What a crazy couple of weeks!! I’m extremely behind on my blogging, but it’s been so much fun so I’m not too sorry. I’ll start with December 11th… when my mom arrived…

Mommy T in Turkey! My mom got here on a Sunday, tired but excited. I was so happy she was finally here. The first day was pretty relaxed while my mom recovered from her trip, but we were up and at it the next day! We got up in the morning and paid my electric bill (I know, super exciting stuff) and had an awesome dinner at Kazancilar, a lovely Turkish restaurant just steps away from my apartment that serves yummy mezes and excellent Adana kebabs. That evening, my mom rested while I went to work.

The next day we went to the mall (I got a hairdryer!) and then my mom came to class with me. The kids couldn’t decide if they were stoked or scared… It was funny. Mommy ended up coming to a number of my classes: all the kids were curious and I loved it because I didn’t have to plan and the kids loved actually using this English stuff that they’ve been learning.

The next few days were more of the same, classes and hanging out with mommy. Then Friday rolled around (my free day) with a fun adventure! We hired a car and driver (thanks to Ahmet) and mommy, Angela, and I went to the amazing breakfast in tents place that she and Ahmet took me to when I first arrived in Turkey. Cannot believe that was over five months ago!!! It was just as yummy as the first time, and we just relaxed there for several hours, eating and gazing at the Mediterranean, lounging in our tent with the heater on.

There’s also the Corycus Castle, just down the beach from Kızkalesi. This castle is an old fortress that was “either built or rebuilt by the Byzantines, briefly occupied by the Armenian kingdom of Cilicia and once connected to Kızkalesi by causeway” (thank you Lonely Planet). Either way, it’s pretty cool and my mom went over to touch it – her first ancient ruins in Turkey.

Saturday and Sunday morning I had tons of classes, which my mom came to. Sunday afternoon I finally had some free time though; so my mom and I headed down to the Sabanci Mosque and Merkez Park. We went inside the massive mosque and then walked all through the impeccably groomed Merkez Park (the Turks take excellent care of their parks – I can’t remember a day I was in the park and I didn’t see a bunch of people weeding or cleaning or shaping the trees). It was a gorgeous day and we immensely enjoyed ourselves.

Monday was a big work day and then Tuesday we went to the American consulate in order to get extra pages in my passport. (Love that!) Wednesday was another long work day, and then Thursday I had a quick two-hour class and then my mom and I were off to Antakya!!!

I chose Antakya because my mom loves mosaics, and Antakya has an excellent mosaic museum with some gorgeous mosaics from Tarsus and Harbiye/Defne dating back to the 2nd-4th century ad. But I’ll talk about that later… Let’s begin with our arrival!

Those of you who I’ve talked to know that my current apartment isn’t quite up to date on its heating… Including the general heating of the apartment and the hot water. More often than not, showers turn crazy cold, and the apartment is old and drafty and freezing. This results in always being cold. So my main goal when traveling to Antakya was to find a place with a heater and shower. Our hotel was called the mosaic hotel, was located next to my favorite restaurant in Antakya, and was super chintzy and ridiculous. But MAN was it warm! Plus, not only did the shower have hot water, it had water pressure!! Glorious.

After checking in, we headed to my favorite restaurant in Antakya where I got my favorite dish: an uber-cooked dish of meat and bulgur that ends up mushy and amazing. We also got yaprak sarmas and delicious bread. After dinner, we decided to walk for a bit so my mom could see some of the town. Plus, we had to get kunefe. What is an Antakya trip without kunefe?! My mom didn’t love the kunefe, although I don’t think she hated it either. It takes some getting used to – you’re not expecting it to be that sweet except it is doused in simple syrup so it makes sense. (For those of you who haven’t had kunefe, it’s cheese topped with shredded wheat and simple syrup.)

Then the craziness started: as we were walking along the streets of Antakya, my mom stepped on a rusty, dirty gross nail. She stepped on it with such force that it managed to go though the sole of her shoe and into her foot. It wasn’t a huge cut, but it was just enough to make us concerned about the last time she’d had a tetanus shot…

We went back to the hotel where we explained in Turklish (my new word for the half English/half Turkish I speak here) what had happened. The boy at the hotel was super helpful and called a cab for us. The cab driver took us to the hospital, where he parked the car and came inside with us. We couldn’t believe the scene inside – at least 150 people milling about the waiting room in total chaos. I started to get worried we were going to be there for the rest of the night, so when we checked in, I told my mom to throw every bit of id she had at them, including her department of defense id. Turns out, the magic word was actually just “yabanci” (“foreign”). In 20 minutes, they had my mom processed, paid (15 lira… About $8 for an emergency room visit and the shot), the shot given (in a chair about two feet from a kid getting his upper lip stitched up), and out the door. I could not believe how smoothly or efficiently the process went – two things that I VERY rarely say when dealing with Turkey. We were so unbelievably lucky. I’m pretty sure we saw at least one dead person, maybe two.. It was a scary place. I was very happy to get back to our hotel and relax for the rest of the evening (complete with heat blasting from the wall unit!)

The next morning, my mom felt fine so we were up and at ’em, after our gloriously warm showers, of course. After breakfast at the hotel, we headed to the mosaic museum, which my mom loved. After the museum, we bought some souvenirs and the woman remembered me from the summer when I’d been there with Angela.

We were hungry and had some time to kill, so we headed back to my favorite restaurant in hopes of finding herise again, but they didn’t have it. Instead we had a really interesting yogurt and meat soup and cabbage sarmas. We sat there a while and then finally headed to the bus, full, tired, and happy.

All in all, a lovely holiday. So sad it was over.

Saturday and Sunday sped by, and suddenly it was Monday and mommy was leaving. I cried so much on the way to the airport that Ercan (my favorite taxi driver) pulled out a box of tissues for me and made fun of me a little bit.

But waiting to cheer me up when I got home was Neil’s decision to come to Turkey for New Year’s!!! After quickly making arrangements for him to get from Adana to Antalya (where I had been planning to meet Claire and Jeremy for new years), we were good to go!!

Neil arrived Thursday night and Irem graciously drove me to the airport to collect him. The next morning we set off for Antalya, a city that is about 10 hours west of Adana by car, located on the Mediterranean. The plane ride was an hour, and the airport transfer that I’d organized was there and we went straight to the hostel. We showered and found Claire and Jeremy and set about exploring.

We headed first to the Antalya Archeology museum which was pretty amazing. There were tons of sculptures from all of the nearby ancient settlements, and loads of other artifacts as well. Trying to tell you all about it would be difficult because there was so much there but let me tell you, the sculptures of the Gods and Goddesses were awesome. We learned the next day that there was a big art school in Perge (one of the nearby ancient cities) and that a lot of these sculptures had been winners of art competitions and had been on display at the large bath complexes for people to enjoy while they frolicked in their baths.

After the museum, the four of us headed out for drinks and backgammon. Claire and Jeremy taught us how to play and then I lost to Jeremy (who showed no mercy on a beginner!) and then Neil beat Claire! After that, we were ready for dinner, so we picked a place from my guidebook and headed to “Villa Pearla’s”.

Pearla’s turned out to be a gorgeous restaurant locate pretty close to our apartment, run by an eccentric old woman named.. (what else!) Pearla. There was a fire, a fluffy white dog, and we had the place to ourselves. Pearla was hysterical, and we went through three bottles of wine, and dishes of meze, manti (Turkish ravioli), shrimp guveç (stewy casserole thing), rabbit guveç, and beef guveç. We finished off with fresh Anatolian oranges and some weird concoction of Pearla’s. The night was fantastic!!

The next morning, we got up bright and early for an organized tour of Side, Aspendos, Perge, and a waterfall.

First was Side. The word “Side” means pomegranate in the native Anatolian language. Not exactly sure how that related to the site that we saw, but I know a few girls named Side (pronounced “see-day”) so I thought it was nice to finally know what that means. (All Turkish names have meanings, such as Gül (rose), Mert (strong/brave soldier), and Deniz (sea), to name a few of the most popular names.)

Side is the sight of an old port.  Its natural geography made it one of the most important places in Pamphylia and one of the most important trade centers in the region.  We saw the temple dedicated to Athena – the major deity of Side and its protector, and the deity in charge of sea trade.

Our next stop was Aspendos. Aspendos has the largest and most well-preserved Roman theater in the world. It is an incredible structure which still has a majority of the seats intact, and the stage building still standing. It was built by the Romans during the reign of Emperor Marcus Aurelius (61-80 AD) and used as a caravanserai by the Seljuks during the 13th century. The Seljuks did some restorations and then Ataturk did some more after he toured the area in the early 1930s (which some historians were NOT in favor of) and apparently now they host tons of concerts including operas, ballets, and modern popular music. The theater seats around 15,000 and the acoustics are perfect. Most most importantly, you can really get a sense of how a Roman theater looked during their heyday and the magical history is all-encompassing.

Outside the theater are the remains of the aqueducts which are also pretty cool. We stopped here for a bit before continuing on to lunch. 🙂

The last ancient city was Perge. Perge pales a bit in comparison with Efes (where Neil and I went last summer) as far as how intact the city is, but the bath complexes are truly outstanding. The city of Perge was one of the most important towns of ancient Pamphylia. It had two golden ages: during the Hellenistic period in the 2nd and 3rd centuries BC and under the Romans in the 2nd and 3rd centuries AD (from which most of the ruins date). There was a theater and a Hellenistic gate with two huge towers. You could see the remains of the colonnaded streets and the agora space. Our tour guide even showed us a marble butcher’s sign! But like I said, the baths are truly awesome – the palaestra (gym), and the hot room, warm room, and cold room were all totally visible. The hot room even had half the floor ripped away so you could see the structures underneath where they would run the boiling water which created the steam, making the hot room well… hot! Then Neil and I skipped down to the northern nymphaeum so I could take a picture of his head on a headless statue of a woman. We’re so mature! 🙂

Our last stop of the day was the waterfall. Truthfully, when we arrived, I wasn’t interested and was more than ready to head back to the hotel, a hot shower, and warm/dry clothes. Oh, I didn’t mention it was pouring rain and freezing cold all day? Ha Luckily the sites were so cool that we could forget about the cold for most of the day, but by the time we hit the waterfall, I was done. Luckily, the waterfall was both short and gorgeous. We had the chance to climb down to the waterfall and go under it and look out through the cascading water and it was lovely. Then it was back to the hostel to warm up! An excellent New Year’s Eve day.

Once we were warm and a bit rested, we set out in search of food. Unfortunately, we wanted to go back to Pearla’s but there was some confusion so we ended up back at our hotel where they had a fixed price menu for New Years. Tons of help yourself appetizers including macaroni and cheese and salad with walnuts, cranberries, and real bleu cheese (!), and yaprak sarmas. Really, the best meal ever! We played backgammon for hours after dinner, and then headed out to a bar where we continued our mission of getting drunk and looking ridiculous (apparently Turks really like party hats, masks, and noisemakers on New Year’s Eve). We had a blast playing Cheer’s Gov’ner! and then suddenly it was New Year’s Eve and I was a bit gushy at being with some of my closest friends and my lovely and wonderful and perfect boyfriend. What, you don’t want to hear me gush? Then get off my blog!

The next day we had a quick breakfast with Claire and Jeremy and then then left for the airport and Cappadokia. Neil and I walked around Antalya, seeing the famous clock tower, Hadrian’s Gate (130 BC, build during the Roman emperor’s visit to Antalya), and the Roman harbour, which was the most important part of Antalya from the 2nd century BC until late in the 20th century, when a new port was constructed about 12km west of the city. Neil and I were tired and being lazy though, so we ended up stopping for photos and tea, and then headed back towards our hotel, stopping only for an awesome lunch of spaghetti bolognese and real caprese salad (AMAZING!). Then it was back to Adana for cuddling, West Wing, and sleep (I slept, Neil played with his iPhone) until he left at 2am.

I’m going to end this post here because 1. it’s already the longest post EVER, 2. I really need to get this up before it’s really ridiculously outdated, and 3. I have a ton more research and work to do before I can write the next section (Gaziantep with Claire and Jeremy, and my new Turkish friends!). My apologies at the delay, and I’ve already made Neil promise to make me write every night next year on our journeys.

p.s. it’s 11 days til England!!! I cannot cannot cannot wait!