So I left off during our trip back to Samos on Oct 6th, a Sunday. Kusadasi was quite as the main harbor street was closed temp for a triathlon. We decided to sit in a Starbucks for awhile which was nice, we needed coffee anyway. Eventuallyichelle drug me out of there and we rolled our matching rust-colored suitcases a few blocks down the harbor street and to the otopark, the friendly operator waving to us and offering a car wash we respectfully declined. It was 30 TL (like $15) to leave our Opel for three days. Not bad!
We next flew out of there and headed to the ancient city of Magnesia, which was in Ionia. I have tons of coins from here and we enjoyed the ruins as always and noted the new excavations since our last visit. We wandered around and then found the odd 'Theatron' on a nearby hill. It is sort of a theater crossed with an odeon and the princess was very happy as was I. The theater located about 1/2 km away was cleared a bit but rather unchanged since our 2009 visit. We then went back to our car and played with a friendly dog owned by the lone ticket guy we dubbed 'Magnesia dog' and left. It is weird having the road run right through the city but that is the situation at Magnesia. What a truly huge city this once was, rivaling Rphesus herself surely.
We then drove on towards Priene, the site Michelle and became engaged at in 2005. We drove along and saw a group of stores called 'Priene Outlet' and stopped st the supermarket there for some odds and ends. I love looking in the markets and stores at all the various products and stuff which are different than our own. I like to see what different tastes people on other places have. For instance there is quite a selection of various small muffins or cakes, mostly sweet, bagged like chips that I haven't the taste for. They aren't like the muffins in the US but more of a snack food. Another thing I noticed is the lack of peanut related products. While peanuts (fistik) are available shelled and unshelled peanut butter is very hard to find and like $5 a small jar. None of the candy or anything I could find is with peanuts or peanut flavored. It is just not a popular thing here in T-Land. In their place however is the pistachio (antep fistik) or the hazelnut, with hazelnut flavored creams and spreads all popular. Candy and chocolate has either almonds, pistachios or hazelnuts in them. I have only found peanut in chocolate in tourist markets. Another food difference is that it seems the T's don't favor eating meat with cheese. Only in mixed dishes like tavas or pide (like Turkish pizza) do you see it. Never have we found it cheeseburger-like, not even on what the T's call a cheeseburger! I always remind Michelle "remember Stimpy, we must respect all cultures no matter how foreign or hideous they may seem to us."
Anyway, Michelle always rushes me at stores and discourages me from buying too much but finally we visited the ancient city of Priene. It was my 8th visit and Michelle's 7th. This is a gorgeous place and we had a ball as always. Google Priene to see pics of the place.
We then left and Michelle had her heart set on finding this small fishing village next to the ancient city of Iasos. So we made our way down into Caria and the turn-off was hardly noticeable. The tiny road wound around, we made wrong turns into people's dirt driveways and eventually drove over this steep mountain and eventually found this tiny village and low and behold there was Iasos, sitting atop a small promontory with still, lake-like coves on either side. Idyllic and charming we tried to follow the Loney Planet book's suggestion and drove up a horribly steep road full of potholes looking for a pair of pensyion a and finally we were too tired and losing the light so we went back to the village and stayed in the pensyion which faced the cove and the beautiful ruins.
The place was nice and better than a regular pensyion as it possessed a bathroom and shower in the room, but lacked hot water, but Luke warm is still better than cold!!! The gentleman owner and his dad made us a nice chicken and fish dinner which turned out to be as expensive as the room but we had a nice room and full bellies for like $75. We did have a skeet (mosquito) issue so Michelle had us sleep under the net she brought.
All in all it was a great day and everything turned out awesome!!!
No comments:
Post a Comment