We’ve been running along borders for the past few days. First we were near the border to Georgia (‘Gerkistan’ in Turkish). Then we came within feet of the Armenian border at Ani. So close in fact that we could see the Russian (Armenia uses the Russian’s as their army) military base and lookout towers.

Turkey and Armenia don’t play together so well and have a closed border, so being in the seriously historic former Armenian capital barely on Turkish soil with armed soldiers wandering around was quite exciting.We followed the Armenian border on our way to Dogubayazit which is on the way to the Iranian border post. Along the way, we went through a handful of checkpoints littered with tanks and armored personnel carriers. That’s Mt. Ararat in the background of the first picture.

Together with the Spaniards, Alejandro and Belen, we labored through some incredibly sketchy mountain roads to get to the hiking base in the tiny town of Barhal. From there we hiked a couple days up the mountains through hamlets that cling to the mountainside for no apparent reason. We had some real excitement when our guide motioned that we should go and climb up to a lake and then follow the trail over the next hill and he’d meet usfor lunch. “1 hour”. Haha. We made it up to a lake and then took a trail over a ridge that left us a good 500 feet above the meadow we were to meet him in. No problem except the trail ended and we had to clambor down a steep incline with poor footing. Oh and the rain started. Good times. We eventually made it down and the only casualty was my right sandal which is now held together with twine expertly fashioned by Mary. But it is a beautiful mountain range and we had a great time. Best part was when Mary and Belen busted out the yoga moves on each other. Life really doesn’t get much better than this.

Although it would have if the pasta had pasta sauce. Notes to self next time we negotiate a hiking package: make sure the pasta comes with sauce, make sure the meat is more than 1 stick of salami for 4 people, we don’t need 3 pounds of cheese or a dozen loafs of bread…

We had read that travelling the Black Sea coast is really nice, so we headed out to the first town where we’d start our journey. We met a Spanish couple, Belem and Alejandro, who had the same plan. But when we made it to Amasara, we found that the road to the next town along the coast had just washed out. Long story short, we said forget it and decided that we’d travel overnight together to Trabzon, well down the coast.In the meantime, a local girl who was on the same bus had been helping us and so we took her to lunch. She picked a place overlooking the beach with great fish and salad.

Sometimes you just have to pay for the kitsch. Mary was looking at a plant growing up a wall and was immediately accosted by a raggedy old woman who was spewing Turkish so fast I wonder if she even knew what she was saying. She dragged Mary forcibly by the arm while jabbing her in the buttocks to these painted egg-shaped ceramics. Finally, she found a busted one to show us that the vine grows from a seed inside the egg. So there went another hard earned 2 Turkish lire. Hopefully our new friend, named Cousin Fred, will survive the postal service.

Safranbolu has a lot of ironworks hidden below the village. We wandered through and stopped to talk with one of the blacksmith shops making farm tools. After a bit they let us take a shot smithing up a stake. Check out Mary taking a big whack at the anvil! They had to take the mallet out of her hand before she hurt someone.

Oh yeah, the town is famous for saffron, go figure.

Everyone is really excited about this town Safranbolu near the Black Sea coast. It’s one of the must see sites and all the Turkish tourists take over the hotels on weekends. Why? Because it has a cute old village with famed “Ottoman” architecture. We couldn’t figure out for a long time what the big deal is. These Ottoman houses look a lot like older western homes in the UK, western Europe or east coast US. In fact, our hotel seemed very much like a ski lodge up in Tahoe. But I guess it’s a big deal when half the country is living in either concrete bunkers or shacks made of dry stacked rock and heated by hay and dung.

İ have no pictures to offer you today, just a note on our whereabouts. We spent a week running across the Black Sea coast from İstanbul to the Georgian border. The land is mountainous and lush. There’s a stretch even covered in tea leaves. Who knew? We met a Spanish couple on the bus and travelled together into the Kackar mountains to do some camping. Talk about back woods. These towns are in the middle of nowhere on poor mountain dirt roads to begin with, but there is a lot of road and dam building (really, the kind that floods small Turkish villages to create lakes) going on so everything takes a day. Somewhere on my laptop there is a picture of us waiting for a backhoe to finish excavating the road that we are driving on. Really.

We’re now in a relatively large (20k) person town called Artvin ın the mountains near the Georgian border again mulling over whether or not we are sufficiently interested in Georgia and Armenia to sit through a few more long bus rides to really get into the countries.

Seriously, they are everywhere and they look like giants looming over a lilliputian town. The ones here in Istanbul are adorned with numerous domes and minarets so the roof line looks like a field of bubbles with toothpicks jutting out. Non-Muslims are allowed to enter but are required to remove their shoes and women must cover any exposed skin and hair. At the entrance I was adorned with a head scarf before let in. I find mosques to be very calming and restful. They’re dimly lit, quiet except for the occasional chanting, comfortably cool on a hot day, have wall-to-wall rugs, and you’re barefoot. All these elements evoke napping and some people definitely take this opportunity for their quiet time.
- Mary

We went out on a limb and went to a baked potato bar for dinner one night in Istanbul. The guy reaches into the cooker and grabs two American footballs out. These tubers were Frankensteinian, something you would expect to win the county fair. After we got over that shocker we started pointing at all the toppings to add to our carbo 18-wheeler. There was butter, cheese (ewww), corn, olives, spicy salsa, bologne, pickles, mushrooms, lots of creamy stuff (eww again), pickled red cabbage, with mayo and ketchup (yuck and yuck) to drown it all. It was surprisingly good and not surprisingly very filling. These were seriously the biggest potatoes I have ever seen. You couldn’t look at them and not think growth hormones.
-Mary

edıtor’s note – no comments necessary about the ‘stuffed couch potato’ ın the background.

Depending on how you look at it, we had our first major trip setback here when we petitioned the Syrian consulate for a visa. They claim that starting July 1st, the only way for an American to get into Syria was by getting a visa through the Washington DC consulate. That’s a little bit out of our way, so after some half-hearted research we decided to just visit Syrian airspace on a flight directly to Jordan. Unfortunate, but perhaps somewhat safer. Although this does give us a bit more time to explore Georgia and Armenia. Azerbeijain also sounds interesting and untamed, but I can’t write blogs if I can’t spell the country…

And in other news, Constantinople is stıll the home of Sultans. We ran into this kid on an outing with his family to one of the palaces. He had an entourage of tourists waiting in line to take a photo with him.

It started out as just one book for each of us to pass the time on our long travel days. Since leaving London there has been a scarcity of English books so we try to grab what we can. Add to that our growing reliance on guidebooks and now we have the beginnings of a small library. No wonder our bags are getting heavier.
- Mary

Editor’s note – scarcity of English language literature is no excuse to punish me with Hemingway, Dickens and Cervantes. I paid my dues in high school. Sort of. How about some Archie comics? In Turkish is fine.