The last post ended with a shot of Trine and I making our weary way home from Poland and a promise that the next post would cover the second part of our vacation, beginning with the trip to Turkey that was to start the very next day.
But although I mentioned the the July 13 assassination attempt on Trump, which seemed dramatic and weird enough to be noted, I didn’t mention the July 21 withdrawal of President Biden from the 2024 election. That was also dramatic and weird, so it seems worth mentioning.
This summer’s drama is still in its opening act—Israel and Hezbollah/Lebanon/Iran appear to be on the brink of total war as I write this on August 4 and 5—but hopefully I’ll be able to post this before Act II kicks off in earnest.
We begin back in in Corfu, Greece, where Molli Malou is vacationing with her friends. (That’s Freja, right of Molli, below.)
Apparently Molli’s “butterfly whispering” is still a thing, and still global.
I’m just posting the pictures she sent in the order she sent them (I think). I can’t speak to their meaning but assume they will prompt Molli’s own mystic chords of memory.
Her beautiful pictures of that sunny Greek island inspired Trine and me (simultaneously: we pretty much jinxed each other blurting out the idea) to respond with an image of the summer we were enjoying back in Denmark.
Yep: same old Danish summer. Cool, rainy, and gray.
It’s not entirely relevant here, but I’m including this conversation I had with GPT (we’re up to version 4o Turbo now, I think) just because it’s funny.
Weirdly, I had that conversation on the morning of the day Trine and I watched Elon Musk being interviewed by Jordan Peterson:
Why yes, I did take that picture just to remind me of this anecdote. Why do you ask? That’s normal, right?
Anyway, Musk was talking about some of the challenges with his Grok LLM AI right now, and one of the examples he gave was that if you ask it how many letters are in a word, it’ll often give you the wrong answer. This is true, he said, even though if you ask it to write a program in any basic coding language to count the letters in a word it can so perfectly. He said they really haven’t figured out why it does that.
It was just bizarre to hear Elon Musk saying that mere hours after having had the experience myself with GPT.
The morning of our departure to Turkey we had to take Didi to the kennel, so I thought it would be good to get a nice shot of her that I could look at on my phone if I ever got around to missing her.
(That circumstance never arose, but at least I was prepared.)
While Molli was spamming us pictures with her tropical bliss…
…we were boarding our flight in Copenhagen.
Our long flight, fairly late at night.
The flight was longer than it was supposed to be because there was a massive thunderstorm over the Balkans and western Turkey that caused us to slow down and take a bit of a detour (according to the pilot). For most of the last hour of the flight, Maddie and I were mesmerized by a wild lightning show not far off from the plane. We didn’t tell Trine about it: it was our little secret right up until the last 20-30 minutes of the flight, when we had to fly right through it.
It was a bumpy landing. Lightning flashed all around the tarmac as we deboarded onto it and scurried like rats through the pouring rain into the terminal. It was a lot hotter than Denmark, sure, but every bit as rainy and a lot more explodey.
Out in front of the terminal our private transport driver met us and led us across a lot of wide open spaces to our car.
It was an hour drive to the resort—Seaden Sea World Resort & Spa, about 20-25 minutes east of Side—and the rain stopped about halfway through. There had clearly not been any rain there.
We checked in around midnight, then had a bit of a fuss because they’d assigned us roomed on the fifth floor even though Trine had asked for rooms on a low floor, and preferably in a quiet area. But eventually they got us into a couple of nice adjoining rooms on the first floor. (Wouldn’t turn out to be quiet, but I’m not sure any of the rooms could have.)
The view our windows the next morning was compensatory enough.
OMG! The resort had its own Smoothie, Bubble Tea, and Moochi concession!
(They weren’t part of the all-inclusive, though. Maddie finally got a moochi on our last day: three little tiny blobs in a little tiny bowl. “I’ve never felt so scammed in my life,” she said forlornly.)
That was right across the path from a “Snack Bar” that also offered wine, beer, spirits, juice, soda, and water.
But no snacks.
We weren’t really prepared that first day: we’d let ourselves sleep in and didn’t make our way to the pools until after breakfast. Suffice to say, all the sunbeds around the pools were already taken—there was a hotel policy against “reserving” them, but early every morning all the nasty smoky Germans would hustle out and throw their towels down anyway—so we ended up claiming a trio in a grassy, olive-treed area alongside the pools.
Didn’t seem to affect the taste of the mojitos.
There was a lot of wildlife running around the grounds—mostly roosters and hens and their chicks, peahens and their chicks (but no peacocks), along with skinny feral cats and at least one adorable little puppy. There were also ducks and geese.
That was one of the roosters, obviously. I took a zillion critter pictures but deleted most of the them (along with all the food shots) because, really, how interesting are they?
“Hey. We saw a rooster.”
“How extraordinary. Please show me all the thousands of pictures you must have taken.”
That’s not a conversation that happens.
Here’s the visual guide to the resort that you get in your room. Just for flavor here, for a sense of location. (And to some day jog our reminiscing memories.)
The next two shots are of one of the paths leading from the pools area to the beach, the first one looking toward the beach, the second back toward the pools. I took the pictures because I’d taken some similar ones on our previous Turkey trip in 2018 and I’ve always liked how lush and green they looked. I thought it would be fun to compare and contrast.
The vibe was the same here, but the lushness doesn’t play for some reason. Don’t know why.
Even this picture of grapes hanging heavily from their vine doesn’t look anywhere near as “lush” as it did in person.
We tried eating some of our early meals out on the patio of the main dining room:
But we quickly gave up. For one thing it was always very hot out there, and for another everybody smoked. There was no smoking indoors, but there was smoking everywhere outdoors, and I’ve never seen anything like it. Everyone was smoking, all the time, everywhere. You’d think, “ah, here’s a nice spot without any smoke,” and some fat tatooed German would waddle over beside you and light a cig. Young, old, middle-aged—we may have been the only non-smoking family in the joint. Sure felt like it.
So we ate most of our meals indoors. It was cooler anyway.
Meanwhile, we continued getting updates from Molli in Corfu.
With us in Turkey and Molli in Corfu, the Life 360 Family map had to scale out a little.
But it worked pretty well for the three of us:
We spent one early evening drinking cocktails and playing cards in the hotel’s lower lobby. We tried to play gin and gin rummy but couldn’t really remember the rules so kind of made a mess of it, but we had fun trying.
(Ew: the mere sight of that scotch makes me a little nauseous. More on that later.)
Our room didn’t get made up this nicely every day, but it was pretty sweet the one day it did:
This is a nice picture, but it’s also pretty pointless. It’s just a shot toward one of the big pools from one of the paths winding around them.
This is also a pointless picture: I only took it to show Maddie (who wasn’t with me) that there were bowling allies in the hotel.
We almost bowled there on our last night, when we were all three wiped out from all the heat and sun (we thought: much more on that much later) and we thought the idea of just tossing some bowling balls around in an air conditioned alley might be nice, but the alley was part of the “Kid Zone” or “Game Room” or whatever, full of blaring music and shrieking kids.
Not hygge.
Now for some beach pics.
Those were fun, but I thought it would be better to zoom in a little.
Best of the bunch:
Unlike the 2018 resort, this one had a bazaar directly across the street. Maddie was very excited to check it out.
Beside the (minimal) outdoor stalls, there was a long indoor “mall” bazaar, which had the advantage of being air-conditioned. (But it sold all the same cheap crap as the outdoor bazaar. And naturally people were smoking all over.)
The lobby bar was open pretty much all the time. We often sat there just to cool off and take it easy with a cocktail.
I might as well mention that the cocktails were pretty meh. They only used “local spirits.” By local I assume they mean “distilled in the bathtub of the employee washroom.” The whiskey was so bad that after giving it our best shot the first day or two, Trine and I realized the whiskey wasn’t drinkable. “It tastes like something rotten in the kitchen,” was how she described it, and she wasn’t wrong. It had a very non-whiskey taste.
The gin had no juniper taste at all, so I opted for vodka tonics, the signal advantage of which was that they had no flavor at all. Trine preferred the mojitos, but insisted on extra syrup, and Maddie just had a blast with whatever we let her have. (Moments before our departure we even let her have an “adult” Pina Colada, which she had to suck down in just a few minutes to make our car.)
Here she is with a (virgin) mai tai.
We didn’t force her to drink virgin drinks all the time, but most of the time she seemed to prefer them.
The beach in the morning:
The pool in the afternoon:
Our package included one “a la carte” restaurant visit: we chose the Asian one, and were very pleased with the meal.
Another day at the beach, and Maddie right back in the frying pan.
I was there, too, you know:
Just some lobby shots:
It was decided one evening that Maddie should have a purse.
We forayed out to the bazaar. A merchant led Trine and Maddie into the shop and waved me over to a seat on the curb, where I comfortably crushed candy to bide the time.
Trine did a remarkable job og haggling for someone who hates haggling. It went something like this (I’m converting to kroner to eliminate all the annoying digressions about currencies and exchange rates):
MERCH: “This bag is wonderful. Very good. I sell you for 700 kroner.”
TRINE: “We’re not paying 700, that’s too much.”
“Okay, 500. Big savings. Best I can do. I have to make some money.”
“Thank you, but we’re not going to spend more than 300 kroner on any purse in this store.”
“Three hundred! That’s too low, I have nothing so cheap, nothing like this. Good purse!”
“Then we’ll go, thank you.”
“Come on, come on, tell me: four hundred? Can you do four hundred?”
“No, just three.”
“Okay, okay. Tell me what your highest price is.”
“I already did.”
“I cannot sell for three hundred.”
“Okay, thank you. Come on, Maddie. . .”
“Just tell me your highest price! Maybe we can meet somewhere between. . .”
“We’re not spending more than three hundred. That’s it.”
“Okay, three hundred.”
It was well done. Very well done indeed.
I wanted to see the ruins of Side, just a cheap 30 minute cab ride away. Trine wasn’t feeling up to a trip out into the heat, but Maddie was game, so off we went.
Nice cab!
We passed a bunch of mosques along the way. This one had four minarets:
Others had two. I thought it was a little weird: I had thought there would be some kind of minaret template for mosques: they would all have four, or two, or one.
Nope.
I decided it was a class thing. The more minarets, the classier the joint.
As for Side: I found this very brief history of the city on a history website:
Side’s coastal location made it a desirable trading port and despite the prominence of piracy, Greek settlers flocked to the city around the 6th century BC. Unusually, this resulted in the preservation rather than destruction of the native culture and Side became a cultural melting pot; many original inscriptions found at the site are written in the indecipherable native language.
Hellenic influence in Side grew, however, and it was under Roman rule that the city really flourished – even gaining repute as the best slave market of the period. Many of the Roman ruins still remain, and the city has become a popular destination for eager explorers interested in discovering the rich history of the ancient Mediterranean.
We got dropped off on the outskirts of the ruins and made our long, slow way toward the center of ancience Side down the single unshaded boulevard that led there.
Those are all market stalls on the left—2600 year old market stalls. (And yes, it’s called the agora.)
Here’s the Vespasianus Monument:
And here’s the “Great Gate.”
Outer doors to the great theatre, which we didn’t pay to enter. It’s a well-preserved ampitheatre: just search for “Side Ampitheatre” online and you can see much better pictures (all the best are aerial).
Here’s the main drag of old town Side: a paved pedestrian street leading down to the sea.
It was so hot we were stopping like every 100 meters for drinks. A lot of the little touristy kiosks had this weird glassy or ceramic tile out front: we didn’t pay it much mind.
All we really paid attention to on our way toward the sea was the narrow band of shade on one side of the street. We scurried from shadow to shadow like cockroaches.
There’s a lot of bad English in Turkey—all over Europe—but this caught Maddie’s eye.
This next picture is actually very pretty in full resolution, doesn’t seem as nice on screen:
(Just a bunch of seasoning powders for meat.)
The main drag ended at a little marina, the centerpiece of which was this statue of Ataturk:
There was, of course, the usual “OUR CITY!” kind of sign. Some day I should make a collage of these… Side, Faro, Piraeus, Seville. . .
(I’m not lactating, by the way, just sweating. A lot.)
More fun bad English: Boot Tours!
Down at one end of the marina was the temple of Apollo.
I asked Maddie to give me a pose, and she actually remembered the one she struck in Nimes, France, back in 2017 and tried to replicate it.
Thanks to the amazing wayback-machine capabilities of this blog, I was able to find the original very easily.
You remembered the wrong direction, Maddie!
But still: very fun to see them side by side. Seven years from left to right:
Okay, back to the Temple of Apollo.
The detail work up top was really amazing.
Also seemed like a pretty logical spot for a temple to a sun god.
That was the tip of the Side peninsula, so from there we just wound our way back toward an ice cream shop we’d noticed on the way down.
(The above pic is only interesting because somewhere on that horizon lies our hotel.)
Weirdest mannequin body shape I’ve ever seen (although it was actually Maddie that noticed it):
Pregnant man? Pregnant female sumo wrestler? Maybe it’s hard to tell in the image, but it’s not just a weirdly distended belly, all the proportions are just. . . off. It was like an alien had made a quick visit to earth, traveled for months to get back home, then built a model of a human from memory.
Or maybe they bought the mannequin real cheap at a local bazaar. . .
My favorite Maddie pic of the whole trip, and probably one of the best of the year so far:
Remember the glassy or ceramic tiling I mentioned? It was all over, which I think I also mentioned, but only when we noticed that the place we’d chosen to get our ice cream and drinks had it on their floor did we take a good hard look down. They were glass, clear glass, and they were glass because the whole middle part of oldtown Side is built over ruins.
I may not have adequately expressed how hot it was. Weather apps said it was only 32 degrees, but it felt every bit as scorching as the 40+ temperatures we experienced last summer in Seville. The ice cream and drink break was really therefore a health check.
Behold: health!
(Well, health and scotch. Real scotch: actual Johnnie Walker at last!)
Weirdly enough, one of the ice creams on the menu was called Denmark. No idea why. When I asked, the waiter only shrugged. (I don’t think his English was very good.)
Here’s a pic of the place. It was called Ruby’s. We recommend it.
Across the square from Ruby’s there was an Instagram swing.
On our walk back to the rendezvous point where we were to be picked up by our car, we paid more attention to all the glass tiling to look and see what history lay under our feet.
In some places, history was literally just one ill-considered step away. ..
(But then, isn’t it always?)
Having the past literally underfoot like that made my mind race with metaphors, all of which are probably best encapsulated by this picture:
We were so glad not to have taken a guided tour. You can’t see their faces, but these tourist all looked about half dead—either from boredom or the heat. (And, as you can see, they were already in the shade.)
We had some issues with the return trip, but nothing very serious (although it felt pretty serious at the time). On the way out of Side, we passed a round building called Side Square.
It says “Side Square” right on the roof, in case you can’t read those tiny letters.
Also: a one-minaret mosque. Must be the poor part of town. Those poor people.
Detail from one of the dining areas back at the hotel:
We called that area the Nana room because Trine and I both thought Nana would have liked it very much: blue and white, mirror accents, and that elegant and almost gaudy chandelier. . . seemed like her style.
(Her birthday as I finish this post. Sniff.)
On our penultimate day there I finally persuaded Maddie to accompany me on a parasail. She was nervous at first, but once she watched the training video and realized we could stay as low as she wanted, she was okay with it.
As you’ll see, she chose not to stay very low. We soared, and it was fantastic.
Here’s an abridged version of the 10-minute video, covering liftoff, a few clips at cruising altitude, and then our not so graceful landing. Pictures follow the video, but I won’t bother annotating them since there’s not much more to say besides, “Look, we’re parasailing!”
And now the pics.
Ascent:
The next pic is from the beach. Trine took quite a few, but we’re just basically just a speck in all of them, so it’s a good thing we bought the pics and video from the company.
(The pics and video cost exactly as much as the trip itself. Sigh.)
Descent:
(You’re not actually supposed to splash.)
Closeups.
We spent from about 18:00 to 20:00 in the pool each of our last few evenings there. While everyone else gathered up their things and hurried into the hotel for dinner, we enjoyed some quiet time almost entirely alone in the massive pool. We bobbed around, drank cocktails, and enjoyed the time together. They were the best hours of every day.
We’d all been having stomach problems on and off during the trip, the heat was exhausting us, the sun was frying us, and the maxed-out air conditioning in our rooms was giving us cold-like symptoms. (I woke up ever morning with a wildly running nose.) We just never felt good, which was a shame, but we got through it. Trine felt so bad on our last day that after a single quick dip in the morning, she retreated back to our room and spent most of the rest of the day in bed.
Maddie and I spent most of that day at the beach.
We decided to spend our last hour before changing and packing over in the pool, and as we passed by the “activity pool” (which we otherwise avoided like the plague) we saw kids and parents racing through a giant inflatable obstacle course:
We dropped everything, got in line, and managed to be the very last ones to run it before they shut it down. It was more fun than it sounds—more fun than it looks, too, probably—and a lot more difficult.
Also, more importantly: I won.
Finally we were packed and checked out and just waiting for our ride to the airport.
A nice ride, but we were all ready to be home.
The airport was a disaster. I’ve never seen anything like it. The problem was that on one of the year’s busiest travel days at this very busy airport (Antalya), the conveyor belt for checked luggage had simply stopped working. All the conveyor belts. They had no idea what to do. We stood in line for about an hour, among thousands of hot, harried, irritated travelers, before finally, finally, finally getting checked in.
At which point we raced to passport control, where we waited another twenty minutes in line before finally rushing to our gate and—[here the manuscript breaks off with a note: “this part of the story shall never be spoken of“].
No thunderstorms on the flight home, but the airport delay made our arrival about an hour late. We weren’t in our beds until about 4:30 in the morning. I woke up inexplicably at 9:00 and although I could have put it off until 16:00, I drove off to the kennel and brought Didi home.
Maddie woke up not long afterwards, poor thing.
We were finally really home in cool, breezy Denmark.
And now, as Paul Harvey used to say, the rest of the story. . .
I’ll keep it short: Trine, Maddie, and I had all contracted covid. (We all tested positive on Sunday.) Trine had also contracted salmonella. We assume I did too, although since I’m not on immuno-suppresants it didn’t hit me as hard. And because I never went to the hospital, I never got tested.
So Trine’s been in the hospital since Saturday night, getting pumped full of antibiotics, and I’m unable to go in to work. Maddie’s Lucas has been with us since Saturday afternoon but tested negative when we all tested positive, and though he’s been with Maddie non-stop (her only symptom has been a sore throat), he just tested negative again this afternoon. Molli has been at her Lucas’s since Saturday; Sunday afternoon we recommended she extend that visit to avoid the House of Covid.
Moral: Screw Turkey!
And that’s that.
I’m proud of myself for getting these two vacation blog posts done so quickly. I’ll reward myself by waiting until after Trine’s birthday for the next one—and look forward to posting so many happy, healthy pictures from the next six weeks that it’ll be as nauseating as Turkish food.
But not as infectious.
See you then!
And finally: internet meme of the month:
