Wow! It’s really been a while since I updated this. I guess I dropped the ball. Well, there’s nothing to do but pick it back up again, right?
At the end of October, my arkadashlar and I went on a trip to Antalya and Cyprus. We were only gone for a long weekend, but it was certainly packed with enough scrambling and picture-taking to last…maybe another few hours. Let me break the fun down for you.
We left on Friday, October 30th, for Antalya. Antalya is the closest major-ish city to Alanya. It is about two hours by bus to the East, and it is also located on the beautiful shores of the Meditteranean. Once there, we explored the old city, complete with lots of old houses, tourist shops and stalls, and hills that are so fun to go down but a pain in the ass to get back up. After our exploration and lunch, we headed over to an archaeological museum that boasted that it was the best collection of Roman whatever in the WORLD. Funny thing is, we’ve heard that a few times on our various adventures. Apparently these places have some issues with superlatives. This museum did have one really exciting and super-creepy piece, however: Santa’s jaw. That’s right. How Nightmare Before Christmas is that, seeing Santa’s jaw on Halloween Eve? To be fair, it was actually only about half of a jaw, but there was a tooth left in it, so that’s cool.
After we left the museum, we toured a community organization that held after-school programs for children and classes for their parents as well. It was really interesting to hear about the different approaches that the organization took to assisting the community members, most of whom were migrants living in poor conditions.
We stayed in Antalya over-night, leaving before five in the morning for our flight to Cyprus. We flew into North Cyprus, which doesn’t really exist if you ask most of the world, what with Turkey sort of just taking claim to a piece of the island. The country has a sad and violent history which is really too complicated to get into at the moment, but there is a DMZ cutting it into two unequal pieces that is maintained by United Nations Peacekeeping Forces. From the capital city you can see through the fence to the bomb-blasted houses that are contained in the Green Line.
While in Cyprus we visited two castles. One of them had really tacky murals within its rooms that were particularly good photo-ops, not to mention a lot of naked mannequins being tortured. That was a treat…or a scarring experience that I’ll never be able to escape…sometimes the difference between the two is too slight to distinguish them from one another.
The other castle was much less disturbing, being the model for Disney’s Snow White’s castle. It was built into the top of a mountain, and it was beautiful. So what if a bunch of soldiers were pushed to their death off of a ledge located in the establishment? At least all of the mannequins were fully clothed.
While in Cyprus, we also crossed the Green Line into Greek Cyprus (which is really all of Cyprus, but don’t tell Turkey). We got to go to Starbuck’s, which was fantastic. I also went exploring and found some great graffiti.
Our trip to Cyprus was wonderful. It was so much better than Syria–not one person threw up! It was a good way to start November.
