Destination Çesme, Izmir, Türkiye

9.5.25

In March we decided to sell Naz. We’ve seen all the major destinations in Türkiye and if we sell her we could use the money to do more travel abroad.

My dream is a one way ticket to South America and explore it all.

I blame Race Across the World for this.

But now they’re in China and I need to go there too.

Realistically that sort of travel isn’t possible with 2 cats and 2 dogs and after advertising  Naz and being offered swaps for land in Bursa, a pizza business and a Hyundai car we later realised we didn’t really want to sell Naz but must make more use of her.

Sadly, 2 weeks ago we lost our dear Honey dog. Putting her to sleep broke our hearts. She had 14 wonderful years with us and we couldn’t see her suffer. She was a street dog before that, so we don’t know how old she actually was. 

She had lymphoma which had got so large it was preventing oxygen getting around her body. Her neck was huge and her face looked like she’d eaten a swarm of bees.

Bless her. We had hoped for one last van trip with her, but wasn’t to be.

Maisy dog showed plenty of excitement to come on her travels – she’s shown no sign of missing Honey. 

It was certainly weird today without the ginger one whining with excitement and running back and forth to the gate. 

So.. Çeşme.. We’ve been before, not our type of place, an expensive luxury marina and a castle.

John is doing a half marathon there on Sunday. The plan is get in, get parked, chill tomorrow, collect race pack, for John not to get injured or come last, then get out and explore some of the surrounding areas.

I never leave the house without having 2 coffees.

I sacrificed one for my flask as we hoped to leave at 10am this morning. 

Success, we left at 10.01.

Not so successful was John braking suddenly as he spotted a chemist.

Half of the flask tipped over into the glove box. I didn’t notice until hot coffee hit my toes.

Still the glove box has had a nice clean out.

If John hadn’t been in the van odd bits of wire etc would now be gone.

Good to know Naz has a great ability to perform emergency stops. 

She showed us again at the new traffic layout in Muğla, just after I commented on the stupidity of a flashing red light,  I shrieked “John!! What are you doing ” just before we almost hit a white car (because of stupidly edging forward at the flashing red light.)

Scarily John had simply not seen it. Luckily I can knit and watch the road as we almost became a crumpled heap. 

A while later I suggested parking up in Söke to eat our simits and to make a cup of coffee. 

No. Didn’t happen because we had detoured onto the green road instead. 

Of course there was nowhere to stop during the next 5 hours. 

It’s 4.30pm now. I’m gasping. 

Yesterday I showed John Serefhisar and Sığacık on the map and they look great places to visit. 

Well, we bombed through Seferhisar.  Apparently we can go on the way home. 

Are we having fun yet? No. 

Another 45 mins and we’ll reach Johns chosen park up, near to the race start which is in 2 days time… 

Thankfully, as it turned out, we got stuck behind 2 lorries carrying wind turbine blades. 

I decided enough was enough, had a big grumble and we pulled over and made coffee.  It was about 5pm and I was feeling murderous. 

A very very cute Kangal puppy amd a caffeine fix soon sorted me out. 

We found our parking space. It wasn’t the greatest, up a very very steep hill overlooking the old windmills, lots of traffic and being right next to the bins meant having to watch numerous cats risking their lives crossing the road to forage. 

Around 7pm a middle aged man on a motorbike stopped to chat. 

By 7.22pm he’d gone and collected his car, in we got, Maisy too, and off we went like the speed of light to prove that just 4 minutes drive away we were near shops and the harbour. Arrival time 7.26pm!

So very kind, and I got a ‘gayet güzel’ – very good – for my language skills. It makes all the lessons worthwhile to be able to experience such moments. The kindness still astounds me after all our years here. 

So we parked there with Naz. Definitely a better option, I had been concerned about how we would spend a day at the other place. 

We’ll go back tomorrow evening ready for the run on Sunday. 

Lentil curry and rice for tea, followed by Somethings Got to Give, gave up after 20 mins, then The Choice. As John said he could have written the script..

I’m dedicating this first blog post to our gorgeous girl. She’s very missed. Sleep tight Honey dog x