Turkey promised. Turkey delivered.
What We'll Miss
- Learning to play backgammon after being inspired by the Turkish men wiling away the hours over cups of çay
- Istanbul cats. So many of the little furry bastads. "Big boof heads" and "little meepers" make our day
- The people of Gaziantep are the best! The cheapest place we stayed in and also the best staff by far was at a cheapo hotel in Gaziantep. We even tipped!!
- The efficiency, logic and interconnectedness of transport is mental. Turkey is a massive country but with a combination of dolmus, busses and shuttles you can get to just about any corner of it. V impressive!
- Twisters. Nix's ice-cream of choice in Turkey. One a day makes your cavities go cray
- Pistachios are in everything! Woo!!
What We Won't Miss
- Turkey is the land of guidebooks and box tickers. Lonely Planet props itself up on the sale of its guidebooks for Turkey alone. Put the guidebook away, the only way to really find yourself sometimes is to get lost, you know?
- 4am starts and overnight bus rides. We have never seen so many sunrises in our lives
- You can't drink our water so we're going to inflate the shit out of the price of bottled water for you suckers
- A thirty minute walk is no longer "just a thirty minute walk" in thrifty five degree heat
- Breakfast with cucumber and tomato was novel at first. After a month straight of it I never want to see cucumber or tomato on my breakfast table
- I'd like to say the little sweaty hot boxes that we slept in in Olympos and Kaş but given we're heading to Asia soon we haven't seen the last of them...
- Watermelon. Please, no more watermelon ever again
The Food
It goes without saying that there was a heap of good food and a heap of flavours and aromas that will forever transport us back to Turkey but it was the apricots and figs in Malatya that pulled us out of the depths of car hire horror and stand out as the best food memory.
The Drink
Çay is ubiquitous and it can be nothing else however open ayran does give it a run for its money.
A dishonourable mention goes to the strange, black herbal thing that we bought on the streets of Antep. It had no flavour up front, a strange herbal sweetness as it went down and then just went about numbing your entire mouth.
