November 14 - Çesme, Turkey

When I awoke this morning we were already docked here in Çesme, Turkey. (Just a little aside here.  I’ve been on the ship two nights and we’ve had to change our clocks both nights. The first night we dropped back an hour and last night we moved forward an hour.  I think most of us aren’t really sure what time it is. I guess it only matters if one had a tour to get ready to meet.)

My home away from home 

First I’ll tell you a little about this place. Çesme is on the Asian side of Turkey and is at its westernmost point.  The name comes from a Persian word meaning spring or fountain. Today it’s a popular holiday resort, but in the middle ages it was an important stop on the trade route from the east.   To that end next to the castle that commands the harbor there is an old caravanserai which was where caravans coming from the east with spices and silks would stop and unload and then take on goods coming from Italy and other places around the Mediterranean to transport to the east.  The caravanserai is today a boutique hotel built around a courtyard where the animals would be fed and watered.  Çesme had a trade relationship with the Republic of Genoa which along with the Republic of Venice was one of the largest trading states of the time.  (We’ve all heard of one of the most famous of the Italian traders – Marco Polo from Venice.)

The courtyard of the caravanserai

One other little tidbit of historic information that I found interesting is that until the early 1920s the majority of the population here was actually Greek. Following WWI  and the Greco-Turkish war after WWI at the time that modern Turkey was founded, an agreement was made and there was a forced population exchange between Greece and Turkey.  The compulsory expulsion was based not on ethnicity or language, but rather on religion.  So, all Orthodox Christians in Turkey and all Muslims living in Greece were forcibly removed and sent to live in the other country.  Needless to say, that made for many unhappy people who were uprooted and moved to someplace they’d never been before.  The decision was made by politicians from both sides with no one representing the average Turk or Greek.  It seems politics and government never really change.

I met Hilary and we went on a “little” walkabout. It is a lovely day with whatever the Turkish version of a Carolina blue sky is and it’s warm.  It actually got rather hot after we’d been walking for a while.  The little walk turned out to be more than 5 miles and about 11,000 steps. We walked along the promenade by the harbor.  Eventually we came to the castle built by an Ottoman sultan to keep away pirates.  We didn’t go up in the castle because there are lots of steps, and, as with many places in this part of the world, handrails are not very often prevalent.  I like to have a railing to hold on to when I go up or down steps.  Just past the castle we turned and began walking through the old town.  The streets are narrow with lots of little shops selling what my husband always called “tourist trash and trinkets.”  There were a few little more local shops selling toiletries and eyeglasses but not much else. Along the way there were a number of tiny cafés with a few tables where people were having a morning coffee. It was clear as we walked along that tourist season was over because a number of shops were closed.

The castle wall with a statue of the Sultan who built it and his pet lion

The top one is the little street in the old town and then there's my friend Hilary

We walked until we came to what looked like the more commercial part of town and then headed back.  Along the way we stopped at one of the little cafés and sat outside having something to drink accompanied by a couple of delicious cookies.  They hit the spot and we could people watch as we sat.  On the ship there was a serious warning to watch out ashore and be extra mindful of your surroundings.  Our Australian friends were put off by that and decided not to go ashore.  Hilary and I found that everyone we encountered would smile and say what I guess was hello and we didn’t feel uncomfortable at all.  Eventually we made it back to the ship.  Why is it that the walk back always seems so much longer?

Once back on the ship, Hilary went off to change into her swimsuit and go bask by the pool.  (The British are fanatics about sunbathing and I’ve sometimes seen them lying there until they looked like lobsters.)  I’m no longer a sun lover so I’m here with my feet up writing this and marking time until I can go and be trounced at trivia again.  It's later and I was right; we lost again, but our score did go up.  I'll say then that we're warming up.  The answer to yesterday's question about whether it's true or false that a sloth takes 5 days to digest its food is False.  If you can believe it a sloth can take up to 30 days to digest one leaf.

Here's a question for today - what country's currency is called a zloty? (I knew the answer but my team didn't believe me. That's the way it goes with a team.)