The Istanbul Fig

is a thing of beauty. If I take a special memory away
from my trip to Turkey and Istanbul, it’s the welcoming beauty of a huge bowl of fresh pillow-sized figs which greet you at breakfast in the mornings…they are weighty and plump and take up your entire palm. It’s a sensory experience. I’ve had the big, tear dropped black figs from southern Andalucia, or specifically, from Estepona…but they’re nothing like the fresh figs they feed you in Istanbul. I loved them!

I even picked a few smaller ones in Patara on my way to the beach. I love picking figs, limes and even managed to pick a pomegranete. Simple pleasures for a Canadian traveling abroad who’s been raised on crabapples and strawberries; nice, but not really as special.

Anyway, I’m back after my 9 days respite in Turkey. Great to be home in my nice, comfy bed in England, but I really enjoyed the late summer golden light of Turkey..the nighttime kilim sofas on the ottoman terraces and fresh pomegranete juice squeezed in front of you for a few lira!

Istanbul is spectacular. I can only describe it as casual sophistication. Istanbul and Turkey are not third worldy at all; very unlike Mexico or the carribean countries, or even Spain. Very unique to western countries is the morning call to prayer, which wakes you at 5 am! It’s beautifully haunting, even other-wordly to be awoken to this sound. It’s almost a mystical experience because you feel it in your bones.

I began my journey in Fethiye, after arriving late in the evening at the Dalaman airport — not a great airport to get out of as the taxi drivers have control over transportation and charge a small fortune to leave the airport. I managed to catch a ride with a mancunian couple who arranged for their own non-mafia taxi driver to pick them up and take them to their home in Fethiye. Fethiye is not a place I’d like to spend any time in. It does have the cliff tombs and a nice harbour, but it’s a town. And if I’ve learned anything from my travels, it’s thaty towns are not nice places to visit. I did take a dolmus (small bus) to Oludeniz to see the lagoon. I’ll skip this the next time; hordes of people, children and English lager lads..no thank-you. I’ve been told that the pretty photos they take of Oludeniz are taken in the winter when nobody is there. Misleading….

I began my vacation by taking a dolumus the next morning, south about an hour to Kalkan, a pretty anatolian harbour town on the mediterranean; famed for yachters and wealthy glitterati in its day, but now just an expensive British vacation spot. I found it aggressive and I didn’t get any sleep for 2 nights because a discoteque was outside my window – when that ruckus stopped, the call to prayer came on. It wrecked me and I ended up with a throat infection.

I was glad to leave Kalkan for Patara. I stayed at a fantastic little spot above Patara, called the Viewpoint Patara Hotel. This was wonderful. Spotlessly clean, relaxing and quiet! The village of Patara is the kind of place you see backpackers and interesting folks..the opposite of expensive Kalkan.

Patara is on an 18k strip of white sandy beach and it is the home of an ancient Lycia port city, Arsenoe. It’s said Marc Anthony defeated Brutus at Patara. The roman ruins were amazing and all they charge you is 5 lira, or about 3 dollars to wander about them.

After 6 nights in the Dalaman coast I flew to Istanbul. I stayed at the Empress Zoe and the Hotel Nomade; both spectacular in their own rights. I’d tell you more about Istanbul, but I have to go now…I’ll write more later as Istanbul is spectacular.

Turkey

Well, I realise I haven’t written much lately. That’s what the 9-5 does to me; it leaves me devoid of communicative energy or desire.

Life is good, I think. I have a decent roof over my head, albeit an over priced one, but that’s normal for living in the UK. I have a bit of money in my pocket; enough to take myself to Turkey for a holiday and that’s where I’m writing this from now.

I’m sitting in a terrace cafe in kalkan, overlooking the mediterranean — a nice breeze is blowing, tempering the high 30 degree temperatures. I’m a little pink, having spent my second day in Turkey at Patara beach. I’m not as brown as I was living in Spain, instead I’m a slight pinkish British hue. So I’m having to be careful with how much sun I take in down here; even with it being the end of summer sun, you can still get burnt to a crisp.

Turkey is okay – Turkish people are friendly. They don’t speak much english and that’s a challenge, but they’re pretty nice people. Sort of like Greece, but cheaper, is how I’d like to characterise Turkey, so far. But my attitude is pretty open. I’m flying up to Istanbul on the weekend, so I’m looking forward to taking a walk through the Grande Bazaar and seeing some colourful spices.

Nothing too challenging. But life for me, at least, although a bit lonely in the UK, is better than living in Vancouver. Vancouver, being positioned north of the 49th and on the Pacific, is a culturally, pretty isolated place. Yes, I realise Whistler is great, expensive, though and Seattle can be a great day out, but it lacks something that Europe has–culture! It really does. You experience fantastic food in Vancouver, but it’s pretty dry culturally. I think if you have wads of cash, you can live well in Vancouver, because you can leave when you want culture..or sun!

Oh well, my .02.

On living in Britain…

Living in Britain in the 21st century means…

The first words out of a British Baby’s mouth is…”Tikka Masala.”

The second is…”look, a kebab van in the lay by.”

I’m quite enjoying living in the ‘land of mister whippy’ to tell you the truth. It’s bloody expensive with crappy weather sometimes, but the junk food is phenomenal.

Ladybug hoovering, willy playing and a Wittering

It’s been an active few months getting myself all sorted in the UK. I just moved into my new digs, an annex cottage at the back of a Victorian stone farmhouse in Hampshire–Jane Austen country. Her house is a few miiles down the road. I must take a look one of the days as she was one of my favourite authors when I was working on my English degree–notable because she wrote men so well. Likely because she was always single and, given they were written so attractively, she probably had high standards and good taste. Not easy to fulfil. I know.

Anyway, my private garden is a bit like the Secret Garden…at the beginning of the film. I need to power wash the 20 or 30 so years of moss and green stuff before I can see what’s under the path. It is pretty, though. I have a little garden gate and to the left is a footpath, one of a gazillion in this part of England, that leads past some ancient badger holes and through a National trust gate to some farmer land. I live near a privatised RAF satellite tracking station and it’s quite surreal to walk through the farmer’s fields to see these massive modern white tracking domes next to thatched 300 or so year old cottages. It’s quite the sight.

Anyway, being spring and since I’m living in the country..sort of, I have an invasion of ladybugs coming through my window seal. They are bloody everywhere..what do they say–kill a ladybug and start a fire or something? My rhyming was never good, neither was my referencing of pop slang…

I got the hoover out this morning and must have hoovered up a few dozen or so. I was picking them off the dogs fur for a few days and that got to be a bit of a pain. Killer ladybugs.

Was privvy to an interesting convo this week…an acquaintance is a governess at their kids private school; governess being akin to PTA mom, but with a bit more kick. Anyway, she got a call that five 6 year old boys pulled down another little boys pants and played with his willy…and what was she going to do about it.

I don’t know about you but if it’s unpaid I’d run like hell. I said it wouldn’t be so bad, but it was boys doing the buggering. If it was girls it wouldn’t have been as difficult to deal with. Boy on boy action at the age of 6 is a bit more complicated.

So the sunny weather has stuck around this week — hooray! It’s Saturday and I’m taking a drive to Chichester and West Wittering beach to walk the dogs. West Wittering is supposed to be one of the best sand dune beaches in the UK. It’s about a 40 minute drive from here. If I have the energy I’ll drive the 10 minutes up the road and visit Arundel, one of my favourite places. Likely because it’s got some style, nice shops, attractive streets and its very own medieval castle. Beats White Rock anyday.

West Wittering Beach

Ciao for now.

Ugly windows and old houses

New double-glazed windows have ruined the British landscape. It just has.

It seems all of Britain has collectively replaced all their old paned quaint windows with ugly bright white synthetic ones. They don’t do the houses justice. I think only the wealthy have kept with the styles of the old windows when replacing them with heat-proof double-glazed ones.

They’re too bright and they jump out at you when you drive into the towns. They’re also very very ugly.

I’m sure I’m not the only one who thinks this.

I also feel very sad about the utilitarian housing, i.e. boxes with white synthetic windows, that have gone up in the United Kingdom in the last hundred or so years. They aren’t built for human beings.

It’s like some dumb old fart who crowned himself king decided to build shitty housing for the working class.

Most Britains live in this kind of housing.

It really is horrible.

Henge=hanging–Stonehenge = hanging stones

So I finally made it to Stonehenge today. I was hoping to go on a clear day, but wasn’t so lucky. It was a typical grey English day, slightly foggy with mild dew.

Stonehenge

It was a very educational experience and well done by the National Trust. You pay about 7 quid, but unlike other touristy places that charge for the walk-around audio bit, they included this with the price. So for 7 quid you get to walk around the stones listening to actors telling you how the stones were quarried from Wales 4,500 years ago, then shipped and dragged 250 or so miles to the top of Stonehenge down, complete with sound effects of, what I’d imagine, it would sound like as they chipped away at the mega ton sarsens with little pagan-size boulders.

It was smaller than what I imagined and the views we see of the henge on TV make it look in better nick. The views we see are from the western view healstone. The other side is more atrophied and looks less like a circle than a bunch of fallen rock.

I don’t usually do the touristy thing; preferring to hang in local drinking/cafe establishments and soak up the atmosphere, but I enjoyed this exhibit. I even went into the gift shop and bought myself a key chain and some pins.

So now everytime I look for my car keys, I’m reminded of my foggy walk on Stonehenge.

Salisbury, Wiltshire
Salisbury is very close to Stonehenge, so I drove the 15 minutes or so to have a gander at this Wiltshire town. It is nice, but very typical of most southern English towns, i.e. M&S, Clark’s shoes, Costa, Nero, Debenham’s, Boots, etc. I asked a local where the best place to eat would be, mentioning I liked Pret-a-Manger, and she pointed me in the direction of the Boston Tea Party cafe.

I wasn’t disappointed. Not unlike Pret-a-Manger, my brie and bacon salad was quite scrumptuous. I think i’m going to try making it myself sometime when I settle into my new digs.

All in good time.

Things happen in 3′s…they do, they really do…

So it was one of those weekends that I wish I never woke up for.

I started out for Stonehenge on Saturday morning, hoping to be there for the biggest moon in almost 20 years and my car started sputtering and sliding back in gear…the clutch, I figured.

450 pds later and I’m still not sure. Of course they gave me a new clutch, but it’s still doing what it originally did. I found a nice guy to look at it and he said, “yeah, I can see it…” But he said after hooking it up, it shows that everything is ok. But he offered to do work for me cheaper at home than at the shop. So I’m still driving around…carefully — and I’m going to try having an oil change and new fuel filter this week to see if it clears out, what feels like a clog of some kind.

So I didn’t make it to Stonehenge. I went home to find my rental contract in the door — I had a look at it and it’s not what was discussed. Uggghhhh Now I have to go through calling them up and saying, “listen…”

I hate drama and conflict. It’s such a pain. Especially when you’re in a vulnerable position, ie. no car, no place to live, etc.

So then…if the car and rental problem wasn’t enough, I bit down on what I thought was a nice English roast dinner of lamb at the Jolly Farmer in Bramley, and it broke my crown! Now I have a broken crown..ka-ching!

I hope that’s it for now. I can’t take anymore surprises.

When you’re overseas by yourself with nobody to vent and go to for support, it’s pretty tough. Believe me.