Aegina Pıctures

Thanks, Danae, for being a fabulous hostess and taking these great pictures.  Come see us soon.

Vacation

I kicked off the week's Kurban Bayram (Sacrifice holiday) break with a happy hour at my place.  Sim was quite the mixologist, primarily mojitos and margaritas.  I made a few Cosmos.  Many of our guests were complimentary about our apartment.  I still find it aesthetically lacking, but compared to many of the faculty apartments it has lots of room and the closets are the envy of all.  We ended up hanging out in the windowless center room that we've set up as a dining room.  It worked pretty well.   We've got pictures up in most rooms and we've bought four rugs (three nice ones and a cheap one from a secondhand store) to add to the three that came in my shipment.  Sim is now in Warsaw on an overnight layover enroute to Ithaca for Thanksgiving.  He took home  a huge suitcase of his clothing that came in the shipment.  I told him when he was packing that for a man without a job, he had an awful lot of clothes to go to work in.  In the empty suitcase he's bringing back more stuff to hang on the walls and things like peanut butter, maple syrup, anchovy paste (I'm trying to perfect a Caesar salad dressing, but I've also asked him to bring a bottle or two of Ken's Lite Caesar, which I love) and Bailey's Irish Cream, that tend to be expensive or not available.

Last Sunday we flew to Athens for a four night-five day holiday.  We flew on Olympic Airlines and on an hour and a half flight we had a meal with wine each way.  The weather was perfect.  As usual we had camera trouble.  (We either forget our camera, get it stolen, or it goes on the fritz, as was the case this time, every time we go on vacation.  The last trip's photos were taken on a disposable because that time we left it on our kitchen counter.)

We visited all the big archaelogical sites in Athens, walked and ate a lot of terrific food.  Our hotel was very nice, with a roof garden and a jacuzzi with a view of the Acropolis. 

On Wednesday we took a ferry to Aegina and spent a night and most of two days with our friend Danae.  She got some great pictures and I hope to figure out how to post them here.  (Sim said he thinks I should only post pictures of Turkey on the blog since it's "Moira's Turkish Adventure" which I think is his way of dealing with the fact that we had no camera.)

On Aegina we toured their classical and prehistoric ruins.  We had squid for lunch, caught by Danae's husband Costas.  For dinner we went to a family place and had terrific moussaka.  I just wish I'd taken the chance to go for a swim.  The air temp was in the 70's and the water was plenty warm. 

I'd love to go back to Greece and to Aegina.  The traveling is easy and I really like it, but there are so many places to go.  We're planning on Sicily in February to see our friends Jose and Pina and to take in the St. Agata festival in Catania.  We've got two weeks for the semester break. Flying to Catania costs 230 rt, with a stop in Rome.  I looked at trying to stay a couple of days in Rome on the way there or back, but that fare is over 500. Even just flying to Rome is more than flying to Catania.  Go figure. Maybe we'll do a separate short trip during that break.

I've looked at lots of places for April.  Right now I'm leaning toward renting a car and doing a 5 hour road trip to Canakkale/Gallipolli/ Troy.

This afternoon I'll do a little food shopping.  I'm missing Sim.  He's done most of the shopping during the last 10 weeks.  He also does most of the care for Bebek, including taking her to the vet, first to get spayed, and then multiple trips for shots.  He carries her in a backpack.  She's dying to go out.  She spends a lot of time on the window sill looking out.  Often one of the many stray cats on the campus sits on the outside sill and they stare at each other, one wanting out the other wanting in.  Once she has all her shots (she's got one more to go) we'll start letting her out.  We're going to try to train her to jump up on the windowsill outside the living room to be let in again.  It'd be nice if we could just leave the window open for her but God knows how many cats we'd have in here then. 

Pictures of the Weekend Away

Along the waterfront in Kusadasi

On the terrace of Fig House in Sirince

The terrace of the Hotel Bella

Can't see it too well, but it's the very cosy dining room at the Hotel Bella

The Theatre at Ephesus

St. John's Basilica
The plaque says that Pope Paul the 6th preached there in 1969

Weekend Away

We had a long weekend at the end of October for Republic Day.  Sim and I headed off to the airport in the pouring rain. (After some difficulty getting a cab, we were rescued by Maura who drove us to the taxi stand above the top gate and even told the driver to put out his cigarette.  I had naively followed the instructions given in our orientation materials that you call the guards at the main gate and they'll get a taxi for you.  When I called I was told "Taksi, Yok."  Which basically means "Taxi, no way."

The driver was great, skillfully weaving in and out of traffic, despite hard rain and lots of cars.  A short one hour flight to Izmir, arriving just as it was getting dark.  We had drama picking up our rental car. First trying to find the counter, then schlepping over to the international terminal, where I discovered I had left my laptop by the door at domestic arrivals when I looked at the information about the rental car.  I had Sim do an OJ Simpson impression running ahead of me back to the other terminal.  Luckily my laptop was safely with the security guards.  In some ways I was more worried about losing the folder with my students; exam papers that was in the case than I was about losing the HP computer that's still driving me crazy, bouncing to the Turkish keyboard all the time and wiping out my work when I brush my wrist on the mousepad.

The drive to Selcuk is easy and quick except for a little more hassle with the toll booth that the rental agent had sold us a card for, because apparently there are no toll booth attendants after 6:00 or something.  But it seems there was no money on the card.  Sim got in a screaming match with the guy who came out from the building and then we paid another ten lira to put money on the card.

But we arrived at the Hotel Bella where we stayed 2 nights quite happily.  We toured the Ephesus ruins and the ruin of the Basilica of St. John which was across the street from the hotel and the column which is pretty much all that remains of the temple of Artemis which was one of the wonders of the ancient world.  The weather on Saturday was spectacular so we drove to the seaside town of Kusadasi and walked along the waterfront, had lunch and sat in the sunshine.  Then we went to the hillside village of Sirince where we spent a delightful night staying in a renovated terrace house owned by a woman I work with.  It was cool in the evening and so after watching the sunset on the terrace we sat and drank wine and read in the living room by the fireplace.

We arrived at the airport for our 2:00 flight  and went to have lunch in the restaurant.  The TV was broadcasting news of the bombing in Taksim Square that morning.  I was looking up the words scrolling at the bottom of the screen to get the details.  I didn't have to look up bomba.  There was speculation that it was the Kurdish rebel group whose self-imposed ceasefire was scheduled to end the next day.  The Republic Day parade was happening that morning and as in the past the target was the police van stationed there.  15 police were injured and 20 civilians, but no one was killed.  When we got back to school,  I was surprised how little talk there was about it.

Also when watching the TV, we discovered that we were an hour earlier for our flight than we thought.  Turkey went off Daylight savings time that morning.