From the crappy hammam to the crappier hotel-with a palace in between

The last thing I remember of Tim on Saturday morning was a kiss on top of the head and a pat on the butt. Having been asleep only 2.5 hours, I was basically paralyzed and unable to give him the send-off I would have liked… so when I woke (shamefully at my normal 10 a.m.), he was nearly in Munich.
Igot myself together, packed my stuff, and dropped it at the front desk to take a few hours in town before heading out to the airport for my 7:30 flight. I intended to tour Topkapi Palace-where the Sultans had lived-and then visit Cemberlitas hammam-built in the 1600s by a very famous architect, can’t remember who right now though.
The palace is –what can I say-palatial.
You enter through a public gate and progress through more-private gates, until you reach the Sultan’s family quarters, with his library – a lovely latticework octagonal pavilion near a flagstone pool- and the circumcision room, where the babies let it all hang out, momentarily at least. I enjoyed it but honestly it was a bit sterile-with all the silk draperies gone, the plush ottomans and cushions turned to dust, the gardens sadly planted with a few struggling begonias (or just grass and weeds), it didn’t give me any chills of the past.
The rooms containing the imperial jewels were a highlight- do you think that any one diamond- and

ruby-encrusted trinket could be special to a person who has hundreds and hundreds of them? Or how about that huge glass bowl full of glossy tumbled emeralds, big as walnuts? Just something for the kids to run their fingers though?
Some of the huge poplars in the last courtyard might have been old enough to tell a story or two of moonlight assignations and plots for royal assassinations, but on the whole, Topkapi reminded me of a hollow old mansion whose heart was burned away.
Despite this complaining, I did end up staying a long time and when I got out I wandered kind of aimlessly trying to decide if I had time for the hammam (Turkish bath). I must have been looking confused because a guy touring his “special handicraft shop” and tried to corral me. I told him I was looking for Cemberlitas hammam and he snorted “You don’t want. Too touristy. Let me take you to authentic Turkish bath right here in Old Town.”
So of course being the worldly-wise traveler that I am-I followed him to Sultanhamet Turkish Bath. Well… it was no classic architectural wonder.
But neither was it touristy, as a large, hairy male Turk wrapped in a peshtemal (cotton bath sheet) shot me a curious look as he padded across the tile floor in rubber flip flops. Alarmed, I asked if it was the women’s bathing hours and the attendant assured me it was OK, with separate sections for men and women. She gave me a key, led me to a wooden cubby with a frosted glass window pane, and a battered wooden bench inside. And instructions to strip and wrap up in my peshtemal. I did so and stepped out.
Another no-nonsense, but kind, lady about my age – in an orange bikini- took over from there, leading me into the caldarium (hot room). Here there are marble basins around an octagonal room-each with a blue plastic bowl sitting on the taps. I’m not gonna lie.
It wasn’t chic. Maybe a long time ago when they first installed the gray and white marble tiles, or maybe when the cut-out star shapes in the central dome were still all filled with blue and yellow glass, or maybe when the caulk was all new and white…. But I’m guessing that was a while ago. Still, it was clean and warm and I didn’t worry about sitting on the stone bench with my plastic dipper. You mix hot and cold til it’s to your liking (preferably realllllly hot) and spend about 10 minutes pouring water over your nekkid self to prepare your skin for ….. THE SCRUBBING!!!!!!!!!!
After the required minutes, the lady stepped in a pulled me out by the arm. She laid me out on a cool marble slab in a warm room and got THE IMPLEMENT. The keseh is a rough mitten made of raw silk-not the kind like Barry White’s sheets but the kind that comes out of a silkworm’s butt.
Perhaps it’s not something you want a bikini-clad 50-some-year-old scrubbing all over your skin. But there are pluses. Number one, it feels A-MA-ZING (if a little rough). Number 2-you shed like an 800-year-old python. I must have shed like a 1,000-year-old python because the lady kept saying “Look Madame!”, “Look!”, “Look Madame!!,” pulling me out of my scrubby-induced coma. I opened one eye and saw it-a shaggy landscape of hundreds of little rolls of dead gray skin all over my tummy, chest and legs. “YUCK” I yelped and she smiled smugly, hearing me admit the truth: “Yes mistress, I am a dirty farangi.”
After the scrubbing came the bubbles, the massaging, the shampooing, and the rinsing with a bucket of hot water. Then it was back to the caldarium for more water-this time as cold as you can stand it. While I was pouring cool water over my new skin, the bath lady broke out into a haunting Middle-Eastern sounding tune. She had a nice voice, and the acoustics were great, especially for a minor key. I had one foot up on the bench and poured the basin down my back-listening to the echoing song, I stepped into the Time Machine-back 500 years, waiting for the Sultan to drop by with some Turkish delight and a bowlful of emeralds.
Was she singing about a harem girl separated from her handsome, but impoverished lover? Or was it more like “Ooooooohh..lalalalala…… With one hand I scrub on the tourist – with the other I take all her coins. But she will always think me the purest, as long as I polish her loins.”
The rest of the day is unimportant. I got to the airport, where I purchased an aptly named “Mixed Delay” sandwich for dinner, flew to my overnight connection in Doha, and took the airport bus to the Doha Seef.
It’s kind of like a bad business hotel in Cleveland. Chipped paint, thin walls, dirty carpet. The hotel was free, part of my ticket, as was the meal I was supposed to get. I had eaten on the plane so I wanted only something light, and, thinking not to be greedy, asked room service for a salad and shrimp cocktail.
“You are Qatar Air transfer passenger?”
“Yes” “
You may have only one sandwich and soft drink”
“Oh… um….” “What, why you no like sandwich?”
“Ummm, how about just a fruit salad”
“Welll…… OK, fruit salad. Only”
It was kind of rancid and cut with an onion-smelling knife, but I wasn’t that hungry anyway.
The bed was soft and cozy though, and the last thing I remember is the guy in the next room banging the toilet seat up and taking a huuuuuge long pee, then slamming the bathroom door. The call to prayer woke me just in time to catch the airport shuttle that would lead me off to Bangkok.

Mosques and marble and mussels - oh my!

On Friday we enacted our familiar Istanbul ritual-Tim worked and I slept. I had booked a massage at the hotel-counting on a more sympathic masseuse-or at least one who wouldn’t tear me up in the name of medical massage.

I was right-although this lady didn’t speak English, she did speak “Happy Fingers.” Whether it was the new course of prednisone, a coincidence, or the massage, I didn’t have a backache-or a headache-for the rest of the day.Tim’s meeting let out at 1, so around 2 we headed out to do a little sightseeing.

We hit the Blue Mosque, one of Istanbul’s oldest, built in the beginning of the 1600s. It has six enormous minarets and seems to take up an entire city block, or more. The stained glass windows are lovely, although maybe not as inspiring to a Christian as ours with their Biblical figures. But Islam forbids the depiction of images of living beings-I think plants are OK-but not birds, humans, or animals. So the art is stylized and largely based on geometric figures or Arabesque Arabic script. Nevertheless, the effect of glowing windows, soaring echoing space, and the huge, huge scale of things conspired to work their magic on everyone.

I suppose all architects of ancient temples (whether to Zeus, Jesus, or Mohammed) knew that their mission was “shock and awe” – imagine normal living conditions back then. If you lived in a smoke-filled, rat-infested hovel, coming to church much have really seemed like a peek into heaven-something you should aspire to attain after your death. Now that we have air conditioning, Merry Maids, and pest control, what will our heaven look like?

We had to leave our shoes and I had to wrap up in my scarf in order to enter. Onc we were there, the call to prayer went out, followed quickly by calls for 3 or 4 other nearby mosques. Like a round that starts off out of synch, these chants never quite catch up with other to form a harmonious whole, but the dissonance combined with the plaintive minor tone carries its own kind of beauty.Only about 2 dozen or so worshippers made it in; mostly men, although it was hard to tell, as the women sat in the back or along the colonnaded sides, sometimes behind a screen. We were allowed to stay in the visitors’ area of the mosque and watch quietly, although I was slightly (and nicely) reprimanded for standing on a small platform to get a better look.

After the Blue Mosque we headed across the street to the Basilica Cistern. Apparently a basilica once stood on the hill near here, but all traces have long since vanished. The cistern was built in the 1400s, an enormous manmade cavern hollowed out under a hill, to store water channeled by a 19-km aqueduct from the nearby hills. As far as I could tell this massive project benefitted only a few-those people and plants who lived at Topkapi Palace on the next hill over. The people of Istanbul got their water from public wells and fountains-many of which are still around but this water was for the gardens and pools and hundreds of gorgeous girls who needed to keep clean and sweet-smelling in case their big chance with the Sultan should come up unexpectedly.

You paid your 6 lire and descended the stairs, which got progressively older and wetter as you went along. At the bottom, a massive manmade cave opened up, carved into the hillside rock, fortified with vaults and arches made of brick, held up with several dozen marble and granite columns that were salvaged from those pesky old temples left over by the nasty old dead pagans. Some of them have been matched to ruins that can still be seen today, but most are from unknown sources.

A wooden walkway runs throughout the cistern, which at its best could hold 100,000 tons of water (that sounds like many many gallons). Now there’s just a foot or so-maybe 2 or 3- and the water is filled with the fattest greediest carp you’ve ever seen just waiting for a handout from the “Cistern Fast Food Café”
The cistern is dark as a cauldron, except for a string of bare electric bulbs above each walkway and an atmospheric orange spotlight at the base of each column. There’s also some eerie Arabic-style instrumental music playing and it echoes off the wet rock walls.

If you make your way back far enough you’ll see two columns mounted on carved Medusa heads. No one really knows why they’re back there-the Christians postulate that they were lying around town somewhere polluting the local thought pool, and stuck them in the way-back … “out of sight, out of mind.” Another theory is that Medusa heads were sometimes incorporated into buildings as a kind of magic charm, to keep away evil destructive influences, like earthquakes (and pagans?). They’re hardly hidden now though, as hordes of tourists swarmed them with flashing cameras.

Disappointingly, I saw no one turned to stone, although with some of the pushing going on to get a good shot, I was kind of hoping it would happen.By the time we emerged, most of the sights were closing, so we didn’t get to see Hagia Sofia, the other mosque we were interested in.

Instead, we hopped the local commuter ferry over to the Asian side of the city for dinner. I’d scoped out a place called Ciya Sofrasi. It’s been written up in the NY Times, all the foodie mags, and Chowhound [of course], yet it remains largely a local place, probably because it takes quite an effort to get over there. You have to figure out the logistics of the ferry (40 minute ride) then follow the map on the website for a walk of about 10 minutes-far more than most tourists are willing to commit to.

On the walk we stopped by a stand for mussels-on-a-stick- some guy had a huge vat of mussels and was shelling them, putting them on skewers and deep frying them. I didn’t want to spoil my dinner so I got just one stick-the Turkish tartar sauce that topped the morsels off was a heavenly mix of yogurt blended with garlic and cucumbers. Ciya Sofrasi is all about casseroles, veggies and stews. The chef traveled around the country looking for old-time recipes that he considered in danger of becoming extinct, and he recreates them with at least a dozen different stews each night; the list changes every day. And vegetarians would be in heaven here-the salad bar is amazing. The standout for me was a kind of wild bitter green with tomatoes, onions pomegranate seeds and walnuts in a sweet-tangy dressing. Since hardly anyone speaks any English there’s a lot of pointing and laughing but we finally ended up with chunks of beef cooked with quince and a dish of little meatballs in a sour cherry sauce for dinner.

The walk back to the ferry was lots of fun, through a great happening neighborhood of pedestrian-only streets and alleys absolutely chock full of sidewalk cafes stuffed with starving folks enjoying a Friday on the town. We topped it off with a stop at a candy store where they make lokum (Turkish Delight), the famous gummy sticky yummy candy of the Ottoman Empire. I tried to get half a kilo of mixed, including orange, rosewater, mastic, hazelnut, pistachio and almond and ended up with a full kilo of the plain ones without nuts. So I guess I’ll have to buy MORE at the airport.When we got back to the hotel Tim packed and I blogged and cursed as Internet Explorer kept quitting on me and I was losing everything. Finally, at 2 a.m., Tim in no uncertain terms told me to quit as he had to get up at 4:30 to make his plane. I obliged, and three hours later I was on my own with a 3,000 mile trip and a week in Asia ahead of me.

I enter the Spice Market, followed by the Lubricant Market

Do you want some saffron, henna, or a bag of pomegranate tea? An Aladdin-type glass lamp glowing like a dark jewel? A hammer or crowbar? A harem dancing girl outfit for your 2-year-old granddaughter? A live turkey? Meat-on-a-sword for lunch? Or how about a jugful of leeches for that nagging headache??

You can get it all-and more-down at the Spice Bazaar.

A smaller version of the tourist-laden Grand Bazaar, the Spice Bazaar sits right along the main port on the Bosphorus River, and right behind a lovely old mosque called the New Mother Sultan Mosque. New is all in how you look at it of course – it was built in the 1600s. It overlooks the river in imposing grandeur, and over the centuries I suppose Mother has become used to the foreigners who tread her halls, for she allows them to come in for a visit-if they are quiet, respectful, take off their shoes, and cover up with a scarf. Kind of like more traditional Catholic churches, except for the shoe thing of course. While this mosque is not as impressively decorated as some of Istanbul's others, the open floor plan, the lovely red carpet with a geometric pattern that obviates the need for pews (worshippers line up sitting along the linear weave), enormous chandeliers, the tile work and stained glass windows, all do the required job of transporting human consciousness to that other place. What is it about God that has inspired so many artists and architects to devote their best work to trying-somehow-to explain the beauty we can’t see which lies beyond the beauty that we can. It must be a hardened soul indeed who can sit in one of these holy places-a cathedral, a mosque, a synagogue, or a bare-rock mountain where eternal flames leap up in the night - and not wonder about the power behind it all, and how He just happened to make the world so cool.

Apparently the pigeons are devoted too, although they appear to worship the little old men and women who hang

around the mosque steps, selling plates full of bird seed. You’ve never seen such crowds of pigeons, so glossy, fat and bold. Both children and adults delight in scattering their dinner, and of course the kids get the extra fun of running through the flighty crowd just as they reach the main course.

Of course the thousands of bingeing pigeons leave their own contribution to the press of crowds around the mosque-perhaps a practical consideration for the rule of taking off your shoes before you enter.

You can stroll from the mosque to the sea wall, and watch as passengers as tiny as ants creep aboard their Zeusian-size mega-cruise ships. The harbor is so immense that several can load side by side with plenty of room for the tankers that also ply the river. One of Tim’s business associates-who lives in Izmir-told him that thousands of cargo ships a year come up the river… so many that there are occasional incidents in which currents and vodka-drinking navigators conspire to draw a crooked course, with unfortunate results for the magnificent house that line the shores.

Behind the mosque it’s easy to find the Spice Market-also called the Egyptian Bazaar. The guidebook tells me that this is the older market, built about 350 years ago to promote the spice trade in the city. It has a large L-shaped covered component in which the spice traders have their booths-the front doors stacked with sacks of colored powder (green henna, yellow cumin, nut-brown coriander, mahogany cinnamon), pink, green, red and black peppercorns, intensely fragrant tea mixtures (dried rose buds, magenta pomegranate flowers, and warm-colored mixes of dried apples, orange peel, cloves and chips of cinnamon bark). Behind these you’ll find burlap sacks bursting with walnuts, pistachios, almonds, figs, dates, apricots and at least a dozen other delicious-looking dried fruits that have no American counterpart that I could identify. There are also the required tourist element shops there, though I got the feeling it was less so than the ultimate schlock of the Grand Bazaar, which is many time bigger and probably many times more tourist-laden.

Once I wandered out of the covered area, I found myself in a warren of tiny shopping alleys where the merchants were arranged by merchandise-knives and kitchen implements, party supplies, clothing, hardware, cheese and fishmongers-just like Wal-Mart but a lot more crowded, loud, smelly, and fun. In these streets you don’t see tourists-obviously they are much more in need of a glass bracelet with the blue-and-white Evil Eye charm or a ruby-red cut glass harem lamp than a new frying pan or some tulum- a salty hard cheese made from a mix of sheep and goat milk, which I bought and found goes great with the gigantic sticky sweet Medina dates.

The bird, pet, and garden markets also butt up against the covered spice section-and you’ll find the Turkish Petsmart. I saw lots of dogs and cats roaming around, getting a lot of attention from a lot of people, all looking very healthy and well-fed-nothing (the animals that is) like the scrawny curs you come across in Tunisia-or Mexico for that matter. The vendors here have bins of dog and cat food, chewy toys, squeaky toys, feathery toys, and lots of grooming tools and medicine for pets. And lots of birds-parakeets, finches, and lovebirds for little cages in the house, and poultry destined for another fate I suppose-but on offer were baby chicks, full-grown hens and roosters, guinea fowl, large turkeys, geese and ducks.

And enormous water jugs, full of 4-6 inch long leeches. Because they were being sold in the pet department, I first assumed that maybe they were some kind of food for the birds, but signs on the leeches at least had the word DOKTOR in them, which made me pause and think… could these be for medical human use?? I tried to approach a couple of salesmen, but the gender barrier combined with the language barrier was too strong to bridge. Finally, an old man who probably didn’t care if I was a woman or not, gestured to me that you put them all around your face and neck-for a headache maybe? He seemed to be saying they were wildly effective and hey-who am I to question? After all, so far “modern medicine” hasn’t done a whole lot to help me out in my situation. But still I left the leeches in their jug and moved on to the leeches trying to sell carpets.

After wandering a bit I entered a street filled with wispy clouds of meat-smelling charcoal smoke. I picked one at random after seeing in the window a huge assortment of metal swords threaded with meat and veggies. One that really struck my eye was an entire eggplant, chopped into sections separated by big chunks of marinated chicken. It looked delicious but too big, so I chose some meatballs interspersed with tomatoes. I sat down at one of the three tables inside, across from an old man who was eating a salad of chopped tomatoes, onion, cucumber, and sliced raw chiles. These peppers have been on every plate we’ve had here, grilled over an open flame. They look like a serrano but are -90% of the time- mild enough to eat like a bell pepper. Every once in a while one will snap my head back and I give it to Tim. I ordered a similar salad, doused it with lemon and salt the way I saw the old guy do, and then he instructed me to open one of the two glass condiment jars on the table-the one containing dried sumac powder, which gives a slightly tart-salty taste-and he warned me away from the dried chile powder in the other jar. The meat and tomatoes, conveniently removed from the inch-wide blade they cooked on, arrived at my table in the company of another lettuce and tomato salad, 2 more grilled chiles, and a big spoonful of tomato-flavored couscous. Of course it was too much food, especially when the proprietor noticed me enjoying the chiles and brought over a few more. The meatballs were delicious-very beefy and salty, with a tinge of cinnamon and cumin. As I was finishing, he cut up a big hard quince and passed out slices to me and everyone else in the place and I enjoyed its vague appley taste and astringent bite. The other customers, and the waitress, the grill guy all seemed delighted that I was enjoying it so much! The nice lady waitress (the only one I saw all day) brought me a tiny cup of tea and motioned to put 2 sugar cubes in it and it was hot, sweet and delicious. When I went to pay, it was just 9 Turkish lire-about $6 US.

After lunch I happened on the garden mart-dozens of vendors selling houseplants, fall bulbs, fruit trees, fertilizer, and even garden geegaws. The coolest thing was seeing the pyramids of bulbs-daffodils, narcissus, cyclamen, hyacinth-all those amazing flowers that have their ancient roots in this very part of the world-the Tarsus mountains, ancient Persia, and Greece, from whence they were brought to Europe by enterprising plant-nuts. All these flowers also have their own wonderful ancient myths to explain their creation –Hyacinth, the handsome youth who was a lover of Apollo, killed by a discus (either by accident or on purpose by a jealous wanna-be). Apollo was so distraught that he created the Hyacinth flower from the boy’s spilled blood-a flower that returns year after year to brighten the spring landscape. Send me a message if you want to hear about Narcissus and Cyclamen… otherwise I’ll spare you. I actually meant to spend only part of the day in the market, but I ended up wandering around there for hours. I returned to the hotel just in time to unload my spoils and get ready for the gala evening-the group that’s hosting Tim’s meeting chartered a yacht for an evening dinner cruise. We got all dressed up and boarded the busses-and learned why Istanbul’s traffic is legendary. It took us an hour to go about 3 miles. When we finally boarded the boat, we climbed to the top deck for drinks-I had just taken an extra pain pill for the headache and as soon as I stepped aboard I thought “Oh crap-I am actually going to faint and fall completely on my face in front of all these oil executives.” The world was literally swooping all around me. I had a huge panic attack and tottered over to grab hold of the bar (by that I mean rickety table covered with glasses of wine). Tim must have seen my alarm because he took my arm and said-hey it’s the boat. You’re OK. As soon as I realized that it WAS the world swaying, and not me, I felt a little more secure. But the high heels, narcotic headache pills, wine, and rocking boat conspired to make a very unsettling evening. Hey guess what? Tim is like a little celebrity among these guys. Unlike my meetings, where most of the doctors and researchers are either loathe to speak with me just rather disinterested, the guys at this meeting were actually saying things like “Tim SULLIVAN! I really want to meet him!” And wow was Tim doing a great job. It was almost a shock to see him dressed up in his nice suit-when his usual workday clothing is shorts and a ratty T-shirt (or underwear, depending on the weather or the time of day). He was witty and charming and a great listener and looked-dare I say it-rather suave in his suit and tie, handing out business cards and shaking hands. It was a wonderful evening but after 4 hours of floating, eating, and drinking-we were ready for bed. The traffic had let up considerably and 45 minutes-and one vodka and cherry juice later-I was snoring.

Travel-we leave the peace of Cirali and greet 15 million Istanbul(ites?)

From the outside looking in-this is how Bellerophon Hotel looks from the beach-hidden away

Back up a little more and it almost disappears.



From the inside looking out, Turkish breakfast and beach umbrellas

The reason you're in Cirali in the first place

Wednesday was a travel day for us-Tim was certain he was gonna catch the sunrise and take a jog on the beach, but of course we both slept through that. The first thing I saw when I opened my eyes was bright sun-the first I’d seen since we arrived. The other days had been cloudy/hazy/sunny/cloudy. So of course I was loathe to leave. It would have been the perfect beach day.
Instead of pulling our usual last-minute panic affair to get to the airport, we actually left in plenty of time, enjoying the scenery on the way back, planning a 2-week trip sometime in te future that would encompass at least 4 days of hiking the Lycian Way-the ancient footpath that linked these coastal cities. By the looks of the mountains, it would be killer. Maybe Tim can just go with Brian on second thought.
The flight was short and we arrived in Istanbul around 3 p.m. It’s the antithesis of Cirali-there are 15 MILLION people living here! All packed in apartment buildings from the look of it.
We crossed the famous Bosporus River and checked in at the meeting hotel- a blah Hilton in a blah business district. We also left behind the bright sun and 80+ weather, and since I lost my jacket in the airport last week, we ducked out for a quick shopping run. We walked by a few fast-food market palces and they also had pomegranates, but they were sad wiezened fakes comapred with the fat beauties of Cirali. Did not really get much of a sense of the town, as it was a busy rush-hour busines district, like any other big city-except that the signs are in Klingon

Dinner last night was a buffet with all the lube meeting folks. It was fun to see Tim dressed up in his suit and working the crowd-he was pretty good at it!!! I have to say I was impressed. His associate Gloria is here as well, with her husband. The salad side of the buffet was amazing-my favorite thing was a little cabbage roll-inside I think it had rice, some soft cheese and mint. There was also a couscous salad, some of the spinahc/rice dish, a cold bulghur and more of the delicious cucumbers that show up at every meal.
Tim woke me up at 8 to see if I wanted to go to breakfast of something, but I just couldn’t get up-so I slept til 9 and now I’m planning my day. I want to explore the old markets, and I’m determined to find the best baklava bakery in town, and a shop where they still make Turkish Delight by hand. I may drop in at a hammam too, although after my experienced with the Cirali “healer,” I’m probably going to pass on any kind of massage- much less “medical”
Anyway, here are a few pictures from Cirali before we left yesterday. I’m sad to leave hose remarkable pomegranates behind, those dirt roads lined with jasmine bushes and orange trees, the chickens that stay somehow convinced that your bare toes are tasty little pink berries. I’d love return someday. I would say it’s just about the ultimate chill-out place.

Lazy day - ruins, tost, pomegranates, and the silent joy of doing nothing

Today (Tuesday) was a slow day for us-even slower than yesterday. Tim had some work to do in the morning, and we really didn't head out until around 1:30. We drove just up the coast to the ruins of Phaselis-another town that was founded by Greeks (7th century BC, as an outpost of Rhodes). Like Olympos, it was a shipping port that waxed and waned under the influence of pirates and earthquakes, and like Olympos, it underwent revitalization by the Romans and later became Christianized during the Byzantine Empire.
The town has a great situation on a little peninsula with three pretty bays. The ruins are more complete than Olympos, with a main plaza still partially paved with marble, a bath, a small theater, and the ruins of shops that lined the main street (with a pedestrian walkway along the shop fronts). A good part of the pretty arched aqeduct still stands. There was also a necropolis (burial ground) along the shore of one of the bays, and some of the tombs were still buried in the hill, while others had toppled out and lay broken on the shore.
It looks like a postcard-perfect setting, but the signs mentioned that ancient texts refer to it sort of a crappy place to live “frequently plagued by wasps and malaria, which the residents blamed on the sailors that visited the town.”
Since we arrived a bit later in the afternoon, Tim was hungry (again), and we were happy to see an enterprising, barrel-chested guy selling sandwiches and drinks out of his small boat, which was moored in the central bay. We got “tost,” sort of a panini kind of sandwich with cheese, salami, and tomatoes, and two glasses of pomorangagranate juice. We’re getting our fill of antioxidants this week for sure!
He had two kinds of pomegranates-the bright red ones we see at home (only like 4 times bigger) and one with a light green rind. We have seen these in the markets here too, and I tried to ask him about it.

“This one (red) is different than this one (green). Why is it different?”

“This white, this red.”
“Yes I see. But is it different inside?”

“This one white, this one red.”
“But do they taste different?"

“This one WHITE! This one RED!”
OK, I get it. One is White. One is Red.

We stopped to pick one up in the market on the way back to Cirali. I just cracked it open on a tree-the seeds are pink rather than ruby red and sweeter than the red kind-and they are much less astringent. Yum!

The most striking thing about these ruins was the partial mosaics that were uncovered in the bath complex. One was a pretty intricate black and white pattern-and the other consisted of a border of linked blue and red hearts.

The mosaic tiles were about a half-inch square. Only a small portion was uncovered-it was impossible to tell how much of the floors were still there, because most of the area was still covered with about 4 inches or dirt. I dug around in it a bit with my shoe and there seemed to be quite a bit more under there.

At the entrance to the public plaza area, there was a jumble of carved columns, pedestals, and cornices that apparently no one knew what to do with, so they were somewhat arranged for us to admire. A favorite running ornamental border was a repeat of grapes and vine leaves. There was also a cool lion's head above some dentil border. Seeing these lovely pieces in marble helped you realize that this was once probably a gorgeous little town. We just see the ghost of its former self-the bare building blocks with all the marble and beauty stripped away. It’s a bit like trying to imagine a beautiful human face from a bare skull, or trying to reconstruct what Austrailipithacus really looked like from just one brow bone and a piece of jaw.

After enjoying the ruins we took a swim in the south bay, which was warm and clear, and then swam out to the mouth of the bay and around the rocky promontory that separated it from the central bay, where Tost Man was tied up. It sounds more adventurous than it was-you could stand up most of the way. But it was a lovely afternoon and just knowing that you were swimming in an ancient port was cool-I’m sure no one swam in it back then. It was probably filthy!
We drove back to Bellerophon and immediately hit the beach. The sun was already behind the big mountain but we enjoyed the cool later afternoon listening to the little waves, the occasional bark of a dog somewhere in town, and at 6:30, the muezzin’s call to prayer. Tim took a nap, and then went in to work.
I stayed out on the beach chair until the stars started winking in, enjoying the luxury of not only doing absolutely nothing, but feeling not one bit guilty about it.

Phaselis bay (above)

Water and Fire

Is there anything more relaxing to the human spirit than lying on a beach, listening to the waves brush over millions of smooth stones, and emptying your mind of everything but sound? That was my morning.
Tim’s was a bit more adventurous. We walked to the end of the bay, where there’s a large, steep rocky hill separated from the headland by a narrow channel. Of course he had to swim all around it. I started off with my typical worrying but as the sea was almost literally as flat and calm as a swimming pool, I figured he would be safe and we could reap the double benefit of him having fun while I did nothing-which is rapidly becoming my favorite thing to do around here Our trips are usually a frenzy of jumping out of bed at 6:30, gobbling breakfast, and buzzing around in the car from one fun activity to the next. Somehow, the combination of how I’ve been feeling lately and the utter peace that suffuses this place of mountains and quiet sea makes that kind of frantic adventuring seem like a big silly waste of time.

Tim described his swim-he was gone about an hour- as magical. The water is clear as a swimming pool. There’s no sand or vegetation to mar the crystal quality of its transparency. The Med is completely different from the Caribbean, at least up here. No coral life, no plants really, and not a big variety of fish. The snorkeling, like the beach and the silent forests, is an exercise in quiet. While the swim over to the rock was a shallow one, once he circled to the other side, the bottom dropped of dramatically, and he was in 60 feet of water. The depth did not impar the view, he said-he saw the bottom clearly, but through a cobalt glass. I was just waking up when I turned over and saw a swimmer approaching the beach. Even without my glasses I could recognize Tim’s swimming stroke. He took over the towel and was asleep in 30 seconds, leaving me the goggles and the silent water. I paddled around, getting 50 feet from shore or so. Amazed by the clarity and the buoyancy. The water is much saltier than the Atlantic, and it would be hard to sink even if you wanted to. My legs kept bobbing up all by themselves. I could almost fall asleep floating on my back, with the limitless horizon on one side and a towering black crag on the shore, and swallows darting all around. No crickets, no gulls, no waves-just the sound of water in my ears and my head-gratefully emptied of thought. Not surprisingly, it was nap time after all this exertion.

We woke up just as the sun was setting, in time for our climb up Mt. Yanartas to visit the imprisoned Chimera. The parking area is at the end of a long dirt road. A few ramshackle tables offering weather-curled postcards and bottled water beckon, set off with a string of Christmas lights in a fragrant pine grove. You pay your 3 lire (a modern offering to the new god of Cirali-Commerce) and set off up the mountain. It’s sobering to follow in the footsteps of so many thousands who have made the pilgrimage to see Chimera spout his fiery stuff.

The Greeks built a temple to Haephestos almost atop the flames-later, the Byzantine Christians tried with all their might to supplant him with a chapel but sorry guys-when it comes to dozens of blue and yellow fires squirting up out of the rock face, lighting up the cliff and flickering off the trees on a moonless night-Jesus just don’t got nothing on the God of the Forge and realm of volcanoes and earthquakes. And Haephestos had the last laugh anyway. The chapel is an earthquake-ravaged ruin, while the flames still beckon.
You feel you’re making a pilgrimage as well, because the trail has been improved with a series of enormous steps made from the rock lying all about. The steps are up to 2 feet high and 8 or 10 feet apart. Shining the flashlight up, they seemed a never-ending ladder leading into the heart of darkness. Just when you feel you really can’t climb another step, there’s a slight curve in the path, the trees part, and the mountain catches fire. Above you, one flame comes into view, and then 3 and then 12 or more, glowing in a vertical path above. The first group is quite dramatic, as the fires arise several feet from an indentation in the rock, among a tumble of fallen columns from the temple. The carved pedestals provide a convenient seat from which to contemplate-how long exactly has this gas been issuing from the mountain? What makes it flame? Does it combust within the subterranean channel, or only when it mixes with our atmosphere? As far as I can tell from my reading, no one has ever really figured this out. And so in the dark, dark night, it’s much easier to believe that Chimera lies eternally imprisoned in the mountain, spitting out his resentment and waiting for the next earthquake to set him free.
The earth power is strong there and everyone feels it, from the silly Turkish teens singing to the flames (I imagined a stark folk song about love lost in the fire, but it might have been a bad rendering of some Madonna tune), to the bearded hulking German who mugged for his companion, adopting the post of a growling bear striking out at the flame. And of course the lovers who twine like snakes, close enough for the fire to burn. Isn’t there a life metaphor not-so-hidden here?
Tim and I climbed to the highest point and lay down near a group of three fires. The stars wheeled above, with a band of Milky Way crossing the valley. Below, the outlines of two mountains dipped to reveal a small slice of sea. The last of the crickets chirped a melancholy tune, but the loudest sound was the constant hissing of the gas vents. No wind in the trees, no crowds of tourists, no birds or cicadas. Just Tim, and me, and a hillside of fire

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