tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-99081272024-03-13T21:28:45.745+03:00My walkabout: A most unplanned adventureKatiehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16693239203078051292noreply@blogger.comBlogger136125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9908127.post-81330316868215253182010-08-14T19:55:00.000+03:002010-08-14T19:56:11.010+03:00Adopted by Boat CrewIt was time to leave the very very hot southeast and go to far eastern and cooler Van. We returned to our breakfast place for an amazing breakfast before finding a bus to the bus station and bording the Best Van Tur bus. Although we were told the trip would only take 4 hours, it actually took about 5.5 We encountered a rockslide, tons of road construction and then a Kurdish demonstration that took the form of a parade of cars, filling the main street of a small town. Finally, we entered Tatvan, to be told that we would not be taken past the ferry boat terminal as promised, but instead be left somewhere in the middle of town. Very grumpy we took a taxi to the ferry terminal at the edge of lake Van to see if there would be a boat going accross. When we got there, we were told that there would definetly be a boat at some time, but it could be in one hour at 5:30, or it could be as late as 9 or 10. The trip would be 4 hours, and it was only 5TL. We decided to wait. The reason for the unclear time of departure, we found out was that we were waiting for the transasya express, the 3 day train from Istanbul to Tehran. Whenever the train turned up, it would be loaded on the boat and we would leave. Indeed, the boat had been lined up so well that the train tracks that ended on the bank now lined up with the train tracks on the boat (!) so the train would be able drive straight onto the boat. <br /><br />Having had no idea what time the boat would leave we had rushed from the center without eating, and had not eating anything since breakfast. Asking one of the captains, a man with glasses and a plad shirt if there was time to go back into town, he said maybe or maybe not, but the iskele bufe should have food. After asking them and scolding them for not having anything he invited us onto the boat for food. We walked along the traintracks on the boat and back to a table in the back with a couple of chairs and a bench. We took a peek in the kitchen where the chef was chopping up an enormous piece of meat. The captain, whose name we found out was Atila told us to sit, the food would be ready in 10 minutes. While that seemed unlikely we sat down. A few of the other guys came over too. To avoid too much male attention since we didn't know how long we would be waiting, I pretended to only speak a little bit of Turkish. The captain's english was fairly good though and we had a broken english conversation. He told us that 25 people work on the boat and he was one of the three captains. He was in charge of stowage - unloading and loading the boat. There were also engineers and and machinists. The cook was also the ticket taker. He brought out three rolls of cookies, and then went to get us tea from the guys at the other table. We told the guys that had come to sit down with us and they asked how many children we had. Insallah I replied - If god wills it - which is always a satisfactory reply to that question.<br /><br />The food was not going to be ready, and after learning that the boat went twice a day, that it took cars as well as trains, and other things, we excused ourselves to go take some photos. Once around the corner out of earshot I started calling hotels in Van to make sure we would have a place to stay when we got in at midnight or later. We took some photos, then returned to the iskele where we sat, and played many games of uno. At long last, although it was really only about an hour, we heard a train whistle, and it was one of the most exciting things I've heard in a while. We immediatly jumped up, but a guy told us the train wouldn't arrive for another half an hour. And then, suddenly the train had arrived and many many iranians were flooding off it with all their stuff and rushing to the boat. We were taking photos until we realized that we too needed to get our stuff on the boat before there were no more seats. We abruptly got our stuff and left, realizing on the way we had probobly missed our chance for food.<br /><br />We threw our bags on some seats in the main cabin, watched two of the train cars get loaded onto the boat and then went to the bufe to get some toast and drinks. Sitting on the rather full top deck we ate and watched the boat as it pulled away from shore. The view was fantastic and the weather was no hot. After some photos and a bit of exploring by Mark, captain Atila found us. He first took us to get our tickets, something we hadn't figured out where to do yet, then took us upstairs into the crew's area, where one man was eating dinner. He insisted that we sit, than put large bowls of kuru fasulye (beans) in front of us, along with cacik, rice and a whole loaf of bread. It was fantastic. He told us that he had already eaten, but had only eaten cacik because he was on a diet. I noticed the wedding ring on his finger and asked about his family. His family lives in Tatvan and he has a 16 year old son that will finish high school next year, and an 8 year old son with downs syndrome. He told us that he's on the boat for 9 days and only gets 1 day off after that. Not good for seeing his family. But he does make 3,000TL a month, which is good money considering the minimum wage is 630 TL a month. He is from Antalya, and after highschool did an internship before he got his job.<br /><br />After I finished my first bowl of kuru fasulye, and tried to indicate I was full by patting my stomach, the captain insisted upon filling it. We were not allowed to help clean up, but then moved to the other table to eat watermelon. I ended up saying Mark had a watermelon allergy so the guy wouldn't be offended by his not eating it. We also took out our remaining pistacios from gaziantep, and insisted upon leaving them in the crew area for the other guys to eat.<br /><br />After sitting and talking until the point that my fakely bad turkish would allow no more, and declining a nap in the captain's cabin we got a quick glimse of the engine rooms before going up on deck. The deck was like a massive party. People were dancing and singing. Others were playing cards. Others, too tired, were just sitting or sleeping. The captain told us that the train after Van would be an Iranian train, and all the women would have to cover up after leaving the boat. He said that going the opposite direction the women get on the boat, and start to take off layers of clothes. So this was their last partying for a while. We started to play uno, and soon the captain had come over, as had a bunch of Iranian guys. After playing a few games, we invited the captain to play. He played one hand, and seemed to be catching on, but decided one was enough. Next, an iranian guy with fairly good english took a turn. Other guys were standing around trying to help him as we explained the rules. One guy in particular seemed to understand, and wanted to know how many cards there where, so he could see if that was possible. But when I said I didn't know, he told us it was boring, and decided he didn't want to play when we invited him. After a while our crowd faded. <br /><br />Soon the captain returned and told us he wanted to show us the navigation room. We abandoned uno and went to look. At this point the captain realized that I was understanding too much not to know Turkish and told me so. One guy was steering, and another of the three captains (who had taken the pickle from Mark's toast with wink and eaten it) were in the room. We were shown the radar with the map of where we were going, the compass, and other important stuff. We were once again asked if we had children. The other captain told us he had three but wanted five. We walked out to the front where we could see an incredible amount of stars and the milky way, as well as the last captain sleeping on the ground.<br /><br />We returned to the deck, which was slowly emptying of people. Eventually Mark went down to get my hoodie and camping pad to sit on. It got cold enough that even he had to get his sweater. When it was finally too cold we sleepily returned to the main cabin for the last few minutes, and after we docked left the boat.<br /><br />One of the crew was ofloading his pickup truck, and after seeing that there were no taxis the captain told the guy that he should take us into town. He agreed, and after the offloaded a massive harvester, we put our bags in the back, and got a lift. He left us off at a traffic circle, which turned out not to be the one on our map. So we got a taxi, and turned up at our hotel at midnight completely exhausted and happy to be there. <br /><br />And thus it was we were adopted again.Katiehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16693239203078051292noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9908127.post-34850594877680701292010-08-14T18:59:00.004+03:002010-08-14T19:52:33.217+03:00Closed Due to Fallen RockWe took daytrips from Diyarbakir the next two days, enjoying the fact that we didn't have to take our big packs with us and find a new hotel. I had always heard about Mardin, and so the next day we were up early and to the minibus area. The minibuses go when they are full, and in this case ours was quite full. One mother had gotten two seats - for her and her three children. Other mothers had children up to what looked like age 12 on their laps. I understand having children perhaps up to five on one's lap, but beyond that it gets silly. That, and the kids are not protected by the minibuses insurance. And three kids in one seat is just insane. There was a long discussion between the driver and one mother, which only ended when one of the girls in question told them to stop it. Before the end of the trip, one girl, who was finally old enough (about 15) to get her own seat went through her entire English repetoire with us, which took a maximum of five minutes.<br /><br />The old city of Mardin is built on a hill, with the new city sprawling below. We got off the bus on the main street, which runs along the hill about halfway up. After walking a bit, Mark looked through a doorway, and discovered a view, as well as a cafe looking out at that view, so we stopped for a coffee, feeling a bit out of place to be sitting and looking at the view instead of staring at the screen of a laptop.<br /><br />We visited the very impressive Sultan Isa Medresesi, the gorgeous post office, and attempted to see the Forty Martyrs Church, but true to form it was closed to renovation. I did get us in to look at the inside, but it was covered in wooden scafolding and dust. The buildings in old mardin, or the old ones at least are made of a honey colored stone, and many have amazing carvings and elaborate decoration.<br /><br />After our wandering we went to the Cercis Murat Konagi resturant for my belated birthday lunch out (thank you Mike and Marie Riddle!). It comes very highly recommended by the lonely planet, a place where the women of Mardin do all the cooking. The building is amazing - an old christian courtyard house that has been redone. Our waiter was a flamingly flamboyant gay guy in a pink shirt. He insisted on explaining the very complicated menu in English, although had he done it in Turkish I would have understood better. We ended up getting some icli kofte, a very impressive platter with small amounts of mezze in metal ladels, and a stew with plums, lots of pits, chick peas and lamb. It was all really good and a bit amusing.<br /><br />After managing to get out of our chairs, we walked through the baazar area. Because there are lots of steps going down the hill, cars can only use the main street, and don't enter the baazar. And so we saw donkeys. And guys making saddles and one rolling black stuff onto what looked like wax paper. He explained what he was doing, but I managed to not understand a word. We made our way down to the bottom of the hill through the maze of streets. At one point we passed a boy crouched down. Instead of saying hi and then asking for money he worlessly handed us both cucumbers, something that's never happened to me before.<br /><br />At the bottom of the hill we gazed up at the city, and then made our way to the bit hotel, which is a very faded four stars, and where the amazing view of the city that is on all the postcards was supposed to be found. The view was amazing, and the drinks horribly expensive. After taking many photos, we caught the bus back home, exhausted by the time we got there.<br /><br />Our second daytrip was to Hasankeyf. Hasankeyf was the one of the few places I really really wanted to go to on the trip. Perhaps the one I wanted to see the most. I had no idea what it was that was there, only that it was supposed to be amazing, is a UNESCO world heritage site, and is supposed to be flooded when the planned dam on the Tigres is built as part of the GAP project. So we needed to see it soon, before it was flooded.<br /><br />To get to Hasankeyf we took a minibus to Batman (yes, there is a town named Batman!) and then changed to another that would pass Hasankeyf. The bus went along the river before crossing it at a bridge, where we got off. We immediatly walked back accross the bridge for views back across the village. From there we could see the massive pillars that remain from a much earlier bridge, as well as the castle, caves and village. We also passed a large number of goats using every inch of shade under the few trees to sleep.<br /><br />Back on the other side of the bridge we stoped in a corner store to get water, and were told that the site was closed as a rock fell and killed a six year old. We were a little shocked, and wandered on until we were overwhelmed by a familiar scent - gozleme! and had to stop and eat some. Across the street was a little office with the photo of a very pretty blue bird. We stoped in to ask where we could find the bird, and the man, telling us he was working against the dam said it would be very hard to find and the site was closed, but he could recommend an alternate route for us. Walking with him a little farther down the road we came to a gate. We could go no further. We were shocked. Every bit of the old village, caves and castle was closed. And it wasn't just a rock that fell, but part of a cliff, a massive piece of rock. We were very dissapointed. We had gotten to the place before it flooded, but a month too late to explore.<br /><br />The guy told us that we could go up and around and get a view into the valley, and then up and around again to have a look at the caves around the back. Figuring it was better than nothing, we took his advice. The first view was very nice, and we were trailed by a purple shadow, maybe 10 years old, who never said a word. Up and around again we climbed on the roof of a cave goatshed to get an even better view. There was a house behind us and all the children peeked out, put underwear on the baby, and then brought him out and begged for a photo. So Mark took one.<br /><br />We walked a bit through the valley behind, but a little paranoid about more falling rock, and also a bit hot didn't walk too far. I had been very excited about eating at one of the platforms over the river while dangling my feet in the water, but the road down to these had been closed off along with everything else, and this was not to be. Instead we ate at a resturant with a balcony over the river, and a view of the bridge. But it was a view over the Tigres river, and we had some very lovely fish.<br /><br />Exploring the village a little more we found that the cave cafe we wanted to visit was also in the closed zone, but there was a garden resturant, that at first seemed nice, but got less so as they started watering the plants and it got muddy and soaked the bottom of my backpack. After visiting the mosque we decided that we had seen all that was left to see, and it was time to go. It is quite an amazing place, and even though it was closed, I'm very happy to have gotten there before the water reached the window at the top of the minaret. At least the stork's nest on the top would remain out of the water.Katiehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16693239203078051292noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9908127.post-15306869864509359912010-08-05T21:03:00.005+03:002010-08-12T19:43:19.587+03:00Big Stone HeadsWe left early from Urfa the next morning, catching a bus to Kahta. We got to the otogar, and took a minibus that was supposed to go straight to Kahta. Except that it only went to Adiyiman, and when we got there we were told we had to wait for the next vehicle. So grumpily we sat and waited and I drank tea. The next bus had some dutch people in it - the first westerners we had been in transport with in a very long while. A bit later a Spanish guy got on. He too was planning to go to Kahta. And the reason one goes to Kahta? To visit the giant stone heads at the top of Mt. Nemrut (Nemrut Dağı). Arriving at 1:30 at the hotel recommended <br />to the Spanish guy, we were just in time to book onto the tour leaving at 2, dump our stuff in the room (no AC) that we had just gotten, change our shoes, and grab some lunch before getting on the bus. <br /><br />There were six of us on the bus - the three of us and three koreans. Our driver knew barely any English, and Mark and I were sitting up front to avoid me getting carsick, and so I once again slid into the role of translator. Our first stop was a burial mound, the Karakuş tümülüs. Surrounding the mound are three pillars with statues. One was an eagle and one a lion. The are very large and impressive. After walking around the mound we once more got into the van, to stop a little farther on at the Cendere bridge which was built in honor of the Roman emporer Septimus Severous. On one side of the bridge we saw a large group of people dancing to a loud drum, and others picnicing and swimming. As it was Sunday everyone had left the heat of the town to find some cool. Next came the very cool but disappointing new fortress, disappointing because it had been closed to visitors for 10 years. After wandering up to it, and taking photos we returned to the cafe accross the street where our guide was lounging and used the opportunity to drink lots of water. The temperature was somewhere up above 100. <br /><br />Next came the selcuk bridge, which, although there has been a new bridge built, is still used by cars. We walked across the bridge, then walked down to the stream running underneath it where we waded accross. And the guys stripped down to their shorts/underwear and went swimming. But because it was eastern turkey only the guys got to swim, and I had to stand there in the sun and got harrased by a guy. I was a bit jealous, and very glad that I had Mark along for the journey, as this was one of the few times I got harrased.<br /><br />Our last stop before the summit was Arsemia, which was the summer capital of the Commagene kingdom. We saw several friezes with greek carved into the back, one tunnel that was blocked off and another that extended down for some 158 meters. I went in maybe 30. Mark went until it ended and emerged later very dirty and happy. We walked up to the top to see the view, and then came back down to find our guide.<br /><br />And then it was time for the big heads! The sun was getting low in the sky as we headed to Mt. Nemrut, but our guide assured us that there would be enough light. The road was much better than the lonely planet indicated - the guide said it had been repaved a few years back. We were left at the parking lot, and along with everyone else, started walking up to the top of the mountain. The top 50 meters of the mountain was created by the same guy who ordered the big heads. They used rock chippings from that and other things to make a huge cone on top of the mountain. It's incredible. Although the temperature was a little cooler, the hike to the top was still a bit of a hike. We first went to the eastern side. The bodies of the heads are in their original location, but the heads have fallen or been taken off and are sitting on the ground. They are absolutely incredible. The western terrace heads are even more amazing, although the bodies are no longer standing. We took lots of photos, and then sat, eating our antep fistik, and watching the sun set. It was magical. And then a guy blew a whistle and told everyone it was time to get off the mountain. So slowly slowly we did. <br /><br />The way back was much longer, but it was on a bigger road. Back at the hotel we had a mediocre dinner, and then the worst night ever as we tossed and turned in our 90 degree room. The fan seemed to blow hotter air than what was coming in the windows. We ended up sleeping with wet towels for pillows as they cooled us down a bit. It was horrible.<br /><br />The next morning we caught an early dolmus to Siverek. The old road to Diyarbakir, our final destination for the day, had been flooded by the making of the Ataturk Dam, and so now the dolmus goes on a very small and rickity ferry for about 20 minutes accross the lake. The dolmus was so full and people had so much luggage ours had been tied to the top. In Siverek we caught the next dolmus to Diyarbakir, and from the minibus terminal had to take another bus into town. We were staying in the old town, which is surrounded by massive intact basalt walls. There only seem to be two roads in the old city that buses go on, and so we had to walk a bit to the hotel area. The first we tried was horribly expensive. The next expensive. And the third one, as luck always seems to have it, was just right (okay, it could have been cheaper, but it was about average). We immediatly left to get food around the corner and then came back to our lovely airconditioned room to have a nap. Mark was exhausted as he hadn't slept the night before at all. Two hours in the cool and dark later we emerged to try to find dinner. Diyarbakir seems to have few resturants, and the ones it has are all kebab places. We walked on and on and then found a small shop that said it only had breakfast. And so we went in. And what an absolutely amazing breakfast it was. So amazing I am going to detail all of it. We had kavurma eggs - eggs slow cooked with lamb meat and spices (Mark is contemplating marrying the man, his eggs are so good), sliced tomatoes and cucumbers, olives, crumbly cheese with butter on top, homemade yogurt, fresh blackberries, van style herb cheese, white cheese, kasar cheese, a small plate with sliced banana and fig with kaymak (like clotted cream), honey and walnuts on it - the food of the gods we decided, and lots of bread straight from the bakery. And tea, water and fresh orange juice. It was the best Turkish breakfast I have ever had in my life.<br /><br />After a night in the airconditioning we felt much better, and after eating the hotel breakfast, which had great honey, but was otherwise disappointing after our amazing breakfast of the night before, we went out to explore Diyarbakir. Diyarbakir gets a bad reputation, mostly because it's the Kurdish capital, and so has seen a lot of violence. But everything was calm when we got there. We had absurd numbers of kids saying hi to us, and then many of them asking us for money. We either said no, or Mark asked them for money.<br /><br />We first visited the walls of the city, at the opposite end from our hotel. We walked all the way down the main street, and found ourselves in a park. The walls were cool, or should I say very very hot. We had a nice view of the area outside the walls, and people on the roofs of houses outside waved to us. As someone afraid of heights though, walking on a narrow section of city wall sometimes unnerves me a bit. After returning to the ground we walked through many narrow and twisting streets to the Church of the Virgin Mary. It was supposed to be closed for lunch, and when three kids answered the door they told us it was indeed closed. But Mark looked very sad and told them we had come all the way from Australia, and the little boy let us in. A man showed us around the church. It was incredible. It's a Syrian Orthadox Church, and they speak Syriani. Next we visited the Behram Pasa Cami. When we went in a kid ran in in front of us and turned on all the lights. He proceeded to give us a tour, taking us up to the balconies so we could get a good look over the mosque. It was beautiful, both the inside and the black and white striped stone outside. When some other kids arrived and told us to keep going so we could see the roof, the kid in charge told us not to and so we didn't. At the end I was sure he was going to ask for money, but instead he asked us to put some money in the collection box. He must have only been about 9 or 10, but he was taking his job very seriously.<br /><br />After discovering a closed house museum and that it was call to prayer time, we decided that it was lunch time. We walked back down the main street, stopping in the cheese market to buy some Diyarbakir cheese in a small flat disc. It was so salty and curdy it seemed it couldn't possibly melt in the heat. We also got some peaches and bread and returned to the park along the walls for our picnic. It was a lovely picnic. And then it was time for more old buildings. We found the Chaldean church was open, so we had a look inside. The courtyard is incredible. The other house museum was very closed and banging on the door many times yielded no results. So we walked north to the citadel. No one seemed to know where it was. Inside was a very non-exciting mosque, and the poorest part of the city we had seen so far. We walked a bit of the wall, but couldn't see the promised roman bridge with 10 arches, and I was feeling a bit sick from the heat so we returned to the airconditioning for a bit. <br /><br />Later it was still hot, as we made our way to the ulu cami, and then discovered the first house museum we had visited was now open. It had some amazing white stenciling on the black basalt walls of the courtyard. The insides of the rooms had not very exciting displays with wierd manakins. Walking back we went past the han we kept meaning to investigate and noticed that right in the entryway was a sign advertising manti and icli kofte. We went in immediatly. The food was amazing, the guys seemed very amused to have us there and we left very full and happy.Katiehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16693239203078051292noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9908127.post-43161274978616269722010-08-04T20:58:00.004+03:002010-08-05T20:57:11.425+03:00Sacred Fat FishWe left Antakya after breakfast the next morning. Erdem insisted upon walking us to the otogar even though we knew the way. After the guy there sold us our tickets he called the bus driver, telling him to come pick up the tourists. The minibus showed up, picked us up, and took us to the minibus terminal where we waited for more people. There were only a few other people on board by the time we left, and in hopes of picking up more people, spent over half an hour crawling out of Antakya, honking at all the people walking by the side of the road, as if this would make them realize that they suddenly had a very strong need to go to Gaziantep, or Antep for short. No one had an instant change of heart though and finally we started to go at a normal speed. The airconditioning barly worked, and gave up completely halfway through the journey. And the host guy kept yelling into his phone, sometimes in Turkish, and sometimes in Arabic or Kurdish or possibly both. He also elbowed Mark in the head. Then, unfortunatly it was his turn to drive, and he continued screaming down his phone and passing people as Mark and I sat there a bit scared. It was the worst ride of the trip so far, and then the driver couldn't even drive us into the otogar to let us out properly. We then took a very scenic drive on a city bus, which did eventually lead us into the center of Antep. We went into the Güllüoğlu hotel, which is above the güllüoğlu baklava shop and asked for a room and then looked pitiful and asked for a student discount. The cut 10TL off the price so we decided to stay. <br /><br />Starving, Mark took the bags up for the room and we immediatly left to find some food. We got some food around the corner, but after eating it realized we were still hungry. Walking around the area Mark got a liver sandwich from a street vendor and I got some very yummy banana milk. And then we went up into our nice airconditioned room, and slept in cool bliss.<br /><br />The next day we woke up to find that Mark's liver sandwich might not have been the best thing to eat. After breakfast we went to the train station to find a nice, but completely clueless guy behind the desk. He thought he could make us a reservation for the Ankara-Istanbul train, but had no idea there was a train from Kars to Kayseri and told us to call that office. After he suceeded in making the first reservation, which took a great deal of fiddling with the computer on his part, he realized that he could do the same thing for the second ticket. The first two days we asked for were full, but in the end we left the slightly more confident man with two sets of train tickets.<br /><br />The train tickets too all our remaining money, and so we had to walk past the museum, back to the center and take out money before returning to the museum. Which was closed for lunch when we got there. We spent nearly an hour reading in the gift shop/cafe waiting for it to open. The museum is amazing, incredible, beyond words. The site of Zeugma has been partly flooded by the GAP project, and so the museum did a large number of rescue excavations and moved the incredible mosaics to the museum. There's a model of what they looked like in the site, and it must have been wonderful to see them there. The mosaics are mostly intact and phenominal. The biggest was about 20ftx12ft and completely intact. Words don't do it justice, I shall post photos soon.<br /><br />After the museum we walked up to the castle, decided it was too hot to climb up to it, and instead went around the side of it and through the market. The focus of the market is copper and tin work. There were a few guys sitting around, etching pieces, and another couple polishing. Good thing I have no space in my bag, because I wanted to buy a number of things. After wandering through the market we found the famous Imam Çadas resturant and baklava shop. They claim to have the best baklava in Turkey. Antep is famous for it's pistachios, so all the baklava is pistachio baklava. The ayran (yogurt drink) came in large tin bowls with a spoon like ladle for drinking. We had lahmacun and then very amazing baklava, but I still maintain that mom makes the best baklava in the world. <br /><br />We couldn't leave Antep without buying what Mark declared were the best pistachios he had ever eaten. Those purchased we got our stuff, and took a less round about bus to the otogar. Entering, there were two companies going to Şanliurfa, one on each side of the entrence to the platforms. We were going to the left, when all the guys on the right started gesturing madly to us. So we went to them. They had a large bus showing on their tv monitor and told us it was leaving immediatly. It left another 15 minutes later, but that's pretty immediate for Turkey.<br /><br />The bus ride was lovely, cool, short and direct. Sadly, the Urfa otogar is also about 6km out of town. A guy that was talking to the driver told us that he would take us to the center as he was also going there. Looking at eachother we agreed. He told us about the things we were passing and in a friendly Turkish way asked too many questions about where we were going. I told him we were going to look around, and so he insisted upon letting us out in the area where all the tourist stuff was, even though we wanted to get out half a mile before. He handed a package in a black plastic bag to a guy, and we said goodbye and left. We walked back to our hotel, which turned out to be shorter on foot than in a car. The hotel was on a back street, had airconditioning (good as it was 110 F or 43 C), and was cheap. The walls were so think though that we could feel the heat radiating out of them as the airconditioning tried to cool the place down. Leaving the hotel we discovered that the entire town seemed to shut down at 8pm. There was nothing open for dinner, or nothing open that had içli kofte. We ended up sharing a medeocre kebab outside, and then, still hungry walked back to the area where we were earlier and had a toast and slushie before returning to the airconditioning. Next time I visit southeastern Turkey it will be in April or October!<br /><br />Urfa is said to be the place where Abraham was born, and where he was put on a pire to burn. Except that he got knocked off and was saved and the coals from the fire fell in a pool and turned into fish. Today, a part of Urfa is a park with the sacred lake of fish, numerous mosques, and the cave where Abraham spent the first seven years of his life in hiding. It's a lovely place. We first went to the lake of sacred fish. Sacred and very fat fish. All the visiting pilgrims want to feed the fish and make a wish, and so when you stand next to the pool and raise your arm, all the fish rush over, even if there isn't actually any food in your hand. It's also forbidden to feed the fish, so the pool is very full, and fish that have escaped the pool wind up all over town in various waterways. <br /><br />Next we visited a couple of mosques and then the cave where Abraham was born. There are seperate entrences for men and women. The women's entrance was quite full and had women crowding around the two fountains, pushing a bit, and filling up large numbers of bottles full of the water which is supposed to have healing properties. I got a glimpse of the cave and then left.<br /><br />We walked up almost to the castle to have lunch at the cift magra (double cave) resturant. It is, as the name suggests, in a cave, and it was amazingly cool inside. We sat on benches covered with cusions at the back of the cave to eat. We both had içli kofte - spiced ground meat wrapped in a bulgur wheat dough and then fried and cacık - a yogurt and cucumber salad. It was quite delicious and we followed it up with tea and then Mark followed up his tea with a coffee, which we then both followed up with a walk through the heat and a visit to the internet cafe.<br /><br />Walking through the park we had found several cafes surrounding small fountains, and one of them had nargile (water pipe). Finding a seat next to the fountain Mark smoked his nargile, and I caught up in my journal. The area is without a doubt the nicest park I've been to in Turkey. After leaving the park we went for a walk in the baazar and got lost in the backstreets of Urfa. After our first pass of the baazar we hadn't found the sites listed on the map, so we dove back in. We found the covered bedestan selling lots of scarves, and then stumbled out into a beautiful two level han where lots of people (mostly old men, but one family) sat around drinking tea and playing backgammon. Inspired, we sat down for a tea too. On our way back through the bedestan I stopped to look at scarves at a stall with three women dressed in a traditional style. A lavender colored scarf with white emrodery seems to be the typical thing here, so I stopped to look. The vendor wanted to put it on me, but instead I asked one of the women. She took a black and white silk scarf and wrapped it tightly around my head a couple times and did a fancy tucking in thing, then loosly wrapped the lavender scarf around my head. She was also wearing a very sparly overcoat in purple and gold. Mark looked at a scarf too and the guy tied it on for him. Deciding we hadn't bought anything really touristy on the trip we decided to buy them.<br /><br />Leaving the baazar we had to return back to the center of town to find money and visit our hotel and then walk all the way back down to a resturant with a terrace we had spotted. We had Urfa kebab for dinner - a must when in Urfa, right? It was lovely and much more spicy than the Istanbul stuff. Despite all the warnings of Urfa as a very conservative town, we found ourselves very welcome there, and I think it's my favorite place in the southeast.Katiehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16693239203078051292noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9908127.post-30293699828097418722010-07-31T21:01:00.003+03:002010-08-03T21:11:24.297+03:00adopted in AntakyaLovely Antakya wasn't nearly as hot as Antalya, which suprised me a bit as it's inland. I had been in Antakya twice before. The first was in 2001 when we spent the summer in Ankara for Mom's research. The second was in 2007, when I took the bus from Istanbul to meet Mom there so she could help me through the Syria border so I could spend Christmas with her and William in Aleppo (see http://travelingmouse.com/story%20pages/syria_christmas.html for more).<br /><br />We arrived and took a service bus into town to the old otogar. For some reason they keep making new otogars for all towns and cities which are on average of 6km from the city. From the old otogar we found many hotels, which all seemed overpriced at first, but we eventually settled on the Divan hotel. It had airconditioning, but there were no rooms with double beds left, so we went for lunch while the guy took our stuff up the stairs and pushed the beds together. We had lovely pizza and slightly cold fries and felt better. Overnight buses leave one quite hungry. Returning to the hotel we basked in the airconditioning before venturing out to the internet and then the market. We found more slushies and some pancake things and then bread with pepper and cheese on it. The market area is awesome and has everything. We found the Habibi Neccar Cami. Habibi Neccar was from Antakya but was a christian or something and is buried in the mosque with two saints. I'm a little confused about the story, but the mosque is very impressive.<br /><br />Feeling we should eat dinner we found the best iskender place in Turkey. I had been there in 2007, but none of use could remember the name, just the general location. I remembered what the upstairs looked like, so I went upstairs in a couple of resturants (which confused the waiters greatly) before finding the one we had been to. The Iskender was superb, although some of the old photos on the wall were missing - apparently they were stolen. And then it was time to sleep in a stationary bed yay!<br /><br />The next day we ate a breakfast of pastries from little shops on our walk to St. Peter's church - the first cathedral and the place where christians were first called christian. And by going on a pilgramage there one also gets a plenary indulgance. It's a pretty amazing place. Back to the center we shared some Kunefe, the famous dessert of Antakya. It's made of very thin hair like wheat noodles with cheese layered on the inside, baked and then drenched in syrup. Maybe it sounds weird, but warm and fresh from the oven it's amazing.<br /><br />Mom and William's friend and fellow couchsurfer Koray met us with his car at the PTT (post office) and took us around. We went to a place called the Anadolu House for lunch. The resturant is in a restored old Antakya house, and Koray ordered a selection of traditional dishes. We had wild thyme salad, olive salad, hummos, ali nazik (a bed of eggplant cream with meat on top), an eggplant salad, a very spicy paste of red peppers and walnuts and I think that's all. It was absolutely amazing. Koray had gotten married a few days before, and had only gotten back from his honeymoon the night before. He works at the university and is also the founder of the Antakya youth center. He was great to talk to and knows a lot about Antakya. After lunch he took us to the salkıev (hidden house) cafe. We tried a very strange neon pink drink called haytali. It's made from rose oil as well as sugar water and has sort of tapioca cubes and ice cream in it. It's refreshing, but at the same time a little strange. We sat until 4 with Koray, and could have sat and talked longer, but it was time for our next visit.<br /><br />We went back to the hotel, collected our stuff, and were picked up by Mihriban Teyze. Mihriban is my friend Ömür's aunt, and Ömür told us we should go visit. The family lives in the old part of Antakya around a courtyard, where all the cousins and more distantly related relatives live. When we arrived we were taken out into the courtyard for tea. Melik, Mihriban Teyze's son was playing a game with three of his cousins. Mihriban Teyze's cousin and her two grown daughters were staying at the house while theirs had work done on it. Ömür's mom and her grandfather also lived in the house. Tea of course was not just the drink. There was pepper bread made by Mihriban Teyze, some cookies from the nearby town of Salmandağ, and some from Syria. Relatives, hearing that we were visiting, kept dropping by to say hi, getting up, and being replaced by more relatives. One was Erdem, who lives in Bahrain with his family, and learned English from the American soldiers at the base there.<br /><br />After many cups of tea and cookies, we went up the hill to another relative's house to have coffee. We sat in her courtyard and she served Turkish coffee. There was an orange tree and some other kind of fruit tree and a couple of turtles, which we looked for but couldn't find. After a full evening of Turkish, we were shown the upstairs flat, helped to take the dust covers off, an fell into bed.<br /><br />The next day I awoke late, it seemed had everyone else. We had breakfast around noon. To get freshly baked bread the family doesn't even have to leave the house - they just call the bakery accross the street, which delivers. Breakfast was fantastic, and included a Syrian specialty which one of the women named TNT. It's eggplant stuffed with hot peppers and perhaps pickled a little. Mark loved it. I thought it was good, but maybe a bit too spicy for breakfast. As we were finishing Cemile and Hatice, Ömür's younger sisters arrived from Istanbul. <br /><br />Soon after, Erdem came over, and we walked to the minibus which took us to Samandağ. We thought we were going to meet Ömer's mother, and so were a bit surprised when we got out at a resturant. Erdem talked to one of the guys and then we got into his car. Turns out he was Erdem's uncle. Erdem's uncle took us to the school where Ömür's mom is principle. We had some tea, and at Mark's request visited a kindergarden class. Then we got back in the car and she got into another car and we drove out to see the titus tunnel. First there's an archway over the river. Samandağ apparently had a problem with flooding, so the emporer Vespasian started and his son Titus finished a tunel that would control water flow. The water today is almost non-existant, especially in summer, so we could walk through the tunel. It was a bit dark, but really amazing. The best part though was the cradle cave or Beşikli Mağara. It's a cave with three or four arches at the front, and completely filled with rock-cut graves. Sadly everything has been stolen so there's nothing left inside the graves. The place is absolutely fantastic, and yet it's not in the lonely planet, even though it's just a few meters up the path.<br /><br />A bit muddy, we returned to the cars. It had been Erdem and his uncle's first time visiting the site as well. We went a few hundred meters down the road and then stopped at a resturant where Ömür's mom ordered us balik ekmek (fish sandwich), which turned out to be amazing, and far more exciting than the stuff in Istanbul. Back on the road again they had to go get petrol, so we stoped at the side of the road, watched a very full tractor go by, as well as a guy on a donkey, watched the lizards Mark found, ate a bunch of grapes we stole and waited. Soon they were back and we continued up into the hills. The view over Samandağ, the mountains and the sea was stunning. Our next stop was the Moses tree in the village of Hıdırbey. The tree is around 1500 years old. It is supposedly on the spot where Moses visited with Khid (the green man). The tree is hollow, and supposedly at one point there was a little market set up inside it. The inside has many strings tied as this is supposed to grant a wish. We had a glass of tea in the shade of the tree and then continued on. At this point Erdem's uncle needed to return, and so we crowded into the backseat of the other car. <br /><br />Somehow we missed the turnoff to the last Armenian village in Turkey, and continued on to another village that had a church that had never been finished. It was dated 1134, but didn't look that old, but perhaps it was. Ömür's mom said that because it was built on stone instead of soil it wasn't damaged in an earthquake like so many of the other buildings of area. The sun was setting and it was quickly getting dark. We continued along, going down now. The man driving the car, another relative whose name I have sadly forgotten dropped us off at the main road. After eating very fresh fried dough soaked in syrup and getting very sticky we managed to find a minibus with space which took us back to Antakya. When we got there Cemile and Hatice were waiting for us with the car. We went back only to go to Erdem's family's house for coffee. And soon after we arrived so did many other family members. Soon we left, exhausted from the wonderful day.Katiehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16693239203078051292noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9908127.post-91698587313503747792010-07-31T19:50:00.002+03:002010-07-31T20:30:43.434+03:00Flames from A MountainOlympos was not quite what I expected. I expected a few hippi treehouse places out in the middle of nowhere, near the sea and the ruins with no cars, birds singing, and lots of flowers. Maybe that's how Olympos used to be, but it's not anymore. Turning off the main Fethiye-Antalya road, it's another 11km twisty and narrow road with mini buses going far too fast. Past the first few camps/pensions/tree house places the road is paved, but then it becomes a red clay mess with too many cars, and parked cars and pedestrians. It looks like a one road tourist town mess, and that's what it turns out to be. Our driver insisted on driving us all the way through to the tiny V-Go hut, where we told the guy there we had arrived and then walked back up the road to the place we were staying - Şaban. To be fair, Şaban is awesome. It has lots of places to sit in the shade and read books and have cold drinks. It has hammocks. It has free internet in a hut with airconditioning, and it has little wooden huts on stilts - tree houses in the olympos sense. We had a tree house to ourselves, with matreses on the floor and breakfast and dinner included for 30 lira each. <br /><br />Dropping our stuff in the hut, we went back to the main area to have a drink and the manager Meril came over to chat. I had apparently gotten very dehydrated and was fairly out of it until I had drunk 1.5 liters of water. We used the internet and waited for dinner. Everyone lines up to get their food - it was very remenicent of summer camp as kid. The food, however, was much better. We had salad, an eggplant salad, mucver (fried zucchini patties), pilav, and fried fish, with enough for seconds. After dinner we went for a walk, found the Canadians from the boat, discovered the tatoo place only did Henna tatoos, and I got some very exciting earrings. We then collapesed into bed, discovering that the way to keep the place cool was to leave the door open.<br /><br />The next day we did almost nothing. I say almost because Mark and I seem incapable of actually doing nothing for an entire day. In the morning we read, wrote, used the internet, had lots of beverages, ate breakfast, wandered around a bit and read some more. Around 4 we decided we ought to go see the beach and the ruins, and so joined a crowd of people going in that direction. The beach was packed, and it seemed packed only with Turks. The water was lovely, but the beach, like most Turkish beaches was very rocky. We swam a bit, not that swimming is necessary. The water is so salty that you can float in a standing up position without moving arms or legs. After floating around we decided to climb up to the ruins of a tower or castle thing. The views were amazing, but Mark's hat blew off, and landed at the edge of a sheer drop, and so we had to leave it there, in that beautiful place, and hopefully it is resting happily.<br /><br />Down from the tower thing we walked back along the very empty river, through very cold springs and pools, on a trail through the woods under an arch to see some sarcophogi and broken mosaics and then back to Şaban for another lovely dinner. We then boarded a very full minibus, and took the narrow twisty road back up to the main road and after less than 50m on the main road turned down another narrow twisty road, went through a little town, and stopped. We were at the enterance to the Chimera, a site where gas comes out of cracks on the side of Mt. Olympos and burns upon contact with the oxygen in the air. As it's best viewed at night, that's when we went. It was a steep uphill walk for 15 minutes in the dark, by the light of Mark's very bright head torch. And then we were there. There really aren't words to describe how cool it is to see fire just emerging from the earth. A few guys were cooking sausages over one of the fires. And everyone else was just wandering around and staring. We couldn't stay too long though because the bus was leaving, and soon we were headed back down and gulping water, then back on the slightly scary journey and to our home sweet tree house.<br /><br />The time had come to leave major tourist areas, and so the next morning we caught a bus after breakfast up to the main road, another very crowded bus (people sitting on stools in the aisle) to Antalya, and from there booked our 15 hour overnight bus to Antakya in the province of Hatay, which is still considered part of Syria on some maps. For more information read my mother's book which will be in print in February. With a few hours to spend in Antalya we took a bus into the center, got a map, and walked back out to the museum slurping blue slushies. The museum was amazing. They have more statues and sarcophogi than they really know what to do with. And they are all in amazing incredible condition. At the end of two hours looking at things from the paleolithic period to the present, my eyes were a bit glazed over.<br /><br />We had a picnic of crackers and sardines on the grass nearby, took a look at the crowded beach and decided we had no desire to go there, and took a tram back in the center to look at the old town. It was nice, although perhaps a bit too nice to be real. We found a lovely cafe with a view of the harbor and sat for a bit to escape the heat, and then had some pasta before returning to the otogar and boarding our bus. It was a surreal ride. I listened to hours of Harry Potter 6, and then when that messed up Harry Potter 4 on Mark's Ipod. Mark read my Harry Potter 3 book. It soon got dark, and we started to doze off. I would wake periodically to road construction on the very very windy coast road with views of the full moon, sea, fog, and mountains. It was very eery and surreal. We stopped twice, the second of which was at a place on the sea, where we could see the yakamoz (the light of the full moon on the sea - 9 words in English, 1 in Turkish). We were very glad to arrive in Antakya the next morning. 15 hours is too long on a bus.Katiehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16693239203078051292noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9908127.post-58919541488226037202010-07-31T13:19:00.003+03:002010-07-31T14:30:50.296+03:00a very blue seaBrenden drove us to the V-Go office Tuesday morning where we checked in, and then waited with an ever increasing number of people and bags. After looking at booklets of all their offered tours and thinking we might never leave, it was time to go to our boat. Our boat was Ömer Kapatan 1, and the captain's name was indeed Ömer. The rest of the crew included his wife and his 12 year old son Ismail. There was also their 5 year old son Hasan and 13 year old Osman, a friend of the family who would be going with us as far as Kaş. After being instructed by the V-Go representative that there were no shoes to be worn on board, no toilet paper to be put in the toilets, and that we should shower off when getting back on the boat after swimming. And then we were off! Although the boat was a sail boat, the sails never went up. We didn't have enough crew to sail anyways. <br /><br />We motored to a small bay near Fehtiye where we went for our first swim. The water was crystal clear and oh so lovely. When lunch was ready the bell rang and we all sat down at a large and very solid wooden table at the back of the boat for salad, green beens, bulgur pilav and yogurt. The other people on the boat - there was an Iraqi family with two daughters - one in medical school and one hoping to start medical school in a year or two, a brazilian girl, and four candians - a mother and daughter, as well as the mother's best friend from highschool and the daughter's best friend.<br /><br />After lunch Ismail pulled up the anchor and we departed. The water was a bit rough and the boat rocked a bit and I got a bit sick. And then realized I had motion sickness medication in my bag. We went around a large point, past Ölüdeniz, saw a bunch of paragliders, and went accross the bay to kelebek vadesi (butterfly valley). The water was incredibly blue - like the color of a blue crayola crayon. We anchored there and swam ashore. Brenden told us that the famous waterfall had no water in it and was a waste of time and money, and we didnt't have time to walk there anyway, so we just walked around the little hippi tent village. And didn't see a single butterfly. Back on the boat we went back the way we had come and stoped next to St Nicholas's Island for the night. As soon as we were anchored among about 15 other boats, a boat came by with ice cream and Gözleme (like crepes). And old lady was sitting there in the boat with a big cast iron griddle rolling out and filling the Gözleme. Mark and I were sharing a lovely chocolate and banana one when the bell rang for tea time. By this I mean tea the drink, not tea the meal. So very civilized having tea, coffee, and buscuits on a boat. <br /><br />After our tea, the captain took us over to the island in the little dinghy. St. Nicholas (Santa Claus) spent some time on the island, and as a result it's completely full of ruined churches, which are amazing. There's the long remains of a tunnel which used to be a procesional way connecting the palace at the top of the island and the church at the bottom. Mark also found a bat cave with hundreds of bats inside. They freaked out a bit as we looked in and started to fly out just past our faces. We reached the top as the sun was setting and then returned back to the little peir where the three kids came to pick us up in the dinghy. As soon as we got back it was dinner time - I guess they had been waiting for us. We had grilled fish, eggplant salad, salad and fruit for dessert. The mother of this family is an amazing amazing cook! I was exhausted as soon as it was dark. We all slept on beds at the front of the boat, bringing our pillows and blankets up from the cabin as it was much much to hot to sleep inside. <br /><br />We were awoken at 5am the next day by the sound of the anchor chain and the motor starting. Soon we were yawing from side to side and, with my bed at the edge, I was feeling I might slide off. Switching with Mark I had a bed on the inside, and managed to sleep a bit more over the next 4 hours as we went along. Finally, we stoped at Firnaz bay where we immediatly got in to swim and then had breakfast and swam some more. The bay is also named Aquarium bay, and after breakfast we went snorkeling. It was amazing! The water was crystal clear, and visibility was great. Paddling around we found lots of plants growing on the rocks, fish and more fish, and then I spotted an octopus in a rounded hollow in a rock. Two fish next to it seemed to escort it to another rocky outcrop where it dissapeared. And Mark found a small moray eel. I felt like I was doing well with my go-fish with real fish on the cards game tally. Have you got an octopus? Yes!<br /><br />After leaving the bay we went towards Kaş. We stopped a bit outside the town to have lunch, then went into the harbor. We had about an hour to explore the town, but it was very hot, and I had adjusted to the boat so well that the ground seemed to be rocking if I sat down anywere, and especially if I went into a small space like a bathroom. We wandered around, sat in a tea garden, looked at lots of tourist stuff and earrings and then got back on the boat. Osman left us to go back to his family. Happily back on the boat we left for another bay, more swimming, more snorkeling, and a lovely dinner with barbequed chicken once again falling asleep just after sunset.<br /><br />Day 3 fortunatly did not start with the sound of the anchor chain at 5am. Instead, we all slept as late as we could with the sun up and blazing, and then swam and had breakfast. After breakfast we motored to a small cove filled with daytrip boats. Told we were only going to stay here 2 hours, but instead staying about 4, we didn't actually go into the cove until the very end as we kept thinking we were leaving. Grrr. When we did leave, we went past and over the partly sunken city of Kekova, which was cool, but not as impressive as the name sunken city would lead one to believe, and were going to the village of simena we spotted a huge amount of smoke. Heading back we saw that one of the day trip boats was on fire. We think everyone jumped overboard and was safely rescued, but there was no hope for the boat. We all stood and watched as it burned and part sunk. The family stood at the prow with horrified looks on their faces. The mom said she had never seen a boat on fire before. We could tell they were thinking about their family - what if this had happened to them, their family livelyhood could be gone just like that. <br /><br />Turning away we went to Simena. With no room to dock we dropped anchor and went ashore in the dinghy, 4 at a time. The Iraqi family choose to stay on board. They hadn't swum either, most likely because they didn't know how. The village is very cute. We followed a group of obnoxious astralians from another boat up up and up to the castle, which has amazing views out over the water and the rest of the village. The views would have been better though if there hadn't been three girls sitting in the place with the best view and complaining about everyone on their boat. Back down again we explored a bit, visited the sarcophogus in the harbor and then got back on the boat to go into a bay with a small enterance and many branches - perfect they said for pirates. We snorkeled more, but visability was not great as cold water and warm water kept mixing. We could see the density waves in the water. The evening passed the same as the others - swimming, snorkeling, dinner and bed. I now have quite an impressive tan (for me). Hasan, the 5 year old has just warmed up to all of us, and has discovered he has a lot of new playmates.<br /><br />The last day we woke up latest of all and were still in the same place long after the other boats had departed. All a bit confused I asked the captain, who told us that we were waiting for the place to become a bit less crowded. Good to know, the problem was that the family spoke very little English and I found myself translating quite a bit. Not that I mind, and maybe they would have spoken more English if I hadn't been there to translate. We went past the pirate's cave and had 10 minutes to swim around inside it before heading off to Demre where we pulled in, had a last lunch and most delicious lunch, filled out evaluation forms and got a small boat to a small bus. There was supposed to be an opportunity to visit the ruins of Myra and St. Nicholas's church in Demre, but in reality there was time for neither. Just time to get a popsicle, look at the outside of the church and go to the bankmachine. And then we were off on the bus to Olympos to stay in a tree house.Katiehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16693239203078051292noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9908127.post-28026276382644893012010-07-26T15:09:00.003+03:002010-07-26T16:47:10.254+03:00a village and more porkOur bags when opened tend to explode. In our last two days in Fethiye our stuff had managed to get all over the house, so we spent Saturday morning convincing everything to go back in our bags, and taking out what we would need for our next adventure. We were going to the village of Minare, near the ruined lycian city of Pinara. Brandon and Ayse had a house in the village, and Brandon had volunteered to drive us out for a few days when they returned from Marmaris. After packing we returned to the beach for another lovely full English breakfast. On our way back we bought food for the village (no shops there) and pork sausages at the pork shop. Everyone had returned from Marmaris when we got back to the house, but we had to wait until about 5 when the Danes returned, as only Brandon's car could make the trip to the village. So we sat around. And talked. And read. And I learned to make Gozleme. And then the car returned and we loaded in our bags and all our food and the very fat dog and headed out of town. On the way we narrowly missed three people who decided to run out in the road, and after a very narrow windy road arrived at the village. <br /><br />Brandon's house is at the top of the village. And it is absolutely amazing! I still haven't seen the promised photo of what it was like when they bought it, but I think it was pretty ruined. Now it's amazing. The building is stone and has two floors. But there are no interior halls or stairs. All the rooms open to the outside, not onto eachother. The stairs are also on the outside. Half of the top floor is a covered terrace and the other half is two bedrooms. The downstairs has a kitchen, a bedroom and a livingroom complete with TV and DVD player. The garden is wonderful, and after we got there Brandon put out two benches, a hammock, hammock swing, and another swing. The toilet is in its own little building. After goldie sniffed everything and Brandon set everything up and had a cup of tea, they left. Mark and I went for an explore around the place. Everyone was highly confused as to why we were still there when they had just seen Brandon drive off. Everyone I could understand that is. I found teethless village women a little bit difficult. We passed a very noisy cow that wanted to be milked immediatly and a guy walking around wıth a shotgun on his back. Back at the house the neighbor who was hanging around earlier didn't want to leave. And he didn't seem to realize Mark was there, talking only to me. I thought somehow having Mark around would make it okay to speak Turkish without sending the wrong signals, but this doesn't seem to be the case. After getting him to leave we made mashed potatoes and sausages...mmm pork!<br /><br />The next day I woke up without an alarm when I got really hot. So moved out onto the terrace and read there. It was a thoroughly lazy and lovely and hot morning. Which stretched until 5 when we decided it was cool enough to go look at the Pinara ruins. Mark mostly remembered the path, although we took an accidental detour to visit some lycian rock cut tombs that he hadn't seen the year before. Then it was up to the ampitheater and along the ridge to visit even more tombs. The tombs are amazing, but were all broken into ages ago, and now nothing remains inside. We went into the site the back way, and stayed up on the ridge. As we were finishing and nearing the main road we heard a car. Hiding behind the trees, we watched the site caretaker/ticket takers drive past, saving us from paying the site fee. The natural setting is just as amazing as the tombs themselves. Returning back to the house I made spagetti for dinner and read to the sound of cicadas.<br /><br />The next day was more lovely reading and doing nothing. And sewing Mark's ripped shirt while he surveyed the territory which was very amusing. Brandon arrived with John and we packed up the place and he drank some of the sweet tea I had made (I think the first sweet tea I've ever made). Then we were off in the car in a new direction. Up and around and through and then parked the car at the edge of the lycian way and walked up to an abandoned house for a spectacular view of the sea. And Brandon, on his return to the car asked Mark what he thought of a chuck of land nearby. Nice was the reply. Good, said Brandon, because it's ours. We continued on to a village and then on a very sketchy road to the yediburun lighthouse botique hotel with an amazing view of the seven noses or seven points. A lovely place for a beer, or to spend a weekend, or to write a book. And then it was back to the house, to meet the new Turkish guests staying in the house next door, and another barbeque, even more massive than the first. And there was an adorable 2 year old that drank too much coke and got very silly and giggly and dogs wanting the chicken bones. And after all that one last swim in the amazing swiming pool before going to sleep with thoughts of boats in our heads.Katiehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16693239203078051292noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9908127.post-33355131310190528522010-07-23T19:06:00.002+03:002010-07-23T19:33:39.593+03:00Mud baths and gorgesFethiye was lovely. And the reason it was most lovely was because of our hosts Ayse, Brandon, and their daughter Aylin. One of our good friends Simay is the nice of Ayse and Brandon, and Mark had visited them the year before with Simay. Brandon told him to find a girlfriend and come back, and Mark had taken him at his word.<br /><br />We arrived at the otogar not knowing how to get to there place, having a vague idea of where we were going. Waiting at an intersection for a dolmus a man stuck his head out of the window of his old blue station wagon to ask where we were going. Hearing we were going to Calis beach, he told us to get in. He pointed out the bar where he worked on the way past, and dropped us right at the beach before going to have a beer there. He refused our offer to buy him a beer, so we started the trek away from the seaside to Ayse and Brandon's house. Mark remembered the road, and so with no wrong turns we arrived at their house soaked in sweat. Although they already had five visitors they were very happy to see us, and we arrived in time for the barbeque.<br /><br />Brandon's cousin John was visiting, as well as one of Simay's other aunts, who now lives in Denmark, her husband and two of their friends. Ayse invited us to come with them on their daytrip to Dalyan the next day and we happily accepted. After moving tables into the garden and watching Ayse grill mountains of chicken we all sat down and ate and ate until we could eat no more. And then the happy dog goldie got to eat the remains.<br /><br />The day trip to Dalyan was incredible. Mark, John and I were in Brandon's car, and as Brandon doesn't like the new tunnel that they've built under the mountain so tourists can avoid the narrow windy mountain road, we took that narrow road. And the views were spectacular, although we got into a small amount of trouble later. At Dalyan Ayse negotiated a boat for us, and a young looking captain in a pink shirt with a mullet crazy looking hair cut took us out in his boat. Although he didn't look it, he did turn out to be a good captain. He first took us through the reed lined chanel (supposedly used in the shooting of the film The African Queen) to the sandbar beach which separates the lake and fresh water from the beach and sea water. Lots of sea turtles lay their eggs on the beach, and no one is allowed to be there after dark. On the way there we passed some spectacular lycian rock cut tombs on the cliff face. The beach was amazing - clear blue water, sand going out forever, small waves. Boarding the boat once again we went over to the crab boats to pick up our crab order, and to watch as guys threw crabs on lines out into the water trying to lure turtles up to the surface. One did pop up for a short time, but was apparently too full to reemerge. But still, I saw a leatherback sea turtle! And then sat on the boat and ate some amazing crab. <br /><br />Our next stop was the mud baths. Basically, you go in, laze about in a warm muddy pool smelling strongly of sulfur. Then cover yourself and others in mud and wait for it to dry before rinsing off. Then you are sprayed down by a guy with a pressurized hoze before going into the very hot hot pool, which smelled even more of sulfer. And at the end the hot air feels cool, and your skin feels like a baby's. This is the mud that they export and sell for lots of money as facial masks. And it's oh so fun to play with. The final stop was a swim in the lake before going back to shore for some food and ice cream before returning to Fethiye and a dinner of leftovers and chips (fries).<br /><br />I should clarify - Brandon and Ayse have two houses that share a well. So the Danes were staying in the other one. And the second night we slept in our tent in their garden after stealing their daughter's room the first night. But the next day all the inhabitents of the house we were in went off to Marmaris to visit relatives, and left us with the whole house to ourselves for two days, which was great. Our first day we went into town to explore Fethiye, and it's pork products. Calis beach is full of brits, which means it's also full of all day English breakfasts, complete with bacon and pork sausages. For a teacher living in Istanbul and very pork deprived (Mark more than me as I'd just been in France and the UK) this was food heaven. <br /><br />Convincing ourselves we could move after our breakfast, we walked along the beach, and then took the water taxi into the center to research our boat trip. Lonely planet gives dire warnings about what can happen if you don't research your trip well enough, and we were scared. We walked on two boats and asked lots of questions, but in the end those boats didn't have space or weren't going on the right days. In the end we chose V-go, which had been reccomended by one of Mark's friends. That task down we wandered the center, visited the fish market, got some fish for dinner and went home. Mark cooked the fish to perfection.<br /><br />The next day we visited the natural wonder of Saklikent. It's a canyon that's been cut into the stone, and is so narrow at most points that they daylight doesn't penatrate. We took a dolmus through villages before arriving at the entrance, renting plastic shoes and hurring in to be ahead of the large group that was massing. The first bit is a wade through an icy stream where they take your photo, but after that the water is shallow, and it's a bit boring until the canyon narrows, and then it's over rocks, up small waterfalls, all the time walking in the water. At time bolders are stuck above between the walls of the canyon. It's an absolutely incredible place. We hiked a couple of hours before deciding it was getting a bit too difficult, and we were getting very hungry after only sharing a toast that morning. We were a bit slower on the way back as we lounged in pools of water and found an amazing natural rock waterslide. The way into the gorge is on a walkway but for the brave of heart (or crazy people) for the return you can be swept away in the freezing river for a few hundred meters. Of course we went this way. Then you pull yourself out of the river onto the platforms of the resurant located there. We sat on a platform overlooking the river and shared quail and omlet before returning to Fethiye. Back in Fethiye we went for a swim in the sea at Calis beach and then had fish and chips to bring back a bit of Mark's childhood.Katiehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16693239203078051292noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9908127.post-67971069421432039232010-07-15T22:29:00.004+03:002010-07-16T22:25:34.350+03:00ruins galoreIt's been a very ruin filled week. After leaving Ayvalik we headed to Selcuk. The buses don't go directly there though, so we had to take a bus to Izmir and then change to a mini bus to Selcuk. Selcuk is the closest town to the ancient city of Ephesus, which is why we were going there. After calling the local camping place, which refused to tell me the price of camping, we decided to stay in a hostel. The room was lovely, and it had a shower and air conditioning, both of which were very welcome after one night on a bus and two camping. Our first day and a half in Selcuk, Mark started and finished at least one book, we visited the Ephesus museum, the ruins of the impressive basilica of St. John, found a camping pad, saw the remains of the aquaduct and its nesting storks, and wandered the market. And this was the day and a half we had given ourselves for down time. Apparently we are horrible at doing nothing.<br /><br />Ephesus is about a 4km walk from the center of town. We got there fairly early in the morning, so it was empty when we started. It didn't take long though for large groups of tourists led by guides bearing umbrellas started to flood in. The area is absolutely amazing. There's a theater, a smaller theater called the odeon, the library of celsus (the image seen on all postcards) which has been reconstructed by the Austrians, the latrines, the baths and more. By far the best place was the terrace houses. There is an extra charge to get in, but it's well worth it. The houses were built into the side of the hill, and seem to be part of an ongoing archeological restoration. They've been piecing together various bits of the marble wall siding and frescos that fell off the walls. There mosaics on the floor are just as incredible as the decoration on the walls. Walking up the hill, we passed more ruins, which are in a more ruinous state than the ones below. Only an arch or a pillar remains standing.<br /><br />The road back proved longer than the road there, and we had enough time to get our packs before walking to the bus station. When our bus turned up, however, there wasn't enough room for everyone. The bus station in Izmir had oversold the bus. And so we had to wait for the next bus, which turned out to be a half sized mini bus, and more like a dolmus (shared taxi) than a bus, stoping for everyone by the side of the road. But it had airconditioning, and it got us there. <br /><br />As we got off the bus in Pamukkale (cotton castle) we were mobbed by people wanting us to stay with them. Fortunatly we had called ahead, and one of the guys in the crowd was for the dort mevsim pension where we were planning to stay, so he put us in his van and drove us there. It was a good deal - 7 lira a person to put up the tent, as well as use of the internet and swimming pool.<br /><br />Pamukkale was created by a very calcium rich spring which now puts forth 260 liters of water a second. It used to produce even more. When it comes in contact with oxygen the calcium precipitates out of the water as calcium carbonate, which then settled on the hill making white pools and just generally covering the place. The romans thought the water was healing, so they built a spa city named heiropolis above it, and so now you can visit the natural wonder of pamukkale, and the roman ruins as well. <br /><br />We spent the entire day there. The entrance is at the bottom of the hill, and then you walk up through the white area. Shoes are not allowed because it damages the site, and so as Mark pointed out, we saw our first barefoot security guard. We visited all of the ruins, including the octaganal temple of St. Phillip the Apostle, supposedly built on the site where he was martyred. It was up a large hill, and there was no one else around. We saw the theater and the ruined temple of apollo, and were shocked at the price to swim in the ancient pool and so didn't, and visited frontius street and a bit of the necropolis while consuming about 5 liters of water. It was hot. On the way back down we watched the sun start to set as we swam in some of the man-made travertines (pools).<br /><br />Our second morning in Pamukkale we spent most of the time in the calcium rich swimming pool - fed by the same spring up the hill. I feel I should somehow have stronger bones after sitting in all that calcium. Midday we caught a ride back up into the village to catch a bus to the seaside town of Fehtiye.Katiehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16693239203078051292noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9908127.post-69439370170588710642010-07-08T19:29:00.003+03:002010-07-08T19:55:01.084+03:00The cat goes to classSometimes things don't start quite as you thought they might. This was one of those times. We arrived at the Anzak House hostel in Canakkale at 1:30, and being suddenly wide awake went off exploring for a bit. Returning to our room Mark got a message that the girl who had taken Greta (the cat) just the day before was freaked out by her and she was no longer willing to keep her. She was our second person to take Greta, as the original person fell through at the last minute. But at half past two in the morning there was nothing to do.<br /><br />After a restless night, Mark got another message saying that a friend of a friend could take Greta for three weeks, solving the problem for now. We took the noon tour of Galipoli. As Mark is Australian, Galipoli is sort of a pilgramage site. For those of you who are American, and therefore didn't learn about this in school, Galipoli is a peninsula which is at the entrance to the one sea route between the Mediteranean sea and the Black sea. During WWI it was therefore a very strategic point. Brits, French, Australians and New Zealanders attempted to control the penninsula for 8 months before escaping from the Turks. The tour took us accross the dardeneles (the first bit of the waterway) to a resturant with a horrible lunch. Poor people on organized tours never eating good Turkish food! Our tour guide was great though and the bus had airconditioning. We went to the small museum, Anzak cove, where the force originally landed, lots of cemetaries and monuments for various countries, and even got to walk around in the trenches. Although I don't usually like tours there was no way to get to all the sites by public transport, and the guide had lots of stories, and put the places in context instead of it being just another monument.<br /><br />We had a lovely supper, odd ice cream, and a good walk before sleeping. The next morning, however, we were awoken by beeping - the next place for the cat had fallen through. We were running out of options. We could leave her with a vet for 6 weeks, but she would be in a cage the whole time and crazy by the end. Tramatized by various houses, putting her with another friend wasn't really an option even if we could have thought of someone. Then there were the future problems of what to do with her when we continue to travel, and the torture of the 10 hour flight to america. So we decided to take Greta to her brothers - to be a very scholarly cat at Bogazici University. But I didn't want to let someone else take her. Which is how we found ourselves on an 11am bus back to Istanbul. Arriving at Istanbul at half past five we did a mad dash to galata, picked up a freaked out cat and took her to the university. When we got there we saw Chaucer sitting on a step, and a few minutes later, Hendrix. Both looked happy and healthy, and both remembered us. No longer feeling worried about Greta, and knowing this was the right thing for her, we said our goodbyes and dashed back to the bus station for a night bus to Ayvalik. We arrived at 7am to start the holiday again.<br /><br />Since then everything has been lovely. We set up our tent in a foresty bit of the town overlooking a bay of the Agean sea, went swimming twice, and visited an island and had amazing seafood. We also went on a long search to find methylated spirits for the camp stove (which we found) and a sleeping pad for me (which we still haven't). It was a bit frusterating, because for the first time in a while I found myself not able to explain what I wanted in Turkish. But in the end we got the idea accross. <br /><br />Today we took a day trip to Bergama (formerly Pergamom) to visit the amazing acropolis and red basilica. The red basilica in particular is amazing! It was so big that insead of converting it into a church they just built the church inside it. Amazing to think that those towering walls have been standing for over 2,000 years.Katiehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16693239203078051292noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9908127.post-51228651075599189712010-07-08T19:10:00.002+03:002010-07-08T19:29:11.287+03:00UK, moving, and off again!After the rest of my Paris experience I went to visit Tom, and his lovely flatmate Derik and girlfriend Roja. We went to see Britain's Got Bhangra, a new musical produced by a friend of mine, which was funny and full of great music. So much so that once we got home Derik was Bhangraing around the flat. I got to see lots of art with Roja, and she taught me how to make some Iranian food. And had lovely beer with Tom at a couple of pubs in his neighborhood, as well as exploring the area where the industrial revolution started, which has since become the first area of urban regeneration in Europe. It's called castlefield, and has a lovely canal (europe's first again) running through and warehouses turned into flats with lovely pubs outside.<br /><br />After Manchester I took the train to Wales to see Charlie and Tim in Swansea. They now live in a flat with a spare room with a very comfy futon. I arrived a bit sad that I was going to miss the barbeque and pimms that Tom had planned for Sunday, only to discover that Charlie had pimms ready at the flat and had planned a barbeque for Sunday as well. Pimms is an british alcohol mixed with lemonade (sweet fizzy water) and cucumber, peach, lemon, orange, strawberry and mint. It's like fruit salad with alcohol, and I drank a lot of it with Charlie over three days. We also watched Fantastic Mr. Fox (amazing), walked to the Mumbles, had sunday lunch and a barbeque and sat around in pubs. One day I went on the train to Cardiff with Tim where we discovered that the museum was closed, and that while Cardiff has lovely arcades and neon blue ice cream (which we couldn't find) there isn't that much else to do. I also did some walking along the coast of the Gower Peninsula. <br /><br />Very sad to leave Swansea, I got on the 8:30 evening train to London, arrived at nearly midnight, took the underground to Heathrow, slept on the floor for four hours, checked my bag at 5 am, and got on the plane at 7 to arrive in Istanbul at 2. Mark met me at the airport which was very exciting. And then began about 4 days of packing and crazyness. We didn't do much on the Wednesday, but spent the time until Sunday at 1 in the afternoon packing the house, throwing things out, giving things away, visiting people, making arrangements at the last minute for the cat and thinking we might never leave. But on Sunday at 3pm we arrived at the otogar after putting all our bags in a friend's house and returning the keys to our flat. We were free! And then told the next bus was at 7. But never fear, IKEA was there, and so we ate swedish meatballs and had free refils and cake, as well as testing all of the beds and couches before boarding our bus to Canakkale. The traveling had begun!Katiehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16693239203078051292noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9908127.post-23174649912896591552010-06-17T23:30:00.003+03:002010-06-20T00:04:48.066+03:00food and ParisAs I spent months planing this trip, waiting for the end of school and counting down the weeks, I never really thought I would be leaving. Only as I waved to Mark out the back window of the taxi Wednesday morning, did I realized I was. After falling asleep on the bus to the airport, confusing the security guys with my camera battery and charger, and getting myself some euros and pounds I was getting on the plane. The exciting part of leaving from the Asian side of Istanbul to fly to Europe is that the plane has to go over the whole city, giving a view that looks remarkably like google maps satellite with a few clouds. With it's 18 million people, Istanbul's size never ceases to amaze me.<br /><br />Three hours of sleep later, I landed in a city of four million. After Istanbul most cities seem small. Mom and William met me at the airport, and we took two suburban trains and a metro to arrive at the flat. The flat is amazing. I'm staying in the living room, and from my window on the 7th floor I can see a very large TV across the street which is perpetually turned to the world cup, a huge number of chimney pots, and Sacre Cour, one of the famous cathedrals of Paris. William thinks whoever owns the flat spent all their money buying it, and had nothing left to furnish it. It does indeed look like it was furnished from a flea market.<br /><br />My mom had to finish writing her conference paper for tomorrow (the reason they are in Paris) so William and I left her with coffee and computer and headed out to look at the Hospital St. Louis and a canal. The Hospital St. Louis is where they quarantined plague victims back in the day, and it's still a working hospital with a very nice courtyard with the requisite football game as well as other children playing. The canal connects the Seine to another river some 100 kilometers away. It has 10 locks along the way. We watched one in action as a houseboat went down the lock and entered a tunnel at the very end of the journey to the Seine. We walked quite a way, past tall bridges with lots of stairs, a swinging bridge, a homeless tent settlement, ducklings and a canal boat. Walking back through the neighborhood we are staying in we found Cambodian, Brazilian, Turkish, Arab, Chinese, Thai, French and a multitude of other restaurants, grocery stores, bakeries and butchers. While I love Turkish food, I miss diversity in food in Istanbul. <br /><br />In keeping with past blog entries, much of my travel is centered around, or at least related to food. And in France, how could it not be. Last night we ate Brazilian food. Today I woke up to fresh baked croissant. A foodgasm to be sure, along with eggs, melon and bacon (pork!!). I realized that while I've spent a good amount of time in France, apart from 24 hours in 2005, the last time I was in France was in 2000 after my Sophomore year in high school. Which happens to be the last time I was on stage in a musical. I had fond memories of French food, but I had forgotten how amazingly good it is.<br /><br />Today was a very civilized day. William and I visited the Musee d'Orsay, a former train station which has many impressionist paintings and lots of incredible art nouveau furniture. We saw Monet and Manet, Van Gogh, Cezanne, and many other people I can't remember. Fully one third of the paintings feature naked women. And then there is a special exhibit entitled Crime and Punishment. Gory paintings of crime, more of the punishment. And then eye charts, photos of faces and diagrams of sculls trying to identify which physical features where most identified with criminals. A set of measuring tools to measure scull size etc. An actual prison door carved with inmate's names. A good exhibit to see and one I hope I don't see again.<br /><br />To continue with our day we walked to Saint Germane de Prey, where we had lunch at Cafe Deax Margots, where the famous writers of the left bank drank their coffee. I had salad and wine. Followed by a walk on the Seine in the rain and a trip to a coffee rostery which had over twenty kinds of beans to choose from.<br /><br />For mother's day William had given mom dinner at the restaurant Le Petit Zinc with one of her children. Luckily she picked me (sensibly too, as Ian is sadly in NC). The restaurant is complete Art Nouveau decoration and absolutely stunning. The food is incredible as well - fish soup, duckling with red fruits, and profiteroles. Paris really is a foodie's heaven.Katiehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16693239203078051292noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9908127.post-29307578572836687372010-06-10T13:16:00.003+03:002010-06-15T20:48:34.740+03:00Off againI was asked a few days ago when I was going to update this blog again. I was surprised - I didn't know anyone read it, especially since I haven't posted in about a year and a half. But as I am leaving Istanbul (my home of the past three years) to begin a new adventure, it seemed like a good idea to start writing again.<br /><br />The plan:<br />1 week in Paris<br />1 week in the UK - Manchester and Swansea<br />7 weeks in Turkey with Mark (the boy) attempting to see as much as possible<br />4 days back in Istanbul<br />10 hours on a plane with Mark and Greta (the cat) to NYC<br />3 days in NYC<br />5 days in Chapel Hill<br />16 hours driving a U-Haul with Mark and Greta to Ann Arbor, Michigan<br /><br />I will then spend then next two and a half years completing two masters degrees - An MPH (masters of public health) in International Health and Epidemiology and an MA in Middle Eastern and North African Studies. Don't worry though, I'm not settling down, just staying in one place for a bit to get a degree which should allow me to be able to travel and work without teaching English.<br /><br />And now, to pack!Katiehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16693239203078051292noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9908127.post-65282911643026286802009-01-12T17:10:00.003+02:002009-01-12T17:21:06.470+02:00Traveling MouseIt has recently come to my attention that it has been over two months since I posted. So first of all, I would like to wish you all a very happy Thanksgiving, merry Christmas, and a happy new year!! <br /><br />After doing tech for a local production of Cinderella, I was lucky enough to make a friend in the theater world, and now I am working in a theater. It's a bit challenging as it's all in Turkish, but it means that my turkish is improving all the time. I've also moved from the asian side to the european side. It was exactly six months from the time I left this summer until I had my own place. And as much as I love traveling, I realized that every so often it is important to have a room of your own. A kitchen is also a good thing. <br /><br />Once again I came to Istanbul unemployed and homeless, and once again I have found an amazing life here.<br /><br />I've started a new project - <a href="http://travelingmouse.com">The Traveling Mouse</a> I'll still be posting ocasional updates, and when I start traveling again I'll be posting more regularly on this website. My new project is travel stories aimed at teenagers, although I hope anyone can enjoy them. There will be a new story every monday. If you have time, let me know what you think.Katiehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16693239203078051292noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9908127.post-68980076496906448032008-11-05T20:08:00.001+02:002008-11-05T20:15:47.391+02:00Election night 2008At home with strep throat, I didn’t get to go to an election night party. I started watching CNN at 3:30 pm. However, as the first polls weren’t going to close until 1am Turkish time, which meant that I had a darn long time to watch CNN before anything started to happen. I watched their little backstage bit at least five times, and during the breaks instead of beer ads, watched every board of tourism east of Germany and west of America try to convince me that they had the most beautiful woman, beaches, etc. Either that, or it would be wise of me to get an MBA or go to a leaders conference in Dubai. Lying on pillows on the floor with dogs, I watched, waited, and hoped beyond hope, knowing that I had sent in my absentee ballot a week and a half before from Germany. At 5:30 I decided that Obama was going to win and went to sleep. Had I known that they were going to call it just half an hour later I would have stayed up. As it was, a friend and my mother called and woke me up at 6am to tell me Obama had won. Payback, my mother told me, for all the times I had woken her up to tell her UNC had won. And, as if to prove the two things are important enough to wake someone up over, Franklin Street was rushed after McCain conceded. Basketball and Obama. The two things worth staying up til 5:30 in the morning to watch from abroad. And, lying there with strep throat, as things went Obama’s way, I was much happier to be here now, than four years ago, sitting in the library at 2am with a broken heart, writing a paper the night before it was due, checking the returns online, and having my first fight with my mother in years as we watched the world fall apart wanting to cry.<br /><br />This time I wanted to cry. For joyKatiehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16693239203078051292noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9908127.post-85287807014360040022008-11-02T14:38:00.002+02:002008-11-05T20:15:36.641+02:00Marathon and HalloweenIstanbul, Turkey<br /><br />Since returning to Istanbul, I am mostly just living. However, I no longer have my own place, and so I’ve been staying with various friends. And at this point I think I would like to say thank you to everyone who has put me up, and helped me on my way from the end of the festival to now.<br /><br />A huge thanks to Rich and Jim, who gave me the gear, advice, and inspiration to hike the west highland way. Thanks to everyone I met on the way, to Daniel, Graeme and Karen for hosting me in Glasgow and showing me how fantastic the city is. To Tom and all his fellow assistant wardens for amazing food and adventures in St. Andrews. To Sarah in Manchester for taking me in at the last minute. To Lou and Olly for also giving me a place to stay at the last minute, for the hugs, and just generally being wonderful. To Charlie and Tiffany, for the awesomeness and fun of sunny Wales, and to Webster, for the birthday party and fold out sofa. But that’s only in the UK! Thanks to Ingo for having the amazing exhibition, to Buck, and amazing CS host, and Marko, for giving me my own space for two days. And in Istanbul, thanks to Hande, Collette, the dogs, Amy, the cats, and Brienne for putting me up so far. You all are absolutely amazing!!<br /><br />And now after that short break, we return to Istanbul. I was exhausted after my flight here, and didn’t really do anything until Monday, when I went to the Kapili Carsi and the book exchange to visit people. The exception to that was to participate in the Istanbul Marathon on Sunday, October 26. It’s the only marathon in the world that spans two continents, and if you do it properly, it involves running 42 kilometers. There’s also a 15 kilometer fun run. But being much more the walking type than the running type, I participated, along with about 150,000 other Istanbul’lus in the Halk Korsusu, or the people’s course. It was about 6 kilometers from the Altunizade bridge on the Asian side, across the Bosphorus bridge to the European side, and then to just past Besiktas. It’s the one day a year that you can walk on the bridge, which explains why so many people turned up in the pouring rain. Usually, Turks are afraid of the cold and rain, convinced that they are going to get sick. I guess the other motivation was that if you had a number, you got a metal and a t shirt at the end. I didn’t have a number.<br /><br />I guess the walk across the bridge could have been more amazing had it been clear and sunny so that it was possible to see Ayasofia and all the other historic mosques. And it would have been nice not to be soaking wet, through the three layers I was wearing. It took my shoes nearly three days to dry out. But it was amazing to walk across the bridge, and to look back and see the sea of umbrellas and hooded people being me. Sometimes people would feel inspired and run past, but mostly people just walked. I’ve never seen so many turks in one place before. <br /><br />The other exciting, or perhaps not so exciting event was Halloween! Turks have not really gotten into Halloween yet, but some of the other foreigners had organized a party in one of the bars in Taksim. So after a three hour meeting (over amazing Thai food) on how we were going to make the pumpkin to carriage transformation for Cinderella, speech bubbles winter panto, we put on our Halloween gear. I had managed to scrape together a witch costume, with a skirt from Hande, a hat from Amy, and some green makeup from Sharon. I also had my own converse, and purple and black striped knee socks. Walking from the Galata tower nearly all the way to Taksim square (a 20 minute walk) I got an incredible number of stares. Some people just looked. Some said something about Halloween. And one girl stopped us and asked if we were going to a Halloween party. She was really excited and wanted to come as well.<br /><br />There were some good costumes – a guy dressed as a belly dancer, Sarah Palin (she won the costume contest, hopefully the only thing she will win!), Penny from Hairspray, and a storm trooper. Sadly there was no pumpkin carving, but I did make a pumpkin pie instead.Katiehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16693239203078051292noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9908127.post-59615156051179461262008-10-26T14:19:00.003+02:002008-11-05T20:03:12.164+02:00Germany<span style="font-style:italic;">Due to technical problems of my computer hating the internet, photos coming soon!</span><br /><br />Berlin<br /><br />Arriving at the bus station with no reservation for a place to stay (no different than usual) I headed to the main train station and attempted to find tourist information. Most things in Berlin and Germany generally seem to be quite well signposted, but in this case I followed the signs for 700 meters, and when I got to where the tourist information should be, there was another batch of signs. The one for tourist information pointed me back 650 meters in the direction I had just come from. Something to work on Berlin, if you want to encourage happy tourists!<br /><br />I took the u-bahn to the hostel I had stayed at the other two times I was in Berlin, but it was full. And so I spent a very hungry and tired hour on the internet obsessing about hostels, and decided to go with the Mitte backpackers hostel. They had space, it was all good. Dropping my stuff, I tried to wake up, brushed my teeth, went and found food, and for lack of anything else to do, wandered to Ingo's gallery. I hadn't told him that I was stopping by, and when I looked in I saw mostly photos I recognized, but no Ingo. The guy looked at me a bit strangely, and I was going to leave when Ingo came out. It was so nice to see him again. I realized how much I had missed him. I went in, looked around, helped a bit, and got in the way a bit. We took one framed photo and a print to the framer so she could swap out the prints, because the new one was better. We also went to the bindery to pick up the art book that Ingo had made for the exhibition.<br /><br />After leaving, I wandered about a bit, and when it started pouring went back to the hostel, made some pasta, read some, and then crashed around 10 and slept over 12 hours. Amazing what some sleep can do for you. The next day I wandered about until I was meeting Ingo at 3. We went for amazing sushi and walked through Mitte until we parted ways so he could get ready for the opening at 6. I kept walking, and visited the Maur (wall) park. As you walk through the park on the left side where the wall once was, now there is nothing. It is separeted from the park by a fence, and is clearly still a sort of border area. From one of the plaques I read, perhaps they are keeping it that way as a sort of memorial.<br /><br />The opening of Ingo's exhibition was the first art opening I had ever been to. When I got there it was still pretty empty, but it seemed that everyone else showed up at once soon after that and Ingo ran around stressed and tryed to talk to everyone. I had a fantastic time. I got to see Thies and Antje, Marko, Jorn and Filiz, as well as meeting Thies and Jorn's cousin, who was a bit crazy, and very funny. He tried to teach me how to say "I love stuffed tigers" in german, as well as other things. After a few hours in the gallery, the celebrations moved to a nearby bar. There was some food, and everyone drank a lot. At the end there was dancing.<br /><br />The next day I met Thies and Anje for coffee, which turned out to be ice cream. They had just finished their berlin internship, and were leaving for Hamburg to start classes early the next morning. And then I took my things from the hostel to go stay with my lovely couchsurfing host, Buck. He has one of the most amazing, crazy flats that I've been in. As he puts it, it's beautiful, if you like dilapidated beauty, and I do. After talking a bit, we went over to his friends' house, and I stayed while he went to study german. The friends - Adam and Paul took me with them to see a band that some of their other friends play in, called the cowboy killers. It's a banjo guy who also plays kazoo, a guitar and harmonica player, and for that night, a bass. I guess they normally have a washboard player, and a drummer. The guys reminded me of people back in Chapel Hill. A bit funny to go all the way to berlin for american folk. The band was awesome though.<br /><br />The next day I wandered around Kruzberg, one of the main Turkish neighborhoods in Berlin. I walked into a bakery, and asked for manti in Turkish. The guy looked at me and went off on this long string of german. I tried to explain that I didn't understand, when one of the german turkish guys sitting in the shop, who actually knew Turkish, stepped in, and told me the guy didn't have what I wanted. A little bit further on was a doner shop. So I stopped inside and asked if he spoke Turkish. Of course he said. Every donerci speaks Turkish. So we had a bit of a discussion. He told me he thought obama would be elected and then assasignated. And then he gave me free Baklava.<br /><br />I finished my wanderings around Kruzberg, and went to the Kruzberg museum, which has a history of all the different groups to live in the area, and of migration to berlin and germany more generally. Returning to the flat I then went off to meet Buck at the karmenoya, where he and his friends were supposed to be having a reading group. Except when I got there I felt a bit out of place because everyone seemed to already know eachother, and I saw no one there that I knew.<br /><br />Minutes later though, Buck showed up on his bike, with another bike in hand. They had just moved the location of the readinng group to where I had walked from, and so he thought I could ride a bike back. Having not ridden a bike in a city ever, I freaked out a bit, and told him he should go ahead because I would be a bit slow. Once I got on the bike though, it was amazing, although I had a bit of a hard time with the backpeddle breaks. The reading group was fun - much better than any english class I've ever taken.<br /><br />I left Buck's house on Monday to meet Ingo at Marko's house. Ingo works mostly nights, so after falafel, it was time for him to nap. Later on we visited his friend and got ingredients for a bit of a strange dinner - mashed potatoes, hot dogs, guacamole, and pickles. It was fantastic though. We topped it off by watching the new indiana jones film and sharing a pint of hagan daaz tiramisu ice cream.<br /><br />After breakfast the next day (I miss breakfast with Ingo!), Ingo departed for his parents, and I spent the next two days enjoying the solitude of Marko's flat and not going out. Thursday was my last day in Berlin, and I met Filiz, and at a wonderful lunch at her flat that she had cooked for me, before walking along the canal and visiting the swans. I also got to have coffee with Sarah (on a grand to do her dissertation research) and Ben, before heading back to have dinner with Marko, hear about his trip to paris, and then fly to Istanbul.<br /><br />My flight left at 3am, but for some reason they thought I needed to be there two hours ahead of time. It was the only flight leaving at that time, and we all just sat around in the waiting place. The flight was very empty - I got an entire row to myself. Somehow, the budget airline fed us breakfast, and then I got to lye down for an hours sleep. I woke up for the landing, which made the whole extreme red eye flight seem worth it. It was perfectly clear, and still dark as we flew over Istanbul, and I could see all of the bosphorus, the bridges, Kadikoy harbor, and everything else. I felt like I was looking at a map. What a beautiful sight.<br /><br />Sadly, it took me two and a half hours on the bus to get from the airport to Kadikoy, just as long as my entire flight from Germany to Turkey. I was back.Katiehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16693239203078051292noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9908127.post-55761346211797527592008-10-25T23:28:00.004+03:002008-10-26T14:19:08.276+02:00Tea, scones, and a long bus rideLondon<br /><br />I woke up late, and Pi the cat showed me to Webster's room. After a bit of waking up time, we took the train to richmond, to the tea house, called the tea box, <a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEglul9udgsqb7nk_sA9PLscxp3pO0g7difZMeMlu4U20tJG3v_LPbx6LUE6PQ5A0Va-YF_tEyF9iu9V-JBbxEvQcumWxBDo9QVl6P9JiiwGSXrWKt7TGTp2yR_TrKLzxEpz-Vqo/s1600-h/IMG_4519.JPG"><img style="float:right; margin:0 10px 10px 0;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 200px; height: 134px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEglul9udgsqb7nk_sA9PLscxp3pO0g7difZMeMlu4U20tJG3v_LPbx6LUE6PQ5A0Va-YF_tEyF9iu9V-JBbxEvQcumWxBDo9QVl6P9JiiwGSXrWKt7TGTp2yR_TrKLzxEpz-Vqo/s200/IMG_4519.JPG" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5261435026476803714" /></a>where webster works. Yes it was his day off, but we went there anyways. It's a really cute place, with a green theme, chandaleers and cool wooden tables. And I had my first proper tea the meal, although perhaps a bit early to really be tea the meal. Green tea, a ham and camembert sandwich, followed by more tea, a blueberry scone with lots of cream, and half a brownie. All of this was eaten very slowly over maybe three hours in a proper tea house like maner.<br /><br />After concluding we couldn't eat or drink one more thing, we returned to Webster's house, and Webster's dad attempted to solve the puzzle of why my computer wouldn't connect to the internet. It turned out to be an unsolvable puzzle. Later that night I took what should have been two tube trains and <a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhEYEXGepVXb7PvfTi6llfbwvD4R4e2agV_rXmSAriMGeGD7Fewu04t2o5gSYci6BWvhxPIJcm6B8ML3UYL-32ixo-DeJ5aTrrfI6rT87qc7hpCKbE-MkoyL0H3P-yiS0-MDd4h/s1600-h/IMG_4524.JPG"><img style="float:left; margin:0 10px 10px 0;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 200px; height: 134px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhEYEXGepVXb7PvfTi6llfbwvD4R4e2agV_rXmSAriMGeGD7Fewu04t2o5gSYci6BWvhxPIJcm6B8ML3UYL-32ixo-DeJ5aTrrfI6rT87qc7hpCKbE-MkoyL0H3P-yiS0-MDd4h/s200/IMG_4524.JPG" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5261435023280178882" /></a>ended up as four to liverpool street station to meet nick (another awesome c venues person). Concluding rapidly that there was nowhere to go at liverpool street station, we headed back to the tube to camden town, home to many more pubs, as well as shops, and in my opinion, a much cooler place. Apparently there was a major fire recently, but it was dark and I couldn't really tell. We had some beer, and talked about c venues, life, the universe, everything. It was really great to see him again.<br /><br />My return to kew only took two trains. The next morning I got up early to see Webster off to work, hung about, packed my bag, printed my ticket, and then once again took everything on the tube, and lugged it to Victoria Coach Station. This time, not for a megabus, but a eurolines bus (gray with no markings) to Berlin.<br /><br />And so began the 21 hour journey to Berlin. I was sitting next to a german woman with purple hair who spoke very little english. Getting out of london took forever and a half, and then we continued on to dover. There was some confusion about which lane we should be in, and our diver had to back the bus about 500ft, out of the lane he was in. At which point the other driving jumped out, and stood in traffic with his hand out, trying to get all the semi-trucks to stop so that the bus could merge. In Turkish style everyone on the bus stood up to watch and perhaps offer advice, and it was all I could do not to burst out laughing. We then waited in this line for a bit as the boat docked and the other cars drove off. And then we all did burst out laughing, as the woman telling cars to go had to walk up to a van and wake up the driver who had fallen asleep. The woman looked a bit startled, confused, and a bit embarassed. I hope she didn't realize she had an entire bus watching her.<br /><br />The boat ride took a bit over an hour, and as we were still in the UK, dover was covered in mist. The white cliffs at dover are very impressive though. And standing on the top deck I realized that I had been on the ferry from Dover to Calais once before, and that it had been 10 years ago. 10 years!! It made me feel old. I stood outside on deck most of the time to avoid being sick, and as the boat approached calais reboarded the bus. It was nearly dark by this time, and everyone started trying to sleep. At lille I got my own seat, and sometime later in the night the seat accross from me emptied and I could put my feet on it and lay down more or less. We stopped about two hours outside of berlin so our drivers could have breakfast, and then we were in Berlin. All things considered, I think I slept more than I usually do on buses.Katiehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16693239203078051292noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9908127.post-33383042919109945222008-10-25T22:23:00.005+03:002008-10-26T14:01:28.145+02:00Sunny WalesSwansea, Wales<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhWaRETVv4urWswKnoQMB4IrG2SqxCvDcYQXGCj_FIihS9hyGwvxnVeNIVjrcdzFuvMdavyHn9yqsefZg5y-hDhkdI7MxTJgPSOl2xIZXUtjpJ7In7swqeygcEQAC9-Qj2NwsUl/s1600-h/IMG_4453.JPG"><img style="float:left; margin:0 10px 10px 0;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 200px; height: 134px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhWaRETVv4urWswKnoQMB4IrG2SqxCvDcYQXGCj_FIihS9hyGwvxnVeNIVjrcdzFuvMdavyHn9yqsefZg5y-hDhkdI7MxTJgPSOl2xIZXUtjpJ7In7swqeygcEQAC9-Qj2NwsUl/s200/IMG_4453.JPG" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5261429154745731442" /></a>I was determined to get to the borough market before I left london, and so Saturday I packed and went with lou, olly, and all my stuff including wheely suitcase to the market. It's a food lovers dream. For lunch I had a wild boar sausage with cranberry sauce, greens and mustard - absolutely amazing. It's like a super gourmet farmer's market with lots of jams, olives, meats, baked goods, fish, vegetables, you know, a market, except that it's in a nice area of london. And suitcase in market - not a good idea.<br /><br />After not much time in the market, I had to say goodbye to lou and olly, and headed off to victoria coach station once again to catch the megabus to cardiff, and from there walked accross the center to get a bus to Swansea. I guess the bus area is not in the nicest part of town, and it was a bit empty when I walked out in search of charlie. I soon found her and we did that running to each other thing that happens in the movies. And then we walked to her house, and up the hill, or as I am told, mountain.<br /><br />After being fed and meeting her sister, we headed out to meet some of Charlie's friends and go to a ska/punk/regee gig. I hadn't really been properly out to a show in a long time. Yes there was music at the fringe, but somehow that seems a bit different. The second ska band and the american guy playing regee were the best. Beer was served in plastic cups, which was confusing, as when you squeezed the cup, the beer spilt, and by the end everyone was dancing. I felt like I fit in fairly well with my blue hair. After the music finished we went to another bar with lots of girls in very short skirts trying to get the attention of guys that didn't look so impressive, and then went home. We were all hungry, and so Charlie's roommate Mali, who works as a chef at TGIfridays all day, made us pasta with cheese and egg. Never has pasta been so good.<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi-tndQTWVjwOsrhxEdSqx3Ue5UQHqhqx3gbtWcxjWNdLR5oEtN8YxURcFTgLaJ1XXgOdXPpyhbgkf2MSExJjMp6uXBvLLeULUG9IFOAn8cGZ2eVwEkR4Qx8od1eIYxXG-3uUha/s1600-h/IMG_4486.JPG"><img style="float:right; margin:0 10px 10px 0;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 200px; height: 134px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi-tndQTWVjwOsrhxEdSqx3Ue5UQHqhqx3gbtWcxjWNdLR5oEtN8YxURcFTgLaJ1XXgOdXPpyhbgkf2MSExJjMp6uXBvLLeULUG9IFOAn8cGZ2eVwEkR4Qx8od1eIYxXG-3uUha/s200/IMG_4486.JPG" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5261430225344334466" /></a>Sunday Charlie had to work, and so Tiffany, the other roommate, photographer, and girlfriend of Mali and I went to the three cliffs on the gower peninsula. Tiffany is french, and has a french car, and so while it seemed much more normal not to be sitting in what is usually the drivers seat, it meant that she was sitting on the outside of the road as she drove and not the inside. She warned me that it had been a while since she had driven on the left, but there were no issues, and we arrived safely.<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi9K_K7tMH9ZYC3OMEfIuh82DzKbhZPTErAYtJazC5IIQV-TtJ3Sr89DXV0kIgJMLwTR39hXh5BydSp82dw5yevn04cLu6YQOhymIMX0pEFjw0t7vTZDb0dLtp-8pR-1CL5YPIw/s1600-h/IMG_4464.JPG"><img style="float:left; margin:0 10px 10px 0;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 200px; height: 134px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi9K_K7tMH9ZYC3OMEfIuh82DzKbhZPTErAYtJazC5IIQV-TtJ3Sr89DXV0kIgJMLwTR39hXh5BydSp82dw5yevn04cLu6YQOhymIMX0pEFjw0t7vTZDb0dLtp-8pR-1CL5YPIw/s200/IMG_4464.JPG" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5261429158467820050" /></a>I was really excited to see the gower peninsula, because Rich's story from "Driving Helicopter Syle" was about going to the gower peninsula with his family. Granted he went to rosili and the worms head, but it was still the gower peninsula, and the weather was amazing - not a cloud in the sky. I remember one line from his story distincly - "and if it was a sunny day, and i'm told that there are sometimes sunny days in southern wales..." <br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiQqMEot2iAqXSZKNpaQ5S5ZNYlzKn6ciWGEUlzBP1mrIlVXsA12-9minLfQr78W-AuZFAeCr8xZ_SJnraNUXm0MlHR2__aD4FkPZFGTB0d63S6sm_pS56mFe2oaSmHZhDGfvty/s1600-h/IMG_4480.JPG"><img style="float:right; margin:0 10px 10px 0;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 134px; height: 200px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiQqMEot2iAqXSZKNpaQ5S5ZNYlzKn6ciWGEUlzBP1mrIlVXsA12-9minLfQr78W-AuZFAeCr8xZ_SJnraNUXm0MlHR2__aD4FkPZFGTB0d63S6sm_pS56mFe2oaSmHZhDGfvty/s200/IMG_4480.JPG" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5261429167129483186" /></a>The walk to the three cliffs was nice, and once we got there it was absolutely beautiful. We sat on the beach to eat lunch and watched the rock climbers, and <br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjuxJKdlYRb6kaOGGyC-rdpPd5n_NgHQKBQkUSDhfHJkdaGq86v5U4hGzT-vuXzBCdDzKf8XSxTHN3smMRHqbocAZVcp1beIibmKcDDlvae9c2po88mcrAFC5ZeVyLfml98g9ql/s1600-h/IMG_4475.JPG"><img style="float:left; margin:0 10px 10px 0;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 134px; height: 200px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjuxJKdlYRb6kaOGGyC-rdpPd5n_NgHQKBQkUSDhfHJkdaGq86v5U4hGzT-vuXzBCdDzKf8XSxTHN3smMRHqbocAZVcp1beIibmKcDDlvae9c2po88mcrAFC5ZeVyLfml98g9ql/s200/IMG_4475.JPG" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5261429164146634162" /></a>then walked to the end of the beach. The tide was coming in by this point, and we had to walk through a gap in the rock as the water was getting deeper and deeper. By the time we got through the water was past my knees. <br /><br />On the way back to the car we picked brambles, not enough for a pie, but enough for a brambly apple crumble. We got back just before charlie, and hung about in the house. Adam, Charle's boyfriend and another friend showed up and we had dinner and my first attempt at a crumble. The top was good and everyone liked it, but for some reason the fruit didn't cook.<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhrMfrqjAQBHH8O6f703wOj2_1y4gZ065nITZuedyR8woqxnU1RJsTzbdtZ7qPl-9JXbbiWbF51Gp3Uond5f5_hXTQq5VDF0QD05tsLMZyxexA5sLYjUEW3PwTUhyphenhyphenBCJ9Bor8xl/s1600-h/IMG_4512.JPG"><img style="float:right; margin:0 10px 10px 0;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 200px; height: 134px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhrMfrqjAQBHH8O6f703wOj2_1y4gZ065nITZuedyR8woqxnU1RJsTzbdtZ7qPl-9JXbbiWbF51Gp3Uond5f5_hXTQq5VDF0QD05tsLMZyxexA5sLYjUEW3PwTUhyphenhyphenBCJ9Bor8xl/s200/IMG_4512.JPG" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5261430231390827106" /></a>The plan was to have a bondfire on the beach, and so eventually we drug ourselves out of the house (okay, so I may have pushed a little). After finding firewood on the beach, and Adam dragging up an entire tree trunk, we attempted to make a fire. And attempted. And attempted. And used up all of the newspaper, then all of the scraps of paper <a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiaYnKTuobSWLAClxbxLOo7IDgNh0EA7uFfsPRDMJKSv90Y61_HbjcT9bZTDIG4SK9WsL1mGWsU95B9ODrYSow8Vr7VaNyGdU2vAWZKr4cGBPMnRvn6X-ovgLgF8i_bKC1XKCoZ/s1600-h/IMG_4505.JPG"><img style="float:left; margin:0 10px 10px 0;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 134px; height: 200px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiaYnKTuobSWLAClxbxLOo7IDgNh0EA7uFfsPRDMJKSv90Y61_HbjcT9bZTDIG4SK9WsL1mGWsU95B9ODrYSow8Vr7VaNyGdU2vAWZKr4cGBPMnRvn6X-ovgLgF8i_bKC1XKCoZ/s200/IMG_4505.JPG" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5261430224195603218" /></a>we could glean from our bags and wallets, and then finally the lighter died. The answer from the welsh was firestarters for next time. On the way back Charlie gave me a tour of the rest of swansea by night, visiting the bar where she works on the way.<br /><br />My last day in Wales I visited Charlie on her lunch hour, and we had the amazing brittish version of the baked potato in memory of the kupir we shared in istanbul. This potato had beans, butter, and loads of cheese. Welsh cheese. We sat in castle square, and then charlie got me welsh cakes. Fresh welsh cakes with sugar. I will dream about them for months to come. Returning to get my stuff I took the bus back to cardiff and then the megabus back to london, arriving at 7. Then there was the tube to hammersmith, where I found Webster and his friend Jake.<br /><br />And this was the reason I had returned to London - to help Webster celebrate his birthday (part I). We went to an indian resturant, I met lots of his friends, was offered a civil partnership so I could get a visa to stay in the country and had amazing food. This was followed by a bar and then with my suitcase to webster's family's fold out couch.Katiehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16693239203078051292noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9908127.post-32028128882927079982008-10-24T20:33:00.014+03:002008-10-26T01:12:07.675+03:00London<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjMvWk3eUrmXx0-7dD_1_sptLZUO6uCb9IbOvX031kPOxZD3_t-HzlaU4tZRN6PSw0dgpLy7uToL5Vgt23pKNXuVwZ24N-ng2qTinavBfTEGeuFi13c3lgqdrkzHYjbPIFfby5n/s1600-h/IMG_4373.JPG"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 200px; height: 134px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjMvWk3eUrmXx0-7dD_1_sptLZUO6uCb9IbOvX031kPOxZD3_t-HzlaU4tZRN6PSw0dgpLy7uToL5Vgt23pKNXuVwZ24N-ng2qTinavBfTEGeuFi13c3lgqdrkzHYjbPIFfby5n/s200/IMG_4373.JPG" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5261216347779550514" /></a><br />London<br /><br />Olly and Lou's spare room reminds me of a cave. The bed is in a nook, and it's incredibly dark with the curtains shut, which means it's an incredible place for sleeping. Saturday morning I slept really late, and then lou and olly made a traditional english breakfast, complete with the baked beans. Yum! I spent most of the day sitting in their living room, learning how to use the program picassa and downloading my photos. In the evening Olly went out to meet Tammy, Lou went to see a possible show for next year at C Venues with Andrea, and I wandered the south bank, walked accross the thames twice, and distracted in a book store. The amazing thing about the UK, is that the books are all in English, meaning that I can read whatever I want when I go into a book store. <br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiHgxXLKtCec_mc1Mv9zblU2U9IqVeGzhOYgB2J2pOvTY6Z3Q7LKsMyscwhDMHK5C4KVsSJQttXriBGEJSG-MNH7nsXGfFlMlD3jROqzIbP3AKTJKHMSHducSuIeXGM7xPMp8S0/s1600-h/IMG_4379.JPG"><img style="float:left; margin:0 10px 10px 0;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 200px; height: 134px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiHgxXLKtCec_mc1Mv9zblU2U9IqVeGzhOYgB2J2pOvTY6Z3Q7LKsMyscwhDMHK5C4KVsSJQttXriBGEJSG-MNH7nsXGfFlMlD3jROqzIbP3AKTJKHMSHducSuIeXGM7xPMp8S0/s200/IMG_4379.JPG" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5261216054501693442" /></a>After their show was finished I met Lou and Andrea in the bar of the BFI, or Brittish Film Institute. It's a pretty happening place, with velvet arm chairs and lots of well dressed people. John soon joined us, and we had a great remeniss about C Venues. Later we met Tammy and Olly, and just got to this amazing Japanese resturant before they stopped serving. It's the only japanese resturant that I've been to that doesn't have sushi. I put my ordering power with the others, and we shared everything, including really good rice, quail, chicken, lamb chops, amazing egg plant, bacon and asparagus, and lots of edame. It was an absolutely amazing meal, and the food was also incredibly cute. It's a good thing that the trains to clapham junction run later than that tube, because we didn't get back to their flat until after 1.<br /><br />Sunday, in typical brittish fasion, was a rainy day, perfect for hanging about and going to museums. We had breakfast together again (of the less cooked variety), and after some a pep talk about the need to get out into the world, I headed out into the world. I went to the free museums near prince albert hall, spending most of my time in the science museum, although I did pop into the natural history museum. <a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi1AsP8pEw3lp8r5aqqTzq4wqhpR94NQbRJsmrXkQkP6Pqjv81I41bSmKFgAkwsBPQ6T3UISWsx-AI7eCObTnSyJKSi7J9U-EHfmPqfk-4kR9hku6YCieBCtO95hXXmS3W_eXBn/s1600-h/IMG_4300.JPG"><img style="float:right; margin:0 10px 10px 0;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 134px; height: 200px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi1AsP8pEw3lp8r5aqqTzq4wqhpR94NQbRJsmrXkQkP6Pqjv81I41bSmKFgAkwsBPQ6T3UISWsx-AI7eCObTnSyJKSi7J9U-EHfmPqfk-4kR9hku6YCieBCtO95hXXmS3W_eXBn/s200/IMG_4300.JPG" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5261210034371013666" /></a>As one who reads every bit of every exhibit (something that really annoys some people), it took me a long time to get through two exhibits. The main one I looked at was a history of steam power and the steam engine. They had collected old steam engines, bits of old machines, and each stage also had a computer terminal with animations of the workings of the engines and information about the key players. It was absolutely facinating! The other exhibit I visited was a history of plastic, which was also pretty darn cool. Further proof that I am a true nerd. That evening I helped Lou make curry, and rediscovered how fantastic a vegitable the parsnip is.<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiJBR9FfpO_mfDzuG_gJjz5M_gvyPQ7Z7CL_gfDjrR9y5gvVxjN77Uht_vkmaqexbLv87XQHXwizWWKNSoNtHn39-kibJEFxHXuSc1kUtYcP-J3PEXnuX6oRC97INMiZhPPMIZE/s1600-h/IMG_4369.JPG"><img style="float:left; margin:0 10px 10px 0;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 200px; height: 134px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiJBR9FfpO_mfDzuG_gJjz5M_gvyPQ7Z7CL_gfDjrR9y5gvVxjN77Uht_vkmaqexbLv87XQHXwizWWKNSoNtHn39-kibJEFxHXuSc1kUtYcP-J3PEXnuX6oRC97INMiZhPPMIZE/s200/IMG_4369.JPG" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5261211600847552338" /></a>I woke up in the morning to sunshine! and remembering William's photos of Kew gardens, thought I would try to see them. With a week travel card (an amazing deal if you are going to be in london for a week!!) that was only good for zones 1 and 2, and not realizing i could top it up to go to zone 3 (you can top it up) I got off at the last stop in zone 2, and started in my way. I walked through the center of Chiswick, and then through a very boring stretch, before I crossed the river, and entered Kew. I think the best word that can possibly describe Kew is cute. It's extremely cute. The tracks for the underground, which at this point goes overground sort of splits the small center into two. <br /><br />I did find the gardens, but at 13 pounds for entrance, with only two hours remaining, and no flowers at this time of year, I decided it wasn't worth it, and being the daughter of a historian, did what any logical person would do, I decided to check out the national archives. When I got there I was given a packet about how to go about conducting research if I wanted to. Instead, I checked out their museum. I found it really interesting - the importance of the archives and documents. Especially interesting were the exhibits on who gets to see what documents and how that changes politics, society, etc. In addition, the museum hosts the doomsday book, a land survey from the 10th century. I think it's the oldest book found from the UK. Just shows the importance of geography - the oldest book from brittian is about place.<br /><br />Leaving the national archives I took the thames path along the south bank of the river. It runs through the forst, making it seem really hard to believe you are in a major world city. It seems as if you are in the middle of nowhere. I walked all the way to hammersmith, crossed the bridge, and took the tube home to have Olly's pasta and sauce for dinner, followed by watching stardust. Or maybe we watched that sunday. Things run together when you're having fun.<br /><br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjD9so5y8Tc5OVmV1upECVCanqeYTHZvjuDErO8lvblq0D8_0H2LysZcutwP2DPRjzuz1bm-le8pxEfoyjlYmXt5AMcfWfMw5WhZvLpMp-Auaai9_equrUbWkRpyYeMSYGGpPeh/s1600-h/IMG_4316.JPG"><img style="float:right; margin:0 10px 10px 0;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 200px; height: 134px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjD9so5y8Tc5OVmV1upECVCanqeYTHZvjuDErO8lvblq0D8_0H2LysZcutwP2DPRjzuz1bm-le8pxEfoyjlYmXt5AMcfWfMw5WhZvLpMp-Auaai9_equrUbWkRpyYeMSYGGpPeh/s200/IMG_4316.JPG" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5261210036632340690" /></a>Tuesday I decided to return to the science and natural history museums. I went on a guided tour of the botany bits of the museum, which included behind a the scenes look at where they press and store all of the plant samples that come in. Back in the science museum, I visited some other exhibits. In the evening I ended up once again <br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi7EArEvsn4lnok4ccc2-hQ4G-81derzfSDJ7HAqRHwdNg7pXAjHVOy7R7slPQMi9HqV3z-WtdD8hJYBfm6w8xY7bcFH7pa-kHtttGMMfTYzaIYvHX1oL7N-wZJRTtw-FZ82BVS/s1600-h/IMG_4324.JPG"><img style="float:left; margin:0 10px 10px 0;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 200px; height: 134px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi7EArEvsn4lnok4ccc2-hQ4G-81derzfSDJ7HAqRHwdNg7pXAjHVOy7R7slPQMi9HqV3z-WtdD8hJYBfm6w8xY7bcFH7pa-kHtttGMMfTYzaIYvHX1oL7N-wZJRTtw-FZ82BVS/s200/IMG_4324.JPG" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5261216050542438898" /></a>meeting Lou, Andrea and John for the Royal National Opera's production of Swan Lake. We were in the upper stalls at the side on the top, which meant that we couldn't see the back drops or a bit of the action on stage left, but it was still a fantastic performance, and the music was wonderful. It's such a good show for the oboe.<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEigqEGvIKo3k6DYvmriGT9a9y4lLsIgtBqxyP-mxZPy8UvKvRyjlECQo3HS8Sq7GDcFOPnxfXibGOstJ0P4hP5PueZKVM8WHd9zqQwCyg0Tmy0D0NeRdJ0Yy53we5HrZ_c6BLX-/s1600-h/IMG_4398.JPG"><img style="float:right; margin:0 10px 10px 0;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 200px; height: 134px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEigqEGvIKo3k6DYvmriGT9a9y4lLsIgtBqxyP-mxZPy8UvKvRyjlECQo3HS8Sq7GDcFOPnxfXibGOstJ0P4hP5PueZKVM8WHd9zqQwCyg0Tmy0D0NeRdJ0Yy53we5HrZ_c6BLX-/s200/IMG_4398.JPG" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5261211605127116002" /></a>Wednesday was the most beautiful day so far, and I walked the south bank, and basically went nuts with my camera. The clouds were perfect, the sky was amazing, the views were fantastic, there were lots of art students out working on projects, and two guys were making living rooms out of sand on the beach. One was just finishing as I got there, and he was sitting on his sand couch watching his sand tv, and hoping that people would toss some money down to him.<br /><br />I walked all the way to St. Pauls, but I got there just as it was closing for mass, so didn't go inside. Instead, I went to the nearby tourist information, and asked likely one of the wierder questions that they get - do you know where I could buy corn tortillas? The guys had no idea, but said that there were some latino stores in the elephant and castle shopping center, so I headed there to have a look.<br /><br />There were no corn tortillas in the elephant and castle shopping center. The shopping center is a mall that has fallen from popularity. The top floor is bingo. On the ground floor is Tesco, Iceland (a very discount supermarket) and Boots. There are lots of other random stores, and one latin american deli sort of place. The area outside is full of stalls selling clothing and random other stuff, with a few food stalls as well.<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiY4waGrgSXiom-SX_moGnaPCvZVLIkTOQc4sQp3PKgyz2WPsLUP9kDjtNmdEgOemRlb4pl10kyPofFTdW2wqn_wsauQAyzReC7FoGr728qDHaXGjpB5RdNn27uZNxIeFAQMUgf/s1600-h/IMG_4416.JPG"><img style="float:left; margin:0 10px 10px 0;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 134px; height: 200px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiY4waGrgSXiom-SX_moGnaPCvZVLIkTOQc4sQp3PKgyz2WPsLUP9kDjtNmdEgOemRlb4pl10kyPofFTdW2wqn_wsauQAyzReC7FoGr728qDHaXGjpB5RdNn27uZNxIeFAQMUgf/s200/IMG_4416.JPG" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5261213255415657154" /></a>Giving up, I went home to make enchiladas with flour tortillas. Webster came over for dinner as well, and much fun was had by all. The four of us managed to finish off two trays of enchiladas and four avicados worth of guacamole. I also had my first amaretto, which unlike most alcohol tastes just as it smells.<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiuCal3_CSTnUTDJ48dp-q_3JwXW_o36CFKi790RGsgpQzCUnMdlUy7ajU5p3xZTkPTeibecWSFnzEsmorJB8CG3EB0r9VJ9LxBFAo4RlrAwNYnEtRIhr_uJmumD4WUUoWRsAn2/s1600-h/IMG_4441.JPG"><img style="float:right; margin:0 10px 10px 0;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 134px; height: 200px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiuCal3_CSTnUTDJ48dp-q_3JwXW_o36CFKi790RGsgpQzCUnMdlUy7ajU5p3xZTkPTeibecWSFnzEsmorJB8CG3EB0r9VJ9LxBFAo4RlrAwNYnEtRIhr_uJmumD4WUUoWRsAn2/s200/IMG_4441.JPG" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5261214741969717010" /></a>Thursday I decided was my day to visit Greenwich. After attempting to do some cleaning in the kitchen, which was a bit of a disaster from my cooking the night before, I headed out late. I also wanted to visit the docklands, as they are supposed to have canals, and also have changed a huge amount in the past 10 or 20 years. So I took the Docklands Light Rail (DLR) for a tour of the docklands on my way to Greenwich. They had a reputation for being run down, but now it's all tall buildings, posh stores and offices. The canals are pretty, but it may be the area of London that is most changed. Not interested enough to stop I headed all the way to Greenwich. The area is cute, and after a bit of walking I found the park where the observatory is. <br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEib-aAhxfINUqOIGrrnxD3DDOH7CBx-OUX3EhxOGiB-7tCWbJQa5yx2I_nA7KF9DSNsSbL2zjKps2njMNr0PuNWZsTxA7y5sjMa9PKQeU0M1OIHGRcJUTLI7Pt7_Gpzjl4Ca9Of/s1600-h/IMG_4425.JPG"><img style="float:left; margin:0 10px 10px 0;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 200px; height: 134px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEib-aAhxfINUqOIGrrnxD3DDOH7CBx-OUX3EhxOGiB-7tCWbJQa5yx2I_nA7KF9DSNsSbL2zjKps2njMNr0PuNWZsTxA7y5sjMa9PKQeU0M1OIHGRcJUTLI7Pt7_Gpzjl4Ca9Of/s200/IMG_4425.JPG" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5261215209270945538" /></a>I went first into one side, but really wanted to visit the side with the prime meridian, and so went back to the center, at which point I was told it was 4:31, and that we had past last enterance time. They wouldn't let be back into the area from which I had just come either, which was very annoying. And so I did not get to see the prime meridian as it goes through the royal observatory. But the park was really nice, and the view from the top of the hill was fantastic.<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEitp5ZhmQkBUtKC_0r2C4MMjBQWtM5-uXxvLZ2Q-b8Gqsmctw6RqyfO_8jLfhrQo7KSgaqhT1cMCWPB05nwr4o8b5BmaiH4Dmm175ihc1frsUJ-QKqNbAtMO94xjEkj6kWbVnqy/s1600-h/IMG_4443.JPG"><img style="float:right; margin:0 10px 10px 0;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 200px; height: 134px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEitp5ZhmQkBUtKC_0r2C4MMjBQWtM5-uXxvLZ2Q-b8Gqsmctw6RqyfO_8jLfhrQo7KSgaqhT1cMCWPB05nwr4o8b5BmaiH4Dmm175ihc1frsUJ-QKqNbAtMO94xjEkj6kWbVnqy/s200/IMG_4443.JPG" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5261215206045063826" /></a>I walked a bit more in Greenwich, took the pedestrian tunnel under the Thames, and then headed to north london for dinner with Rashmi and Subir. They live on the same road as they did when I visited them nearly four years ago, but in a different flat, which they own. Apparently the view is fantastic during the day, but it was night. Subir had made a chicken dish and a vegetable dish, the names of which I have forgotten, but they were both amazing. We talked about chapel hill, and politics, and watched some BBC, which was my first TV news in a long time. They said they were thinking about getting online booking for their spare room, as it was in such high demand. I told them next time I was back I would go to their site and book a few days. Going back to south london I learned how to top up my oyster card, before begining the long journey back.<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhj2heEhabhIKNHkFlJmF73LvaFcjmyutlKFOOWCQ-cZD4KwVZFMir1zFlshJUOuSFanVQmd4-SbpgnHwPxkCv7N04ZN991SNqV4HsbeieRTDn2Tl54D7CnGVyXnJ8wzG5BEzmt/s1600-h/IMG_4435.JPG"><img style="float:left; margin:0 10px 10px 0;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 134px; height: 200px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhj2heEhabhIKNHkFlJmF73LvaFcjmyutlKFOOWCQ-cZD4KwVZFMir1zFlshJUOuSFanVQmd4-SbpgnHwPxkCv7N04ZN991SNqV4HsbeieRTDn2Tl54D7CnGVyXnJ8wzG5BEzmt/s200/IMG_4435.JPG" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5261214724279651138" /></a>For my last day at Lou and Olly's I actually woke up at a decent hour, so that I could go with lou to the c venues office to help for the day. My job for the day was to read through all of the duty logs, and to see which companies overran their time slots, and by how much. Not the most exciting of things, but it was nice to do some work, and be back in the c venues world for a day. And that evening lou and olly went out, and I visited the fresh and wild store - really whole foods, where you can get corn tortillas, refried beans, and north carolina salsa. I got a frozen burrito and some ben and jerry's, and ate it while watching Dirty Dancing and Singing in the Rain. Fantastic.<br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgI4LyHEtvYp2BXkmL8Av7OsIhmcJIshHGx5drnga5BYT_jiw96WwcN84UwqhE8OvQsMZlqFe_BihnCMedaTfFcvx7K9eo4kUu9REqC-Pvq8vOvtvqW9NwmRXVw7wlOMfuw3ezK/s1600-h/IMG_4450.JPG"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 134px; height: 200px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgI4LyHEtvYp2BXkmL8Av7OsIhmcJIshHGx5drnga5BYT_jiw96WwcN84UwqhE8OvQsMZlqFe_BihnCMedaTfFcvx7K9eo4kUu9REqC-Pvq8vOvtvqW9NwmRXVw7wlOMfuw3ezK/s200/IMG_4450.JPG" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5261216352064013058" /></a>Katiehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16693239203078051292noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9908127.post-42662478959596302582008-10-20T00:29:00.008+03:002008-10-20T18:16:43.197+03:00Going south<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEidpLTIpVeuRucBmfCWuAS9wiY-N7R1LaDXqs72oj5pXBrTLXjcShvZSa7xlSeGPv7cuszC7GtA1dlvITFHamcwgxQnlENdT70sPwtU6LrINMMw0Kaa183umRTs1if8uUYuy8cU/s1600-h/IMG_4241.JPG"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEidpLTIpVeuRucBmfCWuAS9wiY-N7R1LaDXqs72oj5pXBrTLXjcShvZSa7xlSeGPv7cuszC7GtA1dlvITFHamcwgxQnlENdT70sPwtU6LrINMMw0Kaa183umRTs1if8uUYuy8cU/s200/IMG_4241.JPG" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5259253104619092770" /></a><br /><br />Glasgow and Manchester<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiETCuKSIM9XOUuSnxAi8DndPyFcTduYfyqAAQ81AzRkw1xpFnaof6jpZQDspaDtE0bNwRkO8koH6XSg66kthABC5GrPJAlqR3BtPdXxgCOYkwigO3vHr0L0fZ5KvzPcOzRY3mI/s1600-h/IMG_4239.JPG"><img style="float:left; margin:0 10px 10px 0;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiETCuKSIM9XOUuSnxAi8DndPyFcTduYfyqAAQ81AzRkw1xpFnaof6jpZQDspaDtE0bNwRkO8koH6XSg66kthABC5GrPJAlqR3BtPdXxgCOYkwigO3vHr0L0fZ5KvzPcOzRY3mI/s200/IMG_4239.JPG" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5259247472550250018" /></a>From St. Andrews I headed back to Glasgow. Daniel was packing to return to the US and Sandra <a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhzSqPNHoB495ukOq1hjcXekUUBGagbIO0FSTK5WAJHuLP8VKVS9mp06EPKbjIVGxm3Tw4uVIXhGu4uEluQ0u2kpx1jJO7juYeXqrDbAt7MoqNhyphenhyphennDZvXrG02sZyF7toXWrVGZl/s1600-h/IMG_4210.JPG"><img style="float:right; margin:0 10px 10px 0;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhzSqPNHoB495ukOq1hjcXekUUBGagbIO0FSTK5WAJHuLP8VKVS9mp06EPKbjIVGxm3Tw4uVIXhGu4uEluQ0u2kpx1jJO7juYeXqrDbAt7MoqNhyphenhyphennDZvXrG02sZyF7toXWrVGZl/s200/IMG_4210.JPG" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5259247477251025058" /></a>was off on holiday. Highlights included the glasgow green, the lighthouse, fajitas and more sucessful brownies with Graeme. And walking and walking down by the river on my own.<br /><br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjwpfADfQoXg2BgVrz557rMnDHe01fzqf5D-Rkz38eOiEXqT6Ukq2OTG3-j7U2o0HJHwLf46u34_lH7QRuYANvR-7ALYubNu-AodqZt-GXWypA-P8ykB_W_Ujet9KTq82aXucSR/s1600-h/IMG_4281.JPG"><img style="float:left; margin:0 10px 10px 0;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjwpfADfQoXg2BgVrz557rMnDHe01fzqf5D-Rkz38eOiEXqT6Ukq2OTG3-j7U2o0HJHwLf46u34_lH7QRuYANvR-7ALYubNu-AodqZt-GXWypA-P8ykB_W_Ujet9KTq82aXucSR/s200/IMG_4281.JPG" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5259251720443739442" /></a>I left Glasgow Wednesday for Manchester with the lovely MegaBus. If you haven't heard of megabus, it works similarly to the budget airlines. The first ticket is one pound, and after that they go up from there depending on demand. So, especially if you can plan a bit ahead, it's a great way to travel cheap. And I hear it's already begun in the US. I arrived in Manchester around 4, and wasn't meeting Sarah, a friend from the festival until 10, so I had a lot of time to do something with. None of the guys from the bus station dressed in their neon yellow high vis could actually were from manchester, but they did tell me that there was no left luggage in this bus station. So I followed the signs to tourist information. They told me that there was supposedly left luggage at the train station, and that there was a free bus to get there. They also did what tourist information does best and gave me a free map. The woman proceeded to circle almost everything on it as a point of interest, especially cicling the northern quarter - known for it's artsy nature. Perhaps it was the blue hair.<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEipJx7u7KZE7QmMcZ4Xi8LvPuCXdOf3QAz0WfBDL_uLinTMwYh0xGr9tRMIJAmrc6u4wyRVa3kH0I49XNU1z_13USB3JqUlGrMg9SLwLxXvxhiONhJz9neRc_HAdHQH36e84tn6/s1600-h/IMG_4271.JPG"><img style="float:right; margin:0 10px 10px 0;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEipJx7u7KZE7QmMcZ4Xi8LvPuCXdOf3QAz0WfBDL_uLinTMwYh0xGr9tRMIJAmrc6u4wyRVa3kH0I49XNU1z_13USB3JqUlGrMg9SLwLxXvxhiONhJz9neRc_HAdHQH36e84tn6/s200/IMG_4271.JPG" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5259250020261660306" /></a>The bus to the train station was packed, and I kept having to get off with my bag to let people out. The first time, the driver didn't seem to realize that I wanted to get back on and almost drove off without me. I did find the left luggage, and was thrilled to be rid of my bag, although I was still carrying my pack with laptop. Following the advice of the tourist information lady, I headed to the northern quarter, which was very cool, but sadly, it also started to rain. I went to a cafe, had tea, and hid for a couple of hours. By the time I left the cafe it had stoped raining, but I still had a few more hours. I walked in the direction with the most people, and soon found a tesco. Buying a bagel, I proceeded back into the street, and, feeling rather homeless I squatted next to a building and made myself a cheese sandwhich bagel. Just when I had finished a woman came up to me and asked me where I had gotten it as it looked good and she wanted one. Should go into business.<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh88tgo_2dQsT4N1hVOVmWZAU-B0tw9pGkVPLP6GU3POnCs6eheFMRMA89bToMZm9KFdA-DCwZ1jvrmC_exHgqq5wFFkTJD97nKE-M9ZiMB0u0hJnnBxubSavSr8ySC5PPEd1Vn/s1600-h/IMG_4265.JPG"><img style="float:left; margin:0 10px 10px 0;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh88tgo_2dQsT4N1hVOVmWZAU-B0tw9pGkVPLP6GU3POnCs6eheFMRMA89bToMZm9KFdA-DCwZ1jvrmC_exHgqq5wFFkTJD97nKE-M9ZiMB0u0hJnnBxubSavSr8ySC5PPEd1Vn/s200/IMG_4265.JPG" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5259250001790200802" /></a>My wanderings led me to the nightlife area, a very disnified passage, and a large wheel. Apparently an IRA bomb went off in this area, destroying buildings, but injuring no one, and so they have been able to redesign the area. I met up with Sarah a bit later, and we took the bus to her flat. She had been at the greyhound races, and had won 10 pounds. We had time for a short reminiss about c venues, and then it was time for sleep. In the morning she went off to work and I went back to the center of Manchester feeling just a tad worried about my complete lack of plan.<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjwpfADfQoXg2BgVrz557rMnDHe01fzqf5D-Rkz38eOiEXqT6Ukq2OTG3-j7U2o0HJHwLf46u34_lH7QRuYANvR-7ALYubNu-AodqZt-GXWypA-P8ykB_W_Ujet9KTq82aXucSR/s1600-h/IMG_4281.JPG"><img style="float:right; margin:0 10px 10px 0;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjwpfADfQoXg2BgVrz557rMnDHe01fzqf5D-Rkz38eOiEXqT6Ukq2OTG3-j7U2o0HJHwLf46u34_lH7QRuYANvR-7ALYubNu-AodqZt-GXWypA-P8ykB_W_Ujet9KTq82aXucSR/s200/IMG_4281.JPG" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5259251720443739442" /></a>I had been hoping to stay with a friend of Tom's on her canal boat, but it seems that this was not to work out. I visited the library where I did the large amount of paperwork necessary to secure my absentee ballot (as north carolina is now a swing state!) and then visited a rather old and famous library, which looked exactly how a proper library should look in my mind. Or, at least definetly how I expect the library at hogwarts looked. And it's still in use for the university. I bought a bus ticket to london, wandered around more, and called Olly who told me it would be fine if I stayed with them tonight, at the very last minute. Returning to the train station I got my luggage exactly 24 hours after I put it in, returned to the bus, or rather coach station, and took my second megabus in two days.<br /><br />London was another five hours, and then it was two stops on the local train to clapham junction. It was fantastic to see lou and olly again. It was going to be my first time having a bed in a room to myself in weeks, to have some space. And Lou and Olly are amazing. I got there at the end of a dinner party, and after giving them my bottle of wine with the prettiest label, I sat down, was given risotto, and was so happy that I wanted to cry.<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj-aqyhi7tXj1a8lcATIP13Aj4pyT50w5VxxaCx_82k8NVudcJitJ6R-pZ9UxRJNqIFNu6Cnngbhaf-ylzjgl2WewylvU9MJfNv1ff_z7G3180GLrzjd6NW2e9D-KgKzidbT9wM/s1600-h/IMG_4242.JPG"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj-aqyhi7tXj1a8lcATIP13Aj4pyT50w5VxxaCx_82k8NVudcJitJ6R-pZ9UxRJNqIFNu6Cnngbhaf-ylzjgl2WewylvU9MJfNv1ff_z7G3180GLrzjd6NW2e9D-KgKzidbT9wM/s200/IMG_4242.JPG" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5259253114185617810" /></a>Katiehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16693239203078051292noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9908127.post-12021334552459298882008-10-17T14:40:00.008+03:002008-10-20T16:44:32.397+03:00Pi(e) and dumplingsSt. Andrews<br /><br />After all the excitement in Glasgow, I headed back to Edinburgh for a day to return the camping gear that I now think of as mine, and to be reunited with my computer and suitcase. It was great to see Rich again as well. I put all my photos on the computer, which caused my camera battery to die twice, and got to sleep in a proper bed in a room to myself, a rare occurance.<br /><br />The next evening I took the bus to St. Andrews and was met at the bus station by Tom and his friend Vikash. As I have hosted two guys named Tom on couchsurfing, let me clarify. This is not the cycling Tom currently in Iran, but the one who is now back from Iran and studying Iranian history at St. Andrews. Not only is he studying, he is an RA, or as they call themselves, assistant warden. Which<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgc6peR-peBL1Rhi6VeEOH7568CDIWlb358DJdYPiIctg5oUMq57cncXOgx-TP06mQDbXkuxWuWMqnjdZcCoqkHgucZZTdvOJSYSEqAGwm30YPLQkkVje3MwTxrD4y2PX073PX7/s1600-h/IMG_4147.JPG"><img style="float:left; margin:0 10px 10px 0;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgc6peR-peBL1Rhi6VeEOH7568CDIWlb358DJdYPiIctg5oUMq57cncXOgx-TP06mQDbXkuxWuWMqnjdZcCoqkHgucZZTdvOJSYSEqAGwm30YPLQkkVje3MwTxrD4y2PX073PX7/s200/IMG_4147.JPG" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5259214051888065666" /></a> means that he and five others take turns being on duty and dealing with fire alarms and drunk first years in the dorm. But instead of having to live in a dorm room, they get flats in the dorms. As he visited me twice in Istanbul, I thought it was only fair that I called on him in St. Andrews. St. Andrews is known for two things - the university, and GOLF. Golf being the more important of the two. In the middle ages they had to ban golf as it was getting in the way of the far more important archery practice. In addition to many golf courses, there is a ruined castle and a ruined cathedral.<br /><br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgpxfNbJWSTQWXsw96aYk7fMR01uXlh6jF8PSpvuBPsPSJ_GiVvXNiSnDHN7NEosE3FOFwWYGGto63wjXIV1D7nAFbapjRonDEuahuf3-UDH6Rwj-0O1GoaWY6ekOG_Exz0zI1a/s1600-h/IMG_4143.JPG"><img style="float:right; margin:0 10px 10px 0;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgpxfNbJWSTQWXsw96aYk7fMR01uXlh6jF8PSpvuBPsPSJ_GiVvXNiSnDHN7NEosE3FOFwWYGGto63wjXIV1D7nAFbapjRonDEuahuf3-UDH6Rwj-0O1GoaWY6ekOG_Exz0zI1a/s200/IMG_4143.JPG" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5259229256068495266" /></a>I spent five nights in St. Andrews, all of which was amazing. I think the most amazing bit was the last day, where Tom and I went out in search of wild blackberries, or brambles, as it is scotland. We walked to the trailer park, and after hopping over the fence found many. We had not thought beyond finding the brambles however, and hadn't brought a sack. So in a feat of amazing engineering which has not been repeated since, I managed to take off the bottom of four layers without exposing myself. The bottom layer was black so I was hoping it wouldn't stain. With my shirt tied up as a sack, we proceeded to completely fill it with brambles in a short time, and only a few scratches. My hands, however, had turned completely purple. <br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgIIX60ExxA6bMBv5tvlaArRvtWn4fYMZS6lt6rlRo4UPhAFKZbeTE5SJKdXjdCjPg4bRIxg9-psKJWuzm4qRMmZp3Ip2cKIstATpNn2EzM-L6nX9yv7K22GtC5nDkxruRh3Rs3/s1600-h/IMG_4172.JPG"><img style="float:left; margin:0 10px 10px 0;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgIIX60ExxA6bMBv5tvlaArRvtWn4fYMZS6lt6rlRo4UPhAFKZbeTE5SJKdXjdCjPg4bRIxg9-psKJWuzm4qRMmZp3Ip2cKIstATpNn2EzM-L6nX9yv7K22GtC5nDkxruRh3Rs3/s200/IMG_4172.JPG" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5259224865442050722" /></a>Tom had to return home, but I wandered around town, and then had the most scary tesco (a grocery store) experience of my life. Back in Tom's flat I stressed about finding a circular pan to make my bramble pie, before realizing that this could be a square, and therefore very nerdy pie. Instead of making the traditional lattice I wrote, perhaps at Tom's suggestion, Pi(character) r squared(character) on the top. Because as we all know after taking geometry, pies are no longer round, pies are square.<br /><br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjqi_cUcIUJ0_7BeG5pyeulCND_VPvV7JYzGMcchvphyphenhyphenVtcT0Eb0zH24KW0VKyc7DPphNNgTJv_1MQOoZ_0ecMqGUELUgXHe9WRH64IcFTWjDwoTLy1H8VdejYCKFN3EFGhyRa9/s1600-h/IMG_4156.JPG"><img style="float:right; margin:0 10px 10px 0;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjqi_cUcIUJ0_7BeG5pyeulCND_VPvV7JYzGMcchvphyphenhyphenVtcT0Eb0zH24KW0VKyc7DPphNNgTJv_1MQOoZ_0ecMqGUELUgXHe9WRH64IcFTWjDwoTLy1H8VdejYCKFN3EFGhyRa9/s200/IMG_4156.JPG" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5259214058958131538" /></a>After finishing the pie I helped Tom's flatmate Yaning finish making the 200 or so dumplings that she was making. The other assistant wardens came over and we sat on pillows (bits of my bed really) on the floor of Yaning's room and ate dumplings until we couldn't move. And then we ate more. Sometime later the pie was done, and Katy and I decided that it needed cream. So we walked to Tesco for a much less scary tesco experience to get cream and custard. And it was a really good pie.<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjFG0VpSKZFlD4INAiXhHrmS-6LXyueAR9mwW3CIGinitZvEK9_tg8S_yzQnvV25ldzIPH_VuRTyyiphHnf_6rXDlXTzVbA5ru8JzMrHIiIao35bIsthav4mJPsS1MUlv_UzTII/s1600-h/IMG_4139.JPG"><img style="float:left; margin:0 10px 10px 0;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjFG0VpSKZFlD4INAiXhHrmS-6LXyueAR9mwW3CIGinitZvEK9_tg8S_yzQnvV25ldzIPH_VuRTyyiphHnf_6rXDlXTzVbA5ru8JzMrHIiIao35bIsthav4mJPsS1MUlv_UzTII/s200/IMG_4139.JPG" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5259224878415851730" /></a>Other highlights include yet another freshers week. Because I was hanging out with all postgrads, they are a little bit more classy than freshers, and so I went to several receptions with free wine, which was exciting. I also went to Katy's birthday party, where she had a giant fudge doughnut we had picked up earlier as a birthday cake. It was amazing. St. Andrews in general is a quite foody town. There is an amazing cheese shop, several delis and bakeries, a butcher, and did I mention the amazing cheese shop? The brittish do make some amazing cheeses.<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh-8IMtOCdSP5vRf-6aj5D_aWJKImthkq6HzhsOECQbDofvzrt79mWaVKvIboL3L7DUtchKSRzu2Rc7JMUne1qBew-5McUjpHrkdUfaakTHizofECEqKwJR6QhW1CiIv_sB0MGH/s1600-h/IMG_4151.JPG"><img style="float:right; margin:0 10px 10px 0;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh-8IMtOCdSP5vRf-6aj5D_aWJKImthkq6HzhsOECQbDofvzrt79mWaVKvIboL3L7DUtchKSRzu2Rc7JMUne1qBew-5McUjpHrkdUfaakTHizofECEqKwJR6QhW1CiIv_sB0MGH/s200/IMG_4151.JPG" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5259229244858735682" /></a>Then there was the night when Tom, Vikash and I went to the beach with a mostly full bottle of whisky. Let me share this advice - never drink (accidentally or on purpose) more than a brittish male, especially a former rugby player. It did end up that a guy from northern cyprus came along the beach with two friends, and we had a very strange conversation in Turkish. <br /><br />Most of what I did in St. Andrews looking back was talk, discuss politics, eat good food, drink wine, walk, and hang out. A very good life indeed.Katiehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16693239203078051292noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9908127.post-12723915497530438872008-10-16T19:09:00.006+03:002008-10-20T02:55:21.590+03:00Return to CivilizationGlasgow<br /><br />The next morning I woke up absurdly early, found myself once again on the school bus, spent an hour in a coffee shop in portree eating a breakfast scone, and then boarded the 7 hour bus back to Glasgow. Part of the trip followed the way, and it was a bit depressing to drive a bit that had taken me a day to walk in half an hour. And a guy sat down next to me, and it took me a few minutes to recognize him as someone who had stayed in my hostel in Fort William. It's a very small world.<br /><br />Back in Glasgow, I met up with Daniel, the guy from Tenessee that I had met on the walk. He had returned a few hours earlier from Inverness. I got a real shower with a real towel and real shampoo and it was amazing. We had the rest of my cheese and salsa, and then Daniel's roommates showed up - Graeme and Sandra. Graeme is from Scotland and is studying audio visual engineering at Glasgow Uni. Sandra is from Germany and is an architect. Later some of their friends showed up and it turned into a party. I spent the night on my first couch since the end of the festival - very comfy, in a lovely red nook behind the table in the kitchen. It was a bit on the short side though.<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgmjiyo8rmqISM0Lpnm35xGm25Hply_kMTXtphe_S4Y4yi1Ct_4rhykdHzqa3QINy6YIrSZRHlUwCxY_Lr1t9dTpBtJMe0iltMhEpL2XdOisCQNnBrUu1LSpT5UsaUrb6mmd8xT/s1600-h/IMG_4107.JPG"><img style="float:left; margin:0 10px 10px 0;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgmjiyo8rmqISM0Lpnm35xGm25Hply_kMTXtphe_S4Y4yi1Ct_4rhykdHzqa3QINy6YIrSZRHlUwCxY_Lr1t9dTpBtJMe0iltMhEpL2XdOisCQNnBrUu1LSpT5UsaUrb6mmd8xT/s200/IMG_4107.JPG" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5259003123591647234" /></a>I hung out there all the next day, enjoying being inside and having electricity. That evening I walked accross Kelvingrove park to stay with Karen, whom I know through the festival. It was the end of freshers week at Glasgow, and so Stag (Student Theatre at Glasgow) was putting on a showcase to entice first year students. A note on this freshers week thing - in the UK, when people go to uni, at least 95% of them are 18 or over, meaning that they can legally drink. And so there is a week before classes begin where first years (freshers) move into the halls and then have lots of university sponsored orientation events, and get horribly drunk. Something we US freshman completely missed out on due to stupid alcohol rules.<br /><br />Anyways, the showcase was fantastic and I got to see more people from the festival and got invited to the party they were having the next night. And people tried to talk me into staying to perform in the first show of the season.<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhuHSJUz0GgY8CP_z3xjND3CiNBH-ynOfm8I-gLBMO_iKvZr8J1tRWJQg_QeK77hFtB29xU3aqksPPtt8Vgq76QVkdhlfxKVFE8Zsm7WHA0hwoukky8LAh8DtggSE-WvECvpHCQ/s1600-h/IMG_4097.JPG"><img style="float:right; margin:0 10px 10px 0;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhuHSJUz0GgY8CP_z3xjND3CiNBH-ynOfm8I-gLBMO_iKvZr8J1tRWJQg_QeK77hFtB29xU3aqksPPtt8Vgq76QVkdhlfxKVFE8Zsm7WHA0hwoukky8LAh8DtggSE-WvECvpHCQ/s200/IMG_4097.JPG" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5259003117928464162" /></a>Saturday, I visited the Kelvingrove museum in the morning. The building is amazing - it looks like a cathedral - but apparently was built for an event like the worlds fair. I focused mainly on the exhibits relating to scotland. <a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh3TDoXLMqwxlBul3cK_IZ_cCnpS013kd7Ltw0wz6pgmWWmg9X6ilHSN44z0qHK9sbW3vXSiDrDWjjo0r4wfwXTgGoUqzVwrvd3NpZfiw0IBd0hwfXU2B_RFmYcklktPXDOqKQx/s1600-h/IMG_4110.JPG"><img style="float:left; margin:0 10px 10px 0;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh3TDoXLMqwxlBul3cK_IZ_cCnpS013kd7Ltw0wz6pgmWWmg9X6ilHSN44z0qHK9sbW3vXSiDrDWjjo0r4wfwXTgGoUqzVwrvd3NpZfiw0IBd0hwfXU2B_RFmYcklktPXDOqKQx/s200/IMG_4110.JPG" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5259005017324218962" /></a>The most interesting was about Charles Rene Mackintosh, who designed a huge number of buildings in Glasgow, specializing in tea rooms. I think he is most remembered for his distinctive chairs. Then I met up with Karen and I walked to Byers road - one of the shopping streets of the west end. I continued a wander into town while she returned home to do work. The party that night was great - with a theme of 1999 and lots of decorations to match. Theatre parties everywhere seem to be fairly similar. Perhaps a bit drunk, I discovered the wonder that is chips and korma sauce.<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhzNIQDUCyjlsbJo-G4ObdmmEaGyNYXCdrGjKVWCUn5dBDcdL8Ur9m0ILkm-0wAeopHJN1TcNqyScibpfPo0fSW9ceZod-f84VJ7E8DhsbUY4xs2lSwPNoNDFxuNFw-pbLZDiOx/s1600-h/IMG_4122.JPG"><img style="float:right; margin:0 10px 10px 0;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhzNIQDUCyjlsbJo-G4ObdmmEaGyNYXCdrGjKVWCUn5dBDcdL8Ur9m0ILkm-0wAeopHJN1TcNqyScibpfPo0fSW9ceZod-f84VJ7E8DhsbUY4xs2lSwPNoNDFxuNFw-pbLZDiOx/s200/IMG_4122.JPG" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5259017350969459394" /></a>Discovering once again that a lot of cheap wine isn't good for one's head I was a bit slow in the morning, then walked into town and to the cathedral. The cathedral was nothing spectacular, but the cathedral museum, St. Mungo's had an absolutely fantastic photography exhibition on of iraqui refugees in Syria and then in Glasgow. I stood there at the end in tears, and really wished they had a catologue of the exhibition.<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiXXSiUWJb2FXNEHHIj6rVckBbnwRs8GWmf4WJzEJNXk4d3Ce8sh8PrNU3kWrF1A4ZQjkjr6eSfEy0MPK4t6fpJP3Lk1_uvg9Mh1m4-P9xK61fY_3KaKH3RVGGfCcDx-5YqeH9p/s1600-h/IMG_4133.JPG"><img style="float:left; margin:0 10px 10px 0;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiXXSiUWJb2FXNEHHIj6rVckBbnwRs8GWmf4WJzEJNXk4d3Ce8sh8PrNU3kWrF1A4ZQjkjr6eSfEy0MPK4t6fpJP3Lk1_uvg9Mh1m4-P9xK61fY_3KaKH3RVGGfCcDx-5YqeH9p/s200/IMG_4133.JPG" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5259017343307347474" /></a>Having heard about the huge cemetary called the necropolis, I walked up to the gate as a large group of people were standing there. A woman asked me if I wanted a tour and so I said yes. 2 hours later I had walked all over the cemetary, and knew more about the people burried there and the symbolism of different head stones than I would have thought possible. The guides, with their very dry glaswegian humor, were great.<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgvCOrw-MEXGCXiikiHwrY7lH5T-mI7HfgB5zBEwUV3_rOjWAq8JZyl_jjZ2w4VabmLqh_o1_K7JGlhFgIlEhvPclXxPNf-1zDd-L2SU206nlttUl8WtiAdfEo6i1vsIz01KXJS/s1600-h/IMG_4114.JPG"><img style="float:right; margin:0 10px 10px 0;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgvCOrw-MEXGCXiikiHwrY7lH5T-mI7HfgB5zBEwUV3_rOjWAq8JZyl_jjZ2w4VabmLqh_o1_K7JGlhFgIlEhvPclXxPNf-1zDd-L2SU206nlttUl8WtiAdfEo6i1vsIz01KXJS/s200/IMG_4114.JPG" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5259005022853244834" /></a>I returned to Karen's and then crossed Kelvingrove park again to stay with Graeme. Both Daniel and Sandra had gone to Germany. We visited an amazing tea shop just behind their flat and then wandered the west end. And I concluded that I really like Glasgow.Katiehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16693239203078051292noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9908127.post-11088175103998813612008-10-07T13:58:00.012+03:002008-10-09T15:44:16.513+03:00Adventures in Skye<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhfrkwcwhLRbkgbA_Qbx7bAkI9q-KOsmOxBaq2wEBAV4kFk5ORAlxcWg__A_nNVdVFIMNlC1vCieWE9PXA5eYlxgXeuK11iukKqkJwauGzj0eXuyun3KmDUcQLMcZwDgnt88SBS/s1600-h/IMG_4022.JPG"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhfrkwcwhLRbkgbA_Qbx7bAkI9q-KOsmOxBaq2wEBAV4kFk5ORAlxcWg__A_nNVdVFIMNlC1vCieWE9PXA5eYlxgXeuK11iukKqkJwauGzj0eXuyun3KmDUcQLMcZwDgnt88SBS/s200/IMG_4022.JPG" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5255117599409759410" /></a><br />Portree, Uig, Dunvegan<br /><br />When I woke up the next morning, the rain had stopped and the cow was still mooing. I packed up my stuff, headed back to the road, and watched the bus to portree drive past me as I walked to the bus stop. Turns out that if I had stuck my hand out the bus would likely have stopped because it's a rural road, but I didn't know that. So I walked to the visitors center for the castle I had passed the day before, asked the guy in the garden shop lots of questions, and sat out front waiting for the bus.<br /><br />I took the bus to broadford, with the intention of exploring. It had not yet sunk in how tiny all of the places in Skye are. I was dropped off in front of the co-operative grocery store, and bought supplies. And then I had a quick walk around, and realized there was nothing to see here, and that I would be best continuing to Portree. So I got on the next bus, but didn't have enough money. I was going to wait for the next bus, but the driver took all the change I had and told me to get on. Then, when I got off the bus he handed me a ticket and change. I gave him a funny look and he said he had just put me into the system as getting onto the bus at a later point on the route. And so he was giving me change! It was one of those moments that reaffirmed for me the kindness of strangers.<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg_vRO7W02n4dDmUq1SnH7abaYiZMOMAfV7op7sUzRkPWkdm1tIKauAPZqg8xL_ZDXmzBO5kyZNLBka2F8VaL-hz9CwC6zYXmAw7RQga-dWnk1N6Xm5B1Momfk90dHLcDVlIVFi/s1600-h/IMG_4066.JPG"><img style="float:left; margin:0 10px 10px 0;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg_vRO7W02n4dDmUq1SnH7abaYiZMOMAfV7op7sUzRkPWkdm1tIKauAPZqg8xL_ZDXmzBO5kyZNLBka2F8VaL-hz9CwC6zYXmAw7RQga-dWnk1N6Xm5B1Momfk90dHLcDVlIVFi/s200/IMG_4066.JPG" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5255131922925398258" /></a>Portree is nice enough, although their main square has been turned into the island bus station. The town is very cute, and full of cute shops and resturants. I visited the Skye Batik store, where they told me to put my pack down and handed me coffee. Reading the information sheet, skye batiks had originally been produced in skye, but because it took so long for things to dry, people were buying their batiked items wet and taking them home to dry. So they moved the opperation to Sri Lanka. Being a good world citizen, I wanted to make sure they treated their workers okay. I asked, and the guy told me it was his wife and her family working. "I wanted to exploit them" he joked, "but my wife wouldn't let me." Probably makes for happier workers if they get to sit in the sun, than working with fabric that refuses to dry in skye.<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiHTPgGhxRd6SB3uN9wxTnf1y6bslI844JUQ40MeZkMshTjR2O7-7q6FS9z_Hs8-tCRMzwxQxclhH7LImLm7xAgP17i7QLYaT5rUK8ENAEdgynKC853iKoULvj4MxMqWvNgdxrg/s1600-h/IMG_4006.JPG"><img style="float:left; margin:0 10px 10px 0;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiHTPgGhxRd6SB3uN9wxTnf1y6bslI844JUQ40MeZkMshTjR2O7-7q6FS9z_Hs8-tCRMzwxQxclhH7LImLm7xAgP17i7QLYaT5rUK8ENAEdgynKC853iKoULvj4MxMqWvNgdxrg/s200/IMG_4006.JPG" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5255120691783131778" /></a>I wandered down to the harbor, where one couple was fishing, and wandered around the rest of the place. And then got on the 3:30 bus to Uig (apparently pronounced ooig). The first stop was the Portree High School, where I discovered that although this bus was public transport on the surface, it was actually a school bus. It was soon filled with uniformed kids aged 12 to 16 or 17, and, sitting there with my big backpack, my now green hair tied up in a scarf, I was something to be ignored. Evesdropping on their conversations, it made me glad to have finished high school.<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEifYQ3I2LYdu_qlb93Tto7OY-bwbh9nGixhbr5-hhDkysz7FqkDxEinnBbhEFjqj7IgCc6T5nX7KVg0ec1FT11BM_VPRh9aGt_1Afl0jJaFkb84MDvAsXDlIlYDkURQeujDVyns/s1600-h/IMG_4015.JPG"><img style="float:right; margin:0 10px 10px 0;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEifYQ3I2LYdu_qlb93Tto7OY-bwbh9nGixhbr5-hhDkysz7FqkDxEinnBbhEFjqj7IgCc6T5nX7KVg0ec1FT11BM_VPRh9aGt_1Afl0jJaFkb84MDvAsXDlIlYDkURQeujDVyns/s200/IMG_4015.JPG" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5255120698891092450" /></a>I ended up getting off the bus at the Quaraing. The lady at the batik shop told me it had an amazing view, so once again I found myself hiking up a large hill with my heavy pack. The view was indeed amazing, although it would have been better if it was less misty. I thought that scotland in general was a green place, but Skye can make there rest of scotland look practically brown. <a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiR3z7hn_G3Adrxf3AD2Uz1wLAp24-KZ1xJhfX2L5HRG1u2T70Wn8O2YcUy0fp4smrF2Y0TvkO1x_Gv41QIobRPrwXeBToJCE1REyG3aOVkQ7yProLl7XWmTCZwzpAXDjCcYz0g/s1600-h/IMG_4021.JPG"><img style="float:left; margin:0 10px 10px 0;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiR3z7hn_G3Adrxf3AD2Uz1wLAp24-KZ1xJhfX2L5HRG1u2T70Wn8O2YcUy0fp4smrF2Y0TvkO1x_Gv41QIobRPrwXeBToJCE1REyG3aOVkQ7yProLl7XWmTCZwzpAXDjCcYz0g/s200/IMG_4021.JPG" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5255124029279857730" /></a>As I was standing at the top pondering the walk down, an older man walked down from the ridge to where I was standing, and asked me if I'd like a lift down to the road. The same woman in the batik store had told me that hitchhiking was an acceptable method of transit on skye, especially on roads where buses did not run, so I accepted his offer. He told me that he had walked to the Quaraing. Apparently it's actually a rock formation, inside of which is absolutely flat. I couldn't have walked it that day, however, because by the time I was on the ridge, it had been covered in fog. He and his wife were English, but came up to Skye every year for holiday. He also told me that the cattle auction had started the day before, and most calves were being sold. The reason for the all night mooing suddenly became very clear - this mother had lost her child.<br /><br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiFULtb-ODJkQPxys5oaawUG-i0gpp9b0M6ybz2bM2gWJBdr3zUK7NxZ-6HhwQF5J58uoJetoOOPQJXCZWKT5rA3_smz4FN4cbFiauYq9bVzYmRtt0jvJYNhyGVrsb202mgqS4S/s1600-h/IMG_4028.JPG"><img style="float:right; margin:0 10px 10px 0;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiFULtb-ODJkQPxys5oaawUG-i0gpp9b0M6ybz2bM2gWJBdr3zUK7NxZ-6HhwQF5J58uoJetoOOPQJXCZWKT5rA3_smz4FN4cbFiauYq9bVzYmRtt0jvJYNhyGVrsb202mgqS4S/s200/IMG_4028.JPG" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5255124033153946514" /></a>Back down at the bottom I waited for the last bus of the day. While I waited I went down to the sea side, and was passed by a group of cattle. Back on the road, I watched as this group of cattle ran up and down the road, followed by guys in small farm vehicles. After about the fourth time, I asked one guy if this was cow exercise day. No, he told me. We're separating out the mothers from the young. They had already put one calf in a separate pen, and it's running mother kept trying to escape the group to go to her calf.<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjC0OMCsIUwmSsG8_Lp6HtilsVcQUyi0PXKuDH59Bw90G7T2wVli71QYHHcZM4blsgLs2afY8Ca9u5cna8eV7abBam1OFiZBCsVo1Gfe2PKI2V8f1krdqtnU1NSU7GjjGukPi1f/s1600-h/IMG_4034.JPG"><img style="float:left; margin:0 10px 10px 0;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjC0OMCsIUwmSsG8_Lp6HtilsVcQUyi0PXKuDH59Bw90G7T2wVli71QYHHcZM4blsgLs2afY8Ca9u5cna8eV7abBam1OFiZBCsVo1Gfe2PKI2V8f1krdqtnU1NSU7GjjGukPi1f/s200/IMG_4034.JPG" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5255126483974429906" /></a>It turns out the bus I was waiting for was only going to go half of the remaining distance to uig before it stopped for the night, but the driver did let me on, and then I stood by the road and watched as he parked his bus and went home. With no good camping area nearby, I did something that will frighten my mother, and stuck out my thumb. After about 20 minutes a car stopped. The guy told me eventually he would be going to uig, but he was taking the long way. A minute later another car stopped. It was a german couple, also going to uig. They rearranged their stuff, and managed to fit me into the car. <br /><br />I asked the guy if he had trouble driving on the left, and he said now. Not that it was a problem on this particular road, as it was a single track road. His wife was on sheep spotting duty though, and kept yelling sheep, sheep. She was a doctor and he was an engineer, and they had hired a car to explore scotland for a couple weeks. As we came to the west side of the island, the sunset was absolutely spectacular, and so they pulled over to take photos. They drove me all the way to the camping site at uig, I thanked them, and then they sped off to find a B and B.<br /><br />The camp site wasn't exciting. Uig wasn't exciting. It was getting dark, and I set up my tent, made dinner, and then visited the pub, which like the pub the day before, was empty. Determined to find some life I walked past the pier where the ferries to the outer hebridies depart from, and back toward the main road to portree. The only sign of life I found was two boy playing with a ball in the middle of the road. I turned around, went back to my tent, and slept. <br /><br />Waking up to another cloudy but dry day, I visited the Skye brewery, tried this drink called kyte, which is microbrewed ginger beer with 1% alcohol. Mine was also made with tayberries, so it was tayberry kyte. And then I caught the bus back to Portree. My plan was to go to Dunvegan, but there wasn't a bus for three hours, which would have put me in Dunvegan too late to see anything. And so I tried the hitchhiking thing. Walking to the edge of town, standing next to the post office, I waited. But everyone kept pointing to the post office. I found out later that I could have gotten a lift with a postman if I had asked. But I didn't know. <br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEieNsSfskPo3E5LjlbGp-xzgwD6V4qWN4JgGS95Bb2fUOMheV6WsDxAhkn4Ui5VNF7gxJ_iLROcDYcdbk8E_2sDHenAExnd-qdSkbUz3bYRO1tcc5zHQwGsRzBj5lW9dFNYMdGb/s1600-h/IMG_4067.JPG"><img style="float:left; margin:0 10px 10px 0;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEieNsSfskPo3E5LjlbGp-xzgwD6V4qWN4JgGS95Bb2fUOMheV6WsDxAhkn4Ui5VNF7gxJ_iLROcDYcdbk8E_2sDHenAExnd-qdSkbUz3bYRO1tcc5zHQwGsRzBj5lW9dFNYMdGb/s200/IMG_4067.JPG" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5255131936273051746" /></a>And so I started walking. Half an hour later, a car with two old men stopped and offered me a lift. They had seen me walking when they drove into town as well. The guy who was driving, told me that he is a crofter with 80 cattle and 200 sheep. His friend works as the gardener for a hotel out in the middle of nowhere, and so the guy takes his friend into town once a week so he can buy groceries. He told me how there used to be grocery vans. One company would come by on a monday, another on a wednesday and another on a friday. Nowdays, he doesn't even bother to milk his cows anymore, he just buys milk at the grocery store. And people don't want to live in the country anymore. They are going to build lots of new council houses up at portree. People want to live in town.<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgLQsTovbP5reWapsP7OoW6CW_Q1VkhenF10-09vs0FsAkXE0aI0lgAML7fL20Rfi5tTegUhaxFMszea-xT8H5ncoEXHO0fuiLArd3GHMMBH3nsh1l8UngnCBdr64oI5Ihv-Rvt/s1600-h/IMG_4061.JPG"><img style="float:right; margin:0 10px 10px 0;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgLQsTovbP5reWapsP7OoW6CW_Q1VkhenF10-09vs0FsAkXE0aI0lgAML7fL20Rfi5tTegUhaxFMszea-xT8H5ncoEXHO0fuiLArd3GHMMBH3nsh1l8UngnCBdr64oI5Ihv-Rvt/s200/IMG_4061.JPG" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5255129118906144610" /></a>He let me off on the road to Dunvegan, and I tried my luck one last time. 20 minutes later a car came toward me and stopped. I was a bit confused, until they explained to me that they were going to Dunvegan, but there had been a police car behind them and they couldn't stop. So they had turned around to come back and get me. I got to sit in the back with my pack and their very friendly black lab named Jake. They were surprised to see me hitchhiking, saying that when they were young they had done it all the time but now things were different. I said that I had been told it was okay on Skye, but wouldn't do it anywhere else. The woman had been in the brittish equivalent of the peace corps, and they both had some good stories. They gave me a ride all the way to Dunvegan, showed me the campsite, and then let me off in the center of town.<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi8mZ7OKTGmUFeq4wND-i-LPpIVmzUvSZwmGw_0Di_T0x7zWCb2LFVMVX0K9t_AYTvR1KnHlht0IaLYTxuYILfNd5j1w4W1AxiQ1rZLNh35GXvXg8G6aoNZozmiAFRzvbyIJyFZ/s1600-h/IMG_4049.JPG"><img style="float:left; margin:0 10px 10px 0;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi8mZ7OKTGmUFeq4wND-i-LPpIVmzUvSZwmGw_0Di_T0x7zWCb2LFVMVX0K9t_AYTvR1KnHlht0IaLYTxuYILfNd5j1w4W1AxiQ1rZLNh35GXvXg8G6aoNZozmiAFRzvbyIJyFZ/s200/IMG_4049.JPG" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5255126492283978834" /></a>At tourist information the woman advised me not to wild camp, and so I walked back the direction I had just been, to the campsite, put up my tent in the wind, and walked back into town to have a look at the castle. The <a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg_TWKnRa1bPVVmtgjgRDvJMLRJ9uPPGWz1ouxs7g7PbAPuo5GpKqdcZmSaw0sdvuJjF3gSL7prFU2jlhwxS8ORpfGf408MGUXcfIG9VZ6Ni2dTwzlKoL0Rrpz8vM3aEcqG7obg/s1600-h/IMG_4058.JPG"><img style="float:right; margin:0 10px 10px 0;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg_TWKnRa1bPVVmtgjgRDvJMLRJ9uPPGWz1ouxs7g7PbAPuo5GpKqdcZmSaw0sdvuJjF3gSL7prFU2jlhwxS8ORpfGf408MGUXcfIG9VZ6Ni2dTwzlKoL0Rrpz8vM3aEcqG7obg/s200/IMG_4058.JPG" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5255129113790943330" /></a>castle at Dunvegan is the McLeod clan's. It looks impressive from the outside, but sadly, they redecorated at the end of the 18th century, and the inside is a bit too frilly for my taste. The history bit was interesting, and the gardens were very nice. And it was my first castle of this journey, so it seemed about time, as I had been in scotland over two months. And I had a camera epifany in the gardens.<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjyKlXj00yA4phZICdVO-xIM1gzeGq5XluiT10NHRFqL7aAPA4JEp0w4zJcLjyoK05-TtLtNICnYgFizUpEiZAUCjTas3dRxlXyShCmCmQhC1Xe6GgJ6QS1J2ehF22LmAU3MOGo/s1600-h/IMG_4078.JPG"><img style="float:left; margin:0 10px 10px 0;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjyKlXj00yA4phZICdVO-xIM1gzeGq5XluiT10NHRFqL7aAPA4JEp0w4zJcLjyoK05-TtLtNICnYgFizUpEiZAUCjTas3dRxlXyShCmCmQhC1Xe6GgJ6QS1J2ehF22LmAU3MOGo/s200/IMG_4078.JPG" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5255133009185690146" /></a>Checking in both pubs, I came to the conclusion that perhaps bars are alive during weekends on Skye, but every pub is empty during weekdays. I returned to my tent, cooked my emergency ramen noodles, chatted to the guy running the campsite, who turned out to be a postman. He told me there used to be postbuses on Skye, but they had decomissioned the last one this summer. And then I spent my last night in the tent. <br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiVuujsw0olFq_fudFaHqTKHCuL5nAJ151SN-KwWpH58cS7Ifec6ZSflMJP0HUc3Kv85CQfjcrXgkLMh2S_wwWljIxgBeAS7_I-fPV6sCy5n0tr_f3y7kZ9H7FPXn_kcbF2HEuN/s1600-h/IMG_4073.JPG"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiVuujsw0olFq_fudFaHqTKHCuL5nAJ151SN-KwWpH58cS7Ifec6ZSflMJP0HUc3Kv85CQfjcrXgkLMh2S_wwWljIxgBeAS7_I-fPV6sCy5n0tr_f3y7kZ9H7FPXn_kcbF2HEuN/s200/IMG_4073.JPG" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5255117603801391938" /></a>Katiehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16693239203078051292noreply@blogger.com0