...But seeing as I am a chronic insomniac, it's likely not going to be me.

I'm back, having survived a 7 day trip to Turkey. My brain is a bit fried, seeing as how I have been up for about 30 hours now, so this blog will be a bit short, to be edited later when the circuitry is all hooked up in the synapse pathways later tonight. Or until I am halfway through a bottle of chardonnay, which gets the little bastards fired up anyway.

How was Turkey? It was great. A few highlights:

- On these charter trips the people on the plane actually applaud when you land and are done with the taxi down the runway. That's right. Applaud. Doesn't exactly inspire confidence, but it has me convinced-from now on when I badge out of the revolving doors at my office, I want a standing ovation. Talk about validation!

- Managed to avoid "The Sultan's Revenge". You know. Also called "Montezuma's Revenge", or any other tribal leader. Managed to avoid it...until Saturday night, that is. Then it hit, and with a startling vengence which I will spare you the details of. Let's just say that life is currently very unpleasant.

- Managed to get a deep dark savage tan. I have some very serious white bits, but the rest of me is brown as a raisin (why do we say that? Are raisins even brown?). I would have gone topless, but seeing as how the beach was populated by tourists and the native (largely Muslim population) alike, I thought that was really flaunting it. I went topless in the Seychelles, for only the second time in my life, and I gotta' say...once they're exposed to the sun, you never want to cover them up again. Heaven. But I think it ill advised to be a foreigner, on someone else's beach, flashing egg whites up to the sun when the others are dressed far more conservatively. Besides, I think my nipples are ugly.

- Went parasailing. That's right, I spent about 10 minutes at 100 meters (that's about 35+ feet or so for us non-metrics types) The only things between me and a seriously unpleasant death were a black lycra bikini and the equivalent of a nylon pillowcase strapped to my back. I absolutely loved it. What a fabulous time. Recommended for adrenaline junkies, basket cases, and people with fatalistic attitudes.

- Discovered that the Turkish people are not only infinitely patient, but extremely kind and honest. Three times we overpaid someone, and all three times they corrected us (and once even chased us down the bazaar) to give the money back. Hey, laugh if you want, but if you are looking at bills that are 5 million lire or 500,000 lire, and you've had a drink or two, the zeros get a bit hard to count.

- Had my first real encounter with dolphins. Incredible. They swam alongside our boat (we were not allowed to swim with them, for their protection, but that didn't prevent me from having "The Big Blue" type Mitty-isms, in which a dolphin would choose me as the great and noble person on the boat, jump up, gently grasp my wrist and pull me into the ocean for a very long swim, since I would of course have an almost Dr. Doolittle ability to understand their every need. Sadly, this did not happen. But at least the dolphins did not pick anyone else on the boat, either.)

- Ran out of books. That's right, I went through the whole stack, at which point, I could not find a bookstore that sold them in English, and the hotel only had a large tattered collection of Swedish and German novels. Then, I found three books in English. Romance novels. And I have to say, I was so desperate that I read them. Yes, I got to read about Lord Ranulf sweeping the spirited Saxon wench Giselle off her feet and protecting her from the evil robber baron. And I was treated to two Catherine Cookson novels-which say, on the cover, that she is "Britain's Best-Loved Storyteller". High praise indeed. Tolkein, Milne, Lewis, (to name a few) must be turning over in their graves as we speak. It was too horrible. I realized that a whole 20 pages were missing from one of the Cookson novels, and I didn't even notice.

- Fed many strays, which actually endeared me to wait staff and they comped drinks. This did not endear me to the hotel staff, when said strays tried to follow me into the hotel. This would explain why they never refilled our toilet paper and we had to buy the damn stuff. Turkey+holiday+no toilet paper=not an attractive combination.

I think that's a bit all right now. I'm a bit wound up and actually quite angry about a non-related blog issue, so will return when I make more sense later.

-H.

PS- I did read two extremely exquisite books on holiday, which I recommend. The first, "The Only Boy For Me," by Gil McNeil, made me laugh so hard tears poured from my eyes. It could be the heat or the Turkish beer (Efes-what a hangover!) since it is not usually my kind of book, but I loved it. The other one, "Lovely Bones", by Alice Sebold, had me more enraptured than a book has had me in a long, long time. She is brilliant, fucking brilliant in fact, and makes me want to quit writing ever, since the comparison falls way short.

Posted by: Everydaystranger at 08:18 AM | No Comments | Add Comment
Post contains 937 words, total size 5 kb.