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Saturday, October 1, 2005 - Anatalya, Resting, Charging Batteries, Reading, Meeting People


"Though we travel the world over to find the beautiful, we must carry it with us or we would find it not" - Ralph Waldo Emerson.

We are spending four days in Antalya. It was time to charge our batteries, to rest, read, meet people and not do too much.

Even though you go on a trip to see different cultures, there is some comfort in finding familiar things. Antalya is very much like Tel-Aviv.

Antalya is a large city of over half million people. It is modern, tries to be Western, yet very much Turkish. We crisscross the streets, got lost in the big city, enjoyed window shopping, walking through bazaars, walking along the beach and dipping in the Mediterranean. In the evenings we walked along the park, enjoyed beautiful sunsets, stopped at a large stage that was sat for the Film Festival that is going on in the city, watched the fireworks over the harbor and enjoy long conversations with our neighbors in the pension. Even celebrate a birthday for one of our fellow guests. We met Mel and Jill from England who sold their home in South England and bought a boat and are sailing around the world for the last six years. We met Betty (64), who for the last fifteen years spends her vacations in Antalya.

We meet many people of all ages who are traveling alone. I do not think that I was able to travel alone. I count my blessing for having Benny as my traveling companion. I do not take my good fortune for granted. He is so kind, gentle, wise and have endless patience. We hardly argue. We move like one person, yet we give each other space whenever needed. Every evening we evaluate our day and check how we are doing and make our plan for the next day.

At home I knew about swap meet, on the trip I am learning about book-swap. We now have more time to read and we finished all the books that we brought with us to our trip. At the pension people swap books. Until now, there were no English bookstores. Antalya has a used bookstore, the Owl bookstore, and we were able to restock our book supply.

Our pension (pansiyon in Turkish) is located in the old city, called Kaleichi. A wall that part of it still stands surrounds the old city. Two gates are standing, one of them, the Herodian Gate leads to our pension. Next to the pension is the cut minaret, a stump of a minaret, which marks the ruins of a substantial building. It was built originally as a second century Roman temple; it was converted in the sixth century to the Byzantine Church of the Virgin Mary. It was destroyed during the Arab raids of the seventh century and was repaired and converted to a mosque by the Seljuks in the 13th century. When Antalya fell to the Christian king of Cyprus, Peter I in 1361, it became a church again, but was converted to a mosque under Sultan Beyazit II, 1470-1507.

When you look at the Antalya Bay, there are ragged mountains across the bay. I was not able to get it on my photos because of the light and haze. Maybe you can see some of it in the sunset photo.

On October 3, Erev Rosh Hashanah, is also the beginning or Ramadan, or as it is called in Turkey, Ramazan. The Muslims follow the lunar calendar and four of their months are the same as the Jewish calendar: Shubat, Nisan, Temmuz and Eylul.

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