Demre

A couple more hours on a bus, winding down the Lycian coast, brings you through dry, rocky countryside with huge swarths of greenhouses in the valleys.

Originally, I had the idea to hike the entire Lycian way. It's a fairly recently blazed trail that goes from Antalya to Fethyie along the coast, connecting ancient cities and ruins. After much research and hemming and hawing, I realized that it wouldn't be an ideal hike. It gets very hot and dry here, and most of the trail winds through near-wilderness. Getting to fresh water on a daily basis would have been a challenge. Also, though it was beautiful, the landscape if fairly unchanged the entire 510 km of the route. You got ocean, you got cliffs, you got rocks, you got scrub brush, you got tombs. Not really too much variation there. I wanted to walk bits of it, see some amazing things, but maybe not commit to the entire trail. A little zip around the internet, and hell yes, I found an easier way.

Do as the ancients do, and sail the coast. It ended up bring a brilliant idea.

The boat was harbored in Demre, another ancient settlement on the Lycian way. Oddly enough, there were gift shops everywhere in Demre selling all things Santa Claus and Christmas. The main attraction in Demre is an ancient Byzantine church which the original St Nicholas was once buried. He was a Bishop of Myra and lived along the Lycian coast for most of his life while doing good deeds and gifting poor women coins so they wouldn't have to prostitute themselves.

We had to kind of elbow our way inside the church as it was packed with tour groups full of orthodox Christian pilgrams. I found it rather hilarious, but most of the women and several of the men were wearing skimpy beach coverups and beachwear, and yet they had the decency to wear a scarf on their heads while at the church. I must say, the whole experience made me feel much better about my own cellulite situation.

Inside the church, there was a tomb there where St Nick was once buried. People were going batshit insane over it- laying their hands on it and wailing and crying and praying and leaving objects of offering on top and pushing through the scrum to get their hands on it.

It was insane. I wonder if they all knew that the remains of St Nick had been moved to Bari, Italy about a thousand years ago, with some minor fragments of the skeleton ending up in Venice. Seriously. The Italians have been lording over his bones since the year 1087. And this wasn't even his orignal

After that brief encounter with the Saint Who Wasn't There, it was off to the harbor for lunch and to begin an adventure on the high seas.

Gözleme in Göreme

A view from a cave...

Cappadocia is synonymous with ballooning. There are dozens of outfitters that launch hundreds of ballons each morning. Even if you don't spend the money to go, it's worth getting up early to see the rainbow of floating airships pass overhead.

While the afternoon light can be harsh and glaring and really hard to get a clean image in, I found pleasure in getting some contrasty black and white shots in.

So called "Pigeon" valley. The names of the valleys changed depending on the whims of the mapmakers it seemed. The local farmers make safe places for pigeons and doves to make their homes, and then harvest the by-products to fertilize crops.

It was a dreamy, other-worldly landscape, reminiscent of some of the cave dwellings I've seen in Arizona.

It was also densely packed with groups of tourist and tour buses. Which, I mean, isn't terrible, but it was stiflingly crowded in places. Places that are dense are crowded for a reason, and it's usually because it's amazing and beautiful and you shouldn't deprive yourself of the opportunity to spend a few moments contemplating the smallness of your life when you see such things.

Local merchants were sure to take notice, and there wasn't a single scenic overlook where you couldn't go without tea and parting with some lire.

The plan was made though: we would spend a day seeing the more visited but worthwhile sites, and then hit the far reaches of the trail system for some peace.

A visit to a vast underground city- Derinyuku Yeralti Sehri. Parts were more than 8 stories under ground, with places for livestock and dwellings and churches, and tunnels connecting it to other underground cities. The dark, narrow, cramped tunnels offered a chance to take crap photos, but it was amazing to see.

Nearby, Ihlara valley was packed- it's a deep canyon with houses and churches carved into the cliffside- but it thinned out a bit once you veered off to hike some of the steeper trails.

The trip down into the gorge was via a narrow stairway, filled with people who perhaps had not navigated stairs in quite a while.

The whole area is notable for the lovely cave churches- hollowed out and frescoed, in various states of decay. Most were built more than a thousand years ago.

Despite distance rumblings of thunder, the day was marvelous.

A local specialty that was embraced:

Gözleme. It's a thin rolled-out piece of bread, stuffed with cheese and tomatoes or whatever, folded and blistered on a hot oven over an open fire. They were always homemade, always made by a woman literally slaving away over the coals and completely homemade and delicious.

The way the kitchen was set up, the women just sat there next to the flames, ofttimes with children at their feet, doing all the prep work and cooking from the same spot. With a deft flick of the wrist, she made an amazingly perfectly blistered smokey crepe that was to die for, and usually for about $1 USD.

Very fit, lithe people lived in these hills. Passing much huffing and puffing and puffing on cigarettes and trying to pass people obliviously blocking the narrow trail while on their phones...well, it was a lovely place despite.

Amsterdam!

One of my favorite cities in the entire world is Amsterdam.

It's a beautiful and chill city to wander around, and it has a really creative laid-back vibe. I love the Dutch aesthetic- it's not as minimalist as Scandinavian design and it's quirky and fun. None of the houses have shutters or blinds on the windows, and people generally put some object d'art in their window.

Despite it being as European as they get, it has a much more New York feel to it than you would think. Maybe it's just New York flaunting its Old Amsterdam roots. It's not as xenophobic as France and there's a huge mix of ethnic populations and really fantastic food. Oh, the food. I made sure this trip to do a little research beforehand and got some recommendations. None of it disappointed.

The whole city is a feat of engineering, and many people are looking to the Dutch to protect their cities from rising sea levels. It used to be a sea-front town, but enough land was reclaimed around it so that it is now surrounded by a freshwater lake, and the sea is kept at a distance.

There are hordes of stag parties and drug tourist that make the red light district a wild place. Coffeeshops are scattered everywhere in the city, and most of them are friendly and helpful. Even the Red Light district isn't a terrible place- I have never felt more than perfectly safe. I have traveled here alone in the past, and I've never been bothered by anyone other than briefly by the canal-side drug dealers casually offering hard drugs. The rest of the city is filled with friendly locals.

There are more bicycles than cars, and almost every street has a two-lane huge bike lane. The bikes here are simple single-gear affairs as the biggest hill you will encounter here are the gentle rises of the bridges that cross the canals.

The lovely 800 year old Ould Kerk is now right smack in the middle of the Red Light District. The reformation hit the Netherlands hard, so the church intérieurs are austere and buttoned-up Protesten affairs. Also, because the ground is a swampy wet affair underneath, they can't build these big heavy stone-pillared churches, and most of them have wooden roofs as well.

Amsterdam is not without its hazards:

This guy was leaning against a public urinal getting his picture taken next to the canal. Gross.

The Royal Palace was the center square of the city.

The interior of the Palace reflected a very Napoleonic influence, as he installed his brother as King here to control the Netherlands for a spell.

This ceiling fresco is about as French as you can get:

I'll have more pictures soon...as usual, I took thousands of them and it takes me a few days to get through them all.