Day Trip to the Coast

Got up early in this yachting-bubble town--- lots of really high-end shops (just as at Bodrum earlier in the week), LOTS of really high-end shops, T-shirt shops, etc., along with all the boat trips to Rhodes, sailing cruises (many go to where I drove today), SCUBA and snorkeling boats--- the tourism boats all line the harbor for about a quarter of a mile, and although it’s almost May, there are precious few tourists here.

So I was up early, sauntering around looking for interesting things to shoot, and noticed people headed toward the NW part of the center of town wheeling little grocery carts that look like really rickety, 1930’s wheeled luggage, if that makes sense.

And I’m a trained police officer, and I start following them, and I notice people coming back into the center of town with similar little carts full of vegetables, and I think, “Hmmmmm. Must be a market day.”

And it was.

It wasn’t nearly as good as the one earlier this week, as this one is now all indoors, instead of taking over a bunch of streets, so it’s more industrial, and the light isn’t as good, and it just seemed more formal. But I tried anyway, “Photo OK?” and got some good responses. I was doing it more to practice asking (and shooting—it was dark inside, but there was bright hot light outside) than for really great shots, although some of the faces were as good as in the other market.


















And just as I was leaving the market the tour bus pulled up and lots of tourists spilled out of it and headed inside—in their tourist uniforms: not enough clothing, fanny packs, and huge purses.

I did advise a nice trio from Essex, east of London, whom I saw later on the harbor promenade and who were trying to escape from a boat-cruise salesman, The best way to deal with these guys is to say you are late for an appointment to buy a rug.

Early in the PM I headed out for a Greek city Knidos, which I’m pleased I didn’t know was about 65 miles away, or I would not have gone.

And boy, was it worth it!

Here’s the place I’m staying—Marmaris.




I stopped and had a standard little on-the-road lunch



overlooking this harbor.



I hit some great scenery on the way including these old Byzantine (?) or Ottoman (?) windmills, very like the same kind of place I shot in Herencia, Spain--- which are on my photo web site.







And an interesting irony about these 5 old windmill towers being here is that from the little ridge where they are, I could see about 30 wind turbines, with their big propellers slowly turning.

Knidos is out on the end of a peninsula, and it’s pretty craggy--- you have to cross the spine of the land four or fine times as the road wanders back and forth from the north coast to the south coast.

Saw this kind of scenery on the way to the end of the land,






and found the standard ruins out there waiting for me.












I wanted to watch the sunset from the ruins, but the place gets locked up at 6:30, almost two hours before sunset, so I’ll have to shoot for some sunset pictures from the next west-facing coast, a day or so away, at Fethiya.

Catching up with the Reports

I stayed over the weekend in Bodrum, which has a lovely old harbor and castle, but it's full of yachts (smallish, but lots of them) so there are strange things here you wouldn't normally have with a town this small: Chinese restaurants, Marks and Spencer stores, lots of high-end shops right near the water, of course, lots of car rental and motor scooter rental places, perfume and sun-glass shops,.






tour places, lots of dive shops, two golf courses in case you brought your clubs on the boat . . .

This is how many people over here see me--- a reflection in a really old mirror-- another antique.





The old crusader castle right at the point of the harbor



is now an underwater archaeology museum,



and it’s a very good museum even separate from being housed in a pretty cool old castle. I was there on Sunday and spent much of the AM up there, although all of it wasn’t open—some of the specialty rooms were closed, partly I’d guess because it’s a little early in the season, and they aren’t at full swing yet.

The short amphora in the rack on the wall is Caananite— made 300 years before the Trojan War—3,500 years old, and there was no one around and I reached out and touched it.



So neat to touch something that was that old.

And I could never figure out why the Greek amphorae were pointed on the bottom for storage, but this exhibit cleared all that up.



There was a glass guy up there with a little workshop and torch and he was making replica Roman glass objects, and I’ve always thought those were pretty damn cool—





I’d always wanted to have something that beautiful and that old, but at least now (I went back after my normal angst about spending money—especially on myself) I have something that beautiful: three of them, actually. Now I get to be OCD about how to get them home without breaking them.



From Bodrum I went the back way






to Milas, where the market was on Tuesday (see the report just below this one for those pictures).

At Milas, before my mis-adventure of looking for the site up in the hills, I went to Beҫin, a large castle on top of a promontory just south of the town, down by the crossroads (natch).









And there was a shepherd up there and his wife who had a garden, and I’m guessing they and the sheep were in charge of keeping weeds down.

This is her working at her front porch. I have soon lots of women, dressed very traditionally, working in fields and gardens in this posture, bending instead of squatting, and I see them sometimes in the market places and walking down the street, and this seems for some of them now the only way they can be—they can’t stand up any more.




It was great up there, and there were picnickers up there and families, and I got invited to share some lunch with these nice people.







On Tuesday PM, I went to Stratonikeia and shot the ruins there.

Here’s another example of the locals using old, near-by stones for their houses. It’s pretty easy to see the old Greek building stones here in the wall.




And the old Greek street with relatively modern Turkish houses on each side.



And other scenes from the site.











This AM (now Wednesday) I stopped at Lagina, a Greek site dedicated to Hecate.











The attendant was watching a DVD of “Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon,” and when I asked him if was Turkish, he said yes. Maybe he thought I’d asked if it was in Turkish. . . .

And there was this poppy field on the way there. . . .









I’m now in Marmaris, back on the coast, getting caught up with reports and e-mailing the (very few) people in the market for whom we could get an e-mail address.

I’ll go out later tonight and do some good-light shooting—it’s now 4:00 PM and the light is pretty hot and glary.