I'm not sure how helpful or visible this map is, but Bodrum is on the coast of the Aegean sea in the SW portion of Turkey. It's a famous tourist location especially during on the summer months when it explodes with travellers who visit to party on the coast! Considering we went for the Bayram October 29-Nov 1 it was the down season and pretty low key, but so relaxing and beautiful.
We had to grab an overnight bus there and back as it turned out to be somewhere around 10-11 hour trip. It sounds brutally, but I tend to sleep very well on these buses; they are surprisingly comfortable, although the legs get a little cramped. We were fortunate because Valerie actually made a friend via couch surfing who is a Bilkent student, but his family lives very close to Bodrum and he was there for the break as well. The first day we were there we just kind of bummed around. We attempted to visit the castle that is there, to which I'm sure there is an immense amount of history is attached, but is more than I care to recap now --- if you're that interested, visit Wikipedia. Not always reliable, but generally where I get most of my "knowledge", haha. Anyhow, this is where the museum card comes in --- what a predicament! Maggie and I both had museum cards from Istanbul, as I mentioned in my post on the marathon. Val, however, did not. We attempted to get one, disaster ensues. The employees at the ticket office were NOT having it. Maggie and I almost got ours confiscated on the grounds that yet again our Bilkent IDs stated that we were teachers and did mention our student status. Problem var. For the same reason they absolutely refused to sell one to Val. We were not willing to pay the 10TL to enter the castle so we grad our cards and ran, figuratively. We then continued to spend the rest of the day complaining about the situation and glaring at the castle in disdain.
(Yet to come: there are some beautiful pictures of this, however, as of late I neither have the patience or desire to be much of a photograph and rely on my friends to do all of the picture-taking. That being said, Val currently holds all photos of Bodrum and I'm waiting for her to post them on facebook so I can steal them and claim them as my own. At that time this blog will be much more asthetically pleasing.)
The afternoon was spent sitting at a cafe on the (rocky) beach enjoying a little lunch and a drink. Later that evening, Beco - our new Turkish friend - picked us up and gave us a tour of all the nearby towns. Again, beautiful and entertaining. We wanted to hit up some of the clubs that night, but we were exhausted, a theme the persisted the entire weekend and we never actually did end up going out at night. Lame, I know, but I don't regret it.
The next day, we enlisted ourselves on a boat tour via the wonderful wonderful man who ran our hostel --- yet another great character we've met in our travels. The only picture I actually took with my camer in Bodrum: see right. Aren't we adorable? haha, hardly. We boarded at about 10:30 am and the trip was the last until sunset, but which time it was freezing! Well, not really, but we were being rather delicate and huddle together for body warmth! It was an absolutley hilarious --- and we have several video documentaries to prove it! We met a wildly entertaining British woman who thought nothing of spending the entire trip topless and making fabulous comments and jokes on life! Enjoyed the amazing scenery and oh wait, the best is yet to come....we somehow managed to befriend that crew (our Turkish language skills improved drastically here) who not so long after taking this photo for us, invited us to a Turkish wedding, sort of. After testing Val on her knowledge of Turkish vocabulary -- sea, sun, friend -- we were cordially invited to the grooms pre-wedding day party, what we would call in the states, a bachelor party.So, we went back to our hostel, changed and were supposed to meet our new seafaring friends at 7pm. They arrived on a moped (ha) and took us to this party in an alley of one of Bodrum's many tiny streets. There was food, raki, and at our request - wine. We had a couple drinks and listened ot the traditional Turkish music that was blaring via a quartet of highly talented men the entire time we were there. Nevermind the incredibly awkward feelings we were having when we arrived and we were the only foreigners, the only females, and expereince what it means to be "foreign" in a whole new way.
After maybe an hour at the party, we all piled into several dolmus-es and became part of a huge caravan that was now headed to the brides portion of the festivities. Who knew it would be a 45 minute trip to the middle of nowhere?? We surely didn't. After the group of semi-drunk Turks stopped alongside the road for a cigarette break, we arrived in some small town crowded with people. There were chairs set up in the middle of some parking lot-ish, basketball-ish looking space to make a semi circle. We were escorted to the front of the rows of chairs to observe the dance party that occurred in the circular space created by the chairs. The surprises continued as we spent the next few hours watching a series of traditional Turkish dances performed by various friends, family members, and whomever else of the bride and groom. All three of us felt as though we were being allowed some special insight into a classic Turkish celebration, but were so ready to leave by the end of the night. Everyone was wildly hospitable and seemed glad to share/show the experience with us. It was crazy, unique, unexpected....there are a plethora of adjectives I could use to described this bizarrely random experience. Yet, we were glad to return to our hostels and slept hard.
Our final day in Bodrum was spent relaxing, enjoying the beach, the lights, the cafes, the scenery - just taking it all in until it was time to return to the bus station and return to Ankara.
A common thread which I've noticed runs through all of my experiences in Turkey? -- Random random random. Time after time I find myself in these totally unexpected, but wonderful situations and experiences which amount to one the most noticeable highlights of Turkey. It's a popular categorization that Turkish people are hospitable, but saying it and experiencing are two completely different things and it only leaves me wondering what kind of characters I will meet next and what new and exciting experiences will they show me! By far, my favorite part of Turkey -- the people!!!
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Post run, we had a little snack with friends at a cafe along the bosphorous. It was chill and sadly, being Sunday and all of us having to return to work the next day, our last day in Istanbul. The day before (Saturday) we had been ultra adventurous and explored the many sights to see in Istanbul. Joe, Maggie, Natalie and I found the funikular (I think I spelled it correctly?!) which is one of the weirdest and coolest modes of public transportation I've been on; it takes you under the bosphorous I believe, not really sure though. But it's more of less just a lift that moves at an angle back and forth. It took us from Taxsim, where our hostel was, and to the tram we needed to hope on to get to Sultan Ahmet where all of the historical sights are. And did we have quite a day! We hit up the Blue Mosque (or Sultan Ahmet Mosque), Hagia Sophia, the Basilica Cistern, the Grand Bazaar, and Topkapi Palace..bmp)
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