Bodrum

April 23-24, 2015

After breakfast Murat and Teoman drove us downtown to Bodrum Castle, built in the early 15th century by the Knights of St. John, also known as the Knights Hospitaller. Bodrum castle was originally dedicated to St. Peter and is known as the Petronion. The town was known by that name, but after the Turkish Republic was established the name was turkified to Bodrum. Unfortunately, one of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World, the Mausoleum of Halicarnassus, was just a short distance away, and was plundered for the castle’s building materials.

We did not visit the mausoleum site because nothing remains except the foundation. What wasn’t used by the Knights of St. John as building materials was carted off to the British Museum. In ancient times Bodrum was called Halicarnassus and was governed by King Maussolos. When he died in 353 B.C. his sister-wife, Queen Artimesia, started the construction of an enormous white marble tomb. It was the first “mausoleum,” named after Maussolos, and rose to almost 150 feet in height. Ionic columns supported a pyramidal roof that was topped by a statue of Maussolos and Artemisia riding a quadriga, now in London. We have the Knights to thank for the fact that the world’s first mausoleum is no more.

On the other hand, they did build a heck of a nice castle. The Knights of St. John were an international organization, nominally reporting only to the Pope. The castle’s towers are named after the home countries of the knights that built them – England, France, Germany and Spain. We entered the English tower, which features a lion motif and was dedicated to Henry IV. The inside is laid out like a medieval hall, which may be more or less how it looked at the time.

The Knights Hospitaller were founded to provide way stations for pilgrims traveling to or from the Holy Land who needed rest and recuperation. Although some medieval medical care may have been available, “Hospitaller” is more closely related to the modern word “hospitality” than it is to “hospital.”  By the 1520’s Suleyman the Magnificent became tired of the Knight’s enclaves in his domain, and drove them first to Rhodes and finally to Malta, where they stayed until the time of Napoleon. Later, the castle was badly damaged by French and British naval artillery in World War I, but has been beautifully restored.

The best part of the castle is that it contains the Museum of Underwater Archeology. Many rooms are devoted to the archeology of ancient shipwrecks from the Aegean and Mediterranean Seas. Many ancient amphorae, as well as glass ingots, tin ingots, and other objects have been plucked from shipwrecks at the bottom of the sea. Much of this work occurred in the 1970’s after a sponge-diver located a wreck while hunting for sponges. Tin is scarce in Turkey and was imported from Cyprus for making bronze. Glass also was better made elsewhere in ancient times, shipped to Turkey and then made into finished goods.

The oldest excavated shipwreck on display in the castle is the Uluburun wreck, which dates from the end of the 14^th century B.C., late in the Bronze Age. The ship carried a cargo of 20 tons – ingots of copper, tin and glass, as well as ebony logs, ostrich eggshells, amphorae of resin, and elephant and hippo ivory. A bronze goddess from the Syria-Palestine coast, which gilded head, hands and feet was part of the display, as well as a golden cup, a gold scarab of Nefertiti and other golden objects.

Another interesting wreck was from the Serce Limani natural harbor. It was a seventh-century wreck that contained many glass ingots as well as finished glass objects. No flash photography was allowed and the room was rather dimly lit for preservation purposes, but some of the glass objects were beautifully lit from below.

Photos are not allowed in one of the best rooms of the palace. Recently an ancient sarcophagus was found that contained a skeleton adorned with much gold jewelry. The woman’s face was reconstructed by forensic scientists in Britain, and it was decided that she is queen Artemisia. I was struck by a beautiful gold-leaf necklace that may have been a bit uncomfortable but was certainly gorgeous.

After we exited the castle, we went to a restaurant on the waterfront for lunch. This restaurant is known for its pizza, which Teoman assured us would be better than Italian pizza. It was great pizza. One interesting feature of our cheese and “ham” pizza was that it was made without tomato sauce. The ham was made from cured beef rather than pork. Teo and I each had a bowl of fish soup with big chunks of white fish in it. Mark and Teo each had a dish custom-ordered by Teo that consisted of noodles and beef cutlets in a tomato sauces topped with melted cheese. Sarah ordered an Aegean salad, which a few miles away on the island of Kos might have been called a Greek salad – tomatoes, cucumbers, onions and olives. We shared an order of thin-cut fries that could have been called homemade potato chips.

After lunch Murat drove us to the Myndos Gate, the only surviving gate of the ancient city wall, which has been partially restored. This gate and its moat (also partially restored) would have been besieged by Alexander the Great in 334 B.C. We drove past the ancient theater, and got a good look at it, since it faces the road. Teo said that the site of the mausoleum is not worth a visit, unless you just want to check it off your list, which we didn’t.

For dinner that evening we walked to Musto, one of the places suggested by Teo. On a blackboard above the kitchen door was a long quote from Anthony Bourdain, the first sentence of which I translated using an online translator and some help from the waiter. It reads, “There are some very interesting experiences of food.” Musto is one of them. The ambiance was very vibrant, with young people laughing and talking, and waiters bustling around at top speed. As a starter we enjoyed grilled octopus in soy sauce and olive oil, which may be one of the best things I have ever tasted. I ate a three-mushroom risotto, also very good, while Mark had some soup and chicken tenders. Abby and Sarah had chicken Musto, a chicken breast with lemon sauce and roasted vegetables. The meal was so good that we returned the next day for lunch.

On Friday we had free time until 6:00 p.m. when Teo and Murat would take us to the Bodrum airport to begin our trip home. We did a bit of shopping downtown, lingered over lunch at Musto, and then went back to the El Vino hotel to sit by the pool and read our books or update the blog. As I write this, I am in the Amsterdam airport, awaiting our flight to MSP.  It’s been a great trip.

We saw all the sights we wanted to see – Haghia Sophia, the Blue Mosque, Ephesus, the underground churches and cities of Cappadocia – even a hot air balloon ride! We also had some unexpected pleasures – eating dinner in a penthouse restaurant on Pera Boulevard in Istanbul, walking in the footsteps of Herodotus on Samos, learning about early Christian communities that were literally underground in Cappadocia, viewing an ancient shipwreck from the 14^th century B. C. in Bodrum. By far the best experience was renewing and rejuvenating our friendship and family ties with Sarah and Mark. Many times I recalled the day late in January 1977 when I first met Sarah and Mark, witnessing the love between the two sisters and enjoying Mark’s social skills and dry humor. And now, 38 years later, we get a chance to deepen and cement our friendship with the shared experience of a wonderful vacation in Turkey. It doesn’t get any better than this. 

Ionic Cities

April 22, 2015

The road from Kusadasi to Bodrum winds for 120 miles around Turkish mountains and coastline. Three important Ionic cities dot the route and would break our trip into four segments. Our guide for this trip, as well as in Bodrum, would be Teoman Erdogan, who is from the same Black Sea area as the Turkey’s President Erdogan, but is not related to him in any way. Teo is 59 years old, almost six feet tall, lean and muscular, with short balding grey hair. I asked Teo why the cities are called Ionic, since the Ionian Sea is on the other side of Greece, and the cities are near the Aegean Sea. He explained that people from the Ionian part of Greece had settled these cities, and so they are called Ionic.

Our first stop was Priene, which is a long walk uphill on concrete paving stones, and then up some steep and uneven stone steps. The city overlooks the valley below, which in ancient times would have been a bay of the Aegean City. A large cliff of rock dominates the north side of the city, the sea and cliff combining to make the city eminently defensible. The city was founded in about 350 B.C. and was still under construction sixteen years later when Alexander the Great relieved the city of its Persian rulers. Priene was a thriving port city, but the founders were not very far-sighted, because the Meander River (whence we get the English word meander), was slowly silting in the bay. Priene was abandoned before the Romans could rebuild it in their style, so it retains the simpler, Greek plan. One of the first things we encountered was a bouleterion, or council chamber, in which ten rows of sets face a small altar decorated with bull’s heads and laurel leaves. Abby commented that felt a bit like the British House of Commons, with rows of seats facing each other, the better to debate.

Near the council chamber is the Temple of Athena, designed by Pytheos, architect of the Mausoleum of Halicarnassus, one of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World. Five of the temple’s columns have been restored. Just to the northeast is the theater that could seat 6500 people. Mark and I enjoyed sitting in one of the five honorary seats around the theater and pretending to be Hellenistic nobility. The front feet of these seats were carved to look like lion’s feet. As we looked down upon the bath, which was placed lower down at what was then the water level, we noticed cattle grazing among the ruins. We felt like figures in a poem written by Lord Byron.

We drove across the former bay, now farmland devoted primarily to cotton, and parked before the great theater of Miletus, which could seat 25,000 people. The first settlers were Minoans from Crete who arrived between 1400 and 1200 B.C. The Ionians arrived 200 years later, massacred the men and then married their widows. The philosopher Thales was born here in the 6^th century B.C. and, according to Fodors, “. . . calculated the height of the pyramids of Giza . . . and coined the phrase, ‘Know thyself.’” Paul the apostle preached here at least twice and is believed to have delivered his letter to a delegation from Ephesus here. He was no longer welcome in that city because the silversmiths didn’t want him ruining their lucrative trade in making Artemis statues.

The Miletus theater is Roman in style, meaning that it had stalls for animals and raised seating to protect the spectators from the animals. Abby stayed at the lower level, while the rest of us climbed the stairs into the vomitoria, the vaulted passages that lead to the seats and remind some people of a modern sports arena. Like most theaters of this period, it is built into the side of a hill, so we walked out the back of the theater onto a hillside covered with variegated thistle that overlooks the ruined, and today partially flooded, city of Miletus. We saw the Delphinion, a sanctuary dedicated to Apollo and, as we left the city, a modern copy of an armless statue of Hera, with a Turkish symbol around its neck that wards off the evil eye.

We moved on to Didyma (Didim in Turkish) which has a spectacular Temple of Apollo. Fodors says that this temple is as grand in scale as the Parthenon, with 124 well-preserved columns. The temple was started in 300 BC, was under construction for almost 500 years, and was never completed. You don’t have to look too hard to see signs of unfinished construction, columns whose flutes were not completed for example. There was a spring at this site, which became associated with an oracle, second in importance only to the one at Delphi. Abby pointed out the meander key and floral pattern around the base of one of the columns. A giant head of Medusa, which Fodor calls the twin of the one in Istanbul’s Basilica Cistern, is posted at the edge of the site, perhaps to ward off those with evil intent.

There was a surprising amount of wildlife in the temple – a tortoise crawled among the ruins, similar to one we had seen at the Basilica of John in Selcuk, and the well had hundreds of tadpoles in it, fighting over the sunlight.

We ate lunch at a restaurant across the street from the temple. I had “meatballs,” which has become one of my favorites. Evren had described them as containing just ground beef, onions, parsley and some cumin. Delicious! Sarah ordered a chicken curry, which was even better. Abby and Mark each had tomato soup and bread. Abby ordered a banana-and-honey dessert, which we all shared. There were a couple of large, green frog statues outside the restaurant, which seemed incongruous with the classical surroundings. We then piled into the van for the remaining 100-kilometer drive to Bodrum.

El Vino Boutique Hotel in Bodrum is a charming little oasis with a small kidney-shaped swimming pool that has a stone bottom. When we checked into our rooms, we found our beds strewn with yellow daisies. We enjoyed a delicious dinner in the hotel restaurant, from which we had a great view of Bodrum castle, the harbor, and the Greek island of Kos in the distance. I had sea trout, which reminded me of Minnesota lake trout. Two filets were bound together with a grape leaf, with red and yellow peppers in between, all resting on a bed of mashed potatoes. Abby had lamb chops on a bed of lentils, and Sarah and Mark each has sea bass served with a marine vegetable. Supper was accompanied by wine made on site. For me, this was our best meal of the trip. We fell asleep early after the long drive. 

Samos

April 21, 2015

Evren and Murat picked us up at 8:00 a.m. to take us to the Samos ferry. Evren asked us if we had our Turkish visas, allowing us to re-enter the country. No, we had left them at the hotel! Evren spoke with a Turkish official, who said that we would be allowed back in without them, but only this one time. After clearing Turkish emigration, we walked across a couple of Turkish carpets to board the ferry. Mark and I sat up top while Abby and Sarah went below where the seats were softer and the air was warmer. We chugged past the Ottoman fort guarding Kusadasi and into open water. It was a slow ferry ride, taking an hour and half to cross the narrow strait between Kusadasi and Vathi, Samos. The ride back would take even longer, because the winds would strengthen and be against us.

We met Irene, our Samos guide, just outside the ferry terminal. She drove us to the Samos Archeological Museum in Pythagorion, a museum small enough that we could do an overview of the whole museum in about an hour and a half. Unfortunately, no photography is allowed inside the museum. No photography is allowed on the outside grounds of the museum, either, which neither we nor Irene realized at first. The result was a rather comical photo of us looking confused, which was snapped by Irene while we were being yelled at by the museum guard for taking pictures in a forbidden area.

When they started digging the foundations for the Samos Archeological Museum, they ran into an important archeological site, the agora of the ancient city of Samos (since renamed Pythagorion as a tribute to its most famous native son). As a result the museum is both an indoor and an outdoor museum, and the outdoor portion has been planted with beautiful and plentiful wildflowers. I squeezed off one photo of the wildflowers and outdoor ruins, and Irene the one comical photo, before taking any more pictures was quashed by the museum guard. We enjoyed a nice walk around the museum’s outdoor grounds before we hopped into the car and headed for the Temple of Hera.

At the entrance to the Heraion, we found a poster stating, “Is your guide licensed – demand the quality you deserve – all licensed tourist guides have the official badge.” And there, in the lower right corner of the poster was a photocopy of Irene’s badge with Irene’s photograph on it. She is the only licensed guide on the island.

The earliest evidence of the worship of Hera on Samos dates from the Bronze Age, the second half of the second millennium B.C. According to tradition, Hera was born under a weeping willow tree on the banks of the Imbrasos River. The ground there is quite swampy, which did not stop people from trying to build temples. Originally, only a small altar existed here, but by the 8^th century B.C., a rectangular stone temple was built with a paved floor. In 570-560 B.C. the giant temple began to take shape under the supervision of an architect named Rhoikos. Polycrates the tyrant receives the credit for enlarging the temple to the form we see today. By 460

B.C. Herodotus declared it to be the most eminent of all the temples he had seen. We enjoyed walking down the same Sacred Way leading up to the temple that Herodotus had trod. Of the 155 columns that supported the temple, only one stands today, and it is half of its original height. The Samian artist Theodoros invented the rotating drill for the construction of this temple. All of us who have bought drills at Home Depot or Menards are in his debt today.

We stopped for lunch at a restaurant that Irene likes. We had the menu that Evren had also recommended – Greek salad, calamari, French fries, bread, and Samian wine. Irene had called ahead to warn them that we wanted calamari. After lunch we went to the Pythagoras monument by the waterfront for a photo shoot in front of the – you guessed it – triangular monument.

Irene drove us to the tower of Lykourgos Logothetis, which afforded a nice view of the city below and the island of Patmos in the distance. It was nice to see, if only from a distance, the island where John had written his revelation. In the tower’s courtyard we encountered a mulberry tree that had dozens of full water bottles hanging from its branches. The bottles were serving as weights to train the tree’s branches to grow in a more horizontal direction.

We drove uphill to the Monastery of the Virgin Mary, where there is a cave with a shrine to Mary in it. A spring came out of the rock inside the cave and filled a pool next to the shrine. Irene explained that the pool is used for baptisms. In pre-Christian times a pool on this location had been used for ritual purification of boys, whose clothes would be left behind as a sign of purity. Although the local bishop has forbidden the practice as non-Christian, the monks still find children’s clothes after a baptism. The Christian faithful had taken a couple of marble slabs from the Temple of Hera and incorporated them into the shrine to Mary. Some people call this syncretism, but I believe they are just hedging their bets. 

It was time for Irene to take us back to the port to catch our 5:00 p.m. ferry. The winds had picked up during the day and the ride home was a bit rough and took longer, though thankfully the sky was clear. Evren gave us a two-handed wave from the other side of the fence as we got off the ferry. People in this country are so friendly! We were concerned when we got to Turkish immigration and could not see the officer who had said that we would not need our visas to get back into Turkey. However, our passports were stamped without comment and we were admitted back into the country without incident.

We ate an unexceptional dinner in the hotel restaurant and retired early. Tomorrow we would travel the 200 kilometers to Bodrum, and see the ruins of three Ionic cities along the way.

Izmir

April 20, 2015

We decided to have a city tour of Izmir rather than take the three-hour drive to Pergamum. In Kusadasi we were only about 40 miles from Izmir, the third-largest city in Turkey and Evren’s home town. Izmir had been a predominantly Greek city until after World War I. In 1918 Greek military forces landed in Izmir and began pushing eastward in a war of conquest. Turkish forces led by Mustafa Kemal Ataturk began pushing back and, on September 9, 1922, defeated the Greeks and took control of Smyrna and the western seaboard of Turkey. The city has been called Izmir ever since. We saw several statues commemorating September 9, and the date is celebrated as a local holiday.

Our first stop in Izmir was to ride the elevator, or asansor in Turkish, up a steep cliff to the upper part of the city. Evren commented that 500 Turkish words are derived from French, and the word for elevator is apparently one of them. The elevator had been built in the early 20^th century and is now part of the public transit system. We rode the elevator back down and walked to a square that celebrates the beginning of the uprising against Greek occupation in May, 1919. A statue of a man in business clothes holding a gun and a flag is a focal point of the square. A baroque-looking clock tower sits in the middle of the square, and a small mosque is on the northeast corner.

Evren led us into the Kaymerali, or bazaar, of Izmir. Fodor’s highly recommends the Izmir Kaymerali and gives it one of their orange stars. It felt less touristy – more like a place Turks would shop – than did the Grand Bazaar in Istanbul. Evren offered us tastes of various things, beginning with a light, fresh filo-dough roll that was delicious. He asked the street vendor to cut it into quarters so we each could have a bite. At a shop we had some breakfast pastries, one filled with spinach and the other with cheese. He found some unripe almonds and “plums” for us to eat. The plums were a bit sour, but flavorful. We later would have them pickled at the restaurant in Bodrum, where they were delicious. The unripe almonds were nothing special. We ate the almonds and plums at a coffee shop, where the shopkeeper washed them at Evren’s request. I drank a strong, dark Turkish coffee while the others had tea.

We saw lots of fresh fish on display, and other meats including beef heart and tripe. Various shops were grilling sheep’s intestines wrapped around a rotisserie. Mark and Sarah had had that in Greece, and said it tasted terrible. Sheep’s hearts, livers and other offal were wrapped inside the intestines, according to Mark. I wanted to try some for myself, but none of them were done yet – they were for consumption later in the day.

We walked through the Jewish quarter past three synagogues, each of which was labeled with a sign, but none of which are still active today. We walked out of the Kaymerali and met Murat and the van. Evren took us to a local restaurant where he ordered some Turkish dishes – spinach with little bits of beef in it, beans, chicken and rice, and bread. The food was ordered cafeteria-style, and Evren brought it to our table. We may have been the only tourists in the restaurant. As we came out of the restaurant, a man tried to talk to Mark in Turkish, but then apologized in English when Mark spoke English to him. 

Evren, looking at his watch, said that we were going to try to catch the ferry back to the other side of the bay. We were one of the last vehicles to board the ferry, just one or two cars and a semi-trailer were later than us. The ferry operators held the semi-trailer so that it was the last vehicle aboard. We sat upstairs and watched the mountains to the south of Izmir get closer, with the ferry’s red Turkish flag flapping in front of them.

Our drive back to Kusadasi was uneventful. Abby and I went to a restaurant named Mezgit, one of Evren’s recommendations, while Sarah and Mark ate potato chips in their room. We enjoyed sea bream and calamari, preceded by a delicious roasted eggplant salad as we watched the sun set behind the marina. The next day, Mark and I would walk through the marina and look at all the boats registered in Delaware, as well as Kusadasi. Evren would explain that it cost far less to register a boat in Delaware than in Turkey. For those wishing to visit Ephesus, Fodor’s recommends staying in Selcuk rather than Kusadasi, but we prefer the sunsets of Kusadasi, visible from our hotel balcony, or from the restaurants lining the waterfront.

Ephesus

Sunday, April 19, 2015

We were not particularly interested in driving three hours to Bergama to see the ruins of Pergamum, and then three hours back again, so we decided that we would see Ephesus today and Izmir tomorrow, skipping the long drive to Bergama/Pergamum. Evren, our guide and Murat, our driver, met us at the hotel at 9:00 a.m. for the short drive to Ephesus.

First, however, we drove uphill to the house of the Virgin Mary or, as she is called in Turkish, Mother Mary. From the cross, Jesus had asked John to take care of his mother. According to legend, John and Mary moved to a house near Ephesus. It was to that house that we travelled today. In the 19^th century, a German nun had a vision of the house in exact detail. A French writer recorded her vision and published it. The house was later found near Ephesus, much as the visionary nun had described it. It remains a place of pilgrimage today. Abby and I each lit a candle and said a prayer, and then rejoined Sarah, Mark and Evren. We drove back down the mountainside toward Ephesus.

Ephesus was the fourth-largest city of the Rome Empire, after Rome, Alexandria and Antioch. About 10% of the ancient city has been excavated. According to Fodor’s, Ephesus is the best-preserved Greco-Roman city in the eastern Mediterranean. We saw the Odeon Theater, where an audience of about 1500 could enjoy plays and other recitals. Next was the Rhodian Peristyle and the Prytaneion, where priests kept vigil to ensure that the sacred flame of Hestia, goddess of hearth and home, was never extinguished. Next to the bath we saw rows of toilet seats that had been preserved for two thousand years. Evren pointed out an early representation of the caduceus, the symbol of medicine and health. Mark pointed out a Medusa head on the porch of the temple of Artemis, meant to protect the city from its enemies. A relief of a winged Nike offers the laurel wreath of victory. The terrace houses, luxurious homes of wealthy Ephesians, adorn the slopes of Mount Koressos, beneath a modern ceiling meant to protect them and their visitors from sunlight.

We paused in front of the Library of Celsus, while Evren pointed out that the second story is shorter than the first, although you don’t notice that on first impression. Julius Celsus, Roman governor of Asia Minor, built the library, which was home to more than 12,000 scrolls. It also served has his mausoleum. In the grand theater we watched as a group of a dozen singers, including a director, took the stage. Evrem opined that they were a Korean tour group, dressed uniformly in white shirts and blue jeans. They sang, in perfect harmony, the Battle Hymn of the Republic and When the Saints Go Marching In. As we left the theater, we could hear them progressing through their repertoire of American choral music.

Evren and Murat then took us to Susguzar, a restaurant in Selcuk known for its cop sis, or shish kebab with small cubes of beef and one cube of beef fat. Abby had the cop sis, while I had the “meatball,” which has become a favorite of mine. Evren ordered a pumpkin dessert that consisted of candied pumpkin and walnuts. Delicious!

Murat then drove us to the Ephesus Museum in Selcuk, next to an old Turkish bath that used glass globes as skylights. The museum contains some interesting and beautiful works, including a bust of Marcus Arelius, a bronze snake, a statue of Zeus, a couple of amazing Artemis statues, Priapus statues, and a giant head and forearm of Emperor Domitian. Much of the art of Ephesus was taken to London or Vienna, but some nice pieces remain in the Ephesus museum.

Our last stop of the day was the basilica of St. John the Divine, whose revelation is the last book in the bible. John is believed to have been buried under the church, although when his tomb was opened, it contained nothing but dust. The adjoining Ottoman fort dominates the city of Selcuk. Not much of the basilica remains, but it is interesting to think of John living out his last years here, and perhaps Mary, too.

Kaymakli underground city in Cappadocia

Friday, April 17, 2015 and Saturday, April 18, 2015

The rest of us took it easy while Gorkahn and Sarah went hiking this morning. Sarah said later that it was really worthwhile. After getting everyone together at about 11:00 a.m., our first stop was Mustafapasa, a perfectly preserved Greek village in Cappadocia. Greek-speaking families had moved out during the “population exchange” of 1923, while Turkish-speaking families from what is now Greece had moved in. This makes the whole exchange sound fair and orderly, while in reality it was not. Gorkahn referred to “population exchange” as a “soft term” for something that was in reality quite harsh.

In Mustafapasa (named after Mustafa Kemal Ataturk) we saw an old doorway surrounded by lions and signs to ward off the evil eye. We had learned from Esin that such signs were meant to reflect jealousy back to the jealous person – thus, in modern terms, they ward off jealousy. We walked into the Old Greek House Restaurant whose entrance was overhung with an ornately-painted balcony. Antelope horns hung underneath the balcony and over the doorway as signs of good luck. Our itinerary called for us to eat lunch at this restaurant but, as it was only 11:00, we moved on.

As we drove down a winding two-lane road in rural Cappadocia, Gorkahn spotted a farm where the women were baking bread in an outdoor oven. Selim put on the brakes and backed up the van so that we could pull into the farm driveway. Gorkahn enquired whether we could watch the bread-baking process; the answer was, yes. The matriarch of the family was stoking dried potato plants, without the potatoes, as fuel into an outdoor concrete-block oven. She was about 55 years old, and her daughters, daughter-in-law and four-year-old granddaughter we helping. Her husband and a son were milling around, but were clearly not involved in the bread-baking. Fortunately for us, her 20-year-old daughter had been a chef in Australia and had perfect English. She was able to translate all our questions, even taking us into the room where the dough was mixed with an electric mixer, and describing the ingredients. In addition to yeast, flour and water, the bread included a little potato, this being potato-growing country. We watched the loaves go into the oven. After about 10 minutes, the matriarch decided they should come out. She gave us a couple of loaves (Gorkahn had given her 20 lira). They were delicious; we snacked on fresh bread for the rest of the day.

After a hug from the four-year-old, we said goodbye to the rest of the family and continued on our way to the Kaymakli underground city. Xenophon, in the 5^th century B.C., was the first to write about the underground dwellings of Cappadocia. Hittite (2000-1200 B.C.) artifacts have been discovered in them. The caves and passages were significantly modified and expanded centuries later by early Christians, to the point where they could be described as underground cities. Large quantities of grain and grapes were stored in them, as protection against an invasion. As invading armies swept across the semi-arid plateau of Cappadocia, the locals could hide in the caves for months at a time, until the invasion threat had passed. Wells cut down to the water table provided fresh water, while ventilation shafts provided enough air even for ovens. Entrances were hidden in peoples’ basements, and large round stones could be rolled across the entrances to keep out unwanted visitors. Some of the round doors had holes in the middle through which spears could be thrust to keep invaders at bay. Four different floors can be visited in Kaymakli, but more floors below the fourth level remain unexcavated. We viewed various rooms used as living rooms, stables, kitchens, wineries and a Christian church.

Our next stop was “Pigeon Valley” where there was a nice overlook of cave dwellings, including Uchisar Castle, the highest fairy chimney in Cappadocia. The “castle” was used as a fort in the Byzantine and Ottoman periods, and was later inhabited as a cave dwelling. It was abandoned in 1960, when it was declared unsafe because of erosion. 

We had a Turkish lunch in Avanos, which for me consisted of mezes, or appetizers, of various kinds of eggplant, plus bulgar wrapped in grape leaves. We then went to the Avanos farmers market, where we saw various lentils, vegetables, tools, herbs and spices.  We walked down the steep hill into central Urgup and found Muti by Prokapi Restaurant. I enjoyed the lamb shank and mashed potato, while Abby had baked chicken and Sarah had soup and appetizers. Mark stayed  home to rest up for the next day's travel.

The next morning, at 6:45 a.m., we met Gorkahn and Selim for our transfer to the Kayseri airport. We flew to Istanbul, and then on to Izmir, where Evren met as at the airport to take us to our hotel, the Doubletree by Hilton in Kusadasi.

Evren recommended a restaurant, Cinar Balik, that was walking distance from our hotel. He advised us to get the bream or sea bass, which would be the most reasonable in price. He also advised us the get there before sunset, which is at 7:30 at this time of year in Kusadasi, so that we could watch the sun set over the Aegean Sea as we ate dinner. That we did, only we ordered the red snapper instead of the farmed bream or bass, preceded by mezes of artichoke salad, leek and asparagus salad, fried sardines, spinach, and calamari. We watched the red sun set over the Aegean and thanked each other for agreeing to go on such a wonderful vacation.