The one nice, sunny day and we spend 13 hours working our way from Cappadocia to Pammakule!
6:30 pick up. A stop at a lookout point for a group shot, a nap en-route, a stop at a really cool 'caravan park' (=lodgings and baths and a market area within a walled complex) used by ancient nomads, an apple tea (SO good), followed by a drive to a horrible place for lunch. It was a huge hall with a buffet and dozens of big white tour busses out front. We sat a bit after we were done eating and were shooed away because they needed the table. They feed over 1000 people every day! Not my kind of travel spot.
In fact, I'm thinking that I really do need to plan a RELAXING holiday. A smallish boutique hotel that doesn't cater to seniors nor busloads of Japanese tour groups. A place with a beach or pool that I don't stray too far from. There is so much in the world, and as I'm learning, Turkey, that I want to see and experience but I need to balance that with some downtime to recharge my batteries. Well, at least I'm not in the office.
After lunch we drove some more, stopped off at the Mausoleum of Mevlana, the founder of the Whirling dervishes, and then Hafiz turned on a documentary on the battle of Gallipoli in WWI. I'm not a war story kind of girl so it didn't really interest me.
We pulled up to the 'mini-Vegas' type hotel around 19h30 and I checked in, booked my spa treatments, had a quick dinner and was in the pools at the Turkish bath shortly after 8. I signed up for the Turkish bath foam cleaning, an oil massage and a face treatment.
The foam bath was the most unique experience. I was summoned to join my guy after soaking in the pool for ten minutes or so. I followed him to a tiled room with a large, flat platform in the middle of the room. There was a row of faucets and sinks on the side where he filled up buckets with warm water. I was to lie face up and he started by scrubbing me with an industrial loofah! It didn't hurt as much as the 'gommage' in Morocco, in fact it was really nice. What a great was to get clean. He cleaned front and back and then after a rinse came the bubbles. I watched what he was doing once I flipped back on to my back. It looked like a big pillowcase that he soaked in soap, and filled with air to make it like a big, inflated sponge. Once he was done going over my legs, belly and arms, he pulled the pillowcasey thing through his fingers, effectively deflating it and squeezing all the residual bubbles on to me. It smelled like roses and the sensation of all those bubbles was great.
It was all quite an experience and while I had my bikini on and was perfectly comfortable, I found it quite amazing that I had a male 'bather'. In a culture where women have to cover up and there are strict rules about keeping them apart in mosques, for example, I find it interesting that they don't insist in same-sex pairings at Turkish baths.
6:30 pick up. A stop at a lookout point for a group shot, a nap en-route, a stop at a really cool 'caravan park' (=lodgings and baths and a market area within a walled complex) used by ancient nomads, an apple tea (SO good), followed by a drive to a horrible place for lunch. It was a huge hall with a buffet and dozens of big white tour busses out front. We sat a bit after we were done eating and were shooed away because they needed the table. They feed over 1000 people every day! Not my kind of travel spot.
In fact, I'm thinking that I really do need to plan a RELAXING holiday. A smallish boutique hotel that doesn't cater to seniors nor busloads of Japanese tour groups. A place with a beach or pool that I don't stray too far from. There is so much in the world, and as I'm learning, Turkey, that I want to see and experience but I need to balance that with some downtime to recharge my batteries. Well, at least I'm not in the office.
After lunch we drove some more, stopped off at the Mausoleum of Mevlana, the founder of the Whirling dervishes, and then Hafiz turned on a documentary on the battle of Gallipoli in WWI. I'm not a war story kind of girl so it didn't really interest me.
We pulled up to the 'mini-Vegas' type hotel around 19h30 and I checked in, booked my spa treatments, had a quick dinner and was in the pools at the Turkish bath shortly after 8. I signed up for the Turkish bath foam cleaning, an oil massage and a face treatment.
The foam bath was the most unique experience. I was summoned to join my guy after soaking in the pool for ten minutes or so. I followed him to a tiled room with a large, flat platform in the middle of the room. There was a row of faucets and sinks on the side where he filled up buckets with warm water. I was to lie face up and he started by scrubbing me with an industrial loofah! It didn't hurt as much as the 'gommage' in Morocco, in fact it was really nice. What a great was to get clean. He cleaned front and back and then after a rinse came the bubbles. I watched what he was doing once I flipped back on to my back. It looked like a big pillowcase that he soaked in soap, and filled with air to make it like a big, inflated sponge. Once he was done going over my legs, belly and arms, he pulled the pillowcasey thing through his fingers, effectively deflating it and squeezing all the residual bubbles on to me. It smelled like roses and the sensation of all those bubbles was great.
It was all quite an experience and while I had my bikini on and was perfectly comfortable, I found it quite amazing that I had a male 'bather'. In a culture where women have to cover up and there are strict rules about keeping them apart in mosques, for example, I find it interesting that they don't insist in same-sex pairings at Turkish baths.
No comments:
Post a Comment