Well, they promised that the A/C in our room was “fixed” when we got back from dinner. Not so…and, the windows wouldn’t open without pulling the handles off. So, at 5:30 am, John headed to the reception area for a tour of 9 or 10 other rooms, none with working A/C. So, he headed to our 2nd choice hotel and got a room for less money with working A/C and we threw on our clothes, packed our bags, paid our bill (at a reduced rate) and checked into our new room. Within 12 hours, we had changed rooms 5 times. Needless to say, we were exhausted and slept in till 9:00.
Our tour of Trabzon and area took us to Monastery of Sumela, Virgin of the Black Rock. This monastery is cut into the sheer face of a cliff (very Tibetan) and is in the middle of a beautiful valley with wooded slopes. We figured out that the 3-km walk from the parking lot was not a necessary experience and took the car to the third walking access point. We trekked up the path with women in babushkas and thongs. The monastery was founded in the 6th C to house the icon of the Virgin of the Black Rock and actually inhabited until 1923 when the Greeks were expelled from the country in the population exchange.
On our way back to town, we stopped to wash the car (this poor car had been through a lot in the past few days). John left his shoe (fortunately only one shoe- since it was the $300 French pair) and we didn’t realize it until we were back in the city. So, we headed back to a laughing attendant who gladly fetched the shoe.
Then it was back to Hagia Sophia Cathedral (now museum), a mid 13th C monastery church. The church is filled with frescoes depicting the miracles of Jesus.
Then it was on to Ataturk’s villa (another of the many “Ataturk slept here” stops across the country). He actually came to the villa three times and the wealthy family who built it gave the home to him. It’s a beautiful, Victorian looking home overlooking the Black Sea, filled with photos of the man himself.
Dinner just had to be McDonald’s tonight…. too many kebaps. Email worked and we had a bottle of wine in the room and played catch-up.
Commentary:
Hotels in Turkey: we started to understand the guide book comments about hotels. They often refer to hotels recently renovated so that things still function. We found a quote from our guidebook that sums it up:
“..the Turks are perfectly able to organize a good hotel. It’s not the building but the running of the inns that is so bad. When they are started- new and clean and rather expensive- with all the latest available devices- the owners sets out his chair in the shade of his doorstep, places his magenta stockinged feet comfortably out of his shoes in an opposite chair, reads his paper, and expects his clients to carry on with all the remaining details. Some crone upstairs with one tooth in her head is walking around with a handful of rushes that stroke the dust along an unwashed floor, the beds are made with sheets or quilts that may or may not be changed when the guests depart in the morning, and in a year or two every one of the modern devices is wrecked”
On the Turks, a commentary from David Hotham, who spent 8 years in Ankara as The Times correspondent: “The Turk is unusually filled with contradictions. Not only has he East and West in him, Europe and Asia, but an intense pride combined with an acute inferiority complex, a deep xenophobia with an overwhelming hospitality to strangers, a profound need for flattery with an absolute disregard for what anybody thinks about him. Few people, capable of such holocausts, are at the same time so genuinely kind, helpful, magnanimous, and sincere as the Turks. It is as if his nature compensated its capacity for one extreme by a propensity towards the other.”
Commentary:
Hotels in Turkey: we started to understand the guide book comments about hotels. They often refer to hotels recently renovated so that things still function. We found a quote from our guidebook that sums it up:
“..the Turks are perfectly able to organize a good hotel. It’s not the building but the running of the inns that is so bad. When they are started- new and clean and rather expensive- with all the latest available devices- the owners sets out his chair in the shade of his doorstep, places his magenta stockinged feet comfortably out of his shoes in an opposite chair, reads his paper, and expects his clients to carry on with all the remaining details. Some crone upstairs with one tooth in her head is walking around with a handful of rushes that stroke the dust along an unwashed floor, the beds are made with sheets or quilts that may or may not be changed when the guests depart in the morning, and in a year or two every one of the modern devices is wrecked”
On the Turks, a commentary from David Hotham, who spent 8 years in Ankara as The Times correspondent: “The Turk is unusually filled with contradictions. Not only has he East and West in him, Europe and Asia, but an intense pride combined with an acute inferiority complex, a deep xenophobia with an overwhelming hospitality to strangers, a profound need for flattery with an absolute disregard for what anybody thinks about him. Few people, capable of such holocausts, are at the same time so genuinely kind, helpful, magnanimous, and sincere as the Turks. It is as if his nature compensated its capacity for one extreme by a propensity towards the other.”
No comments:
Post a Comment