Well, I spent most of the flight from Antalya to Cologne sleeping (Marcos and I had our entire row [ie, 6 seats] to ourselves, so we both took one side of the aisle and napped away), and then going through photos took a good hour, so this will be another relatively wordless post. Don't worry, though, there's photos enough to make up for it!
Antalya Museum: We'd read it would take no more than 1-2 hours. Maybe if you didn't actually stop to look at anything, but we spent 3 hours there and Marcos only got through half of it. Museums are fun!
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| Part of a series I deemed "creepy faces", ranging from 4000 to 2000 years old |
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Little figurines! The one at the bottom is a horse,
but I'm not sure what the top one is––pig? Dog? |
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A variety of terra cotta vases with glaze. Widdershins from top left: "We are men!",
"We are pegasi!", "We are on horseback!", "We are in a parade!", and "I am an owl!" |
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Things you can drink out of: A ram, a foot, and what Marcos
deemed a clam with eyestalks |
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Various pottery with glaze––amazing how intact the colors
are, even after several thousand years! The one in the top right
was used by soldiers to carry alcohol. An ancient hip flask, if you will |
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| Some nice glazed green pottery |
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Some old treasure––the stuff on the right was salvaged from a wreck,
hence the atmospheric blue lighting |
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Statues of dudes: Headless Emperor Hadrian, headed Emperor Trajan, headed Emperor
Hadrian, and armless Alexander the Great
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Statues of ladies: Not sure who these all are (at least one was labeled "young woman"),
but golly, aren't they beautiful? |
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Pretty, nearly perfectly intact statuette (I say "nearly"
because I assume she was once holding something in her right hand––
but maybe she's just flexing real hard?) |
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Statues of dude gods: Hermes and some M-dude (Marsyas, maybe?). These were
taken from the Theater at Perge, and they are huge, at least half again as tall as a normal person |
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| Statues of lady gods: Nemesis (left and right), Hygeia (center, from whom we get the word hygiene!) |
And the sarcophagi! Were amazing! I want one when I die.
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| Example 1 |
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| From an angle |
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| Up close; look at that exquisite detail! |
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| Example 2 |
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| Example 3 |
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| Close up of Example 3 (Dionysus inspired): I like the hermaphrodite! |
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Gorgeous glass: The bowl edition. So much vibrant glaze! Don't remember
how old these all are, sad |
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| Gorgeous glass, vase edition |
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Goodies from the Byzantine/Ottoman eras: Iznik tiles, gold illustration,
gorgeous Arabic script (and look at that blue!!!", and some crazy wardrobe doors |
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| Ottoman ladies' prayer scroll necklaces |
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| Selection of Ottoman-era dress, though no dates were provided |
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| Ottoman Anatolian example rooms (plus a nice rug) |
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| And there were peacocks! |
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| Majestic flag |
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| Beautiful mountains, courtesy of Marcos |
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| Ditto |
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| Mountains at sunset! |
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My almost-mosque-appropriate outfit (just add headscarf!),
so worn because I was out of other
clean clothes. The face is due to the heat. |
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We went to the grocery store and found these Cheetos, biftek flavor,
aka beefsteak. We did not purchase them, opting for the Doritos a la Turka
(tomato and sesame seed, from what we could tell) |
After museuming, we ran around town some (visited the Sephora, because I wanted to see how it compared––basically the same, plus Chanel, but they got mad when I took photos), then Marcos did sunset pictures and then we went to Sim for dinner. It was amazing.
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Widdershins (=counterclockwise, in case that wasn't clear) from top left:
Garlic-herb butter, the mysterious meze, a half-distributed mixed grill, and
part of my half of the grill. The chicken was Granary kind of good––I KNOW, RIGHT?!
(For anyone not my mother, go to The Granary and have their herb chicken.
Then you will understand.) All the meat was equivalently delicious, yum yum. |
We got the mixed grill, which was 6 (or 7?) different meats, and every single one was delicious (though Marcos wasn't fond of the lamb, that's because he doesn't like lamb––it was a great "do" on the meat). We also got a cold
meze (starter) of sesame oil, cumin, garlic, and pepper, but I cannot remember the name. It wreaked havoc on my tongue, but it was so tasty! Very rich and creamy and tangy, mmmm.
I'm really glad we're going back to Turkey for a week at the end; there's still so much more I want to see/do/eat!
Waiting for our flight to Berlin out of Cologne. It's been delayed, for some reason, but there's free internet and not at all free water (6 € for a liter?! I could buy 3 bottles of wine for that much back home!), so things could be worse.
Marcos had gone to get razors and got to walk in to a glass-strewn room, which was probably less surprising than I might hope, given my general flusteredness. Ric is doing really well––he's married (we get to meet his husband later this week, at which point we can apparently also do laundry at their place, hurray!) and runs a modeling agency and seems very happy with his life, which is great! We drank the rest of the vişne şarap (wine) we'd gotten in Şirince, and then ventured out for a birthday drink/snack. It was raining by that point, but we trekked up to Potsdamer Platz and had a cocktail in the Sony Center, after which Marcos and I headed up north to meet Matt at a jazz club.
The S-bahn did not seem to be running that direction, so we took a cab up there and arrived just as the jazz was ending. I was quite tired and a bit hungry, so we took the S-bahn back down to our hotel (it's less than a block away from the station!) but were unable to find any open food places, so I snacked on some Tibs and called it a night. All in all, it was a very pleasant day, and it's nice to be back in Berlin!
