Tibet nomadic village, Thursday, October 13, 2016

We boarded the bus at 9:30 a.m. for a ride to a traditional nomadic village outside of Lhasa. Much of the road was under construction and the ride was very bumpy. After about an hour and a half we stopped at a public toilet. Our destination was visible in the near distance. The nomads spend the summer months in the mountains where their yaks and cattle have pasturage. After the harvest, the animals are brought to the lowlands to graze on the leavings of those who have harvested the crops. We were greeted by a barking dog with a red ruff around its neck – for decoration, according to Nima. We could see stacks of yak dung drying in the sun to be used as the family’s heating fuel.

Nima led us to the family’s room that serves as both a living room and dining room. It’s also a bedroom for some of the family members. Beautiful Buddhist paintings adorned the cabinetry in the room. We were served a snack of yak-butter tea, sweet tea, yak-cheese dumplings and boiled new potatoes. After one bite of yak-cheese dumpling, Abby let me eat the rest of her dumpling. I thought the yak-butter tea was pretty good, but Abby definitely preferred the sweet tea. I would learn later that I should have avoided anything involving yak butter or yak cheese.

The most interesting room in the house was the “religious room,” which had incense burning and contained glass-fronted statues of the Buddha and Tibetan deities. A thangka painting of a red-skinned Tara caught my eye. In Tibetan Buddhism, Tara (or Dolma in the Tibetan language) is the goddess of compassion. Her cult reached Tibet in the 11^th century and, judging from the number of Tara images seen in Lhasa, she has quite a following.

I noticed Hu on the roof and climbed up to see the view. I had to climb a steep stairs past the hot chimney of the yak-dung furnace that heated the house. There was a slightly better view of the mountains from there. The most interesting sight was that of women winnowing grain by using an electric fan to blow away the chaff. Nima said that electricity had come to this village of 500 souls relatively recently, and the villagers were making full use of it.

We walked past five of the egg-shaped furnaces for burning juniper incense to get to the Nyegon Nunnery, adjacent to the village. The nuns opened the temple so that we could walk around (clockwise!) inside. No photos allowed. It was a miniature version of the Jokhang temple in Lhasa. The nuns’ robes were arranged in rows on the benches where they would sit during worship. There was a statue of Tara/Dolma inside.  Nima explained that nuns have all the same powers and duties as monks and can perform marriage ceremonies, for example.

We went back to the public toilet to use the facilities and to have lunch in a shack that was a short walk away. We had to dodge yak dung and cross a small creek on the way to the lunch spot. Tiny frogs, not much bigger than spring peepers, caught our eyes in the creek. A pile of yak dung was drying in the sun. Lunch consisted of stir-fried yak meat, stir-fried vegetables, rice and bread. Tea was poured from a large thermos. We played ping pong in a light breeze. Len played with Mary, who was born in the Independence Sanitarium and Hospital 12 days before I was and went to Sunday school with Brent.  We took photos of a yak herd and two herders that stopped nearby.

We returned over the same bumpy road to the Tibet Museum in Lhasa. Although the museum displays a few interesting artifacts, its main reason for existence is to present a defensive rationale for the Chinese occupation of Tibet. Here’s a sample of what was presented in three languages: “Tibet has been an inalienable part of China since ancient times. . . . From the beginning of the Yuan dynasty, Tibet officially became an administrative region [of China.]” The pre-historic and historic artifacts were just a vehicle for the official message that Tibet has always been part of China. Never mind that Lhasa feels like an occupied city, with a Chinese military presence everywhere. There were even four soldiers with automatic weapons and riot gear marching in a circle in the square outside the Jokhang temple.

The museum contains a large number of seals of Tibetan political officials, all of the bestowed by the Central Government of China, of course. There were some nice displays of traditional clothing from various regions of Tibet, as well as some displays of pottery and teapots from modern times. A room on the third floor contained various representations of the Buddha, as well as Tara. The display characterized the evolution of Buddha iconography from India to Tibet and China.

Some of us walked to the nearby Sheraton Fourpoints for dinner. The restaurant only had three menus, which we took as a hint that we should eat the buffet. It was good, but not great. There have been a lot of buffets on this trip, and I’m sure there are more to come.

Jokhang Temple, Wednesday, October 12, 2016

Our first stop of the day was the Traditional Tibetan Hospital. We climbed three flights of stairs to hear Dr. Tsewang describe traditional Tibetan medicine. He used diagrams painted in the traditional Thangka style – which we would learn more about later – to describe the three spirits that govern the health of the body. The diagrams portray the body as analogous to a tree. The main trunk of the tree is healthy; diseases are represented by branches that separate from the main trunk. Each of the three main spirits that govern disease is represented by its own color – yellow, blue or white. The diagrams were draped in traditional read and yellow Tibetan Buddhist fabric – the same colors that monks wear – and surrounded by beautiful embroidery. Dr. Tsewang pointed to glass-fronted cabinets that contain early works of Tibetan medicine, many of them printed by using wooden blocks.

Dr. Tsewang expl

ained that Tibetan medicine is best used for treating chronic diseases such as arthritis, hypertension and diabetes. Treatment is based on physical examination and evalua
tion of the patient’s symptoms. Various herbal remedies, dietary and lifestyle counseling, and acupuncture are used. However, in Tibetan acupuncture, only the skin of the head is punctured with a needle. For medical emergencies, people should go to the modern hospital. Len separately asked Dr. Tsewang if he goes to a Tibetan doctor for treatment. The answer was no, because he does not have a chronic disease. He has, however, been to the modern hospital to treat an emergent medical condition.

Dr. Tsewang then took us to a separate room that is a shrine to the founders and early practitioners of Tibetan medicine. It looked just like a shrine that you could see in a Buddhist temple; in fact, one of the six figures represented was the Buddha himself. Someone asked whether there is a school or college that teaches traditional Tibetan medicine. There is such a college. Its original site was on a hill across from the Potala Palace that is now occupied by a radio tower. It was destroyed during the peaceful liberation. It has since been rebuilt elsewhere.

The twenty of us, with our two guides and driver, then hopped on the bus and drove to the square in front of the Jokhang Temple, the most sacred building in Tibet. The temple was built in the seventh century by Songtsen Gampo. The site was selected by Queen Wengcheng, a princess from China who became his second wife. His first wife, Princess Bhrikuti of Nepal, financed the construction. In her honor, the main gate faces west toward Nepal. Our guide, Nima, reported that the Temple was saved from destruction during the Cultural Revolution, although Fodor’s reports that it was ransacked by the Red Guards in the 1960’s and turned into a pig sty. It has since been restored to its former glory.

The first thing we noticed upon disembarking from the bus was smoke from two egg-shaped furnaces in front of the temple. People were stoking juniper branches into them; the smoke wafting skyward was an offering to the Buddha. Men dressed in orange clothing were making sure the juniper burned by using fossil-fuel fire starters. Next to each furnace was a prayer pillar wrapped in prayer flags that carried the prayers of the faithful about 40 feet skyward. Nima reported that those prayer flags are changed one a year during a religious holiday. In the courtyard immediately in front of the temple people were ritually prostrating themselves over and over again on mats they had brought. Some even had pads to cushion their hands from contact with the stones. One woman inside the temple wore a pair of athletic gloves to protect her hands during the prostration. Nima said that some people would do that for a full day. It looked like a full aerobic workout – touching the head, the chest and the stomach with one hand, then kneeling, then full prostration, then standing up, over and over again.

Just inside the outer door of the temple were colorful statues of four guardians from each of the four cardinal directions. Inside the temple, the faithful walk clockwise past and through series of chapels.  They stand in line for as long as two hours for the privilege. Nima had deliberately brought us here on a Wednesday morning to see the pilgrimage; in the afternoon it would be only tourists. Fortunately, the morning tourists had a separate line from the faithful, and we were urged not to jump their line to enter into any of the chapels. We paused by a monk who, through a wooden railing, would accept requests for special prayers to be said by the monks, in exchange for a cash offering. Some of those requesting prayers were mothers with tiny babies in their arms.

The sanctum sanctorum of the temple is the chapel called Jowo Sakyamuni Lhakhang, containing a statue of Jowo Rimpoche, representing the Buddha (Sakyamuni) at age 12. This chapel is packed with people coming in and out, and standing before the Buddha in reverence. We were content merely to peek in. Many people had been in line with thermoses of warm yak butter for the temples many yak-butter lamps. Those thermoses were emptied along the way, but I didn’t see where.

We climbed to the second floor, decorated in the Chinese style to honor Queen Wencheng and then to the third floor, decorated in Nepalese style to honor Queen Bhrikuti. On the roof is a great view of the gold decorations that top the temple and the mountains in the distance. Not far away, the Potala Palace appeared and disappeared behind the clouds of smoke from the juniper incense burning in the furnaces below. 

Some of us shopped for a bit in the tourist shops in the streets around the temple, then we climbed spiral concrete steps to a second-floor restaurant. Our two main dishes were curried yak and grilled yak, accompanied by bread, rice, noodles and spring rolls. On the sidewalk below the restaurant was as sign welcoming us in Chinese, Tibetan and English, to “gorgeous homeland, joyful Lhasa.”

The bus took us to the Tibet Manla Tundrop Tangkha Fine Arts Center in a strip mall near the Sera Monastery. There we listened to Master Dhondup explain the traditional Tibetan art form of Tangkha painting. Most of his works were of the Buddha, and told stories of the Buddha’s life and teachings. In Tangkha art, the Buddha’s features are strictly prescribed, such as the distances between eyes, nose, and mouth. One painting I first mistook for Shiva, who is often portrayed with four or six arms. Of course, this was not Shiva, but Buddha, and he had eight arms, corresponding with eight-fold path.

We then took a walk to the Sera monastery, a Gelugpa monastery founded in 1419. At one time it housed 5500 monks, but today only 500. Nima and Hu led us a courtyard up a steep hill, and even steeper steps, were dozens of monks in red robes were engaged in one-on-one debates. The monks use loud hand slaps to emphasize important points during the debate. On the way out, guards held us back so that some tourists could take a group photo outside the entrance. People here are very respectful when others are taking photographs. On the way out I took a photo of a swastika carved in the stone threshold of the debate courtyard.

After the usual supper of stir fry at the hotel buffet, I fell into bed at 7:30 p.m. and had a good night’s sleep. 

Beijing to Lhasa, Tuesday, October 11, 2016

We received a computer-generated wakeup call at 4:16 and then a live-person wakeup call nine minutes later. Neither was entirely necessary because I had been awake since 3:15. I thought was a short night’s sleep, but much worse sleep was ahead during our first night in Lhasa. We left the hotel before the appointed time of 5:15, marveling at how timely our group is. We got to the airport in time for our Air China flight to Lhasa, which was uneventful. We were fed a meal of either stir-fried pork or stir-fried beef (choose one), which was a pleasant surprise for those of us accustomed to air travel in the U.S.

After we collected our luggage, Hu showed our travel permit to one of the men guarding the exit from the airport. That document allowed us to leave the airport building and meeting our local guide, a cheerful Tibetan named Nima, a 33-year-old wearing a plaid shirt and blue jeans. Sunglasses were hanging backwards from his ears so that he could make eye contact while he gave us an earnest talk about Tibetan culture and Tibetan Buddhism. He taught us two very useful Tibetan words – tashidalek, which means hello and thukjiche, which means thank you. He urged us to use them frequently, lest people think him and inadequate guide. Also, it’s the polite thing to do in a foreign country.

After about an hour’s drive from the airport, we reached the Lhasa city limit, where our passports and travel permit had to be shown at a very military-looking checkpoint. After entering Lhasa we saw many trucks cruising the city filled with Chinese soldiers. Nima told us that he was absolutely unable to answer questions about the political situation in Tibet or the current status of the Dalai Lama, and he steadfastly refused to do so.

We checked in to the Dekang Hotel where we were greeted by two dancing yaks, accompanied by musicians playing traditional Tibetan drum and cymbals. The hotel lobby was decorated in traditional Tibetan style, including Buddhist paintings and a large prayer wheel in the middle of the lobby.We ate a late lunch at about 3:00 that included a delicious tomato-based soup with Tibetan spices. Stir-fried black mushrooms, pea pods, and pork was another favorite.

After lunch we boarded the bus and drove to the Norbulingka Palace, built in the eighteenth century by the seventh Dalai Lama. He was a frail man and moved his whole government there from the Potala Palace so that he could take advantage of the medicinal spring. We enjoyed taking pictures of a trio of young monks walking through the grounds. We entered the seventh Dalai Lama’s throne room, which has become temple or shrine. Yak-butter lamps were lighting and scenting the room. An eighty-year-old monk fingered prayer beads, while a much younger monk chanted from a book.

The current Dalai Lama built a two-story residence for himself on the grounds, called the New Summer Palace. As we walked through, we could see his bedroom, his study, his throne room and even his bathroom. Nima pointed out a 1950’s vintage “hi-fi” that had been given to the Dalai Lama by the Indian government. Nima called it a radio, but most of us knew that under its lid was also a record-player. While we were in the throne room, a family from northeastern Tibet entered and prostrated themselves three times before the throne. The mother instructed her five-year-old son how do prostrate properly. Nima could identify their region by what the women wore in their hair.

Supper at the hotel was delayed until 7:00 because of the late lunch. The soup this time was a potato-mushroom soup. We had a selection of stir-fried dishes, including some delicious sautéed spinach. The zucchini in cream sauce was especially good. Abby didn’t go to eat, pointing out that she had already had three meals that day. I brought her a couple of tasty apple fritters, and she fell right to sleep at about 7:30. 

I had a very restless night. My respiration must slow down when I sleep.  I was exhausted, but when I would fall asleep, I would wake up seemingly a minute later short of breath because of the altitude. This went on in five-minute cycles all night. I spent part of the night sleeping, or trying to sleep, in a chair, which seemed to help a bit. It’s easier to draw a deep breath while sitting up rather than lying down. I hope I sleep better tomorrow night, after another day of acclimation to the altitude. 

Beijing, Monday, October 10, 2016

We arrived in Beijing at 4:35 a.m. on Monday, October 10, 2016, twenty-four hours after being dropped off at the Twin Cities airport to begin our trip to Tibet, Nepal and Bhutan. We had flown first to Los Angeles. I had marched right past Len because our flight was already boarding by the time we arrived at the gate. Behind me, Abby gave Len a friendly greeting, while he gave me a gesture suggesting that he didn’t care about my feelings, either.

Once aboard the plane, I told the flight attendant about my gaffe and asked her to send a glass of red wine back to Len to atone for my thoughtlessness. After she rejected the suggestion of the young men across the aisle that they go out together in Los Angeles, and her other duties were accomplished, she reported back that Len had received the glass of wine graciously and was feeling better. All was forgiven.

Once in Beijing, the line to get through immigration seemed interminable; it took about an hour and a half to wind our way to the front to have our photos taken and our passports stamped. Fortunately, the lie-flat seats on the 12-hour flight had allowed us to sleep, about five hours for me and six hours for Abby, so we were not too tired for the ordeal.

Len was the first of the Road Scholars through immigration, and we were shortly behind him. Our guide, Hu Lin, was holding a Road Scholar sign at a very obvious place in the arrival hall. The three of us were joined by 15 other Americans. Two who had arrived over the weekend would meet us at the hotel.

After very nice breakfast at the Radisson Blue Hotel, which included made-to-order omelets and pork wrapped in bamboo, we gathered in a meeting room for orientation at 10:30. We each introduced ourselves and said a little about our families and how many Road Scholar trips we had attended. Then the rest of the group went off to see a hutong, the Bell Tower and the Summer Palace.

Abby and I had already seen those sights, so we met up at 1:00 p.m. with Lanny Jin, a technical interpreter and tour guide who had interpreted during my earlier business trips to Beijing. Lanny and her driver, Mr. Chang, took us in a black Hyundai Sonata to the Ming Tombs, a tourist site just outside the city that Abby and I had not seen before.

The Ming Tombs had been built to the north of the city within the embrace of mountains that formed an “armchair” on three sides. The entrance to the Tomb area mimics the Forbidden City, also a Ming construction, with a set of gates that the visitor passes through. Thirteen of the dynasty’s 16 emperors were buried here. Ming emperors would journey here annually to make offerings to their ancestors.

Based on Fodors’ recommendation, we asked Lanny to take us on a walk down the Sacred Way, a concrete-and-flagstone walk that passes a series of marble animals and imperial officials. Lanny took a picture of us outside the stele gate, which houses a large tortoise called the Son of the Dragon. On the tortoise’s back is an enormous marble stele extolling the virtues and accomplishes of the Ming Dynasty. Abby pointed out the vestigial wings that were etched on the Son of the Dragon’s carapace. Along the walk that followed, the other animals – lions, horses, camels, elephants, and a mythical Chinese creature that Lanny called a Chinese unicorn with two horns - would be depicted first kneeling, then standing.  The walk was surrounded by mature willows whose drooping branches made it very peaceful and quiet.

Mr. Chang then drove us to the Dingling tomb, the only one that has been excavated. Lanny said it was 29 meters underground and would be reached by descending a series of steps. Abby at first thought she said 29 stories of steps, and declares that descent to be impossible for her. Lanny assured her that it was only 29 meters and would be achievable if we maintained a conservative pace. Fortunately, there were fewer steps going out (up) than in (down).

The Dingling emperor was a cruel man, reviled by both his subjects and by historians. He was over fond of torture, even by the standards of the time, and apparently enjoyed watching his subjects in agony. The emperor’s tomb, entirely underground, was arranged in the Ming style, with a series of doors leading from the entrance through a series of rooms to the final burial chamber. The emperor was buried with two empresses, one a wife and the other a concubine whose son later became emperor, so his mother was made an empress after-the-fact. Upon the emperor’s death, the emperor’s other concubines had been fed a nice meal and then had been required to hang themselves. Their bodies were thrown down a well.

During the Cultural Revolution, the emperor and empresses’ coffins were burned by the Red Guard; the red coffins on display are replicas. Lanny led us past an elaborate gate decorated with blue and green Ming porcelain representing the entrance to the underworld, but she did not lead us through the gate, because walking through the gate would be viewed as bad luck. Even Chairman Mao did not walk through the gate during his visit here. If Chairman Mao is not going to do it, then neither am I.

Our last stop was a museum that displayed solid gold bowls and other gold vessels recovered from the tomb. Jade decorations on the empresses’ clothing would have jingled when they walked. The emperor’s jade belt was on display. Beautiful silks with a golden dragon and lotus-blossom motifs were replicas. When the tomb was opened in the mid-twentieth century, the original silks had turned to dust. I enjoyed taking photos of the elaborate dragon-head waterspouts on our way out.

An online list of the ten best tourist sites in or near Beijing had included the Ming tombs, although Fodors did not rate them as highly. We found them to be quite peaceful and interesting, and not as overrun with tourists as some sites, although there were plenty of tourists.

It was great to re-connect with Lanny, whom I had not seen for about three years. Her eyes lit up when I asked about her American-born son, now in his first year at University College, London. He is in the process of registering for the Selective Service and is studying finance. Lanny described him as a very good student who attended an English high school in Beijing.

We reunited with our group at 6:10 p.m. and walked to a restaurant that catered to locals. I especially enjoyed the soup, a version of egg-drop soup with a tomato base and dumplings.  The food was authentic and very good, although the tea never arrived. Lanny earlier had helped me buy some Chinese red wine called the Great Wall (the only words in English on the bottle), which we sipped in our room with Len while we talked about the events of the day. By 8:00 p.m. we were too tired to talk. Len returned to his room and we fell into a deep sleep in anticipation of the 4:15 wakeup call the next morning.

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.