EDIT: The fireworks happened after all! They were pretty awesome:
Back to the vacation! Paul and I finished our time in Selçuk and took a minibus to the nearby Kuşadası, mostly known for being a port of call for many cruise ships. As such, it's designed for tourists to get a taste of Turkey in the few hours they spend there. This means lots of overpriced food and shops, and many aggressive salespeople. Blech. Our hotel was quite nice, though, and had fantastic views from the rooftop bar and a balcony in our room:
We spent the first evening wandering around the touristy areas trying to find food, and then enjoyed some drinks on the roof in absolutely perfect weather:
In an uncharacteristically trusting move, I asked the hotel to arrange ferry tickets to Samos, the nearby Greek island. This was my chance to exit and enter the Turkey, for reasons hinted at in the post below, and also a chance to check out a pretty island. Unfortunately, we were too trusting. They gave us the wrong time for the ferry departure, resulting in us running to the pier in the pouring rain, missing the ferry by about 30 seconds. I was furious and upset. The hotel owner felt bad, though I think he believed that we had misheard the time rather than the mistake being on their end. I think I will do these sorts of arrangements on my own from now on.
It continued to pour for most of the day and I started coming down with a cold, so we didn't do anything exciting. In the evening the weather was beautiful once more, so we ventured farther from the shore and found an amazing restaurant called Sare. It looked way out of our price range, but the prices were totally reasonable and the food came in ridiculous quantities. We finished the night with some baklava and beers.
The next day was extremely exhausting, especially with my sickness in full force. We spent about 7 hours taking a minibus to a train to a plane to a bus to a ferry to arrive back in Istanbul in the evening. We got some cheap and tasty Turkish food near the hotel and were constantly approached by cute cats who wanted some food. One kitten was bold enough to jump on to Paul's lap, who unfortunately had to remove him due to allergies. Even Paul admitted that it was totally adorable, though.
Saturday was mostly spent at a genetics conference hosted by my lab, where Paul and I got to feel like cool scientist folks. It was full of interesting talks and brilliant people. We didn't do much else, since I was still quite sick, but we did get to have a nice jaunt through Taksim in the evening to give Paul a taste of the Turkish nightlife.
It's hard to tell from pictures, but the crowds of people behind him go on and on and on:
It was a nice ending to an awesome week!
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