Sunday-We eat, we hike, we learn Tim's secret identity

This morning it was dark in the cabin when we woke. Partly because the curtains were drawn and partly because it was cloudy. We had to rush a bit because breakfast is over at 10 and jet lag and the Happy Little Rooster had kept us snoring til 9:30
Breakfast was surprising-freshly squeezed OJ, two kinds of olives (green and black oil-cured), fresh cucumbers and tomatoes, two kinds of fresh cheese (one salty, one mild) apricot and cherry preserves, some soft fresh bread with a chewy crust, a bowl of chopped apples and melons, and some muesli with honey, yogurt and walnuts. AND two eggs made into an omelet. And coffee for me. I love olives but after the wine and the jet lag it was tough to face them for breakfast. But the cereal, yogurt, fruit, preserves etc were all delish.
Since it was cloudy and cool, and looked like rain, we decided to visit the ruins of Olympos today. But first, some business to attend to. I actually forgot my bathing suit-well not the whole thing, just the bottom. And seeing as this is a mostly Islamic country – despite being ALMOST sure about the not-cutting-off-fingers thing- I decided it would be better just to go ahead and buy a new bathing suit.
By the time we found one, Tim was getting hungry (again) and we realized we’d need some sustenance for the ruins, so we stopped in a café where they make gozleme (gurz-lem-ay). It’s a yeast dough that’s rolled very thin, filled (sparesly), folded in half and cooked on a big griddle. Then it gets rolled around a stick so that it’s a long, sort of tubular many-layered doughy sandwich thing.
Again we had the language problem. I wanted 2, one with meat and one with cheese and potato. But my miming didn’t work as well with the old lady as it did with the old man. No, she didn’t ask me to visit her out behind the oleander bush, but she did end up making 3- one with meat, one with potato, and one with cheese. And she did let me watch her making them and take some pictures.
But either we picked the worst gozleme-maker in Cirali or we just don’t like them that much. We ended up eating most of them-rather Tim did-mostly because we ended up walking all day and were just hungry.
I got another amazing pomorangagranat drink too, made with a pomegranate that-I am not exaggerating – was as big as a baby’s head.
Olympus is one of those cities that had numerous heydays interspersed with a lot of down time. A harbor town, it straddles a wide creek and marches from halfway up the mountains right down to the beach. It was founded in about the 3rd century BC by Greeks, then revived in Roman times, and once again during the Byzantine empire. Pirates seem to have been responsible for most of the off-times in Olympus. The plusses of being seaside were also its ultimate downfall. You know how it is in “Pirates of the Caribbean,” once they take over, it’s downhill all the way. I guess a few earthquakes helped Father Time rub Olympos out of the history books as well.
There are enough English signs that you can make some sense of the sprawling site, but it’s by

no means the manicured, partially restored big-tourist ruins that you’d normally visit. They are Indiana Jones, overrun with pine forest and fig trees and coiled with grape vines conveniently dropping big fat juicy and sweet purple berries all over the path. There are wild mints, mountain oregano, bay trees, and little pinky purple cyclamen blooming their heads off for the fall season.
Being around for so long, apparently the town needed lots of burial plots, and they provide a lot of modern-day interest. Most are carved into the steep hillside, side by side all in rows. They all have arched openings blocked by rectangular or square stone slabs, each with a square indentation in the front-obviously for pulling it shut across the opening. The bottom, side and top of the door have runners carved into them to accept the slab, and I suppose once it was pulled into place it was sort of locked for good.
But maybe not for good, actually. There were a number of larger tombs, owned by rich families. These were actually free-standing sarcophagi, embellished with bas-relief carvings, epitaphs, ID, and warnings. Every one that was translated ended with a similar threat-basically, this tomb is for the exclusive use of so-and-so, his wife, children, and grandchildren, and anyone who buries anyone else in it will have to pay a fine of 1,000 (or 2 or 3,000 denarii, reflecting inflation, I suppose), half of which will go to the temple of a chosen god and the other half of which goes to the person who turns in the offender.
After rambling through the ruins for a good 4 hours, we headed back, with a detour to the most recent addition to Olympus- a Byzantine-era castle that sat stop the a cliff overlooking the bay. It’s nothing but a pile of rubble now, but provided a fabulous lookout, as I’m sure it did when soldiers were keeping their eyes peeled for pirates.Driving back to the cabin, we noticed a sign for the Cirali health center, with a sign for massages. I had a terrible neck-ache from “sleeping” on the plane, plus the nagging headache from hell, so decided to book a massage. The masseuse of course had no English so she handed me a menu and I picked “antistress massage”, 45 minutes, for 50 lire. I tried to gesture about my headaches and neck ache and she kept pointing to “medical massage” on the menu, which was 60 minutes and 10 lire more. But I kept insisting on antistress-so in we went to the cubicle and off came the clothes, and Tim waited for me just outside on the front porch. Once I was naked and face down on the table (and covered with a sheet), she kept saying “medical massage, medical massage” and brought in her colleague, an English-speaking man, who translated, saying she had felt my back and was sure I needed medical massage. I was a little intimidated and, filled with the tourist’s overwhelming fear of getting ripped off, I just said NO, ANTISTRESS a couple times. Tim must have heard me because he came in too and said in a kind of stern voice “I’m her husband and she is NOT getting medical massage, she’s only getting ANTISTRESS massage” and the English speaking guy backed off, saying rather huffily, “Sir, I was only translating what the healer has suggested for your wife.”
So the masseuse started in on me-and I have to say, she was great. Now for some strange reason-I really don’t understand why-I always get weepy when I get a massage. I’m sure Freud could explain it, but I can’t. And this time, with the headaches that have really been affecting me for weeks now, I started feeling quite emotional and the tears were dripping off my nose as I lay face down on the table. She tut-tutted and got me a Kleenex, and after probing my back ascertained that I was pretty messed up in the upper back-neck region. She said in a sympathetic voice “Madame, madame….” And then kneeled down so I could see her. She pointed out the window and said “Husband?” I nodded and she mimed slapping herself in the head. I said “HUH???” and she did the whole thing again, apparently convinced that my husband is some kind of cheap ogre who beats me across the back and then refuses to pay for a medical massage to fix the results of his wrath. Of course I said “No!! No!” (not knowing how to explain that although Tim IS cheap, he does not beat me), but she just tut-tutted some more, and made it clear that she was going to give me a medical massage and that I could just pay the extra by putting it in her tip jar without my mean husband ever knowing the difference.
The massage was crazy good. What can I say. I tipped her 10 lire and considered putting my name down for an appointment for Monday. But I’ll have to do it while the cheap ogre is off skulking under a bridge somewhere.