MANIC MONDAY - HEAT

MANIC MONDAY


Kudasasi

The four last days of my roundtrip in Turkey I stayed in Kudasasi which is one of Turkey's principle holiday resorts, and is a real cute little old city situated on the west coast of Turkey- 90km south of Izmir. It is also close to the important historical sites including Ephesus, where I had also been.

Of course getting up very early in the morning (sometimes at 5.30 am) and climbing the whole day in the heat through roman and greek historical ruins was at the end a little tireing.

The hotel where I stayed was very nice and of course had also airconditionning against this still spring heat and I was quite surprised that a lot of private houses were equipped with that too.

The city itself had quite some very nice mosques and was surrounded by a big wall from ancient greek and roman times. The first day I spend there was very hot and cloudy a sticky heat hang over the little town despite the fact that it's located just at the sea.

Kusadasi also has a very big habour where Cruise ships from all countries stop to visit the town. The Setur Marina is one of the largest and best equipped marinas in Turkey with the capacity of 629 yachts both a float and on shore, visited between 2500-3000 boats each year.

click on pictures to make them bigger




The remains of the city wall





One of the fortress had a wonderful inner courtyard, decorated with beautiful carpets and there was also a café where you could get cold drinks.



Of course there were shops side by side, selling jewlery, leather clothes (very cheap), souvenirs, and carpets.


carpets wherever you look






Suddenly a heavy rain started and in a minute the streets were full of water. Here you can see the shop owners trying to put their things inside and free their shops from water.





Fortunately the rain stopped quickly and I visited the fisher market. What an odor !



It still was cloudy but warm. This is a monument of freedom at the seafront




Women chatting


There were a lot of yellow taxis all around



I watched military divers who had pulled out all this junk from the sea !





The rest of my holidays the weather was beautiful as you can see here. Cruise ships boarding. They usually stayed there over night.

I didn't suffer from the heat, because there was always a little breeze coming from the sea.

TOILETS OR RESTROOMS ?

Pookie washes her paws in innocence with such a story !

One thing I had to get used to (again) were the toilets in Turkey ! In the 60-70th you could find the same in Italy or France but in Turkey they still are very commun everywhere, airport, historical sites, restaurants, on the ferry and public toilets. Only in hotels I didn't see them.

Now you can easily imagine the gymnastic which people had to do because it's not so easy to pee while standing with the feet on the forseen gutters without wetting your shoes and cause an inondation. There is nothing to hold yourself in this position and usually it's years ago when we as little girls used to do that in the bushes !

But nature is nature and when you have to you have to !

The old romans had another view of toilets and I wonder if the word "restroom" doesn't come from there because toilets really were there to rest.

This picture shows a meeting room in a roman historical site, where they all sat together side by side on the "throne". For more then 2000 years ago it was already very sophisticated, with running water underneath ! While slaves brought in plates and plates of food and a lot of wine, they ate, chatted and shit (sorry) all at the same time.

Now can you imagine our politicians in such a meeting place ? Maybe the world would be better then !