snaps of turkey: selcuk

a large percentage of turkey's pupulation still makes it's living through agriculture. we saw a lot of people using tractors as their main form of transportation. nice parking job with this one in the heart of town.



the view over the countryside by selcuk, from the ruins of the basilica of st.john.




still at the basilica, a great view of the the citadel on the hillside in the distance, which sadly is closed to the public due to the lack of structural integrity.



al fresco dining at a small restaurant on a side street overlooking the site of one of the 7 wonders of the ancient world - the temple to artemis. however, to see any artifacts of the temple, one must go to the british museum. the site is now a very famous grassy field. dinner was tasty, and removed from the more touristy part of town.

nate's pictures from selcuk

snaps of turkey: airport and izmir

my first taste of turkey. hot, strong tea and a not-too sweet pastry filled with sesame paste and topped with sesame seeds. i think i'm gonna like it here.

stelfi is the brand of bathroom hardware favored at the airport. elefants everywhere! i know i'm gonna like it here.

after a flight from istanbul to izmir and a good night's rest, we explored some of Izmir (formerly known as Smyrna). we walked through the bazaar and ended up at this big square.

we checked out the aegean and walked along the coast briefly. besides the sea, and a few back alleys, we weren't all that keen on what we saw and had no plans to stick around. so we busted out of Izmir towards the greener pastures of Selcuk.

nate's pictures on the road to turkey
nate's pictures from izmir

orla kiely cutlery dress

tell me what you think - should I splurge on this? click here to get to the poll

scent

for the first time i put on grandma's robe that mom carried all the way from florida for me. it smells of her, whatever that combination is: laundry detergent, the soft sarasota water, her soap, the clean body smell that's hers alone. instantly i felt security, followed by great heaving pain. i miss her quite excruciatingly. and this lovely, warm scent i'm literally wrapped in maddeningly both makes me feel better and so much worse.

Oldy McOlderson

a few days in and so far thirty is pretty darn good.

bug

there's something not quite right in my system. i fought off the weird tummy thing, and now i think i'm harboring regular old cold germs. or something. i feel crappy, and i just slept the better part of twelve hours. i haven't caught up on putting laundry away or cleaning and i made just a small dent in the readings i should have completed by 5:30 tonight. another dose of that salty alka seltzer plus is on the way.

in rainbows

happy radiohead new album release day!

in case you haven't heard, they've been causing a major ruckus with their latest approach to distribution. a website was created to take orders for a digital copy. unique links to use for downloading sent via email after your order is processed. and each consumer pays what they wish for the pleasure.

apparently i've been out of the country for a few weeks - according to nate's mom, this has been featured heavily in the news. i only heard about it because katy knows i need my radiohead fix.

if you're interested in getting your own copy, head over to www.inrainbows.com

my homegirl knows how to treat a homegirl right

katy came by to drop off my mail key after having taken care of groundskeeper duties for the two weeks i was in turkey. she also had in her purse a super duper special sarah treat - mallowmars! nothing manmade better heralds the coming of fall than mallowmars on supermarket shelves. and nothing better lines my tummy. yum!

my man knows how to treat a lady right

after catching sharon jones and the dap-kings on npr again on sunday and missing their show in boston while we were out of town, i was primed to go purchase their album. but nate beat me to it and surprised me by gifting me their 2006 album through itunes while i was in the shower this morning. what a guy!

pcitures/no pictures and tastes of turkey

nate has pictures up from our two week turkish adventure! and he will be adding more soonly.

i, on the otherhand, have barely just loaded my snaps to my desktop, and will require more time. in the meantime, some quick and dirty highlights from our trip:

boston to london to istanbul to izmur - all by plane. we arrive tired and ready to sleep. the inn-keeper insists on turning on our tv to a turkish soap opera, and standing in our room to watch for a minute or so. our first night in turkey and we start awake to what we think are gunshots. nate thinks it could be backfires or potentially the izmirian way of providing the early-morning wake up sounding call for ramadan. sounded like gunshots to me.

izmur - we wander around the bazaar, eat mini-burgers of lamb (kofte) at a corner eatery where nobody speaks english except the recruited restauranteur from next door, and visit the aegean sea. on our way out of town towards selcuk we get taken for a ride, both literally and figuratively. nate can tell that story.

selcuk - a landlocked town next door to the ruins at efes (ephesus) where we hang out hat (nate) and head scarf (me) for a few nights. it has it's own ruins of st. john's basilica, which have been/are being restored by an evangelical group from ohio (sweet!), and also hosts the isa bey mosque, built in the 14th century. nate and i peeked inside, but didn't stay too long. we also ate at an outdoor garden restaurant within spitting distance of the ancient temple of artemis (one of those no-longer-standing wonders of the world). of course, we visited efes, too, and were suitable awed. then we ran for cover as the sun beat down too hot and the hordes of tourists made us claustrophobic. too bad we couldn't hang around until winter for the camel wrestling championships.

fethiye - hooray! we make it to the mediterranean area, also know as the turquoise coast. not as big a resort town as boddrum or alanya, it's still pretty touristy along the waterfront - jampacked with seafood-laden restaurants and moored gulets and yachts ready for hire. we gaze happily at the sea and mountains from our hotel, wander the coastline, and take a day trip to the abandoned ruins of kayakoy, a mountain-top town which was relieved of it's christian inhabitants of greek ancestry around the 20s, and replaced with muslim macedonians who decided they weren't happy with the new digs. we scrambled around for hours, and stood at the look out tower at the apex - turning left to look down at the town, and turning right to peer into the clear blue waters of the mediterreanean. dockside fethiye is also where nate and i killed a 2.5 liter bottle of orange-flavored potently-carbonated chemical sludge called fruko and had a burping contest.

antalya - to reach antalya we stoically survived a stormy night of bus travel which included 7 or 8 hours of the air filled with loud incantations, mutterings, and crazed outburts of a sadly disturbed woman who spoke in tongues and cursed everyone in sight and may have been a witch. nate tamed her and may be a shaman. he will have to tell that story, too. another seaside town, this time much bigger and grander with a much more sophisticated tourist feel. outside the old city was a bustling modern metropolis. and by modern, i mean dated to the 60s or 70s. we changes accomodations after a night of rock-hard mattresses and waterbugs sightings in the bathroom. our new mama in antalya gave us a break on a room and mother-henned us with all her might. we took a long walk to the pebble beach for some people-watching and swimming in the sea. vendors came around with corn on the cob, and a lady caused an exciting scene as she brought her horse to the water. the horse neither wanted to drink nor, apparently, swim. they left soon after all the kids fed the beast the remains of their cobs. antalya is home to hadrian's gate, and a very nice all-you-can-eat buffet at the hotel Alp Pasa. we also watched amusement park rides in action, and a potential secret-policer shakedown of a gang of teenagers in a playground - looked suspiciously like 21 jumpstreet.

goreme - away from the coast and into the heart of anatolia, we arrive early in the morning to see a sky full of hot air balloons floating lazily amonst the weather-worn rocky outcrops that resemble nothing i've ever seen before. goreme touts pension after pension of cave rooms for you to stay in. some of them even real and not from cement or concrete! we have a lovely time for three relaxing days. we scramble and hike around the hills and into caves and take a lot of pictures of spaces that look like adobe huts on acid. we meet up with ann, also from cambridge, ma. we rent mountain bikes and go for a cruise to avanos, famous for it's pottery. nate tries his hand at the pottery wheel, and we pedal our way from avanos to urgup, going through devrent valley. ann and i walk our bikes in a few tough spots. we all chat with a tour group from iran, and we all get back to goreme good and freckled. ann and i both take advantage of the hamam for a traditional turkish bath, though on different days. nate and i rent a motorbike to visit the underground city in nigde. nate and i play a few games of backgammon.

istanbul - you know, the bosphorus, the sea of marmara, the blue mosque, the aya sofia, the city walls, the grand bazaar... we also get travel tummy on our last day and have to cut some of our itinerary short. a shame, but as grandma would say, always leave something for next time. however, we did get to wander around the area between the blue mosuq and the aya sofia around sunset - festival every night with picnickers ready to end their fast as soon as the sun said goonight. vendors and people everywhere. quite nice.

istanbul to london - after getting to the airport early, we almost miss our flight. several trips to the bathroom.

6 hours in heathrow - after triangulating, we get to spend several of them over lunch with diana, which is a great bonus. get to see bathrooms here, too.

london to boston - sleeping and eating and running down the aisle to the bathroom.

ah, boston - manage to stay awake until about 11pm. good to see our own bathrooms again.

veronica in uganda

veronica will be living and working in uganda all october. read her blog here. (i've also added her blog to my links section.)

we're home!

i forgot about bananas on my counter which went all black, and the apartment smelled musty, but windows are open, and rotten fruits have been thrown out. we are decompressing and downloading photos to post as soon as we can. shout outs to miss diana for meeting us at heathrow airport for a mini-visit, to wolfram for helping us find each other, and to dave for the airport pick up. more very soon...

alive and well

it's the last day for us in turkey. we'll be at the ataturk international airport at 7am tomorrow, so today we are off to cram in as much istanbul as we can manage. on our list: the aya sofia, the sultanhamet camii, a ferry on the bosporus, visiting the asian side of the city, the grand bazaar, and maybe some time to just look around and reflect on the past two weeks.


pictures will be coming, both mine and nate's. emails and phone calls, too.

100 miles - done and done

hooray! i reached my goal of riding a full century ride in 2007. i am proud of myself. i rarely feel pride in myself without reservations or caveats of some sort, but this time it's pure and true.

the course was actually 102 miles, and yes, i was counting. very closely. the ride started and finished at hampton beach, and went south to dip into massachusetts before circling back round north along the new hampshire coast and peeking into maine before heading back. there were a few hills towards maine which winded me, but the most difficult part, as i imagined, was the headwind coming back south. almost the entire route was right along the coast. gorgeous vistas and glimpses at some pretty spectacular beachside properties.

nate was a fantastic support system to me: coach, pack mule, and cheering squad all rolled into one. he also was documentarian, and has put pictures up here. i couldn't have done it without him. i may have never even set this as a goal for myself if it weren't for him. he's had my thanks a few times, and i plan to thank him a few more before the day is through.

before leaving the area we treated ourselves to pizza from a beachside vendor. we leaned against his parked car in the fading light, munching slices and watching the crashing waves, the kids pedaling past rocking back and forth on training wheels, and the die-hard sunbathers still camped out. it was a lovely, exhausting, satisfying day. a beautiful way to cap the summer and begin our vacation.

tommorow is all about packing our most quick-drying belongings and then being off to turkey!

pictures

last saturday, nate and i were present as deborah and kc were married. and we were dressed to the nines. here is proof that nate cleaned up nice and got his suit on after he rode his bike 126 miles.






mary, nate, and i saw the sun set from mass ave bridge on wednesday night.

hyggelig hen til på gensyn

i hope that translated correctly, i used this website to get the danish version of "nice to see you."

after lapsed communication on my part, i owed a response to a letter sent to me over a year ago, i have been reconnecting with my first au pair, lone, who has also very recently created a small web presence.

i am so pleased that we have been able to rekindle a relationship. it makes me feel all warm and happy to hear about the growth of and changes in her career and two beautiful children. lone was a teenager and i was still in grade school when we first met, and we were both figuring out a lot of things for ourselves. we've seen each other once since then, when i was close to the age she was when she came to america. there will be business trips that bring lone back to the states. i'll be hatching and scheming plans to see her...

and so...

i clipped my toenails this morning.

my dreams tell me things

i dreamt i was poking around the sample size bins at the drug store, and i picked up and contemplated purchasing a pair of toenail clippers.

sore shanks

about a week before i did the 70-mile ride i decided it would be a good idea to cross-train, and i used all sorts of muscles that were decidedly sore until a day or two before the ride. of course, limiting the comfort of riding and doing real training before that big day. i thought, how silly. and i thought, that's surely a lesson that i should put more time between using oft-ignored muscles and a long ride.

which must be why come monday i decided the weather was so beautiful that i shouldn't go to the gym - that i should, instead, jog. i, who haven't touched a track, a field, a fast pace on foot for more than a few seconds since 1999...yes, i put some headphones on and went out in the neighborhood to alternate jogging and walking until everything was sore. that took about 18 minutes. i really don't need to go into detail about how very un-sojo this act was, or how unlikely it is that anyone will believe that i did anything close to running.

and so, about a week before before i do another big ride, i decided it would be just fine to cross-train and make all sorts of leggy, knee-y, and shanky muscles decidedly sore. noted: riding to work this morning felt nice, but after a few hours large portions of the lower half of my body are reluctant and angry.

i have fielded a request to not run again before riding this weekend. i will happily oblige.

100 miles with viola and nate

did i mention i'll be on my bicycle for one hundred miles this coming saturday? indeed. i have signed up for what is touted as the flattest 100-mile organized ride on the east coast. i can only hope. using a modest and likely estimate of my average speed, i should be able to stop pedaling sometime after six and a half or seven hours. i'll be thinking endurancey thoughts and looking to nate for moral support if ever my eyes wander to the sag wagon. he has considered bringing bungee cords in case i need to be towed. i am considering kicking my own ass up and down the coast.