Thrilling Thursday: Istanbul (Not Constantinople)

So my friend Chris is in Turkey. Turkey! She does more travelling, it's awesome. She's been to Africa, Peru... just all over the damn place.

The true beauty of this trip for *me* though (because it's all about me) was that she was able to text me, and I was able to fill in the blanks with my own overly-romantic imaginings of world travel.

Plus, OMG TEXTS FROM TURKEY. How fun!

It should be noted that Chris believes herself to be dreaming all this up - meaning her life, yours, mine, all of it. It just always seems that when she's into something everything around her seems to line itself up. Strangely, this came true as she was texting me while at Elitch's... I was standing outside, receiving a text from Istanbul, when this song came on!

I'm totally serious. (Also, enjoy the earworm... I guarantee you'll be singing this for a week.)

And so for your very own enjoyment, and because I know Chris will just SO APPRECIATE that I'm using her texts in public, the promised half-assed travelogue for the trip I'm not even on!

May 16:
"I'm in a taxi on my way to hotel. Let me know if u get this text." "It smells so good. Sea air, camp fires and kabobs. Oops just passed the fish market."

So descriptive! I mean can't you just picture it? Zipping along the busy market streets, window down in the Turkish-enscribed taxi, face tipped up to catch the wind and all the olfactory goodness riding it, and then BAM slapped in the face with fish-stink.

May 17:
"American brought swine flu here yesterday."

Oh fabulous. Good thing it wasn't her, or she might've ended up in a Turkish prison. I've heard that's terrifying.

May 18th was apparently filled with Turkish towels and baths and delight.

May 19:
"Saw some really cool stuff today. Going to see whirling dervishes now."

I can't tell you how many times I've used "whirling dervish" in a sentence in my life, and I have never once thought to find out what a whirling dervish actually is. Voila!

"I didn't suspect I would be attracted to Turk guys. SO WRONG! Some r crazy hot!"

And how! (Seriously, YouTube, you have something for everything don't you!) She tends to like really light-skinned guys, and I think she was thinking Turkey is much more Middle-Eastern that way.

"I'm getting ready to go up in a hot air balloon."

Can you even imagine? Up in a hot air balloon, looking at this:


Of course I don't know what exactly she was looking at, but this is what Google gave me for "Turkish Mountains".

May 20th:
"Adam lost?!"

I do so love Chris. Even in Turkey she's all over AI.

May 21st:
"You are going to go crazy for these pics I just took. In ancient caravan, big stone building. White orbs everywhere."

And another reason to love her... she hates ghost stories and ghosts, but she knows I totally eat that stuff up.

"I drank a Cola Turka for lunch. It's their own brand. Normal Coca Cola is everywhere. Way better than Pepsi, not as good as Coke. Will drink it anywhere I can get it here. I still prefer Coke, but when in Rome ya know."


Or, ya know, Turkey. That does look refreshing though!

"I'm in the tiny village. 4-bar reception. Walked around and people would join us. People just popping their heads out of windows to say hi. At least 3 people invited us to stay."

Now that's just awesome. I must say though, that it's really sad that she gets better reception in Middle-Of- Nowhere-Istan, Turkey than I do in my own house.

May 22nd:
"Hiked to Mediterranean mountain top. Had lunch overlooking a Roman necropolis."

This, of course, made me immediately think of something out of Army of Darkness (aka Evil Dead 3), but in fact:


That doesn't look like it would be terribly zombie-filled. But it's daytime in this picture, so you never know.

"I'm standing in the Mediterranean now."

I wrote back "Wish I was there!" and she said "Me too." Awwwwww!



May 23rd: Also apparently filled with more bathing, and thankfully no prisons since she texed me the next day. I'm fairly certain they would have taken her cell phone.

May 24th:
"Today sucked. 8 mile hike. Too hot, too humid, not terribly scenic. The ruins at the end could have been easily driven to. Now too tired for the steep 1km and back to the thing I really wanted to see... the Chimera Flames."

Okay those are too cool. Somehow she had to get it done! Sure enough, 4 hours later...

"I made it to the Chimera Flames."

I knew she could do it!

She managed to call me too, and told me she picked up the Turkish version of Twilight. Now *that* is a souvenir I can get behind!


YES!

Alas, her Turkish version must have included a lot more secrets of the Volturi (oh cram it, haters!) because all of a sudden she was awash in bloodletting of one kind or another. Gross.

"Have I mentioned there are tons of stray cats here? I got scratched by one today. Blended in with the rocks. Stepped on its tail."

That and she apparently stepped in human blood while in the village - the remnants of some violence in the street. The police were in the process of cleaning it up. Yikes!

May 25th:
"I stepped in human blood and have had minor injuries that drew blood 3 days in a row. Can I get through today blood free?"

See?

May 26th:
"Boat ride, gorgeous hike, had tea with a goat farmer. Good day. So far no blood. Knock wood."

I said something snappy about "knock wood, but hope there's no nail in the wood upon which you knock". Because I'm me, that's why. I guess that blood sacrifice paid off though... sounds like a delightful day!

"In an upscale bar listening to the wife of a friend of our guide singing The Cure. She's a brit."

Just Like Heaven, in case you were wondering. I was!

May 27th:
"My sunglasses died today. I bent them about a week ago and today one side just popped open at the end of the day. It was my fav I ever had. Alas."

A small price to pay to the Travel Gods, I think.

Well, hopefully she didn't laugh at bad karaoke, since that's the last I heard from her, but it was just yesterday and she's probably on her way home. Hell, she's probably still sleeping!

I hope you enjoyed THRILLING TURKISH THURSDAY!

Why did Constantinople get the works? That's nobody's business but the Turks.

Tomorrow... What's with the weird scrapbookification of this photo? It's a mystery.

UPDATE! SHE SPEAKS!

In order to get more out of her, I posted the tantalizing text "I'm blogging about your trip."

She wrote back:

"Do I get a final edit?"

I of course simply laughed, but I reassured her it's all good. :)

Later, I heard from her again:

"Just saw a freight ship that crashed on the Bosphorous Strait and almost hit a house. Look for it on CNN. Did you see a story on Paris Hilton in Turkey a few days ago?"

I assured I would (and did! - and am now terrified that there's a website called "Russian Spy"), and told her I hoped she didn't get herpes from Paris's mere presence in town, which is SO MEAN but I couldn't help myself. However...

"There was a story that she was thrown overboard for doing it with with her boyfriend on a ship in Antalya."

Ha! But untrue, per Paris herself. Also that's not nearly what I had pictured, which was the actual flinging of Paris Hilton from the side of an ocean-going vessel, post-coitus, which was funnier though of course I would never actually wish her harm.

Finally, she said:

"Back in Istanbul. In a hookah bar."

Naturally I initially read this as "hooker bar" and had to look twice because that's not really Chris's thing.

I quite like hookahs (hahaha say that out loud I *dare* you) - they're pretty, they don't stink when you smoke em, and they're basically just flavored water. Like a big, pot-free bong.

Except when you add marijuana. I'm just saying.