Ok so it has been a long time since I last blogged, and I am going to blame excessive traveling. I am not even going to try to write about all of my adventures right now, though eventually I guess I should talk about Florence, Munich, Barcelona, Vienna, Istanbul, Santorini, Athens, and soon to be Porto Portugal, respectively. Since the last three were the most recent trip, Fall Break (Oct. 21-November 1), I suppose I will try to summarize those into a blog post first....I will defeat distraction!!
Though to be honest my most recent distraction was attempting to watch Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants online, because that takes place in Santorini, in fact we even found Lena's house on the island! But I'll get back to Santorini. First let's start at the beginning, which would be Istanbul, or rather midterms.
The week leading up to fall break was midterms week, aka the first week we have really had to do anything for classes. So that was a very long, rather sleep deprived week, which in short lead to frantic half asleep packing Thursday night/Friday early morning. The result of this was that I did not bring my camera, but since I am learning to take things as they come I didn't even cry about it. I just determined to steal all of my friends' photos and to attempt to enjoy seeing things, rather than only taking pictures of them....sometimes this approach worked and sometimes it was just depressing to feel left out when everyone else got to have their artistic expressions, but back to Istanbul.
Turkish airlines might be my favorite airline so far. They fed up delicious food on our 2.5 hour flight. Further, while I had forgotten my camera and for cautions sake had left my computer, I did bring my Kindle...and thank goodness! I think I read no fewer than 8 books over the course of this trip, but the first one was "As the sun rises" by Ernest Hemingway. My roommate and I (while not packing....) decided to start a book club and that is the book we chose because it is on her list of most monumental American novels of the nineteenth century (there are one hundred, and she intends on reading them all). It was certainly an interesting book, though rather depressing. In a sense though we hoped to model our entire trip on their example: hop from one cafe to the next the entire time.... the downside to this of course being that it is rather expensive. But anyway we arrived in Istanbul, and were informed that we needed a visa to enter, but never worry you could get one immediately for 15 euro. We then traded out Euro for Lyra and for once the exchange rate was in our favor, 2.2 lyra to 1 euro! This difference would continue to confuse us for the next 4 days.
We then attempted to find the way to our hotel. We asked several airport tourism people and were shown to the metro. There we were helped by a Turkish official whom we didn't even ask for help. He just assumed, correctly I suppose, that we did. He showed us the way, and how to work the Turkish metro, and then spent a good 5 minutes laughing with his colleague that my friend Alyssa was taller than him. He seamed utterly amazed. Once we got to the area, we tried calling but realized that the hotel staff did not really speak English…so we decided to go looking, with only an address, on our own. Sadly, the streets were as confusing as Trastevere and thus street signs were of very little help. After dragging suitcases for half an hour and being no closer to finding our hotel, we finally gave in to the crowds of men in front of their stores and restaurants asking if we needed help. We were pointed in the right direction and possibly asked out on a date. We got to ‘our’ hotel and to my dismay it seemed to be a little sketchy. It was located over a hookah bar. Again since I booked the hotel I was made to talk to the front desk, where I promptly showed him my reservation….and was told that I was at the wrong hotel, which was actually a relief. He pointed us in the correct direction of Sultan’s Eye Hotel (not hostel…) and we actually found it. Even better, it was exactly how I pictured. Small but quaint, and completely safe and clean feeling! Even better it had a TV with one English channel! (or more accurately English tv with subtitles).
But Istanbul…I loved it and would go back to Istanbul or even Izmir, Ephesus, or Troy in a heartbeat if I had the opportunity. The first night we went out to a traditional Turkish dinner and had Mediterranean cuisine so bread, hummus, kebabs, rice, and vegetables. We stopped drinking wine with our meals, however, because it was outrageously expensive. So much so that I am curious to look up if this is because of an alcohol tax in a muslim country… The next day we went to the Grand Bazaar, which was such a shock to the senses. There were so many colors, and smells, and voices all at once. We spent several hours just wondering the 4thousand shops, feeling like we never actually saw the exact same thing twice. We were looking for two things: scarves and jewelry, and the latter mostly because my roommate makes jewelry, and wants to do that for a living one day. None of us were disappointed, and with a bit of haggling I think I am coming home with two of the most beautiful scarves and an assortment of various other small things.
Later we visited the Blue Mosque, but could not enter right away because actual prayers were going on. Instead we attended an information session on the mosque, and it turns out, moreso Islam itself. Nothing I heard was particularly new to me, though it was interesting hearing someone try to put Islam in liberal Western sounding terms. Neither of my friends had heard much about Islam, and interestingly enough they were both fascinated by the thought of direct communion with God, which neither of them in their catholic or agnostic upbringings had encountered before…odd being the only protestant…For dinner we pulled a true Ernest Hemmingway and started a café for dinner, before going to a rooftop restaurant for drinks, and then continuing to a more traditional looking Turkish bar where we were invited in by middle age Norwegians and Swedes singing a classic American song. We ended there and met two Americans from Colorado who we bonded over Sweet Caroline with.
So…that was a lot of writing I will just bullet point my other highlights.
-Being called Charlie’s Angels or Spice Girls depending on if vendors thought we were from the US or the UK….
-Being proposed to…multiple times
-Taking a cruise around the Bosporus and crossing into Asia
-seeing the mosaics in the Haggia Sophia and sitting in the garden of the ancient Sultans
-having traditional Turkish tea overlooking the Bosporus
-realizing that I preferred the historic, more expensive parts of Istanbul to the up and coming modern quarter…who knew
-And finally, realizing how much I appreciate English TV shows
-Playing in a kids park in Asia
After a rather peaceful 7 hour ferry ride on what felt like a luxury cruise ship (complete with movies and our favorite Caesar salads), we had the most memorable and horrifying adventure yet.
So we arrive at a rather empty ‘city center’ as people are getting on buses with their groceries, which slightly concerned us…there would be food near our beachside hotel, right?? We were a little concerned when we got off at what appeared to be a gravel road in the middle of nowhere…but this was our bus stop. Then the ‘just walk 600meters’ was confusing (since there was no straight…) but we final got the hotel concierge (or so we assumed) to send a car for us…which ended up being a man driving his private car with beer bottles on the floor. Ok, so we don’t judge… Then we get to the sketchiest little motel looking building in the middle of absolutely nowhere: no beach in sight, no real roads, no restaurants, and gave each other that all knowing look of survival (did I mention that this had a 87% rating online?!?) Worse the men who showed us into our room (which was perfectly inside) stayed there too, and therefore all had a key to our room. After what would have been a very funny game of charades to figure out where the ‘front desk’ was in order to cancel, we gave up and locked ourselves in our room while Morgan immediately called her mom for help on her dying phone. I was volunteered to go to room number 2, which was supposedly the front desk, and attempt to cancel our reservation (since my other friend was hyperventilating). Guess what room2 was? A normal room where the three men who worked at the hotel lived…along with the maintenance man….aka not a front desk. They told us we needed to talk to the ‘boss’ who had conveniently just left but would be back in 15 minutes. We reconvened in our room (where I might have accidentally tested out my pepper spray…oops) and realized that if we did not leave in 20 minutes we would not have time to walk back to the last bus leaving before dark. Since the boss was still not back (if there even was a boss…) we handed the befuddled maintenance man our key (or rather set it beside him since he refused)and literally ran down the road. No one followed, except for a dog who literally started walking with us hear our ‘hotel’ and did not leave us until we got onto the bus. He literally sat calmly with us at our stop. I think he was a gift from God, my friend thought her grandmother sent him…all I know is that he was a great comfort, sort of like Aslan/the cat in the Horse and His boy…
After that all was well, we got safely on the bus right after dark, made it to a nice, rather expensive, very safe hotel located on the edge of the cliffs over the Mediterranean. It was difficult to find with suitcases in the dark, but the view, safety, and friendly service more than made up for it. We were all mentally exhausted and laid down silently alternately reading and watching TV until the next day. It was unfortunately much colder than would have been ideal (and extremely windy…I guess that is how cliffs on top of islands would be expected to be though) but I still thoroughly enjoyed it.
I sat outside on our terrace, reading, journaling, and sipping my cappuccino most mornings. It was heavenly! We also rode donkeys down the Cliffside road…terrifying. We gave up on being adventurous and ate a lot of Italian food (I found most Greek food not particularly my favorite…especially the completely uncooked chicken kabob….). We toured a volcano, hot springs, and adorable village all by boat, which sounds amazing but was actually just unbelievably windy, extremely cold, and rather rough in general (refer to uncooked chicken). Other friends met up with us eventually and we lots of fun touristy things (like nap…). The last day we went to a northern village on the island and watched the sunset. It was spectacular. (This is where we found the houses used for filming Sisterhood of the Traveling pants). I would definitely go back…in the summer.
Athens was not particularly special. I have already been and I saw everything again, but really didn’t need to. We were also all just extremely tired of being travelers and tourists by this point and honestly were all rather tired of each other. So we took things very easily, sat on our porch with a view of the Acropolis. We also just wanted to be wary of Athens in general, since God was gracious enough to allow them to not be scheduled while we were there, they certainly happened all around us. Highlights of these 3 days: getting up to eat my free, deliciously simple breakfast with my kindle overlooking the city. I did this everyday, and on the last 2, was accompanied by my other friend who is also obsessed with reading. It was the epitome of peaceful, and I loved my lemon poundcake and bottomless coffee. Other highlight was meeting up with a CRU stinter and hearing about Greece. And to show how low key this leg of the trip was, my actual highlight was definitively finding our hotel (and room) from the Acropolis hill, exciting stuff!Least favorite moment would definitely be when these three rather well dressed and cute little girls came up to us and asked for money as we were finishing eating (ages 3, 5, and 7 maybe). They came back and the youngest just reached onto our plate and ate the leftovers with her hands, went away, cam back and picked up our water glasses…. At this point we picked up our stuff and ran inside to pay there instead. I feel terribly sorry for these girls and yet we are quite sure that they targeted us because they knew we wouldn’t say anything, we were after all American girls…it was just the oddest thing I have ever seen up close…all they had to do was ask for the food.
So that was fall break, and it took the two weeks until Portugal to recover enough to be able to leave Rome again. It was definitely amazing, but there is something about traveling that much that makes you terribly homesick, and so yes, I felt my first real bout of homesickness ever…and it is not enjoyable and still with me. Luckily as I am finally finishing writing this, I am sitting beside my mommy on a train to Venice. But that story I will write after we get to the hotel…and perhaps after I finish my paper due in 2 days…meh, probably not.
Ciao belli,
mi dispiace que io sono multi tarde a scrittore
(because once you get behind it is terribly difficult to get the motivation to catch up…)
So we crossed the windiest bridge ever which was designed by Monsieur Eiffel, before he built his tower. Then we started what we thought was a simple task of finding a wine tour/tasting in English...and preferably for free. This was actually a really difficult assignment near the water, so we started hiking uphill. Only we misread the map and probably actually walked an extra mile, and after almost giving up at least five times (and after stating "I refuse to go uphill anymore" at least 4 times) we finally found "Taylor's" which was owned by an Englishman. The port was good, but not amazing, what was amazing was sitting down for 5 minutes....and the satisfaction of finally finding it! Then we walked downhill (because literally everything on that side of the river/sea was downhill from us at this point) and went to an adorable place where we each ordered a tasting of port with a certain type of food. I had the rouge with chocolate...or at least that is what I thought that I was getting. What actually came was so much better! It was little espresso beans covered in amazing chocolate, coated in cocoa. Heaven in your mouth. Unfortunately after this we had to walk back uphill to get to our hostel, but it was definitely worth it. 
