We started the day by wandering around lovely Kaş. It was the off-season, so not much was jumpin', as it were, and Mattie was crushed to find that we had to hit three different diners and a convenience store before we found a place that sold ice cream. I believe she and Maeghan managed to eat ice cream in every town we stayed in. That takes dedication; most of the towns we visited were resort towns, and we were there in the peak of the off-season, and anyway, Turks have a Thing about cold. They're pretty phobic about it. Frozen deserts and white shoes: not to be found between May Day and Labor Day.
Anyway, Kaş was nice:
Leaving Kaş, we drove to the ruins of the town of Xanthos. The long-suffering guide was, as usual, slightly confused, but the gist is that Xanthos was inhabited for quite a long time (from Umpteen Thousand BC to the decline of the Roman Empire in 435 AD) despite the fact that the inhabitants tended to commit suicide en masse in protest of takeovers by various and sundry Roman emperors. Exactly how an entire town can commit suicide twice bends the mind a bit, but apparently it happened.
And in case there's any confusion about admittance fees, there's a handy sign on the gate to help you sort it all out:
At Xanthos:
The funny thing about touring a country with so much history is that it's treated very casually. At the might-have-been-the-basilica-of-Zeus, about half the exchange students ran off to go chase a herd of goats that was wandering the site (the long-suffering guide looked like she really missed her Valium). Most of the historical sites have a few stray dogs or cats wandering around. Xanthos, though, went one step further. Xanthos had a resident cow! (click to see better - it's a buffalo shot)
Amanda and Valeria, chilly but cheerful:
After Xanthos, we regrouped back on the bus and absconded to Fethiye, which will be a familiar name for all two of you who have read Birds Without Wings* and is a sprawling medium-sized town. And not far from Xanthos is the Dead Sea. No, not the Dead Sea; that's in Israel. This Dead Sea is a small, very salty, and freakishly cold inland pond.
So, of course, we had to swim.
Like many things, this is Maeghan's fault. She's Canadian, and therefore not truly of this earth (she celebrates Thanksgiving in October: Case in point!). She practically lives in an igloo, so of course the Dead Sea felt like a Jacuzzi to her. And because Mattie couldn't be bested by Maeghan, Mattie had to swim. And then they were taunting Garet, and Garet's from Chicago and runs warm anyway, Garet had to swim. And then they all started taunting Blase, who's a Michigander, so Blase had to swim.
And then I realized that if I didn't swim, I was seriously going to regret it, in spite of the inevitable hypothermia/frostbite/pneumonia/impending death. So I swam, too.
(And by "swam," I mean "stood shivering on the dock until Mattie and Maeghan pushed me in, and then crawled back out, toweled off, and wished fervently for hot chocolate." Just so we have our definitions straight)
Well. That was fun!
And from there to the hotel, which was mostly unexciting. After we got board throwing pistachios at each other from the balcony, we wandered down the street to a convivial convenience store for provisions, and retreated back to the room to eat junk food and view Dr. Horrible's Sing Along Blog.
It was also around this point that Mattie, Maeghan, and I were conscripted into doing the wake-up calls. We were roomies, and consistantly the only ones up and ready on-time in the mornings, and thus were recruited by the long-suffering guide and Can the Rotex Chaperone to coerce others into doing the same.
Materials: Room list, iTunes with a playlist of "possible wake-up music," and excessively cheery voices.
Procedure: Wake up around six. Fortify self with Nescafe is provided gratis; if not, complain about the lack of Nescafe and get dressed. From the room list, pick the people least likely to haul themselves out of bed when ordered to do so. Call them. When they've picked up, chirp "Good morning, sunshine!" into the phone, hold the phone over the computer's speakers, and start a track on the wake-up music playlist (Spice Girls went over very well). Go through the whole list in the same manner. Repeat twice. If, after the repeats, certain persons are still apparently not suitably awake, go pound on their doors. While singing.
Okay, so not the best way to win a popularity contest, but the results were impressive. Every day for the rest of the trip, we had everyone on the bus on schedule.
* Regarding Birds Without Wings: the novel is fictionalized, but the events and places it describes are indeed real. It's a beautiful, moving, humanizing portrait of the death of the Ottoman Empire and birth of the Republic of Turkey. It's also one of the best books I've ever read.
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