Turrrrkey!!

First off, I want to wish Linda Randolph a Happy Belated 60th Birthday!!!! I love you, Linda!!! I wish I could give you a birthday hug but I promise I’ll give you one when I get home!! XOXOXO….

As I write this now in Bulgaria, I realize I haven’t updated you all on what happened in Turkey and since it was such a wonderful port, I wanted to make sure and do that now. We had one day at sea after Greece and then five days in port in Istanbul. The first day we got off the ship and visited the Blue Mosque and Hagia Sophia. My favorite part of the day was when I was in Hagia Sophia, and I was petting the kitty cat in the mosque (like I always do even though I probably shouldn’t because they’re strays and it’s not sanitary) and this tour guide came up to me and said, “…and this is President Obama’s cat…” and I was like, “PARDON!?!?!” well…apparently, when President Obama was in Istanbul recently, the press caught him petting the SAME KITTY CAT and everyone was putting up the footage on YouTube and saying it was now Obama’s cat because he was petting it and I was ECSTATIC that I was petting the same cat Obama had pet earlier this year. YESSSS….BEST. DAY. EVER. We went to the Spice Bazaar and I was able to haggle at the bazaar and get this beautiful pink and orange patch purse and pashmina for 30 Turkish Lire…hooray! We went out that night to a hookah bar and drank delicious apple tea and ate lamb kabobs.

The next day was the big independent trip I organized to Cappadocia for three days with thirteen other SAS kids and I was SOOO excited it was finally here! Well, trying to lead a group of thirteen other college students is harder than I thought it would be. Everyone wanted to leave for the airport at a different time and everyone wanted to take a different method of transportation and after I finally begged everyone to stay together I realized I still had a gigantic problem ahead of me. Tyler, one of the guys in my group did not get a Turkish Visa for his Passport and after meeting with the Deans, the Chief Pursers and the Administration I realized that SAS was not budging on allowing him to get a last minute Visa or allowing him to take his Passport off the boat. My friend/partner in crime for this Cappadocia trip, Caroline, found out that its apparently illegal to carry around your Passport without a Turkish Visa in Turkey. If you don’t have a Passport you get a “Landing Card” which only grants you access to Istanbul and the surrounding areas and it’s illegal to leave Istanbul with JUST a Landing Card…however, I found out that from our Cappadocia tour guide that I called that you don’t need a Passport to fly on a domestic flight from Istanbul to Cappadocia so even though it is “kind of illegal” it’s still totally worth it to try and get him to Cappadocia since he already paid for the three day trip. So...I basically just prayed and prayed that we wouldn’t go to Turkish prison and said, “Jesus take the wheel on this one” and it was a GREAT SUCCESS! We made it there and had a fabulous time.

Our guide, Remzi, was phenomenal and he showed us all the cave churches in the rock formations with Byzantine icon painted frescoes inside of Biblical symbols and stories. I was sooo excited!! We saw all the “lunar landscape” that is Cappadocia which I can’t even describe to you (hopefully I’ll upload pictures soon) and visited the “fairy chimney” rock caves and the Devrant Valley and the village in Cappadocia where they filmed all the old Star Wars movies (since Cappadocia looks like a terrestrial planet)…sooo cool!! That night we checked into our Cave Hotel…that’s right, a hotel that had cave rooms in the rock formations. SO NEAT. We felt like we were in castles because the rock was cut so beautifully and everything was so beautiful in the rooms. A group of five of us wandered around the small village our cave hotel was in and played with the children of the village and watched the sunset while the “Call of Prayer” was playing at the local mosque. It was amazing experience. Then we wandered into this “kind of cave hotel” where this family was hanging out and I asked them if the had food or had a restaurant they recommended nearby and they said, “We’ll feed you!! Sit, sit!!” So they played us Motown music by candlelight dinner and gave us plates and plates of Turkish food. We found out that it was a mother and son and they were trying to open a cave hotel but they had only fixed up three rooms so far and they didn’t have much luck with tourists and travelers so far. I promised them if, Lord willing, I’m ever back their that I’d stay at their hotel. Then we sat and talked with them and played with their dog, Nissa. It was like something out of a movie it was so cool. The next day we went horseback riding next to a river and it literally reminded me of something out of a fairytale. We visited more Byzantine cave house churches and the Kayseri underground city of Cappadocia which was the neatest thing everrrr because it’s where they early Christians would flee to hide from persecution and they had everything down there from churches to houses to kitchens to cemeteries to wine cellars. The best part is that they have only excavated 10% of the underground city too, which means there is tons more for them to find!! That night we went to a traditional Sufi Whirling Dervish ceremony that had belly dancing and cultural dance as well. Our group was in the front row so they were constantly pulling us up on stage to dance with them and it was so much fun! Our last day in Cappadocia we went on a hike through a national park/open air museum which combined more cave villages with churches and it was near a river where we stopped and had lunch. This is where things got a little crazy. There were two little kittens under our table and everyone was like, “Angie! Angie! Pick up the kitties so we can take your picture.” So, like an idiot…I did and the cats flipped out and scratched the hell out of me. There was blood everywhere and everyone was screaming and luckily one of the girls on our trip is a part-time Paramedic at home so she doctored me right up and made sure it wasn’t infected. Lesson learned…not all kitties in the world are safe to cuddle with. At the end of the day we made it safely from Cappadocia back to Istanbul in one piece…until things got REALLY crazy and a girl on our trip, Melanie, got her foot ran over by a taxi at the airport. WHAT?!?! It was terrifying but thankfully, nothing was broken and she can still walk on it. There was a lot of blood everywhere though. Caroline and I reunited with our ship family (AKA: Heather, Rachel, Shannell and Cheyenne) and we all went out to this bar outdoors and met some students from the university in Istanbul and danced like they do in Turkey, which apparently means lets just dance however we want/like we’re four year olds. It was so much fun. Our last day in Turkey we went to the Grand Bazaar and I got a lamp, a skirt and some apple tea which was great because it gave me plenty of bargaining entertainment. My friend Shannell and I went to Transformers after that because everyone else wanted to go see Harry Potter (but I’m not really a fan of the HP) so we decided to watch Shia LaBeouf save the world from the evil robots in Turkish subtitles. We all decided Turkey was the best port and we didn’t want to leave for Bulgaria. Now that we’re here in Bulgaria, I kind of wish we were still in Turkey but I’ll write more on that later.

I miss you all and I love you, my dear friends and family!! Be safe and continue having a wonderful time this summer!!!! XOXOXO…

Angie ☺