Antalya...

My four day vacation to Antalya was horribly unlucky. It rained 80% of the time. In a city that's made to be enjoyed in the sun, I found myself thwarted by weather.

However, the third day was clear and I made the most by going to Aspendos, a little village north-east of Antalya.

That was really the only thing interesting that is worth talking about. But it's the perfect example of why you should travel alone.

Getting to Aspendos required one bus or dolmuş after another. OK. Well, four isn't that many, I suppose, but it took a few hours to finally arrive. I could have taken a tour but screw that. I wandered around the giant stadium of Aspendos and eventually met the man dressed as a gladiator.

I chided him quite a bit, laughing at him all decked out in his costume that could have landed him a role in Troy. I giggled as I took pictures of the tourists taking pictures with him. He got a bit sheepish after awhile, especially when I asked him:

"Işin ne? What's your job?"
"Bu. This," with a gesture to the outfit.

I chatted with him for awhile about the history of the stadium and then got him to draw me a map to get to the aqueduct nearby. Before I left him in peace, I got a photo of us together. You know. My new boyfriend. :-p

I set out on a 20-ish minute walk, eating an orange. Tour buses had stopped in the distance so people could take panoramas similar to mine. As I continued down the road after the last tour bus had gone, I spied a Turkish woman. By the time I passed her, she was sitting in a white lawn chair in her yard, eating oranges picked fresh from her trees.

"Merhaba," I said in Turkish.

"Merhaba! Gel! Gel! Otur! Otur! Come, come! Sit, sit." And she wouldn't have my polite refusals for the orange so I ate another one. After a few minutes, her daughter appeared. We chatted for awhile.

Where are you from? What's your job? Where's your family? How long are you here for? Who are you traveling with? Are you scared to be alone? Where are you going? I pointed with orange-juice-stained fingers to the aqueduct in the distance. Less than a kilometer from their house. The daughter took me to wash my hands at a faucet behind the house, and then took me through the orchard (picking plums as we went), my voluntary tour guide.

Özge kept asking me questions. Are you married? Do you have children? Do you want to get married? Do you want to have children? Are you happy? I asked her: Are you married? No. Do you want to get married? Not really. Do you want to have children? Meh. What do you do now that you finished school? Sell jewelry to tourists at the aqueduct site.

We passed a cemetery and I asked if it was OK to take a picture. I talked about the difference between American cemeteries. We crested the hill to the aqueduct and I was pretty excited to be so close. She showed her table with the jewelry. There was also a juice press for making OJ. She made me a glass, free.

Then we climbed up the tower into the aqueduct and sat on top of the world for awhile. We exchanged contact information--cell phone and Facebook names. She invited me back to stay with her. If only it weren't a lifetime away from Izmir.

We climbed down and waited for the bus for approximately 14 seconds before she announced it wouldn't be coming soon, and we should explore the old house ruins to pass time. I shrugged. Why not...

Then she took me on Tour Özge--up a hill, under a fence meant to keep people organized and law-abiding, and through absurd amounts of wildflowers, bushes, shrubs, nettles, burred, thorned plants and more. Over the next hour, we discovered turtles, snails, flowers, ruins, trails, no trails, rocks perfect for sitting and looking out, and the way all the way back to the stadium where I'd originally started.

By the time we finished, I was exhausted, sore, thirsty, bleeding (from falling into the nettles), mildly sunburned and dusty, dusty, dusty. I finally got onto the dolmuş to head back to civilization and could do nothing but sit in my own stunned silence.

(Check out the album for a jumpy companion photo sequence...)