not seeing a breakfast menu, we ended up ordering cherry pies, but would have to wait seven minutes for them to be cooked. I almost finished my soda in that time, and when my girlfriend was nearly done with her orange juice she went to see if the pies were ready. Sure enough, the girl was just bringing them. They were just out of the oven and for some reason I ignored the Caution: Filling Is Hot warning, lightly burning my tongue and fingers. We caught a taxi and my girlfriend gave instructions I couldn’t hear to the driver. I don’t know what she said or what she thought she said, but the driver apparently thought she said something else because we ended up somewhere other than the bazaar. We explained this wasn’t what we wanted, and when I said “kapali” he finished “çarisi” and nodded. He even reset the meter back to its starting point of 500,000 lira before starting again. On the way I told my girlfriend of my plan to get a costume, and when we got there that was the first thing we looked for. I found one that fit me reasonably well, and while I liked the colors they had, my girlfriend determined I looked best in the iridescent white. The salesman met my offer of 35 million, but because it was the first I had found I didn’t want to buy right away. I think that was an error - he expected me to buy now that he had met my price. We took a card and I noted landmarks so we could find the shop again. We looked in other stores, but it wasn’t until we found a shop specializing in costumes that I tried another on. It was lilac and gold, and very pretty - but the top was much too big. The woman showed me how she could fix that in five minutes, so we drank apple tea and talked to the seller. I had 55 million in my pocket, and decided to offer 50 million now and go up to 55 million if he offered that. But even when my girlfriend explained I was a student (false) without much money (true) he wouldn’t go below 60 million. I’m sure that’s a very good price for a full outfit with beaded top, belt, cuffs, and headband plus matching chiffon scarf, but my girlfriend pointed out that it was twice what I had budgeted so I declined. In addition, it had started at 75 million lira and I didn’t feel they were giving enough of a discount - the first shop started at 60 million for beaded top and belt, and while that wasn’t as complete a set it was more affordable and therefore better. We looked around some more, buying trinkets as we went. While buying a gift I realized I had left my bag in the store with the lilac costume. my girlfriend stayed with the gift while I ran off to retrieve my bag. Unfortunately I had only a vague idea of where the store was, so I ran all over attracting stares from vendors (I buttoned my overshirt) and a police officer (I slowed down and tried to look calm). I finally spotted the distinctive storefront, and I clattered down the stairs. My bag was right where I had left it, and the woman said she thought it belonged to a girl who was still there from when I was. As she handed me the bag she said it was no problem and it was safe here; that reminded me how friendly most Turks are, and I was glad she was so nice even after I had put on a costume, haggled over it, and then not purchased. When I got back upstairs it was considerably easier to find my girlfriend - it turned out the store with the gift was just a few aisles away. We continued to look around, and I tried to keep from being frustrated or discouraged too easily, but eventually I decided it was time to find the first shop and get the white outfit. The salesman insisted we couldn’t possibly have agreed on 35 million, that 50 million was the last price, so we found the man who had met my price and he stuck to it - but my girlfriend and I both had the feeling he went lower than he was supposed to, and hopefully the owner didn’t yell at him too much. We shopped a bit more, then stopped at the first place we found for lunch. my girlfriend had soup and bread with water, and I had a small salad. After walking around the bazaar some more we decided we would have to balance cost and quality with how much our feet hurt, so we bought a few more trinkets and gifts in rapid succession and left. We walked outside for a while before I finally found a taxi to hail; traffic crept along at rush hour pace for a while but we finally arrived at Taksim Square and the driver rounded our price down to two million. Had it been very close to three he’d have rounded up, but apparently they don’t expect tips so we gave him two million. Neither of us had wanted to risk encountering a Turkish toilet at the bazaar (I’d only been forced to use one once, and I gave up and just took off my pants - almost all public bathroom stalls are mini-rooms anyway, so no one could tell) and we hurried the few blocks from the square - which, by the way, looks circular to me - to our hotel. After we had put our bags down and relaxed, I asked what we should do for dinner. my girlfriend felt we should have pizza delivery, and while I knew the nearby Pizza Hut delivered we didn’t feel like trying to conduct business over the phone. I volunteered to run across the street, and when I got there ordered a plain cheese pizza. In the 20 minutes I had to wait, I went outside and bought t-shirts from a man carrying an armload and offering five for 10 million. I picked out two and offered 5 million, but he kept trying to get me to buy two more - he even said if I bought four he’d give me one free, which, yes, I’d expect if he had been hawking five for 10 million before I walked up. I insisted I only needed two, and I brought them up to our room along with some drinks from the market. By the time I returned to Pizza Hut the order was ready, so I carried it back and we watched CNN while we ate. The first time in Istanbul we’d had MTV India, and it was there the first day we returned, but for some reason it was no longer on any channel. We did some packing for a bit, then around 8:00pm I suggested a nap so my girlfriend set the alarm for 10:00. I woke up at about 10:30 and realized the alarm was set to 10:00am. my girlfriend didn’t feel like waking up anyway, so she reset the alarm to 3:00am and fell back asleep around 11:00. I stayed up a bit longer, then at midnight or so I went to bed. I was up again around 2:00, and my girlfriend woke up just before the alarm went off. She finished packing our suitcases and I got my carry-on bag ready with some snacks and books and things. There were eight members of our group going to the airport at the same time, and I had expected the other six to be mostly quiet on the ride because of the early hour but they talked the entire way. We checked in with a minimum of trouble, and went to the food court to see about breakfast. Burger King didn’t have a breakfast menu either, so it looks like Turkish fast food places just don’t have breakfast. We were able to order a BeanBurger instead, though, which was good enough to count as food. We looked around in the gift shops a bit, and by the time we made it to the gate we didn’t have to sit long.

Extension Day One

I went to breakfast the next morning, and when I returned to fetch my girlfriend we decided to return to Topkapi Sarayi. The cab driver played Turkish music on the way, and pointed out major sights - we didn’t tell him we already knew what they were. There were a lot of school groups at the palace, but we got to see the costumes and portraits we’d missed the first time. We tried to stop at the Konyali restaurant on the palace grounds, but I decided two million lira was too much to pay for a can of soda. We wanted to see the harem section (an additional 4 million after the main entrance fee of 7 million), but the line stayed very long the whole time we were there, so we gave up. We rested on a bench outside the gate, and fed some cold cuts to a pair of cats - one reacted the same way the cat near the Süleymaniye Camii did, becoming all teeth and claws at the smell of the meat. I had that cat on my lap and we were both petting it when a Japanese tourist asked if she could take our picture - of course we let her. We tried to see the Istanbul Arkeoloji Müzesi (Istanbul Archeological Museum), but it turned out to be closed on Mondays. Why we weren’t told that before walking down the hill to the dead end is a mystery, but we made it back up to the top. I saw a sign for the Turk ve Islam Eserleri Müzesi (Museum of Turkish and Islamic Art), but the sign indicated that was also closed on Mondays. We ended up walking around a bit, and I tried to feed a couple of cats in an alley but they were the opposite of the cats in the high-traffic areas: I ended up tossing scraps because they wouldn’t come close. I found a present for my mom in a handicrafts shop, and we had lunch in a cute restaurant before taking a taxi back to Taksim Square so we could walk to the hotel. As we were waiting to cross the street, a man who seemed to be selling something walked up to my girlfriend and started chattering in Turkish. She tried saying “I’m sorry, I don’t speak Turkish,” but he kept going. I suspect he, like a number of other people in Turkey, thought she looked Mediterranean - she’s heard that several times in the last few weeks, and at least once or twice today from vendors trying to strike up a conversation they hope will lead to us buying something. We’re planning on returning to Kapali Çarisi, and I’m thinking about getting a harem/belly dancing costume, but I think I’ll only purchase if it’s under 30 million lira or so. In the evening, we went over to Istikal Caddesi and found the vegetarian restaurant Nature and Peace, which had been mentioned in our Lonely Planet guidebook. This was the first restaurant that actually provided us with water - everywhere else you had to pay for it. It’s generally inexpensive, but you still have to pay for the privilege of bottled water - I wonder if they’d give you tap water at no charge. The food was pretty bland, but good enough. They were playing quiet music with Spanish lyrics, and we agreed it was nice to hear something other than Turkish or American pop.

Travel and Istanbul

The bus left at 7:30am for Istanbul, and we arrived around 2:00pm. I convinced my girlfriend to go to McDonald’s for lunch, and we found they play loud Muzak versions of old English-language pop songs - we heard “How Deep is Your Love,” “Close to You,” and something my girlfriend said was by the Beatles, but I didn’t hear what. We relaxed a bit in the hotel room, and a while later I went over to Istiklal Caddesi to look around. I got back just as dinner was beginning, and ended up having another omelet. We said goodbye to everyone when dinner ended, and watched some Deutsche Welle before going to bed.

Travel and Ankara

We rode to Ankara the next morning, and had lunch just outside the city. We were only scheduled to see Anit Kabir (Atatürk’s mausoleum), but our guide decided to move the museum visit up one day so we could get an early start to Istanbul. We got the first rain of the trip while at the mausoleum, but it was just a light rain that didn’t get you very wet. It was fairly cold, though, so we hurried into the building where Atatürk’s cenotaph stands. He’s actually buried several feet below the marker, but that’s not immediately obvious because it’s shaped sort of like a sarcophagus. We waited a few minutes for the rain to end, and by the time we got outside it was sunny again. There are two other exhibits at the site; the one showcasing his personal effects was crowded but nobody seemed interested in the cars he used. Turkey’s second president, Ismet Inönü, is buried across the courtyard from the building housing Atatürk’s marker, and the next thing you see is, of course, the gift shop. They had what looked like interesting books, but the titles were all in Turkish and the cashiers were already busy so I didn’t bother asking. We went to the Anadolu Medeniyetleri Müzesi (Museum of Anatolian Civilizations) next, which at the time I found boring, but looking back on it I liked seeing pretty much all of what was there. I had hoped the gift shop would have jewelry replicating the ancient pieces, but all they had was the same stuff we saw just about everywhere else at about twice the price. We finally made it to our hotel, where we had a served dinner rather than buffet-style. They already planned for the possibility of vegetarians, so my girlfriend and I ordered omelets. They weren’t expecting anyone to be allergic to chocolate, though, so I declined the dessert they offered everyone. I was very surprised when a waiter brought out a plate with an orange and an apple! We tried to go to the hotel’s art gallery after dinner, but it was closed. Instead we realized that we needed to visit an ATM, so I asked at the front desk where to find one. We tried to follow the directions, but it was dark and vaguely scary (I thought) so we turned back. I tried asking at the desk again, and they actually sent a bellhop to show us the way. He walked us about one long city block, and sure enough there was the Yapi Kredi building. I tried to withdraw 300 million lira, but the machine refused. I tried 100 million, and again no luck. I tried 10 million to see if I could get any money - and it gave me that. It even gave me 50 million all at once, so I slowly coaxed 210 million lira out of the machine. my girlfriend warned me that my card might not work by the time we got home, because they might notice two failed attempts for a lot of money followed by several successful small transactions.

Cappadocia Day Two

We left at 9am to see Maziköy, one of Cappadocia’s underground cities. It takes a lot more imagination to picture ancient civilizations there; everything is much more crude than Roman ruins. It’s probably about as easily understood as Troy; the most recognizable features are ventilation shafts and the altar in the room that served as a church. After leaving the underground city, we were invited to a wedding party in town. The children, most of whom were in school uniforms, kept asking us “photo? photo?” - we later found they were hoping to get money for letting us take their pictures. The girls asked us if we had any lipstick, and several small ones just said “money money?” We had lunch at a restaurant on some campgrounds, and decided it was very good. This was the first time we’d had halvah on the dessert table, and as it was our guide’s first time visiting that restaurant he said he’d definitely tell all his friends and bring future tour groups there. I was tired after lunch, so I went back to the hotel while my girlfriend went on the carpet factory tour. I wrote some postcards and watched a French movie (the subtitles were also in French, and using them I was able to keep track of the plot), then decided I wanted to take a nap. I took the key off the keyring, and wrote our last names on an envelope. I dropped the key into the envelope and put it just outside the door so my girlfriend could get in without having to wake me. It turned out she had bought a large wool-on-cotton carpet for a room on the bottom floor of our house. Unfortunately that’s where the cats like to eat whatever they catch and bring in, so we’ll have to devise a way to keep them out of that room. Before dinner I took a picture of the view from our window. About 85-90% of the buildings we’ve seen in Turkey have red tiled roofs. I’ve never seen anything like this - no matter where you look, there are the same red tiles, in varying conditions matching the state of the house beneath.

Cappadocia Day One

Now that we’ve come inland a bit, it’s easier to get away with wearing only one shirt. In the larger coastal cities, if we wore just a turtleneck or t-shirt all the men stared at us. I’m pretty sure this doesn’t happen to the older women in our group. We’ve found ourselves wearing a sweatshirt or other overshirt in addition to whatever else we’re wearing; my girlfriend noticed even the local girls who don’t cover their hair still layer their clothing as we are. They don’t seem to stare as much in Cappadocia, fortunately. I was glad to see a variety of cereals at breakfast. They still had corn flakes, but they also had sweetened corn flakes, a granola-type cereal, and a few I couldn’t identify. Unfortunately the orange drink is only almost bearable, as it’s obviously Tang. We went to the Göreme Open Air Museum in the morning. I was impressed by what the ancient Christians could do with a piece of rock, but felt antsy the whole time. Lunch was awfully boring; our guide later said it used to be a good place but apparently the management changed. In the afternoon we went to one of Cappadocia’s numerous pottery factories. We were given a demonstration of how they make the painted plates, and then we were taken for a demonstration of their red clay work. When the artist had finished making a teapot, the factory guide asked for a volunteer. Nobody else was speaking up, so I went ahead and raised my hand. He gave me a pair of clown-type pants, in orange and of course way too big for me. I couldn’t kick the wheel and follow instructions at the same time, so the artist kept the wheel going and helped me make the shape. I’m not sure what I was supposed to be making, but because of the hole in the bottom we decided it was a flowerpot. By the time I got my hands scrubbed clean, the group had moved on to the “we gave you a tour, now buy our expensive stuff” room. We liked a lot of the pieces (including an Artemis statue about 5 feet tall for nearly $8000), but just couldn’t afford any of it. After dinner most of the group went to a folklore night, which included native dancing and belly dancing. The native girls had several beautiful costumes, and I noticed they made noises similar to those the Hungarian girls made when we saw the Hungarian dance performance. They didn’t seem to be calling to each other as the Hungarians did, but the noise was the same high-pitched trilling. The belly dancer wasn’t very good, but she recruited a member of our group and a Chinese tourist for a play lesson - she made both of them take off their shirts and imitate what she was doing. The drinks were free, so in addition to peach juice and lemon Fanta, I also tried a bit of raki, an alcoholic drink made with anise. It smelled like licorice all right, but it tasted awful. In about the middle of the show, the native dancers pulled everybody out of their seats and tried to lead us in a dance. It was mostly chaos, but I finally recognized it as a hora.

Travel and Konya

We were on the road at 7:30 the next morning, and I managed to get a short nap on the bus. I don’t have much problem sitting still, but sometimes I run out of activities. I have plenty of games on my Palm, a few books to read, a puzzle book, and my crochet - but I still find myself occasionally bored because I don’t feel like doing anything I have. I told my girlfriend that it’s not as much disinterest in the activity as it’s that I don’t feel like being on the bus anymore. I’d rather lie on the hotel bed doing the puzzles - or writing postcards. I bought a few yesterday and I’m looking forward to sending them, but it’s impossible to write on a moving bus. I’m glad I have my travel journal on my Palm, because no matter how bouncy the ride gets it always comes out legible.

Antalya
In the morning about 20 of us did the optional tour to Perge and Aspendos. I wasn’t particularly impessed with Perge. It’s just like all the other ruins we’ve seen, and we were there for what felt like a really long time. The main attraction at Aspendos is its theater, which is one of the best-preserved there is. It was originally built in the first century, and somehow all this time somebody’s been keeping an eye on it. It was interesting to see the intact stage building; there was one with every theater but we’ve had to use our imaginations except at Aspendos. my girlfriend found a necklace and earrings in the Ministry of Culture’s gift shop and paid $48 for them - I plan to give her the money so they’ll be a gift. After lunch we spent a little while in a leather shop - I was rather uninterested. If they’d had pants or skirts or even gloves I’d have looked at them, but all they made was jackets, belts, and purses. Shortly after we got back to Antalya it was time to leave again for the afternoon’s tour. We went to the Museum of Archaeology, which I would have liked a lot more if it had a mock dig set up; even so I enjoyed the statues (we played “identify the goddess by her attributes”) and the costumes. At the gift shop, run by the Ministry of Culture, we found the same jewelry my girlfriend had gotten in Aspendos - and the necklace was almost $20 cheaper (we didn’t bother asking about the earrings). After the museum our guide took us on a walking tour of Kaleici, the historic district of Antalya. We got back to the hotel around 6:00, which meant another 90 minutes until dinner. We were pretty hungry, so we decided to go buy dinner on our own. We wandered into a shopping mall, and I was absolutely stunned to see a tattoo parlor - Muslims aren’t supposed to get tattoos! I tried talking to the girl who greeted me at the door, but she didn’t speak much English and was only able to tell me that prices start at 30 million lira. She invited me in, though, and I obediently looked at a portfolio in the photo album she gave me. What surprised (and somewhat alarmed) me was that the entire shop was within a very small storefront. The sign mentioned “genital” (I’m guessing piercing), and I suppose they just close the blinds for that. There was just one chair near the back wall, and while they probably use fresh needles I didn’t see any autoclaving equipment - hopefully it was in a cabinet. I had hoped to be able to talk to them about tattooing in Turkey, but the language barrier was too great and I didn’t say much. I took a picture of the shop from across the mall anyway, just because I was still so surprised to have found it. We had dinner on the balcony of Burger Queen Pizza (on the same street as Burger Land and Burger King), which was nicely decorated with Roman columns and similar things. We both had small cheese pizzas, about 7″ in diameter (I’m just guessing) - larger than a Pizza Hut Personal Pan Pizza, anyway - and fruit drinks. I was amazed to find that the entire dinner came to about $4.75. We changed some money after dinner, then got dessert at the hotel - dinner is included, so why waste the opportunity?

Travel and Myra

Our wake-up call came at 5:30 and we had eaten and checked out by 6:45. We had a bit of panic when it seemed that one of our bags had been lost, but we finally got them to unload some of the bags and it turned out that ours was there after all. The drive south was unremarkable until after we passed through Finike, when we found ourselves directly on the Mediterranean coast - directly on it meaning a few feet away from the cliff straight down to the water. The road is twisty and turns alarmingly sharply, and we’re right behind the driver today so we had a Disneyland-like view as we approached each curve. It’s probably fine if you’re in a car, but our big bus was frequently on both sides of the road and there were a couple of times I got really scared because somebody showed up right on the other side of a blind turn. My girlfriend said it was similar to the Pacific Coast Highway, but I’ve never seen that. The water we’d have plunged into, though, was an incredibly brilliant blue. I found the Church of St. Nicholas almost boring - I didn’t need to spend more than a few minutes there to see everything. Fortunately our guide didn’t talk very long, and when he gave us 20 minutes for looking around and taking pictures we went back out to the street to look at the trinkets in the shops. At a rest stop I had my first experience with being given tea by a shopkeeper. That’s actually fairly common here, and while they’re hoping to get you to buy something it’s still done mostly to be friendly. I had been looking at a package of apple tea mix they had on display, and the owner brought me a small cup (the tulip-shaped glass seen everywhere in Turkey) of tea, indicating it was the same as what I was looking at. Obviously this was to let me see if I liked it before buying it, but at the same time there was no pressure to make the purchase. They do this no matter what you’re buying, too - our entire group was given tea at the carpet school, but nobody would have expected all of us to buy a carpet. I sometimes feel that the custom is a way of kissing up to the buyer (which it is), but I suspect it’s because I’m an American that I have a hard time accepting the possibility that they’re just being friendly. At the same stop, we saw an adorable kitten not more than a couple of months old. He wasn’t really into being held, but he walked around and mewed loudly at everyone. When other members of our group saw me with him, they said “I knew it” - they’re getting used to seeing me playing with stray cats everywhere we stop. The locals probably think I’m crazy for playing with the rats, but my girlfriend and I agreed I can’t help it. She pets most of them too, but I’m the one actively seeking them out. At Phaselis in the afternoon she found a sweet calico with a habit of nibbling fingertips. It didn’t hurt, she’d just gnaw and lick a bit. Phaselis itself wasn’t really interesting; most of the site hasn’t been excavated yet, so the main thing we saw was yet another ancient theater - but we had to climb up a rocky hill to get to this one. The stop at Phaselis also brought us to a small harbor on the Mediterranean - I didn’t get to touch the water, but my shoes got a bit wet. I was glad to get to Antalya; while I love the countryside, suburbs, small towns etc., I find that I just prefer cities. This holds true for anywhere - I like downtown DC, and I love the confusion and constant hectic state of Manhattan. I’m perfectly happy living in the suburbs as I do, and I’d be happy living somewhere rural and isolated, but I like to be in cities. Unfortunately, within an hour of our arrival in Antalya, we heard a series of gunshots from somewhere less than a block away. I didn’t count them, but I suspect it was as many shots as the gun carries, fired in rapid succession. Our guide sat with us at dinner and said he’d heard the victim was the owner of the currency exchange office on the corner just behind our hotel, and that it was probably a personal issue. That didn’t make us feel much safer, but after we finished chatting my girlfriend and I decided to venture out to find an ATM anyway because I wanted to get some cash from my own account. The one right beside our hotel turned out to lack any networks, so we couldn’t use that one. We walked past the currency exchange, which had a long line in front of it and some police tape up. The next ATM we found had plenty of networks, but the intake mechanism was broken and it just hummed a bit when I tried to put my card in. We walked a bit further down the street and came to a large Yapi Kredi building, very well-lit. I’m pretty sure Yapi Kredi is a bank - maybe a credit union. In any case, their ATM was in a little room with its own door off the main entry. I was able to withdraw 10 million lira as a Cash Advance, supposedly from my credit card - my girlfriend says a Cash Advance means you have to pay interest on the amount. I’m still not clear how that works in a normal situation, and I have no idea how it works for me - as I understand it, my check card can masquerade as a credit card, but I don’t actually have a credit account so I’m not sure how they’d be charging me interest. I’m glad I got 10 million lira of my own money, but I’m still nervous about the Cash Advance thing. I wrote up two postcards before going to bed; I’m now all out and will have to get more for the nineteen people still on the list. I hope the cards are making it to the U.S. okay - I pretty much trust the USPS, but I worry about them making it that far. I think I’ve been using more stamps than necessary, so even if rates go up again (which is entirely possible) I should be okay for postage. I spoke to my parents for a bit the last night we were in Pamukkale, and they hadn’t received the one I sent about a week ago. That’s probably not enough time anyway; I’m comfortable believing all of them will make it eventually, but it may not be till after we get back.