Turkiye

Just wanted to share about our trip, which commences tomorrow. J and I are headed first to Istanbul, via Kiev (cheap ticket) and then meeting up with our friends Susan and Roly down on the south coast a few days later. There we're going to walk a portion of the 400 km Lycian Way, an historic footpath from the acropolis era, for about 8 days total between Ucagiz and Finike. A British woman, Kate Clow writes about the Lycian Way here—she's responsible for the best research and way-finding guides on the walk. I emailed with her briefly for advice on which portion of the walk to do, but she refused to divulge anything at all subjective on the matter! She's a very dry character. We had to resort to miscellaneous bloggers to conclude that this part of the walk will be nice, given our late May season and our interest in having a hike that includes both beaches/coastal cliffs AND a mountain-climb. For the first couple of days, the walk follows the coast, and we'll pass through a number of small villages and sites of ruins from ancient Greek civilizations, including an oracle where priests once dismembered animals and threw their parts into the water to take clairvoyant divinations from the way the beast was consumed by sea animals. At that point we have a couple of days of uphill climb to the top of a peak and then another couple of days of descent through what is supposed to be gorgeous forested topography.

Here's our approximate trajectory, from Google earth.



I'll have to tell about the Blue Mosque, Aya Sofia, and the baths (hamams, we call them in Turkey) from the other side. We are very excited!