Turkey!

Hi everyone! Finally getting around to updating my blog on Turkey. I had such a great time it was such an interesting Country and it was really nice to finally be out of my element culturally.
        The first day in Istanbul I went to the Grand Bazaar with two of my friends. We first went to lunch at this very authentic looking restaurant that had an outdoor patio. We didn’t understand the menu at all because the way that they used english was by naming random ingredients that weren’t real words. We told the waiter to give us two large plates of what he recommended and we would just split it between the three of us. The lunch turned out to be one of the best meals I have had this entire trip. They had chicken and meat and cheese with red sauce and vegetables.
After lunch we went walking through the labyrinth of the bazaar. Words and pictures can not even begin to describe how massive this place was. Rows and rows of shops with all sorts of items being sold from jewelry and trinkets to hookahs, carpets and lamps. We spent all day wandering in and out of the shops, haggling the prices, which I love, and trying turkish tea at multiple places. One of the cultural customs of Turkey is the shop keepers frequently invite you to have tea with them. Now, in the United States, if someone asked you to come have tea with them you would book it the other way. However in Turkey, the ship told us ahead of time, it is safe to have tea with them they like to see the different people and share their culture with you. It also probably had something to do with three pretty girls, but we will stick to calling it cultural.      One of my favorite parts of being in the bazaar was when there was a call to prayer. Five times during the day the call to prayer came across the speakers all over the town and people would close their shops, grab their carpets, and go in the aisles of the markets side by side laying down their mats and would pray. It was a beautiful sight to see that sort of dedication and lack of need for personal space in order to pray.
        Once the Grand Bazaar came to an end, we ended up at the spice market and the pet bazaar, yes a pet bazaar. The pet bazaar had everything from fish, rats, snakes and rabbits to parrots, dogs and monkeys (though I didn’t personally see the monkeys, I heard they were there). The spice market was a lot like the la boqueria in Spain with bins and bins of spices, candies, and fruit. The smells were very interesting and the candies were all made with honey and one or two other ingredients. After spending hours wandering through the markets we went to the new mosque and were able to go inside. In order to go into a mosque in Turkey you have to have your shoulders, head and knees covered and you also had to take off your shoes before going in. It was very interesting to follow all these customs and then once we got inside we sat on the floor and observed others around us. That night we ate on the ship and started packing for our trip to  Cappadocia which we needed to get up at 5am for.
The next morning we woke up at 5am and headed off the the airport for our flight to Cappadocia. We arrived in Cappadocia at 9am and started a full day of touring around the amazing city. I am going to include a paper I wrote for my global studies class mixed with personal comments in the following paragraphs because it details what I did and saw, as well as some of the history on Cappadocia.
        The Göreme National Park and the Rock Sites of Cappadocia were officially inducted into the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization as a World Heritage site in 1985. (UNESCO) Cappadocia is a term that traditionally came from the Christian religion to describe the region in Turkey that refers to the fairy chimneys and pigeon holes, as Christianity was the prominent religion at the time Cappadocia came in to existence, as can be seen by the rock churches and monasteries. The underground cities were necessary to be used as a fortress because Christianity was not an accepted religion in the Roman Empire. Cappadocia also consists of  caves and underground cities.
        Due to the natural terrain of Cappadocia, many homes and churches were built in to the rock which created a cave like atmosphere. The Christians came to Cappadocia seeking a refuge and found it in these underground cities, which throughout time, due to technology, they were able to make deeper thus creating additional levels. Due to the central location in Turkey, Cappadocia was an idyllic location for Christians to hide from persecutors, as armies rarely would travel through that region which followed with Christian tradition, as “St. Paul established the first Christian colonies here”. The caves consisted of living areas, kitchens and even an intricate ventilation system so they never ran out of air. The tunnels connecting the rooms were quite tight and short at times, I imagine it would have been difficult being a man living in the caves. Most of the churches, underground cities, and monasteries date from the Roman and Byzantine periods.
        The terrain of Cappadocia shows the effects of erosion through out time due to wind and water. The natural rock has been carved into for many functions including a fortress, which was built underground, churches, homes and storage. Wine is a commodity that Cappadocia thrives on and the cave storage centers create the perfect temperature to store wine in. An interesting feature of the caves were the way that they produced their wine. They used a large boulder with holes created in them to crush grapes that they used for their wines. The underground cities, previously mentioned, were used as a way to escape invasions, and was an extremely effective means of  hiding until the numerous cities found out about them. Boulders were placed in a strategic way as to make it impossible for intruders to move it, but when the people of Cappadocia needed to leave, it was easy by means of leverage. The city itself is interesting on its own because it was mainly formed due to an ancient volcano, Erciyas, erupting through out time. The “recurrent volcanic eruptions blanketed the area with boulders, ash, and lava, over time creating layers of sediment, with the underneath layers more solid than the newer, softer upper levels of sediment.” The people of the city decided to build their homes and churches into the hardened rock, which can still be seen today.
        I was in Cappadocia for two full days, July 30-31st, of guided tours and one night at the Gamirasu cave rock hotel. It reminded me of the grand canyon of Europe. The scenery was breath taking and it was amazing to me how such beautiful and diverse of rock formations were created in that city. When we arrived in Cappadocia we went to Uchisar Rock-Castle to have a panoramic view of the valleys of Cappadocia. After this we took a  tour of Göreme  open air museum, which was a village that was made into a museum. The homes, kitchens and churches were all built in to the rock and still stand today. The most interesting fresco I saw was that of a person that was half woman, half man. I asked our tour guide why this was and she said that it was originally a girl who wanted to dedicate her life to be like the virgin Mary. Her father wouldn’t hear of this, so she prayed to God that he would make her ugly so that no man would want to be with her. In return, he made her half male and half female. There were many other interesting frescoes that depicted the things such as the last supper, the washing of feet, and the resurrection. The monastery itself was created by St. Basil the Great, who believed that people should live a simplistic life, consisting of “self sufficient units with an emphasis on poverty, obedience, labor, and religious devotion”. One of the most interesting parts of the Göreme open air museum, was the communal kitchen area which was used for all the people of the area. There was a large dining table, benches, and storage units. This area is referred to as the refectory, and at the end of the table there is a “trough  in the floor that was probably used for pressing grapes” which we also saw in the underground cities.  After visiting the open air museum, we traveled to see a panoramic view of Cappadocia and the table top mountains. 
  Our tour guide took us to lunch and to see Sobessos, which are newly discovered mosaic houses and an archaeological excavation site. Next we went to see the Keslik Monastery that slightly exposed frescoes that had been painted hundreds of years ago, behind a very thin smoke layer which was shown to us by a flashlight, as there was no other way to view it. After lunch we we saw a demonstration in a traditional pottery workshop. After this went to another vista to view another side of the Cappadocia valley before going to our hotel. Our hotel was incredible. The rooms were caves that were built into the rock mountain. We had a bed that consisted of three twin beds pushed together so four of us decided to sleep in there so we could have a girls night. The room also had a fireplace and a Jacuzzi with a waterfall trickling in to it that lit up with different colors. We went to dinner at the hotel with our group of people (All semester at sea people, as I planned this trip through a tour company and shared it with others on facebook before the trip)
        The next morning we woke up early (4AM)  and were able to see the fairy chimneys, table top mountains, and rocky terrain from an ariel view in a hot air balloon. We were greeted by Goreme hot air balloon with traditional turkish tea and pastries. We were up in the air by sunrise along with at least 75 other balloons.  The "fairy chimneys" are called this because it is considered where the voice of wind mixes with the "songs of fairies" and were created due to wind and water erosion. We got spectacular pictures and had such an amazing time. At one point we all freaked out because we got really close to the top of one of the mountains and even hit the bottom of our basket on it! After our amazing hour long hot air balloon ride, we went to Kaymaklı Underground City, which was said to be one of the most interesting underground settlements in Cappadocia. (Tour guide)  After this we went to Sinasos, an old Greek town with multiple cute old Greek houses to walk around and have lunch at a greek restaurant. Our tour finished with going to a jewelry workshop that specialized in black onyx, which comes from the rocks of Cappadocia. We got back to the ship around 9pm and were exhausted!
        The next day a group of us took a ferry over to the Asian side of Turkey (Cappadocia was in the Asian side as well) and walked around the streets and had lunch. It felt and looked the exact same as the European side of Turkey but it was neat to take a ferry across the water and get those views of Istanbul. After this we went to a traditional turkish bath which was one of the most culturally interesting things I did the entire trip. We all went in to this giant room with a big round marble plank which we laid down on with our towels. The room was like a steam room with water flowing out of faucets all around. After a while a woman came up to me and dumped a bucket of water on me. She then got another bucket that was full of suds and put it all over my body. She then took the exfoliator they provided each of us with and scrubbed me down. Next the woman moved me over to a step near a faucet and washed my hair and poured buckets of water on me. After this we were able to soak in a hot tub before having a massage. This experience was so unique and an interesting part of Turkish culture, and I was very glad I got to experience it.
        After our Turkish baths we got ready to go to a whirling sufi dervish show. The purpose of the performance is to get a deeper connection to God. The performance was done by men only who wore long dresses. They would twirl around in a circle as the circled around the room. They performed the same set of moves about five times which took an hour. It got a bit long seeing the same thing being repeated, but the performance is not for entertainment purposes so it was interesting to watch the full ceremony.
        The next day Danielle and I went to the bazaar for lunch and met two local Turks that took us around the city to see the Blue Mosque, the Hagia Sophia, Topkapi Palace, and Sophia Park. All of the buildings were so grand and beautiful. The architecture used to create the mosques was so distinct and amazing.
        Turkey was so incredible and was one of my favorite countries because of how unique it was. I had incredible experiences there that I will never forget.

Bulgaria

Unfortunately I do not have too much to say about Bulgaria. It was a country that reminded me of a European Mexico, where people just go there to relax and lay on the beach or go shopping. I just got back from Turkey though and will have a lot to say about that in my next blog!
The first day in Bulgaria Danielle, Mary and I went out to find a place to get some lunch. We hadn’t had an opportunity to exchange our money yet, and none of the places we found seemed to want to accept credit cards. We found a restaurant that a few people we knew were at and they said they took credit cards. We visited with them for a bit and then one of the kids Dad, who came to see him in that port, bought our lunch for us and told us we could just buy his son a drink at some point, which was really nice of him. After lunch, we went on an SAS trip that took us to the “highlights of Varna” lets just say I knew right then if what I saw were the “highlights” Bulgaria would soon be my least favorite port. We went to an archaeological museum, some Roman ruins which were just some pillars and stones where there used to be a bathing house, a Cathedral which was very beautiful, and a typical old fashioned Bulgarian house, where we saw the types of tools, clothes and food they would eat.
The next day we went to the beach for a couple of hours and then went to the mall. Yes I know that is sad that we travelled this far just to go to the mall, but there wasn’t anything else for us to do or see without traveling several hours away. After that I went out to dinner where I proceeded to get food poisoning and was therefore in my bed for the rest of the night.
On wednesday, I went to lunch with Meghan and Ashley and then went to the beach for an hour before going on an SAS trip I had. The restaurant we went to was called happy bar and grill and they had all sorts of wraps and skewers that were really good. My SAS trip took us to a botanical garden with waterfalls and all sorts of flowers. Next we went to an old palace which was very interesting because it was not how I would have imagined a palace looking like. It was fairly plain, yet charming. After the palace we went to a cape that is the furthest jutting cape in Europe. It went very far into the ocean and had incredible views, definitely the most beautiful thing I saw in Bulgaria. After the cape, we went to a dinner and show. The dinner was buffet style and had typical Bulgarian food which was very interesting to try. The dance show was really neat because they performed a few traditional dances, and then incorporated some more modern dances. The neatest dance I saw was a girl that did a hula hoop routine where at some points she would be spinning up to 10 hula hoops on her hips, legs and neck. At the end, a woman threw hula hoops to her which she would grab and put on while still spinning all of the hula hoops she had on her. The dance show ended with a man and woman walking on coals together. We didn’t get back until 11:30 at night.
The last day, I went to lunch with my friend Abby and we tok our computers so we could email and skype. I was able to skype with my mom for a few minutes although the quality was really bad because of how many people were on the internet, but it was really nice to see her face for a minute. I then got back on the ship and wrote some post cards before it was time for us to take off.
The next day we only had one class which was our global studies class and it was 2 hours long instead of the typical 1:15min. We talked all about Turkey, and different things to know about the history and monuments. After class I had a paper to write so I spent the next 3 hours locked in my room researching and writing it. That night we had a preport lecture that informed us about the weather, current political situations, money exchange and two speakers who were from Turkey that told us about what to do or see.
That's all for now, will write all about Turkey soon!