Karen Maloney's Dispatch: Turkey, Florence and Rome

Dear Friends, let me update you since I last wrote. We’ve experienced so much & will be very sorry to leave Turkey, although we are excited to be visiting Florence & Rome eventually. When I left you we were still in Bodrum at the Marina Vista Hotel, which, apart from a great bellboy & terrific laundry service, let itself down badly. Breakfast was an uninspiring affair with a half-dressed waiter doing nothing but sneak fags down the back of the room & a lacklustre display of food. We had a small drama in our room as we couldn’t unlock our safe and had to wait for the big Turkish wrestler to come and reset it for us. While waiting we chatted to reception about laundry procedure & the receptionist explained we needed to ring reception & they would send someone to collect it. We wondered if it was OK to tell them in person, rather than have to go back to our room & ring them & eventually she agreed to make an exception in this case!

It was raining as we set off for the Castle & Underwater Museum and when we met our guide, Bahadir, he seemed much more interested in talking to his wife on the phone than showing us the sights. However, that all changed once we were in the areas that interested him – he is an archaeologist, who has done a number of wonderful things in his life and they are all celebrated in this Museum, which is a fabulous use of the Castle. He showed us a video from 1984 when he was part of an underwater expedition to bring up buried treasure from a shipwreck – that buried treasure has been cleaned & sorted & repaired and is displayed to great effect. As well there is a replica of the ship giving you an idea of what it looked like and what it was carrying.

We could have spent longer in those rooms, but his piece de resistance is ‘His Lady’. Some years ago he found an unopened sarcophagus, with a noble lady buried inside. Her skeleton is nearly complete and she had some lovely jewellery and effects with her. He explained that someone from the Museum took her skull to England where they recreated her face & from there her body and a life-size effigy of her, dressed & bejewelled as she would have been, is in the room with the sarcophagus. He called her ‘Belinda’ and told us the story of meeting an Australian girl named Belinda, who he introduced to his brother & now they are married & living in Byron Bay. Bahadir is married to an Australian from Horsham, but they live in Bodrum.

After this we went to a local ‘home cooking’ cafe for lunch with him – he tucked in happily, but we didn’t enjoy the food. When we explained that I don’t eat meat, they cheerfully offered me chicken instead. After leaving Bahadir, we went in search of a corkscrew, which we found in their equivalent of the Queen Victoria market. We had fun buying it, as the seller desperately wanted us to buy two (Rick McClean would approve) but we settled on one, took it home, and opened a bottle of wine we had been given & got rid of the taste of lunch!

That night we went to a lovely fish restaurant that Wes had found on Trip Advisor – ‘Meyhane Evgenia’, where you choose your entrees from the kitchen across the road; then your fish from the fish-monger, where you buy the fish & it is given to your restaurateur to cook for you. This is a small place, family-run, and we loved the experience. The fish, red mullet, which we shared, was cooked to perfection. We drank a half-bottle of wine (Rick would not approve), and then enjoyed a walk back to our hotel along the foreshore.

We left our hotel after another forgettable breakfast, and headed to the airport for two internal flights – the first to take us from Bodrum to Istanbul & the second from there to Kayseri, which is about an hour from Cappadocia, the home of caves & hot-air ballooning. On the second flight, the co-pilot was having his first flight & he landed the aircraft very well. We were able to congratulate him as we left the plane, as we could see right into the cockpit.

After an hour’s drive, we reached the Museum Hotel, which is unforgettable. This is one man’s vision – he purchased empty house & shops on a big piece of land and had the hotel hand-built and laden with antiquities. We climbed down many stone steps to come to our room, which is called ‘Guvercinlik’, which means ‘Door Gods’. Our door is wooden & hand painted in a simple design, we have a small cave full of amphora, three steps on which lie an electric jug & cups & saucers; a chest holding a TV; a small alcove for hanging clothes (you can’t stand upright); bedside tables covered in brightly-coloured kalims; niches in which to put belongings; a spa bath with two showers above it; Turkish rugs on the stone floors; beautifully coloured marble tiles in the bathroom; and two small windows covered by curtains.

We had dinner in the restaurant last night, and enjoyed our meal & wine very much. The service is good & everyone speaks quite a lot of English. While we were eating it snowed lightly, but that had gone by the time we went back to our room. This morning after my shower, I uncovered a window & discovered that it had snowed heavily during the night & everywhere was white. I woke Wes & we took photos madly and then walked to breakfast through the snow, where all the staff were amused at our excitement!

Breakfast was unforgettable – service to die for, yummy food, lots of fresh fruit and a young woman producing omelettes on demand with the very freshest of ingredients. We reluctantly tore ourselves away from there and came back to our room, where we had no internet service, so I rang Viva on my mobile to tell her we were living in a cave and it was snowing! She told me it was very hot in Strathmore with hailstones expected.

Our guide, Sercan (pronounced surgeon), arrived with Michael, our driver, and we set off to visit the Open Air Museum, where we learnt the history of these caves, and then visited some of the many churches amongst them, including the Dark Church which has amazing paintings from the 9^th Century. We stopped for views at various points, saw the alleged home & church of St Simon, and with the snow starting to melt, headed to a local restaurant for a yummy lunch – Wes had the house speciality of beef casserole cooked in clay and I enjoyed mushrooms with cheese. We had yoghurt soup as well & it was very spicy and enjoyable.

After a few more stops to gaze at the views of these magnificent cave structures, we came back to our beautiful hotel, where the snow is still around and more expected tonight. We are like kids in our excitement and everyone is laughing with us.