Turkey: Kușadasi

The ship docked early at our first of two ports in Turkey. In fact, this was the earliest yet this trip. The boat docked while it was still dark and the earliest tours leaving the ship at 7 AM.

Bryan and I have been to both places already on a previous trip so we planned different itinerary than Joe, Alan, John and Larry. 

Turkey is a country with a rich history and diverse culture and is home to some of the world's oldest civilizations.

Turkey has 19 UNESCO World Heritage Sites, including the historic areas of Istanbul, the rock sites of Cappadocia, and the ancient city of Ephesus.

The country is uniquely positioned, straddling both Europe and Asia. The Bosphorus Strait in Istanbul marks the boundary between the two continents.

Turkish is the official language, but the Turkish alphabet has only been around less than 100 years. Prior to that they used the Arabic character set. Their beloved president Atatürk introduced the new Latin-based alphabet in 1929.

Turkey has some very unique customs and history. While tulips are often associated with the Netherlands, they actually originated in Turkey and were brought to Europe in the 16th century.

Almost all Turkish homes and businesses display a blue and white "evil eye" charm, believed to protect against negative energy.

The historical figure of St. Nicholas, who inspired the legend of Santa Claus, was born in Patara, an ancient city in modern-day Turkey.

Turkey is the home and origin of the traditional dances of the Whirling Dervishes, associated with the Sufi branch of Islam and is still performed today.

We were up early and after a brief run through the buffet left the ship at 8:00 at the port town of Kușadasi. Located on the Aegean coast, it boasts several beautiful beaches with turquoise waters.

Through my work in Hot Springs Village I have a client that I’ve worked with remotely several times. She happens to live in Turkey and not far from the port in Kușadasi where our ship docked. Since we didn’t have a tour scheduled, Ebru met us at the dock and we spent the morning together. 

She took us to an area that housed a centuries old tanning operation and has been totally refurbished and now looks like a small cozy village in the middle of the big city. We spend a lot of time there and learned a lot about the country.

Coincidently, this little ‘village’ is adjacent to the hotel where we stayed on our previous trip here 6 years ago. We never even knew what we were seeing just outside our balcony window.

Ebru lived in the U.S. and even acquired American citizenship but retained her Turkish citizenship and shared with us some of her ‘perks’.

Single females in Turkey are given both their parents pensions when they pass away. She will continue to get her parents pensions for the rest of her life as long as she remains single and unemployed. As soon as she marries or gets a job she looses the pensions.

She said that getting married is serious business here. When a couple gets engaged they visit the home of the girls parents who gives him a coffee loaded with salt. If he is unable to drink the salt coffee then the parents will not give their permission for him to marry their daughter. This shows his dedication to take care of the daughter.

Ebru took us to a local seaside cafe where we had a local street bread called a Gevrek and had some Turkish tea. 

She spoke some about both American and Turkish politics and related Trump to their President Erdegon. She claimed that most people believe them both to be likeminded dictators that are harming their countries. 

She claimed that most people in Turkey do not like Trump or Erdegon and the Country is hoping Trump will be defeated in the election. 

Turks believe that their high inflation rate is a result their presidents bad policies and indeed inflation is high. She purchased a used Toyota Corolla 6 years ago for 70, 000 Lira. That same car 6 years older is now worth over 700,000 Lira. 

After our visit with Ebru we returned to the ship by noon. We were warned many times of the importance of not being late because the ship will leave people behind. 

Apparently two couples missed the noon deadline. The ship hung around in port and kept announcing their names over the loud speaker. 

We rested a bit and cleaned up and we were enroute to the buffet when we passed the 4 missing passengers. They had just boarded and were receiving a scolding by the crew. They were informed to expect a personal visit from the captain who wanted to discuss with them the problems they caused. 

After our buffet snack, we met up with John and Larry. We tried tracking down Joe and Alan, but they were unavailable. The four of us went ahead and ate in fancy dining room, but it’s quite a different experience without Joe. 

Joe is a food aficionado and culinary

Expert and almost every meal consisted of items and names that the rest of us were ignorant of. We were constantly asking Joe what things meant on the menu. Without him, we were winging it.

The evening performance was another mesmerizing magic show by the same magician from Spain that we saw earlier.

We found out that he actually grew up on a cruise ship. He was in a show with his parents who were almost exclusively cruise ship performers. He and his sister even homeschooled on the cruise ship.

After the show, we were still unable to track down Joe and Alan. Hopefully they were on board and safe. Since we were a little worried and distressed, we decided to go to the buffet.