Rome, sweet Rome

We have been back in Rome for just over two weeks, but the suitcases were finally unpacked and stowed only yesterday.  Our happy return was slightly marred by the discovery that the power had gone out while we were away, allowing the contents of our fridge and freezer to rot quietly in a month-long heatwave.  No problemo: two litres of bleach and one crazy homemade baking soda paste later, our fridge is back to near-odourlessness...and the freezer is well on its way.  I actually spent the first weekend back not in Rome but up north in Bergamo, getting denied for my permesso di soggiorno again.  No tears this time, as I actually didn't really expect to pick it up (ha!) and Filippo's family spoiled me like crazy with delicious dinners out and the season's first polenta con funghi porcini. (A quick Google search failed to turn up a decent recipe and/or photo, so I'll have to reproduce pcfp at home then post for all to see.  I don't even like mushrooms, but this is definitely in my Top Five Favourite Fall Dishes.)

But I can't jump ahead to an I *heart* fall post before properly turning the page on Turkey.  It really is an incredible country, and we discovered that it has absolutely everything: mind-blowing mountains, turquoise (!) seas, amazing architecture and beautiful people.  The couple pictured in my last post, for example, worked so hard at engaging Filippo and me in conversation - we had forgotten our Teach Yourself Turkish text on that particular walk (doh!) so had to rely on a mix of the few phrases we knew supplemented by the travel glossary at the back of our Lonely Planet.  We "talked" for at least 20 minutes, and when I asked to take a picture of them at the end, the grandma made me take about five, then picked her favourite.  She also asked us to take a self pic and mail it to her - she couldn't write her address so we waited and chatted until a young man walked past and scribbled it down for us.

Cuteness like this happened to us every day in Turkey.   The gentle owners of our B&B in Safranbolu mapped out a wonderful series of sights to visit for a one-day tour of the area and shared their family mulberry jam recipe when they saw that I couldn't get enough.  Now all I need to do is find some mulberries, and I'm set.

But I'm not respecting the narrative - have skipped Cappadocia, where we hiked to our hearts' content through winding canyons and sandy hills.  The manager of our hostel-turned-hotel took us on his favourite day hike, we made the bad decision not to bring our camera along (I love it like a pet but it's a little on the heavy side), but got an unforgettable and very personal window into the land and flora of that amazing region.  I wish I could also say fauna, but the fact is that we saw nothing aside from one stick insect and one fox.  No animals!?  Most bizarre.  Filippo's pièce de résistance was the hot air balloon ride he organised for our last morning.  I had been anxious about the idea due to my paralysing fear of heights...but got the good advice not to look down but across...and didn't throw up or have heart palpitations.  Actually really enjoyed it - though I'm glad it only lasted one hour. :-)

It was in Cappadocia that I checked with my loved ones in Britain and decided not to go off on my own for a few weeks as per the plan, but save up my vacation days for a mega visit to Blighty this fall.  I was determined to see as much as possible on weekends, though, so dragged Filippo to Safranbolu (dangling as a carrot the lovely Gülevi) and planned an ambitious trekking route around the mountains of Kabak, our final destination.

Maybe because of the dragging to and fro, or maybe just because we've reached a stage when good books and a quiet paradise to read them in is exactly what we're looking for in a vacation, but: we did a little asking around in Kabak, and when we found that we'd have to waste one full morning and pay 75 Euros to take a taxi to the trailhead, all trekking plans were abandoned.  Instead we tag-teamed through every book in our camp's little lending library, went on lots of beautiful day hikes and ate three gourmet meals a day.  The Olive Garden was actually recommended in our Lonely Planet as "place to eat", but they had upgraded their bungalows and pool area since the LP was published, so we decided to take a gamble and stay there.  Their yogurt, olives, bread, and majority of veg was grown/made on site, and the honey (from resident bees) was dark and fruity and life-changing.  I ate it with a fork right out of the little dish they brought to our table every morning.  Compared with super-touristy nearby Ölüdeniz and Fethiye, Kabak was tranquil and perfect. 

Just the rest we needed, as we're right back up to our eyeballs at the moment, with Filippo working until 11pm on evening shifts and me still sharing the workload of four people with only one other colleague.  The good news is that there will be a new head of my department in place by early January, and Filippo will only have to keep up the ultra-late shifts for another three weeks.  He's actually off to Torino for all of next week, so I will be free to cook all the crazy Asian recipes that I want and stare dreamily at our holiday pictures, wishing I were back there, lounging in the shade with a good book.

Have backpack, will travel.

Our final weekend in Ankara was spent exploring the old town and packing our suitcases in preparation for this afternoon's departure...and absolutely no blogging, clearly.  I will have to write a super mega Turkey post when back in Rome - in the meantime, check out the final bit of my end-July post to be reminded of where we're headed this week.  We decided somewhat last-minute to split up our six-day holiday - our little Kabak bungalows are situated right on the Lycean Way, so we couldn't resist spending a few days on the trail.

Three reports to submit by 5pm, then it's out to the airport with backpacks and hiking boots.

Cappadocia & Safranbolu

Photos from our weekend get-aways to Cappadocia and Safranbolu have now been uploaded to to my web-based photo collection on Flickr - a descriptive post will follow this weekend!

Ankara & Istanbul

Pomegranate vinegar. Take an already delicious fruit, turn it into thick and syrupy vinegar, then whisk it with olive oil to dress a salad of arugula, beets, purple basil, mint, dill and pickles. Serve up some chewy bread, a yogurt + chickpea + bulgur concoction, and maybe add another little dish filled with finely chopped tomatoes, herbs and lots of chili flakes. Once you have laid these out on your table, you have a good sense of how my daily lunch in Ankara begins.

We found a little restaurant set on an artificial pond about a ten-minute walk from our place the morning after we arrived. Thankfully, unlike Italians (there it is – I said it), Turks know a thing or two about breakfast – so we quickly read up on kahvaltı, selected some traditional elements from the menu, and enjoyed omelettes with strong white cheese, the above-described salad, and white foccacia-like bread with lots of butter and sour cherry jam. Though my books claim that rose petal jelly (gül reçeli) is a popular favourite, I have yet to find it outside a grocery store…maybe I’ll just bite the bullet and buy a small jar to take back to Rome with me, taste untasted.

But I’m getting ahead of myself. This country is obsessed with Atatürk, it's actually illegal to say mean things about him, so Filippo and I hightailed it to Atatürk's mausoleum as the first order of business once breakfast was taken care of. We got shafted on Turkish SIM cards and bought "genuine copies" of six DVDs along the way, to ensure that we were really experiencing Sunday morning as a local would.

Sunshiney and 40 degrees at the Atatürk mausoleum – guarding soldiers were all marching around in full regalia, and 60% of the women wore headscarves, long pants and long-sleeved shirts with jackets over top, so I couldn't really complain in my breezy tank top and mini-shorts. It was a combination museum-mausoleum, so we read lots of persuasive propaganda on the chain of victories that brought Atatürk his fame and this country its independence, then fell asleep while watching a 15min documentary so decided to call it a day.

Monday saw us both settled in offices near each other, a two-minute walk from the apartment where we're staying.  Our workday is typically 9 to 6, with a 1.5 hour lunch break in between. Though there are lots of good-looking restaurants in the neighbourhood where we're based, we usually return to the pond one and another that a driver recommended around the corner (Kebap 44) as we've gotten to know the menus and the staff are tolerant of our terrible Turkish.  One exception was the evening we went downtown to finalise bus tickets to Istanbul and Cappadocia: LeMan Kültür came highly recommended by our well-worn guidebook, but Filippo got frustrated that there were no pictures or English translations on the menu, so we will not be going back. ;-)

Actually, I shouldn't be so hard on poor Filippo - we fine-tuned our Istanbul trip the night before our departure at a delicious seafood restaurant where we both ate our weight in tasty appetisers.  The broccoli-and-three-seaweed salad was my favourite, and contained coin-sized slices of raw garlic that I'm sure are responsible for destroying the cold that I'd struggled with all week.

We arrived in Istanbul excited and ready to take on the city.  Turns out it is the country's hotspot for Ramazan celebrations, so we found it buzzing and festive: giant white tents set up to accommodate families breaking the fast together every evening, impressive firework displays afterward.   We ventured out to Taksim on Saturday morning, had lunch in an awesome vegetarian restaurant with a leafy courtyard garden, then headed to the Grand Bazaar area for a guided walking tour and some shopping.  Our hotel was conveniently located across the square from Aya Sofia, the Blue Mosque and Topkapı Palace, so we were up by 8am on Sunday to see those three sights, then hopped on a bus back to Ankara by 5pm.

Somehow it's already Tuesday and we'll be on another bus to Cappadocia this Friday afternoon.  I'm currently revising my vacation itinerary and may end up taking a little less time off than originally planned...it turns out that single female travelers may not have it particularly easy in Turkey, and I may have been too ambitious.  Well, if that means an extra week in Ankara, I'm going to see about enrolling in a pottery class and possibly a cooking class as well, so I can raid Filippo's mom's garden and make my own gül reçeli and pomegranate vinegar this fall.

NOTE: see that rectangular box on the left side of the page with photos shifting around in it?  It's a direct link to my web-based photo collection on Flickr.  I'll always include a few recent pictures in each post, but if you want to see all of them, click on the box.

Turkish delight

Thorung Phedi, 4400m.  This was the day before cresting the Annapurna Circuit, one last acclimatisation hike so that we'd be able to make it over the 5500m pass without throwing up.  Despite all the moving I've done in recent years, I haven't been able to set aside a satisfying chunk of time to really sink into a trip since this photo was taken in 2003.  You know when you're in a water slide, not racing through a corkscrew but sort of rocking back-and-forth on a straight stretch?  That precise point is how I feel when I'm off on my own in the middle of nowhere: happy and ultra-alive, excited about everything that got me there as well as whatever I might face next. Travel Zen is the closest I've come to the free-floating bliss that expert meditators regularly tap into - this could explain my addiction.

So you can understand my giddiness when informed that Filippo would be posted to exotic Türkiye for five weeks.  Our flight leaves tomorrow just before noon - leapfrogging Istanbul to finish in Ankara.  It's the administrative capital of the country, so to zestify a potentially dry stay, I strong-armed my surprisingly sedentary Italian into ten million flavourful side trips.  My flexible contract and trusty tank of a Dell allows me to work from anywhere, so I'll put in ten days for The Man then take about three weeks for myself.

 

Our first field trip will be to Istanbul, of course.  A few days ago, we confirmed our stay at "First of Special Class Hotels in Sultanahmet" (Hotel Nomade), and immediately tried to get into the swing of things by watching Oliver Stone's Midnight Express - which neither of us knew was a brutal story about an American hash smuggler stuck in a Turkish prison.  To sweeten things up, we concentrated on booking our next stop: Cappadocia, or "Valley of the Fairy Chimneys" on the map above.  We'll spend three days there together, then Filippo will return to Ankara and I'll head east to Erzurum and hopefully onto Van, Mt Ararat area (Doğubeyazıt for the İshak Paşa palace), up to Kars (for Ani) then over to Trabzon (for Sümela Monastery).  I aim to fly back to Ankara from Trabzon, then will drag Filippo up to Safranbolu with me for two days.  We'll both work on August 29, then enjoy the closing festivities of Ramadan at a hidden beach about halfway between Bodrum and Antalya (called Kabak) where the hippies run wild and free.

Our shuttle for the airport arrives in twelve hours, Filippo is taking a nap because he started work at 5 this morning.  My next post will be from some sort of compound in Ankara - no idea what to expect, all I know is that our "apartment" is the former mail room.  Will pack quietly and prepare for the water slide.