Kelly's Visit: Leaving Bozcaada

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Since the last two days had been such let downs, we were glad to be leaving.  We stopped by the ferry station the night before to check the times.  We decided to try and make the 9:30am ferry and checked with the guy at the ticket booth to make a reservation like the sign said we needed.  The man said we didn't need a reservation, which made sense since it was a weekday and it's mainly tourists and weekenders who come to the island.

So, the next morning, we were up and ready to leave the island.  When we arrived, the police officer in charge of letting people in asked if we had a reservation.  We told him they told us we didn't need one since it was a Monday.  He, of course, said we needed a reservation in order to get through. Mike called them to see if we could make a reservation for the 9:30 ferry, but of course, they were booked until noon.  Of course they were.  We spent the next two and half hours wandering around the island both by foot and by car before being able to finally board the ferry.

By the time we left, we all said goodbye and good riddance to Bozcaada.  I was trying to think of a nicer term than what we've been using all weekend to describe our experience. Mike volunteered Charlie Foxtrot and I'll just use that and let your imaginations go from there (hint: the last word rhymes with truck).

After a short ride on the ferry, we hit the road and didn't look back.  Luckily, the ride back was pretty uneventful, although it seemed long.  We made a stop at Pergamum and walked around the ruins there.  There were actually a lot of ruins and, since it's at the top of a hill, the views were really pretty.  We also got to check off another sight from our UNESCO World Heritage List, which is always a little exciting.

If 

We made it home around six and were excited to just be home and relax.  As Kelly and I walked into the apartment building with bags full of stuff, my worst nightmare (at that moment) came true.  The power was out.  This meant the elevator, the air conditioning or the Wi-Fi weren't working (you can see where my priorities lie!).  It was one of those moments where you have to laugh in order to keep from crying. Kelly and I left the bags downstairs and trekked up the stairs to our apartment on the eighth floor.  Just imagine the looks on our face.

Mike joined us and we all waited out the power outage for about an hour before the lights turned on.  I wanted to cheer out loud.  We ate dinner, FaceTimed with my parents, and grabbed a drink of tea before calling it a night.

Kelly's Visit: Bozcaada

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Since we were planning on being at a wine festival all weekend, we had no idea what to do when we found out the festival didn't exist. Bozcaada is a cute island, but it's mainly vineyards and wineries, which apparently aren't allowed to do tastings.

There was a lighthouse which had good reviews on TripAdvisor, so we decided to go check it out.  In order to get there, we had to drive around the back half of the island, which was really pretty. We followed the signs down a little dirt road to the lighthouse.  As it turns out, the lighthouse was pretty small and probably about a mile walk.  We decided to enjoy it from a distance and move on.

Somehow a filter got put on my camera for these pictures, but I kind of like it.

#nofilter

After we had a little photo shoot, we decided to venture back into town.  The word on  TripAdvisor was that there was a wine shop that did tastings.

Sure enough, the rumors were true!!

We walked into the shop, which was on a side street and asked to do a tasting.  The guy showed us around the corner to what was clearly their wine tasting shop.  There were tables and a bar set up and we quickly took a seat.  We were able to taste ten wines for 10TL ($3 USD)!!  Super cheap!!  The wines were pretty good and we were just happy to somehow have managed to do a tasting, even if they are banned. 

By this point, we were pretty hungry and ready for lunch.  We settled in at a restaurant and tried some more wine with lunch (I told you, we were determined to try the wine from this island, even if it meant we were going to do it on our own).

The big winery on the island is Corvus and, even though they had already turned us down for wine tasting, we thought that maybe if we ventured out of the downtown area to their vineyards, we'd have more luck with wine tasting.  We were wrong.  They don't do tastings. Period.  Instead, we had to order by the glass.  So, we did.  We each ordered a glass and were glad to finally try it.  

After failing at wine tasting, we headed back to the Air BnB to nap before dinner.  After a long nap, we headed back into town for dinner.  We were determined to try this one restaurant that was owned by a winery.  We had tried to go the night before, but it was completely full, so we were set on getting a table.

When we got to the restaurant, we sat down at a table next to a table of 4-6 women.   They were leaving as we were sitting down and we quickly noticed that they had done what looked eerily similar to a wine tasting.  When our waiter came over, Mike pointed to the table and goes "Can we do that?!"  The waiter took one look at the table and goes "No." very matter-of-factly before walking away. 

Looks like a wine tasting to me!  Also, how dare they leave so much wine!! If I was allowed to do a tasting, I can almost guarantee there wouldn't be a drop in any glass. 

Not only were we unable to do a wine tasting, I found out that they didn't have any of the items on the menu that I was hoping to order. It was like the restaurant and the waiter really just didn't want us there. I finally settled on a pasta dish and we sat outside and enjoyed our dinner.

Mike had a friend join him for dinner

We ended the night with a little desert on the water. By the time we grabbed a taxi home, we were all tired and feeling pretty gross (maybe all of that wine wasn't a good idea). I wish I could say we fell asleep right away, but the lack of air circulation and fans kept us all up until the wee hours of the night. 

Needless to say,  after all of the bad luck, we were all pretty excited to know that we were leaving the island the next day.....

This sign is in one of the wine shops.  We think it means that all of these very important people have bought/drank their wine, but one can never be sure because....Turkey.

Kelly's Visit: Leaving Istanbul

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After showing Kelly around Istanbul for a day (read her recap here), we loaded up the car and headed out, but not before a stop at Chora Church. Little did we know, this was the start of Mike's Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day.  Everything that seemed to go wrong did go wrong.

Let's start from the beginning with Chora Church. It's located on the outskirts of Istanbul, so it's kind of hard to get to if you don't have a car. When we pulled up, we parked in a parking lot around the corner.  As we were walking up the street, a shoe shiner approached us and tried to direct us to other sights because the church was being restored.  After getting us kind of confused, he told us that the church was just around the corner, which is where we were headed in the first place.  As we were walking away, he asked us if he could shine our shoes (even though we were all we wearing flip flops) and, ultimately, get us to pay money.

We forged ahead and entered the church.  It was gorgeous, as all of the churches in Turkey have been. A lot of it is being restored, so we couldn't see the majority of it, but it will be beautiful once it's all done.

After the church, we got back in the car and were ready to leave Istanbul.  Little did we know, it would take a good hour to get out.  We missed a turn and ended up in a neighborhood with narrow streets that were mostly one way.  We would try and make a loop around a block, only to realize that the neighborhood wasn't laid out in a grid and most of the streets were one way.  At one point, we could see the main road, but the street we turned down ended up being one way. Mike had to reverse uphill, which is not fun, especially when you're on cobblestone streets.  If I thought Mike was frustrated driving into the city, this took it to a whole new level.

When we finally made our way out of the city, it was like the roads opened up and we were cruising.  After an hour or so, we were ready to stop for lunch since it was around noon.  As I've said before, finding food isn't easy on the highway.  First, Turks like to enjoy their hour long lunch break, so fast food isn't really an industry here.  Regardless of what is going on, they will take their hour lunch break to enjoy lunch and tea.  This makes stopping for lunch on a road trip pretty difficult.  We made it to what we thought would be a big city according to Google Maps in hopes of finding a quick restaurant.  As it turned out, it was a pretty small town.  As we drove through, Mike noticed that none of the restaurants had women eating at them.  In the United States, this would probably just be a weird coincidence, but in Turkey, there could be underlying reasons and I was not about to find out why.  We stopped at a gas station to top off and ended up just buying chips to hold us off.  It was less than ideal.

As we continued on our journey, Google Maps got creative with it's route.  We ended up going on these tiny back roads that didn't really save us time.  In fact,  as we were driving down a back road, Google told us to turn right on a road that didn't exist. Thanks Google. You're great.  Not.

After navigating the back roads, we ended up at Galipoli and Chanukkale.  This is where the Australian version of Normandy took place and is like a rite of passage for lots of Australians.  The battle fields are pretty far out of the way though, so by the time we made it there, Mike didn't want to drive the extra 30 minutes to see them.  Instead we just boarded the ferry to take us to the island of Bozcaada.

Luckily, we didn't have much trouble with the ferries.  It was the one thing that really went well for us that day. You have to take two ferries when coming from the north and we made both of them.  Thank goodness.  When we finally made it to Bozcaada, we found our Air Bnb and dropped our stuff off before heading back into town.

We chose to come to Bozcaada this weekend with Kelly because we heard that there was a wine festival this weekend.  As I mentioned in my last wine tasting post,  there are strict laws about alcohol here that make getting information about anything wine related very difficult.  Finding out information about this festival proved near impossible and we had to just hope and pray that it actually existed.

I guess we didn't say enough prayers because when we made our way back to town, there was no festival in sight. Some of the wineries had shops in the little downtown area, so we stopped in to ask them about it. All they said was that the festival was on the streets.  We had seen a few stands selling jewelry and little nick nacks, but nothing even close to a wine festival.

After realizing that this wine festival wasn't really a thing, we decided to do a tasting.  We had done one in Izmir and Bozcaada was full of wineries, including downtown, so we didn't think this would be a problem.  Wrong-O.  We stopped in the wine shop of one of the bigger wineries and asked if we could do a tasting.  The girl behind the counter replied that the president had banned wine tastings in Turkey.  We left completely confused since we had done a wine tasting in Turkey, but were hungry enough that we settled on a bottle of wine with dinner.

I wish this is where it got better.

We found a cute restaurant on a side street that had seating all in the street.   We ordered some mezzes (appetizers), a fish to split and a bottle of red wine.  The wine and mezzes came shortly after were seated and we were happy to be out of the car and with a bottle of wine and food.

cute little street of restaurants and outdoor dining

As we were enjoying the fresh air, I went to reach over to grab some calimari and knocked over my glass of red wine....all over Kelly. It was one of those times where you watch what is happening in slow motion, but can't react fast enough to divert it.

I felt terrible. I would have felt even worse, except that literally two minutes later, Kelly knocked over her glass of wine and ended up breaking the glass (it didn't spill on anyone though).  At that point, Mike was completely embarrassed by the two of us and Kelly and I couldn't stop laughing.  Every time we though we could compose ourselves, we would look at each other and burst into another fit of laughter.

We managed to make our way through dinner without any other spills, although I'm pretty sure Mike never filled our glasses even remotely close to where they were at first, just out of fear.

After dinner, we tried to grab a cab so Kelly could go back and change her clothes before returning to downtown, but there was no cab to be found.  Not at the cab stand. Not driving around town. Nothing.   The bad luck just kept coming.

Kelly finally settled on the fact that she would just have to be covered in wine for the rest of the evening (sorry!!) and we found a bar where we could sit outside and enjoy a bottle of wine.  We were determined to try the wines from this island, even if we had to create our own wine festival. By the time we finished a bottle of wine, we were all exhausted after a terrible, horrible, no good, very bad day and were ready for bed.  By that time, we were able to find a cab to take us back to our Air BnB.

Overall, the day was pretty much a disaster.  Everything that could go wrong pretty much did.  It was truly a terrible, horrible, no good, very bad day.  Maybe we should move to Australia.