Last run

Laodicea

It’s my last week in Istanbul. Definite mixed feelings about this, but I’m making the best of it.

Last weekend, the post-Ramadan holiday, I took my last getaway on Turkish Airlines to Macedonia (still the Former Yugoslavian Republic of Macedonia, but soon to be Northern Macedonia). I left on Wednesday night and came back on Sunday, starting in Skopje and finishing in Tirana, Albania.

The highlight was absolutely Lake Ohrid, a big lake on the Albanian/(Northern) Macedonian border. I left Skopje (a really cool city with, I swear, more statues per square kilometer than any other place I’ve been) by bus on morning and arrived around 1 p.m.

Pergamon

My place was an AirBnB I’d totally recommend. It overlooked the lake and, if you looked sharply to your right, the fortress. But the lake was the amazing thing. It was pretty big – so big that, when walking around it, I started looking for seashells. I didn’t find any, of course, but it took me awhile to remember that’s because it was a lake, not the sea. I’m surrounded by salt water in Istanbul and I just forgot there was such a thing as fresh water. It was just so big, too, that it took me a minute to realize why there weren’t any shells or seagulls.

I suppose it might be like Tahoe, not that I’ve spent too much time there. The city had a vibrant downtown area, though it was tiny. Pearls were their thing, but I didn’t buy any. I just had a great time walking up and down. My little tracker said I did over 20k steps and 51 floors that day. It was a lot of hills!

The fortress had a great view, too, especially of the stormclouds as they were coming in. The skies unloaded, but there was at least a big gateway I could stand in while it passed by.

The boats get to me. I probably took 20 pictures of boats from all angles. I really need a beach house.

Turtle porn! Spotted in Macedonia.

Tirana was the last stop, and it was fairly fun, too. There weren’t many amazing photo ops there, but they did have all the electrical boxes on the roads painted like cartoon characters. I saw Homer Simpson, Lego Batman and Betty Boop. But the greatest sign was the “Pee and we’ll put you on YouTube” sign. I did a doubletake. I’ve resisted the urge to go to Youtube and search for “Pee Tirana,” but feel free!

I arrived back exhausted and in need of preparing for packout, which was today. Everything’s gone, except 17 pounds of liquids I couldn’t ship. I also have barely enough clothes to make it through this weekend, my last in Istanbul.

And the jury is out as to what to do. There is just so much to choose from. I’m thinking of seeing the Dolmabache Palace, which I haven’t done yet, but I also want to just hang out in the Galata Tower area for a good chunk of the day. And honestly, as I left the gym and walked back to my apartment via the pool, I have to say it’s super tempting to just sit out and enjoy that for an afternoon.

Boats. 'Nuff said.

Man, I will miss this place. And the country. The weekend before last, I finally got to the Six (of the Seven) Churches of Revelation, which are all centered around Izmir. I went with a mom and daughter from work, who drove the five hours down there. We rented an apartment and just hit the road to the farthest one first, Laodicea. It was about two and a half hours away. We’d planned on seeing three each day and then heading back to Istanbul, but we managed to get horribly lost with the help of the GPS.

Eventually, we figured it out but we decided to swing by Hieropolis and Pamukkale, which I’d done before but they hadn’t. There, we splurged on a golf cart tour of the place, which was the right move! We swung by Philadelphia on the way home, where the ruins aren’t as extensive as Laodicea. Philadelphia is basically a city block. You think for a second how convenient it is to have the ruins right in the middle of the city and then realize that the whole point of them being there is because it’s been a city for centuries!

I truly believe this is the
greatest sign ever.

The next day we hit the four remaining churches. (For the math minds reading, I know there are seven churches mentioned in Revelation, but all three members of the party had been to Ephesus before so we skipped that one.) As cool as it was to see them (Sardis, Thyatiera, Pergamon and Smyrna), they do kind of run together after awhile. When I got back, I tried to pull the photos off the iPhone but if you’ve ever done that, it gets confusing. They don’t show up on Windows Explorer in the same order the pop up on the iPhone, which makes it something like a game of Old Maid. I sorted by time and figured some out, but it was far from perfect. After thinking I was done, I counted the folders and realized I’d forgotten Thyatiera, so I had to go back through all of them and figure those out.

However, that didn’t take away the fun of the trip. I am so glad I got to see them; we’d postponed the trip twice. It’s something I wanted to do as soon as I found out I was coming to Turkey, so I’m really happy I got to do it before I left.