the night has a thousand saxaphones

So, I'm home. I will NOT be catching up on the flist, because, five days! So if there is anything I should see, please do point me at it.

( cut for road trip babblings )

Final mini-nano update: 17,000 words this November. I wrote 16 days of the 24 days I was at home, so that's kind of a sucky record. I made that 15,000 conservative goal (that's what an average of 500 words a day works out to), but totally missed the 20k or 25k I really wanted. But I'm really happy with what I wrote. The news to me is that I suck at writing what I SET OUT to write- I had three specific things I wanted to work on, and those are still untouched. Hmm. Now the trick is to keep up regular writing, because it makes me happy. *nod*

Treasure Island audiobook in the car. Most entertaning.

amara_m is always saying disparaging things about El Paso. Amara, love, you are COMPLETELY right.

*Colorado plateau is a hell of a thing. How can land be so flat 6000 feet up?

*Finally, some mountains that aren't mucking about.

*It's far more tiring than I thought to fight these gusty cross winds all the time.

*The thing about interstate truck stop towns is that they're so damn huge for their population. This town I'm in now MIGHT have a population of 200, but between the Flying J and its parking lot, two other gas stations and their parking lots, the truck wash and its parking lot, the diner and its parking lot, the mega-uber-super Wall*Mart and its parking lot (all lots sizes for trucks), the damn thing's the size of Rhode Island. Must be 2 acres of pavement for every permanent resident.

*Painted desert and petrified forest- beautiful and well worth a lengthy visit. I am becoming quite a connoisseur of desert scapes, you can trust my judgment on this.

*What is up with all the pretty freeways? All these underpasses and exchanges all painted up in geometric patterns in bright orange and blue southwest color palettes. It's a bit odd.

*Why is it that when the Winchesters get a cheap motel in the middle of nowhere, it's always funky and themed and horrifically overdecorated, but when I get a cheap motel in the middle of nowhere, it's just ugly?

*However, this god-awful Motel 6-clone does have one thing up on the spectacular canyon lodge: fitted bottom sheets. This makes ALL the difference in the WORLD. Forget your heated pool or 200 TV channels or whatever else you're advertising- I want to see "Fitted bottom sheets!" on those huge billboards. I'd ask at the office before deciding to stay someplace if I didn't think that would make me sound insane. I can't be the only one who feels this way.

Spent all day yesterday packing up and watching New Who (HOW MUCH do I love Christopher Eccleston now?). Then off to miriad's, where we ate pizza, she loaned me many books and baked REALLY good cookies, and then showed me the first part of the original Stargate movie (because I WILL end up in some variety of SG fandom. It's become completely inevitable).

Oh my lord, James Spader. James Spader is SO ADORABLE and SO DORKY and SO CUTE and SO SO SO HOT. I just... *flappy hands* No words.

And now- the minute I unhook my computer and load it in the car- I am ROADTRIPPING. Which I have been craving for months now. I have my room at the Grand Canyon all reserved and everything. *excited*

Right now my future is a distinctly hazy and frightening place, and when that happens, I want to TRAVEL so so so badly. Because when you're traveling, future and planning and money and boyfriend- none of it exists. There's just you, traveling. Total freedom, newness, wings under your feet, yadda yadda. What I need right now.

I shall have no internet until Monday earliest. Farewell, sweet flist. Goodbye, cruel world. I don't hate you, I promise *hugs and kisses*

Early morning and long bus ride back to Istanbul. The Istanbul otogar is a complete circus.  Took an hour to get ourselves to a dolmus back to Sultanhamet.  Settled in and decided to e-mail Dustin first thing- good thing too, as I realized my flight leaves Sunday, not tomorrow!  I mixed up the end of the tour and though the departure day was the day AFTER the end, not the same day.

Very embarrassing, but good, as I was very disappointed about my lack of time in Istanbul at the end.  Freaked out but managed to book at the hostel across the street for 10 Euro.  I've been really pinching pennies all trip, so I think one more day will be fine.

Got out to Aya Sofya finally.  That building has been the thing I most want to see in the entire world since... I can't remember, but I think it was when I did that paper on the Ottomans winter quarter TS year.  So, seven years. 

It was more of a mix, more of a hodgepodge, than I expected, but that just made it more interesting.  The restored mosaics are beautiful beyond belief- even after all I've read about Byzantine mosaic work, this is my first time seeing really good ones in person and it's just... striking.  The dome is boggling, and (even despite the horrible unfortunate scaffolding) the entire impression is of light and air and space and soaring vaults, just like it's always described.  It's wonderful.

Spent an hour or so in the bazaar- no buying yet, now that I have another whole day.  It really is pretty overwhelming, disorienting, but that's the fun.  The jewelry sections are quite satisfyingly sparkly.  I'm getting quite a hankering for really sparkly necklaces now.  Those lariat style ones, maybe, or the shaped collar ones that don't actually connect in front but curlicue over your collarbones, something in red gold if possible.  I would have to be in another strata of society entirely to actually wear such a thing, and I feel a bit little matchstick girl pressing my nose up to those windows, but wow. 

Our final dinner together was a place on that pedestrian underside of the Galata bridge.  You settle down on these beanbag chairs on the outer walkway, with the restaurants behind you and this incredible view of Suleymanye mosque (there are three mosques right there, actually, and I can't recall the names of the other two) and that huge fountain on the water, and the bridge stretching out to either side, and the Galata tower and the ferries, and everything spotlighted or strung with lights.  It's the most incredible date-spot I think I've ever seen, and I would give a truly astonishing amount of money to be there with a date someday, especially when it goes silent except for the splashing of the water and the call to prayer just drifts, eerie and otherworldly and beautiful, from a dozen directions at once.  I am convinced that, at least at night, Istanbul is the most beautiful city in the world. 

Kind of a nothing day.  I napped in the room till a ridiculously late hour, then did the loop of the Temple of Artemis, museum, basilica.  More napping, good dinner.

Got sucked into the shop of a carpet seller, a Kurd named Ennis, for an hour or two.  Lots of tea and backgammon.  Much talk about the people he's met, how he loves talking to travelers, about the woman from Seattle his brother married.  Then a lot of talk about Eastern Turkey and Lake Van, about the Kurds and being Kurdish and the Turkish government and identity and the pace of change in the younger generation and the need for education to resist oppression.  Good talk.

After dinner, the hamam.  That was pretty incredible- it felt completely luxurious but without being fru-fru and new-agey like spas at home. It's interesting how completely unselfconscious you can be-I thought the scrub guy and masseuse would bother me at least a little, but not at all.  The amount you can sweat, and the amount of skin you can take off, and the intensity of massage you can stand, is all pretty incredible.  you come out feeling five pounds lighter.  It also really evens out funky tan lines.  I find myself desperately wishing for someplace like that at home, just cheap and businesslike and effective. 

Half-day travel to Pamukkale, to one of the nicer hotels we've been in- big complex with this spring fed swimming pool, all un-chlorinated and mineral-y, with this big courtyard with nice decks and those cushioned tree-house things I've been seeing around, which are startlingly comfy.  Also, really nice bathrooms, actual shower curtains, little sample bottles of shampoo, and a computer with free internet! *does the awesome hotel dance*

We waited around, didn't actually head up to the site until about five, for the heat.  I'm sad that I missed the museum that way, but it's a fantastically long hot walk through the travertine pools, a long way UP from the town.  

There are old baths made into a museum, the absolutely beautiful restored temple mineral pool (which you can swim in for a jaw-dropping fee, considering it's the same damn mineral water in every gutter in town).  Ruined building complexes, the old Plutonium, where the springwater and all the lethal gasses come out.  Remains of city walls and several gates and arches, nice amphitheater, the martyrion of St Philip.  Old amphitheaters make me so sentimental, in a really embarrassing way- I have, somehow, built them up in my head in a symbolic way, until they just seem to contain all the LIFE of the entire city, for centuries, and you sit there and just drink it up until all the ghosts around you and on the stage seem real enough that walking back out into ruins is an utter shock.  I am a romantic, and classical cities are so alive and vibrant to me that it is rather embarrassing.

The travertine pools themselves are quite something, far huger in scope than I was remotely prepared for.  Absolutely beautiful, calcified lace and wedding cakes.  We saw at least four brides having their pictures taken there- it's obviously quite the trendy spot.  Also lots of stunningly immodest tourist dress- those with digital cameras were playing a "most inappropriate tourist" scavenger hunt, which Damien won with matching his-and-hers flesh-colored thongs.  I am not making that up.  

Watched sunset at the top and walked back down through the pools in the cool.  It's just about the most ludicrously romantic thing on the planet.  

Complete hell. I've been hacking and coughing and sniffling and sneezing and Kelly told me she'll take another room because I kept her awake all night. I got some pills from the pharmacy, and they work a bit but only for the cough and only for a short time.

Dolus to Fethiye. new pension is associated with a hotel with a pool, which is icy cold, so that's wonderful. Everyone else went out to trek in the Salikent Gorge- the one where Nina was telling us cute stories about schoolboys pulling you up over the rocks for 50 kurush- also, where you have to wade through the icy water. But I just couldn't face hard physical activity 3 days in a row, and I really want to hike tomorrow. Swam, gave in and paid too much for a cool swishy skirt, and ate a crepe with honey and bananas (YUM). Planning on sleeping and resting as much as possible in the air con to try to be okay for tomorrow. Met a guy at the pool whose cough sounded exactly like mine, and it turns out he has bronchitis. Oh, fun.

Kas is beautiful. It's strikingly Greek-looking, the first properly Aegean town we've been in, with the white terraced houses and red tile roofs plunging straight down to the sea. Except, of course, for the flags and Turkish signs and all the damn minarets. Apparently they don't have anyone to do the call to prayer here, so all the mosques use a tape-recorded one, and you can clearly hear the cassette player tones. It's funny.

We walked down to arrange the sea kayaking for tomorrow and ate at this fabulous place called Mama's Kitchen, with these huge meat-filled dumpling things.

Finally to the beach, which is actually a steep plunge off barnacle rocks with some slimy ladders. I've never seen a rock-cliff beach like that, but it was cool and wet and refreshing and perfect. Damien is quite the enthusiastic diver, so that was fun.

Back to the pension, which has an absolutely lovely terrace, and, amazingly, free internet.