Mystery Meat

The final stop on our journey: Westport, Ireland's tidiest town. All we wanted to do at this point was hang out, get our stuff together, and prepare to head home. With it's cute downtown and lively pub scene, Westport was a fine place to chill for a couple of nights.

Both Galway and Ennis probably deserved more time than we gave them. Both cities sit in the middle of one of Ireland's most popular tourist regions. Lots of things to see, but very difficult to see them if you don't have wheels. So, we only gave the two cities a passing glance.

Both of these cities found their way onto our itinerary mainly because we had people to visit. Marian and Ronan and their respective families we more than generous with their homes and their time. Thanks!

Upon leaving the Dublin area, we quickly discovered that Ireland is very difficult to navigate without a car. Athlone gave us our first real taste of the difficulties of tourism in Ireland for those of us who aren't on bus tours. Athlone, a town smack in the middle of the country, is a convenient jumping-off point for the Clonmacnoise monastery. Of course, there isn't any public transport to the site, so we had to bicycle the 17 km each way. The ride wasn't too long or strenuous, but the weather was less-than-pleasant. Still, the countryside was beautiful and the monastery atmospheric.

Due to the lack of hostels or other cheap accommodation, we ended up staying in a B&B for a couple of nights. Definitely worth it to spend a couple of days in a nice place, especially because of the excellent and heavy Irish breakfasts.

Despite the inertia we always feel when we crash in people’s homes, not to mention our general apathy toward sightseeing at this point, we managed to hit a few sights in and around Dublin. One of the highlights was the Guinness Storehouse, a museum/gift shop dedicated to the famous Dublin brew. Thanks to Neill’s tips, we evaded the expensive ticket price, paying only for our pint from the source. In addition, we took in a few historical sites such as the old Kilmanhaim Gaol, the well-manicured gardens at the Powerscourt Estate, and the ruined monastic city at Glendalough. Perhaps the most significant cultural sight we saw was Bono's house. Well, more like Bono's gate. We even got to hear the voice of one of his security guards: "Please step away from the gate."

A big thanks to Neill and Amanda for letting us invade their lives for as long as we did.

(The calendar is misbehaving, so these entries are out of order.)

Cappadocia is one of those fascinating places that defies description. We could go on and on about the landscape, the cave-dwelling people, the rock churches... but it's probably better to just post a bunch of photos so you can see for yourselves.

Despite what guidebooks and travel agents lead you to believe, Cappadocia is very easy to see without loads of expensive guided tours and such. Goreme, our home base, offered tons of amazing walking opportunities in the surreal landscape. A fantastic end to our time in Turkey.

From Egirdir, we made quick one-night stops in Afyon and Konya. Both cities are bastions of conservative Islam, which can have its benefits. The mullah at the mosque near our hotel in Afyon had an amazing voice, making the frequent calls to prayer even more enjoyable than usual.

A pilgrimage spot for Muslims, Konya is best known as the hometown of the Mevlana, who founded the whirling dervish sect. Weeping visitors pay their respects at his tomb, housed in what was the first whirling dervish hall. Fake whirling dervishes are a big part of the tourist restaurant scene in Istanbul, so it was neat to learn a bit about the real deal.

After a few weeks of hugging the coast, we turned inland toward "lakeland," an easy stop on the way to Cappadocia. We enjoy staying in towns with unreliable electricity, and Egirdir was no exception. A peaceful spot that sees only a trickle of tourists, Egirdir offers few amusements beyond splashing in the clear water, eating tasty lake fish, and downing a few Efes. When the power cuts out, the restaurants bring out candles, and locals hang out on the lakeshore, chatting for hours.

In order to continue our fledgling careers as kiteboarders, we picked up shop and moved down the coast to Çalis beach, just outside of Fethiye, a hopping, Bodrum-style beach resort. Çalis itself is a fairly quiet, generic beach town popular with British and Dutch families. We stayed at a cute apartment-hotel run by a sweet Turkish couple who were amused by the novelty of having American guests for a change.

As for the kiteboarding, it's damn hard! After four more days of lessons, both of us mastered standing on the board and riding for a bit before falling on our faces. Kite control is not our strength, and we both spent a fair bit of time re-launching crashed kites or apologizing to the unsuspecting beachgoers whom we nearly decapitated. At the end of everything, we came away with cards that claim that we've achieved level 2, whatever that means. Our instructor says that we still need to be supervised because we are 'dangerous.' No doubt.

Kiteboarding left us pretty exhausted, but one afternoon we manged to sneak away to Kaya Köyü, a village that was abandoned during the Greek-Turkish population exchange of the 1920s. People were classified as 'Greek' or 'Turkish' based solely on religion, so Christian families who didn't speak a word of Greek, for example, were sent to live in a country they had never visited. When the Greek Orthodox families were forced to leave, Kaya village fell into ruin. Today, the remains of approximately 1,000 dwellings are a memorial to this horribly disruptive and painful episode.

The great thing about traveling with friends is that you find yourself trying things that you never would have considered on your own. While she was in Spain, Lauren started taking kiteboarding lessons. This sport involves using a giant kite to pull you through the water while you stand on something resembling a snowboard. When we discovered that you can take kiteboarding lessons in Turkey, all of us decided to give it a shot. Unfortunately, Laur had to leave after only one day, but the two of us kept it up for a week: two days here, and four more days in Fethiye. But more on kiteboarding later.

Akyaka is a fantastic beach town. Populated mostly by vacationing Turks, the place has a summer camp-like vibe. No nightclubs or noisy bars--just a bunch of families staying in self-catering apartments or pitching tents in the nearby forest. We would have been happy to crash here longer, but the kiteboarding school was fully booked, so we decided to push further east.