Monday October 14 Thanksgiving day
Today would begin with at 6 am call to prayer (Ezan) through loudspeakers surely installed right outside the window of our 'room' (aka the foyer of the pension). Apparently this occurs five times a day and can range from a beautiful melodic prayer, to a painful five minutes of cat screeching (speaker or singer quality in question?).
Given our digs, it wasn't long (7:30am) before other guests started showing up in our "room", wondering where the staff were. We had no idea, but perceive that we may have upset the balance of things here. Eventually, staff showed up, and install us on their outside patio to await breakfast. This was wonderfully generous, but all we really wanted was a room, and sleep. Alas, we managed to stay awake for our first Turkish breakfast, including: strange hot pink sausage (meat type undecipherable), a boiled egg, fete chunks, mozzarella chunks, sliced cucumbers, slice tomato olives, jam, and knock off nutella (for shame, that such a thing exists!). We ate outside with a blue cloudless sky overhead, and a rising sun packing some real heat to. What, is that a trickle of sweat I feel? What, am I reaching from my sunglasses and shifting to be in the shade. Yes, yes I am. We've arrived in Turkey. We were told our room would be ready in 10 minutes plus a tea; two hours later we're finally be invited in. I suspect Turkish time may resemble 'Brown time', and defy any laws of comprehension (from NA perspective). Further, I suspect tea time and 'real time' are separate entities, which blend to create the realized time, and cardinal order of things, in day to day life around here.
Our main goal for today: unpack boxes and rebuild bikes, all to the amusement, fascination, and offered assistance of hotel staff. Once done, we rode around the Old Town (kaleici) in Antalya, trying to get a sense of what was in store for us: roads, drivers, people, food, sights, sounds, smells. All so dramatically different from yesterday. It wasn't long before we found the beautiful waterfront view I'm sure Antalya is known for, and the reason cycling across Turkey is not for the faint of heart, or knee, or back, or leg. Tall, steep, jagged mountains running right down to the coast in every direction. Hmm. That's going to be interesting riding.
In our short tour of the town, we managed to find our first honey infused baklava, and witness a baker making 'the bread'. If you've been to Turkey, you'll know what bread I'm talking about. Everyone else, you should visit Turkey. After a cheap and cheerful chicken dinner plate at a local restaurant, we were back at the pension by 8:30pm, absolutely exhausted, and fell asleep watching dubbed CSI (possibly on improvement on the original). Tomorrow we ride on.
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| Turkey and Ataturk |
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| Topside view of our breakfast patio at Mavi Konak. |
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| Kahvalti. Turkish breakfast. Equivalent to bacon and eggs. |
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| Mavi = Blue. Konak = House? Our hotel in Antalya. All is all, a good experience. |
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| Cliffs in the foreground, mountains in the backgrounds, all good reasons cycling in Turkey is a challenge. |
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| Hadrian's Gate. People drinking tea. Typical Turkey. |
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| Looks fast! That is the bread you will be eating in Turkey. |
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| Is there such a thing as too much baklava? |
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| First day in Turkey. Absolutely splendid. Those mountains look a little jagged. |
