سورية

Here's the link!

So, we arrived at the Syrian embassy some time around 10 or 11 AM, I believe. It was unbelievably hot, and there was no AC inside, just lots of big open windows. The place was pretty dingy: a long, large hallway with lots of counters along the side for various nationalities to get their passports stamped. There were no other Americans, so we were kind of on our own, but already we got to see how friendly Syrians were. We'd stand around and look confused and someone would come up to try to help us. Eventually, some officials came out from behind a door and determined that we were Americans and needed visas, so he led us back to an office where we sat around for a bit and then got grilled about all of our travel plans. The officials spoke a little English, but we had to conduct a good portion of the transaction in Arabic, so it was really helpful to have Matt with us. It actually wasn't quite so intense as we might have expected. The one dodgy bit was when we got to discussing getting from Jordan back to Cairo. Of course, Syria hates Israel, and they don't grant entry to any person having an Israeli stamp on his passport, or even an exit stamp from a port adjacent to Israel, as that obviously implies an Israeli entry. This was the primary reason that we did the trip in this direction, rather than going up through the Middle East and flying home from Athens. If we'd done that, we'd have had to worry about keeping Israel from stamping our passports.

Anyway, they wanted to know if we'd be passing through Israel on our way back from Jordan to Egypt. I'd of course made sure that Matt knew not to tell them that we had plans to visit the Holy Land, but I failed to brief him adequately on the details. When they asked us how we'd get from Jordan to Egypt without passing to Israel, he told them we'd take a train. The thing about that is, Egypt and Jordan share no land border, so you either have to take a ferry or enter Israel. When we got back out to the lobby, I asked Matt about that interaction, and when we realized what had happened, we started to get a little worried that they'd think this meant we in fact were going to Israel. I began to rehearse my Arabic for, "I planned the trip so he didn't know that we were taking a ferry from Aqaba to Nuweiba. We will not be taking a train and we will not be going through Israel." After worrying about that for a little while, the boredom began to set in. We tried to read or study, but it was so sweltering that we could hardly concentrate. On top of that, our only sleep from the previous night had been on the bus, so we were all exhausted. I was the only one brave (or stupid) enough to act on it though. I laid right down on the floor and put my head on my backpack and fell asleep for somewhere between two and three hours. I was very impressed with myself, though apparently I was quite a source of interest for all the folks passing through: the dirty sleeping American kid.

When I woke up, we still had heard nothing back, so we each took turns walking down to the duty-free shop, though we didn't really want to spend any money there until we knew how much the visas were going to cost. This was a source of some concern. Visas at the border were supposed to be around $20, but Americans who get their visas from the embassy in Washington have to pay $100. We didn't know if that extra $80 was a result of the additional bureaucratic levels it would have to be passed through coming from the US, or if it was just a tax for being a rich American. We were of course hoping for the former. After another hour or two of waiting, one of the officials who had interviewed us motioned to me to come over. He proceeded to confuse me greatly about what he wanted me to do, but I went off to try and do it anyway. There was something about how I had to pay in American dollars for something that was equivalent to some amount in Syrian pounds. After wandering around trying to gather a little more information about what exactly I should be doing, I recruited Matt to come back with me and help me figure out what my task truly was. They seemed a little annoyed that we were having so much trouble, and so they told Matt the same thing they told me, but we were still confused. On the third return, they realized we were hopeless so one of the men escorted us around the place. We had to take the American money which we had obtained across the street at a restaurant because the actual money changer wouldn't change Turkish money and we had to bring that money over to the bank to get it changed into Syrian pounds which we then had to buy receipts with which were then used to obtain stamps from this little office way in the back of the place which we then had to take back to the office and then we were given everything to go to the main counter for non-Arab foreigners entering Syria where they then applied the stamps. Ugh... how they expected three far-from-fluent Americans to figure that out is beyond me.

But we made it, and it cost us less than $20 each! So with our new Syrian visas in our passports, we left that damned sweltering hall where we'd been for the last five or six hours (better than we had hoped for, especially considering one group of our friends was stuck there for more than twelve), and we walked through the border. We were hoping to see a bunch of taxis waiting on the other side. There weren't any. Looking at my map, I guessed we were maybe sixty kilometers or so from Aleppo. Way too far to walk. But we started walking anyway, and for the second time in our trip, we pointed our fingers down at the road and tried to hitch-hike it. We only had to wait two or three cars before a little fat man in a little fat sedan stopped for us. We told him we wanted to go to Aleppo, and he motioned for us to get in. It was awesome! He was from Turkey and spoke no English or even Arabic, so we had to communicate in hand gestures and the tiny bit of Turkish we'd picked up over the past week or so, but it was really nice. He was very friendly and the ride was pleasant enough. When we got to Aleppo, he let us out somewhere not far from downtown. There were plenty of taxis so it was good enough for us. I tried to pay him but he absolutely refused. He seemed just happy to have been of help. It was a really heartening experience.

At that point we hailed a cab to go further downtown, and the driver was once again just overwhelmingly friendly to us. He didn't try to rip us off and he was very excited to meet Americans, in spite of governmental tensions. He gave us a quick tour of the city as we drove through it, and he let us out right at the Clock Tower, one of Aleppo's central landmarks. It's a really neat old building, one of several things in Aleppo that feels more like it belongs in Europe, but somehow still works well there. We headed from there to one of a couple hotels recommended by the Lonely Planet. Since we had been unsure of our ability to get in to Syria, we hadn't booked any of our hotels from here on out previously. The first hotel we asked in at was booked, so we kept going just down the alley to the next closest hotel, and they had a triple for us. It was a really cute little place with comfy beds, our own bathroom, AC, and even a little, inscrutable TV. Matt was exhausted and even dirtier than Peter and I, so he decided to stay back and take a shower while Peter and I went food-hunting. Syria, and Aleppo in particular, is said to have some of the greatest food in the world, and our first experience certainly affirmed that. We wandered around the nearby alleyways until we found a little shawerma stand. We'd of course been eating lots of shawermas back in Cairo, but Syria is the source of this type of food, and so we were pumped to try the real mccoy. We bought three of them, along with a big order of french fries and three Fantas as well, and this is when we first saw how absurdly cheap this country was, even compared with Egypt. All of that together cost us a little over one hundred Syrian pounds, or two dollars. Amazing!

After eating and chilling for a little while, we decided to hit up what we could of the city before it got too late. Syria definitely felt like the most cramped period of the trip, in terms of how much there was to do and how little time we had to do it. I absolutely need to go back there at some point in my life and do the country more justice. Anyway, we headed up to the Christian district. Most of the attractions up there being churches, we figured they might be open late. It was a really enchanting area. The district is all interwoven by these tiny, picturesque alleyways, and you emerge from them into the courtyard of some great church. This really felt like Europe to me, like some town in Northern Germany or something. After wandering around checking that stuff out for an hour or so, we headed to a little restaurant in one of the alleyways that the Lonely Planet recommended as some of the best light fare and drinking in Aleppo. It was incredibly classy, but of course still very cheap. We got some hummus and some wine and beer and started to get a little tipsy. It didn't take too much drinking before we were convinced of what we were going to do with our night. Ever since our hammam in Istanbul, we'd been craving another scrubdown. Unfortunately, they were pretty pricey throughout Turkey, but as early as Bandirma, I'd noticed in the Lonely Planet that Aleppo and Damascus both had some very reputable hammams, and like everything else in Syria, they were absurdly cheap. Whereas we'd spent around $30 or $40 each at the hammam in Istanbul, the ones in Syria were quoted at four or five bucks tops. We finished up our drinks, went back to the hotel to get a change of clothes, and then set out to take advantage of the cheapest professional massages we would ever get without dating a massage therapist.

The hammam the book most strongly recommended was women only on that night, and the second one it mentioned was closed. So we headed for the third one. It was a very serene, antique place, just like the one in Istanbul. There were a few men laying around the big open tea room, and they were very excited to see some tourists looking for a bath. It was just as cheap as the book had predicted, and so we undressed, threw on our towels, and headed in. There were probably a dozen men hanging out in the sauna, all of whom were immediately very friendly and spoke the best English we'd encountered so far in Syria. One guy started talking to Matt and Peter, while another guy came over and introduced himself to me. He was wicked nice, asking me all about what had brought me to Syria, where I was from, what I was studying. It was all good and nice... until he says to me, "So, are you gay or are you straight?" I blinked at him for a second and then asked him to repeat himself. "Are you gay or are you straight?" "Oh, I'm... I'm straight." He nodded and looked a little bit miffed, but still friendly, he asked me, "What about those two?" He said, motioning toward Peter and Matt. "Are they gay?" "No, I'm pretty sure they're straight too." I almost apologized, but fortunately I caught myself. "Is this a gay hammam?" I asked awkwardly. In a very matter-of-fact tone, he replied "Yes," and nodded firmly. As he began to walk away, I struggled to get Matt and Peter's attention without being too obvious. Once I managed to pull them aside, I told them of my discovery. They were skeptical, however. We were, after all, in one of the most conservative countries in the world, a country where homosexuality is illegal, not to mention severely punishable. I put it aside and tried to relax. Soon enough, though, another man had come up to me and we had a nearly identical conversation. Once again, after he'd questioned my sexual orientation, I asked him if this was the gay hammam, and he told me that it was. I didn't need any more convincing after that, and I told the other guys once again about what I'd discovered. At this point they started to believe me. No other men approached us to ask about for which team we batted. I assume they all spread the news pretty swiftly and so we were politely ignored... for the most part. We went into the room with fewer men and managed to relax a little, that is until one surly-looking Syrian man entered it and sat down not far from Peter. Slowly I began to notice that this man was only looking at Peter, nowhere else. He was, in fact, staring at Peter. I began trying to make Peter laugh, as he had clearly noticed, and he was trying with all his might to ignore it casually. It was pretty hysterical. Matt was, of course, totally oblivious, just basking in the warmth of the steam. Just then, a wiry old gentleman entered and motioned to me. It was time for my massage.

I went back into the other room where he laid me out on the stone and began to soap me down. As he began massaging my legs, it seemed to me that his hands were getting a little close for comfort. I began to fear this was a little more than just a gay hammam, that perhaps these Syrians were also engaged in the world's oldest profession, but then I told myself that even if a gay hammam could slide by under such a regime, certainly a combination gay hammam and male brothel would be a bit much. But I couldn't really know. I decided that if he touched any of my no-no bits, I'd just ask him to stop, and being a friendly Syrian man, he would understand and comply. To help relax, I just began imagining how awkward Peter was about to feel during his massage. Of course, he didn't touch any of my no-no bits, and all-in-all it was a very relaxing, if a little disconcerting, massage. As I got up and went to go sit down again, I saw him bring Peter in and I smiled at him, told him to have a good time. Sure enough, as soon as Peter was finished, he came in looking a little shocked and told me about how close the man's hands had gotten and how he'd kept tugging down on his towel. The man had waved his hands and indicated that there was no problem, that he was just doing his job, but still Peter was very uncomfortable. Of course, after he'd had some time to recoop, he admitted that it had in fact been a very good massage. After sweating for a little while more, we rinsed ourselves off and headed out to the tea room to dry out and drink some tasty tea. Once we'd settled up and redressed, we headed out and laughed our asses off in the street. We'd found maybe the only gay hammam in Syria, just our luck. Why couldn't we find the only hammam in Syria totally owned and operated by beautiful Syrian women? In the end, I found it to be a pretty positive experience, though, actually. It was interesting to see what homosexuals do and how they surivive in that part of the world, and even if it was a little awkward, we were alive, our no-no bits in tact, and we'd gotten to witness something very rare as well.

Needless to say, after all that excitement, we decided to call it a night.

The next morning, we got up early and headed back to the Christian Quarter to check out some Armenian churches and other spots that had been closed the night prior. Apparently Syria has a large and old community of Armenian Christians. It was here that we ran into our first AUCians of Syria, and we ran into a good many, in spite of the visa issue. It became clear that our worrying had been somewhat unfounded, and that the Syrians were just talking trash when they said Americans can't get in without already having a visa. So we explored the Armenian stuff and then headed back downtown to check out the National Museum, which was full of a lot of the same archeological junk from the same empires that had ruled the rest of the places we'd already seen, but it was still neat. We headed back toward the Christian Quarter once more to grab some lunch at a very classy and delicious establishment. After that, we went down to the old city, the Islamic part of town. The suqs, or markets, in Aleppo are supposed to be some of the most amazing in the Middle East, and they were pretty overwhelming. There's just miles and miles of tunnels filled with shops and people and all sorts of things I can't even remember. After perusing them for a little while, we emerged at the Citadel, which was totally awesome! It's a huge elevated fortress surrounded by a vast, albeit dry, moat. There's a huge stone bridge shooting up to the Citadel. It's all very breathtaking. We went up inside and found a vast palace to explore: quite elaborate. There were theaters and dungeons and throne rooms and mosques and all sorts of neat shit. There was a sweet tower on the far side which afforded amazing views of all of Aleppo. After we'd had our fill, we headed back down to the street and went to a quaint, if a little touristy, cafe where we smoke some sheesha, drank some tea and fruit drinks, and generally relaxed. Aleppo is a pretty focused city, and we'd covered most of it already, so it was nice to relax a bit. On our way back out, we stopped by the Great Mosque, the sister mosque to the elaborate and historical Umayyad Mosque which we would soon see in Damascus. It was a beautiful structure, and it was filled with prayer and children playing. I've probably said this already, but I so prefer the mosque atmosphere to that of a church. So much more laid back. By this point, it was dinnertime and most sites in the city were closed, so we headed up to get some food. Our sleeper train for Damascus was to leave at midnight, so we had a few hours to kill. Luckily the restaurant we chose for dinner was a very good place to kill them. It was a really nice setting right on the roof of a building downtown. We spent most of the time surrounding the huge and fantastic meal teaching Peter how to read Arabic and having quite an intense discussion on philosophy. Afterwards, we headed to the internet cafe to kill some more time. We'd toyed with the idea of doing another hammam, but I think Peter was still a little wounded from our last experience. At the internet cafe, we ran into more friends from school, and I got to chat for a long time on Skype with my mom and sister. It was very weird to think that I would see my mom again so soon, before I saw Egypt again even, and yet there she was on the webcam hanging out with my sister in New York. Technology is wiggidy wiggidy wiggidy whack.

Finally, around 10:30 PM, we headed up toward the train station, which was somewhat confusing, but we got everything worked out and got on our train in time. Peter and I shared a cabin, while Matt slept in a room with an Iraqi refugee, which was pretty crazy. Once again, the sleeper was delightful, although I think we all wished it had been a little further between Aleppo and Damascus. We only got about five or six hours of sleep, but it was worth it.

When the train pulled in, we stumbled across the platform and tried to figure out where we were. We were a little too exhausted though, so we gave up and just got in a cab and told him to take us to the center of the city. From there, we managed to sort of make our way around and find a hostel, though the map the Lonely Planet has of Damascus is terrible. I feel like our experience there was somewhat marred by the fact that the map was so bad and we kept getting lost. Everywhere else was easy-peasy; we had zero problems. But in Damascus we were hopeless. So we found a hostel and got some breakfast there. It was a little while before stuff started to open up, so we took our time hanging out and talking. Finally, we got moving and decided to begin by securing our bus tickets to Amman, which we'd failed to be able to do in Aleppo, much to our chagrin and nervousness. I'd read that those buses filled up fast, and the last thing we needed was to be unable to get out of Syria for a week and miss picking my mom up as well as some classes most likely. Of course, that's overreacting a little, but we were a little nervous. I really wish I could do this trip again, now that I understand how simple most of that stuff is and how little there's really anything to get worked up about.

So we walked toward the bus station from which the Lonely Planet claimed buses to Amman left. We got there, and it appeared to be just a big empty parking lot with a few stands and buses scattered around. Looking very confused, we began walking around it and soon enough a cab driver came up to us to try and give us some help. When he found that we needed to go to Amman, he told us we were in the wrong place, that the correct bus station was out of town a little. I was reluctant to believe him, but after a week and a half of this sort of stuff, I was growing pretty tired of this game, so we just got in his cab and he took us to this other bus station. He was of course quite friendly and sure enough he was right about the bus thing. Perhaps it is possible to take a bus from the station we went to, but this was just as easy. As he drove us back in to Damascus, between dancing to the Arab music on the radio and asking us about America, he told us he'd pick us up the next morning in time for our bus. We shook on it and went out to explore the city.

Working as best we could with our terrible map, we managed to work our way to the old city, where most of Damascus's sites can be found. We started with the suq, which, though less laberinthine than it's counterpart in Aleppo, seemed much vaster and more impressive. We walked down a long main artery of the suq to emerge in front of the aforementioned Umayyad Mosque, and if I thought I had been impressed by the Great Mosque, the Umayyad Mosque freakin' blew my mind! It was huge and open and beautiful and filled with astoundingly intricate gold mosaics. To top it off, we ran into even more friends from AUC! The other cool thing about this mosque is that it was built on the site of an early Byzantine church, which in turn had been built on the site of a Roman temple to Zeus. Among the awe-inspiring mosque were ruins of these other two centers of worship. Sweet!

From there we wandered over Salah El-Din's (or Saladin, as many Westerners call him) mausoleum. That was quite a guy. He freakin' kicked those Christian devils right out of Arabia. Quite a legacy, so it was pretty neat to see where he is now: a gaudy, overdone tomb with a big gift shop attached. I think there was a gift shop.

After that little gem, we wandered over to get some lunch and then realized we needed more money. The Lonely Planet was informative enough to tell me there were no ATMs in the old city, so we had to head back toward our hotel. We had a pretty neat walk out of the old city, in spite of the fact that we got lost again. We saw this neat modern Muslim academy and then we started talking with this really nice guy who showed us how to get where we were going. He and Matt seemed to have a really good conversation. By the time we made it back to the hotel, we were exhausted, and though we only meant to lay down for a minute or two, we passed out for about two hours. When we woke up, everything was starting to close, and we'd missed some of the stuff we'd wanted to see, but once again, after ten or eleven days of non-stop touring and getting up early, we didn't beat ourselves up too much about taking a nap.

But still we headed back to the old city to try to make the most of the time we had left in Damascus. We went for the Christian Quarter again, which is pretty historic since some of the first Christians settled in Damascus back in the day. Some stuff was closed, but we did get to check out the House of St. Ananias, which was basically a little church in an old basement, but it was neat. From there we walked back to the Umayyad Mosque to what the Lonely Planet calls one of the best sheesha places in the Middle East, and it was pretty great, though mostly for the atmosphere. We were right in an alley coming off the mosque. It was phenomenal for people watching and the mosque itself was pretty awe-inspiring that close to us. We smoked sheesha and drank tea for an hour or two, and it was probably one of the most serene experiences of the whole trip.

Afterwards, we decided to head up and get some dinner across town in one of the newer districts. We got marginally lost, but we found it and it was pretty nice. We toyed with the idea of another hammam, but we decided it would be best to get to bed early so we wouldn't be too tired the next day. Of course, by the time we got back and fell asleep, it was past midnight anyway, but whatever. The next morning we got up around 6:30 or so to go downstairs and wait for our cabbie from the day prior who was slated to pick us up to bring us back to the bus station. We gave him about fifteen minutes, but he didn't show up, so we just grabbed a cab. We were talking with a Mexican guy while hailing the cab, and it turned out he was going the same place we were, so he hopped in and we split the fare. He was a really nice guy, maybe a little older than we were, and he was on a somewhat similar trip, though in the other direction. He had started in Cairo and was headed up through to Croatia of all places. We parted ways at the station and went to hop on our bus. We were the first ones on, but it slowly filled up, and then it left and went back into Damascus, which was kind of annoying, and there it picked up a lot more people.

When everyone was on, we headed back out, following signs for Al-Urdan, the Arabic name for Jordan, and it was only an hour or so before we had hit the border. It was exciting to be headed to a new place, but I think we were all disappointed by how little time we'd gotten to spend in Syria. It was definitely one of the most surprising and fun places of the trip, and in retrospect, Peter and I both often place it as the highpoint of that journey.

Türkiye

First of all, really sorry this has taken so long. But no one's probably reading any more anyway, so whatever.

I'll start you off with the link to the pictures.

When we woke up on the train from Thessaloniki, we were still quite far from Istanbul, though we had trouble finding out exactly how far. We wound up finally getting into the city around 10 AM, I think, which was two hours later than expected. I was really shocked to see how unpunctual the trains were, as the vast majority of my experience with them comes from my time in Holland, where they're like clockwork. Once we arrived, we went to buy as many train tickets for our time in Turkey as we could. Unfortunately, the early ferry and train to Bandirma and then Izmir had been cancelled, so we had to settle for an afternoon one, which meant more time in Istanbul, but no time to see Izmir, which, while allegedly rather boring, is Turkey's third largest city. We didn't get too broke up about it. The bigger disappointment came when we learned that there were no spots left in the sleeper car for the train from Izmir to Ankara. But whatever... Oh! While buying the tickets, a couple came up to Peter and asked him if he was from Houlton (he was wearing his Houlton shirt). He said no, but that he has family there and is from Maine. Turned out they were from North Yarmouth! What are the odds!

So we left the station and headed for our hostel. After getting all our stuff set up there and eating some lunch, we headed over to the hostel where some of our friends from Cairo were staying. Our roommate Stoo and our friends Sam and Adam had all decided to spend their vacation in Istanbul, so we had hoped to meet up with them there. By the time we got to their hostel, however, it was one in the afternoon and they were of course out seeing the city. We moved on, hoping to meet up with them later.

With only one day in Istanbul, it was kinda tough to decide which sites to hit, but we went for the big ones. Our hostel was only about five minutes walk from Aya Sophia and the Blue Mosque. The former was closed that day, so we hit up the latter, which is one of the most beautiful structures I've ever seen. It's funny to think back to when I was thirteen and went there. At the time, Istanbul was the most exotic place I'd ever been to, and the Blue Mosque was pretty much the only aspect of Muslim culture I'd ever encountered. This time, Istanbul seemed like Cairo on downers. It's a beautiful city, but it's very Europeanized and incredibly clean. I've decided Cairo is like learning to play an instrument for fun. As a source of entertainment, watching a movie is much easier, but learning an instrument rewards effort. Cities like Athens and Istanbul and really any Western city are awesome, but being in them doesn't give you the same feeling of accomplishment and satisfaction, for lack of better terms.

After the Blue Mosque, we went to see the Hippodrome, which was very disappointing. We expected some sort of a big arena that you could go into. It turns out that nowadays it's basically just some part of town that they call the Hippodrome, or something. I dunno... it confused me. Anyway, there were some neatish pillars, one of which was taken from Luxor. All those countries just wish they could be Egypt. Give it up, guys. From there, we walked over to Topkapi Palace, the Versailles of Turkey. It was pretty sprawling and awe-inspiring, especially the Harem. We didn't get enough time to explore all the stuff, but we saw some neat things. Probably the most amusing part was a little museum that claimed to contain Moses' staff and Mohammed's footprint, as well as many other equally incredible objects.

After sitting outside the palace watching boats go through the Bosphorus, we left that part of town and took the (brand new) tram to the Grand Bazaar. This was another thing that overwhelmed me when I saw it eight years ago, but this time around it seemed tame compared to Khan el-Khalili. I didn't buy anything but some shampoo and toothpaste. It was I think at this point that we started to realize we might be getting into some real financial difficulties. When Peter called his mom the morning before (Sunday), she had said she'd put the money in my account as soon as she could, which meant Tuesday, as the banks are obviously closed on Sundays, and Monday was some sort of a stupid American holiday. It was now Monday evening, and we realized that at the rate we were going, if the money didn't happen to make it in the next day, we could run out very quickly. Matt's cash was running low as well, and we didn't know how soon his mom was going to be able to stick some more into my account. But we just crossed our fingers and assumed all would be well.

We took the tram back from the bazaar and while walking to our hostel, would ya believe it?, we ran into Stoo, Adam, and Sam. We walked back with them to their hostel and made our evening plans, and we also discovered that some of the girls we hang out with were staying in our very hostel! We went back and ran into them there, and after shooting the breeze for a bit, got our stuff ready for one of the most exciting experiences of the trip: a Turkish bath! Peter briefly described it in a previous entry, but I'll remind you. In a Turkish bath, you take off your clothes and put on just a towel, and then you go into a large stone sauna and sit for a while, exfoliating and whatnot. After that, you are given soap and a coarse rag to clean yourself, or if you pay a little more, a Turkish guy will do it for you. Matt wasn't quite comfortable with that part of the deal, but Peter and I were on board! It sounds a little weird, but everything we'd heard about it said that it was an amazingly relaxing experience, as well as a compulsory part of being in Turkey. And it was incredible. The sauna was very comfortable, and after laying there for ten minutes or so, we were motioned over by our respective bathers. They started by massaging our chests, backs, arms, and legs, which felt really good after a few days of carrying around heavy backpacks. Then they scrubbed our skin, which removed the last layer of the sunburn I'd acquired in the Sinai a couple weeks prior. After that they doused us with cool water and scrubbed us down. Finally, they rinsed us off again and we were allowed to sit around for as much longer as we wanted. The Turkish bath we went to, or hammam as they're called locally, is one of the oldest in Istanbul, from around the 15th century I believe, and it was incredibly beautiful just to lay on the warm stones and stare up at the dome. When we'd finally had enough, we went and changed into clean clothes and sat around drinking fresh squeezed juice. Fantastic. I've never felt that clean in my life.

We headed back to the hostel to meet the guys for dinner/festivities. It turned out they'd already eaten, but some of the girls were hungry, so we went to get some food. We found a cute little place in a side alley that was pretty decent. All in all a very pleasant time had by all. We returned to our hostel, which is apparently Istanbul's central partying spot for backpackers. There were lots of people out front drinking and smoking sheesha and generally having a good time. The guys were there, already pretty drunk, and believe it or not, Jay was there, too! He was in the middle of his own wild trip around the Middle East, had just gotten in to Istanbul, was taking a cab to his hostel, and he drove by the guys sitting on the street drinking. He jumped out of the cab long enough to say hi, ran back and dropped off his stuff, and then joined them. It was pretty ridiculous. Anyway, we sat around and most people drank or kept drinking, though I didn't really feel like it just then. There were so many Australians and New Zealanders, apparently because of Anzac Day, which commemorates the defeat of the Allied forces at Gallipoli during WWI. Every year, thousands of Aussies and Kiwis flock to Istanbul to make a pilgrimage to the site where many of their ancestors died trying to get supports past the Ottoman Empire to the Russians. Ataturk and his Ottoman troops, however, did a very good job at holding them off, though the battle lasted nine months and left a third of a million people dead. So there's your little history lesson. It would have been neat to go and see the battlefields, and they're right next to Troy, so we coulda hit that too, but I wouldn't have wanted to have done it at the absolute busiest time of the year. We didn't have time anyway.

So after our lovely night with the boys, we said goodbye for two weeks and went to bed. The next morning, we got up, had breakfast, checked out, and went to see a few more sites before our noon ferry. First we did the Aya Sophia, which is overwhelmingly impressive but much uglier than the Blue Mosque, which sits across from it. Matt liked it better, though. After spending an hour or so there, we headed for the Museum of Turkish and Islamic Art, which had lots of cool rugs and Quran stands and whatnot. Overall I found it to be a fairly boring museum though. And so we headed off to the dock to grab our ferry and bid farewell to Istanbul. We only got a day there, but I feel like we saw a lot of good stuff and got a pretty good feel for it. It definitely deserves a longer stay though. Oh well, next time.

The ferry was pretty boring once we got used to how awesomely fast it was, and it was awesomely fast. We crossed the Sea of Marmara in two hours and arrived in Bandirma around 2:30. Our train to Izmir was leaving a little over an hour after that, and since we were hungry, we decided to get some food. Reasonable boys, us. Peter's mom was slated to put the money in that morning, which means mid to late afternoon in Turkey, at some point while we were on the train, so while we were in Bandirma we had to make do with what little money remained to us. I wasn't even sure if there was enough left in my account to make another withdrawal at an ATM. Between the three of us we had a little over twenty lira, which should have been enough for lunch. We sat down at a restaurant in the train station and had a modest meal, but we foolishly did not ask for prices or check a menu. With about fifteen minutes remaining until our train's departure, we called for the bill. The waiter came over and began tallying everything up on a napkin. We watched him as he wrote the price of each thing we had eaten. All was going well, we'd reached maybe ten lira, until he hit our main courses, which totaled more than twenty lira alone! The three of us looked at each other, our faces written all over with "Oh shit," and we managed to communicate to the waiter that we didn't have enough money. We asked him to guide me to an ATM, and he pointed to Peter's watch. Thinking he wanted Peter to give him the watch in return for the meal, Peter shook his head. He just wanted to know how much time we had until our train left though. Seeing that we had a little over ten minutes, he motioned to me to follow him. We'd all expected him to take me across the street or something. Instead, we jumped in his car and shot across town to an ATM. There was no parking nearby, so he parked where he could and I got out and ran to the machine, where there was of course a line, though thankfully not a huge one. When it was my turn, I went to do the transaction, praying it would go through. I requested fifty lira, and the machine told me to wait. I listened attentively, and when I heard the machine begin to count money, it was the most relieved I'd been in a very, very long time.

So I ran back to the car and we rushed back to the train station. Jumping out of the car, I flashed the money at Matt and Peter, who in turn showed me faces as relieved as mine. We paid and got on the train in time. It wasn't until we were safely moving away from Bandirma that we started to lament how absurdly overpriced that lunch was. But oh well, we made it. People have since asked me if I was ever afraid in the Middle East, and I always say no. But that's a lie. That was the one time I was afraid.

The train plodded through northwestern Turkey for the next eight hours or so. It was pleasant enough, and the scenery was really beautiful. Instead of reading any of the many books I had to finish before my return to Cairo, I took this opportunity to digest just about every page of the background and history sections of my Lonely Planet guide to the Middle East. It was good to get a deeper understanding of the whole region.

The train didn't actually take us all the way to Izmir. The tracks right around the city were being worked on or something, so it dropped us off about half an hour north, and we took a bus the rest of the way. At this point, we were just about out of money, and the walk from the train station to an ATM was a very tense one. We got there, and I decided first to check my balance, which the ATM was unable to do. A lot of ATMs in the Middle East don't take my card, so our first reaction was to leave that machine, thinking my card was unusable in it. We started to look for another ATM, which normally wouldn't have been a big deal, except that it was almost 10 PM, and Izmir wasn't our final stop. We had to get to our hotel in Kusadasi, which was still an hour and a half or so away, and we didn't know how late the buses ran. It was then that it occurred to me that perhaps that ATM just couldn't do a balance check. Jogging back over to it, I tried to take out a pretty big sum, thinking that this would let us know if Peter's money had gone in. When we heard the machine counting, we all squealed with joy (maybe not Matt) and ran to get a cab to the bus station. We caught a bus to Kusadasi that was leaving right then, and we got to our hostel no problem. There we were treated like kings, since it still wasn't quite tourist season, and we were some of the only people staying in the hostel. After having some dinner, we went to bed.

The next morning, we all threw on our bathing suits and walked to the beach to try for a swim in the Aegean. When I was thirteen, Kusadasi was one of the ports my cruise ship pulled in to, and I've always regretted that I didn't get enough time to go swimming in the beautiful beaches of that town. Eight years later, however, I had a lot of trouble even finding a beach. Instead we explored the remains of an old pirate castle on an island just off the coast. We headed back to our hostel after that to check out, but first I called a few places to find out about taking a ferry to Cyprus should we get turned away at the Syrian border. As our hopeful entry into Syria drew nearer, I became more and more nervous about not getting in. The places I called did not help my anxiety. The ferry I had hoped to take to Cyprus as a contingency plan would not be running until May, though they did give me the number for a ferry that ran from another town along the Mediterranean coast. This was better than nothing, but the more I thought about our alternate plan, the more expensive and difficult I realized it would be. Ferries from Turkey to Cyprus are pretty cheap, but they really don't exist from Cyprus to Israel, and while I believe there is one to Port Said in Egypt, that one is rather pricey. To make matters worse, Cyprus is divided into halves based on political disputes between the Turks and the Greeks over the island. All Turkish ferries go to the Northeastern half, Turkish Cyprus, a country which is unrecognized by every other country in the world save for Turkey. Therefore, all ferries and cruise ships to Israel and Egypt obviously leave from Greek Cyprus. We'd have to cross a disputed border in order to get out of the country, and while the border is becoming demilitarized and easier to cross, it just didn't seem particularly fun. At this point I began spending every spare moment praying that we would make it into Syria.

We also went to an internet cafe that morning in Kusadasi where wrote an email to my mom letting her know what had happened and asking her if she could put a little more money in my account to help us get through until everything got worked out. After that I checked my online banking to confirm that Peter's mom had in fact put the money in. I found that money had indeed gone in, but only $500. That was more than enough to get us out of the rut we were in, but Peter had asked his mom to transfer $2000 of his money to the account. Assuming the $500 was from Peter's mom, he wrote to her asking her to put the rest in at some point fairly soon, and we kept going.

After checking out, we took a minibus to Selcuk, another big backpacking town, and the closest spot to Ephesus, our big destination in the region. Though we only spent about half an hour in Selcuk proper, two pretty hilarious events took place. The first concerned our luggage. Every place we'd go, we'd find a spot to leave our backpacks because, as I mentioned in the Greece entry, they were a bitch to lug around with us. We asked the folks where we purchased bus tickets back to Izmir for that evening if we could leave them there, and they motioned toward the back of the office at a spot where we could put them. Peter and I had no problem setting our bags down, but Matt somehow lost his balance as he got rid of his. Reaching out toward a curtain hanging from the wall to steady himself, he soon discovered that there was in fact no wall behind said curtain. The curtain was instead covering a little nook within which there were more bags. Matt started to fall into the curtain and he lashed out at anything around him to keep himself up. As he fell farther in, he tripped again over the bags which were inside. Finally after about fifteen seconds of delayed falling, he hit the ground somewhere behind the curtain. I saw the whole thing, and by this point, I was laughing so hard I was crying. My laughter and the noise of Matt's fall drew the attention of Peter as well as the Turkish guys working at the bus station. As soon as every one realized what had happened, they were laughing just as hard, and the Turkish guys were all explaining it in laughter-riddled Turkish to the others who hadn't been around. Matt got back on his feet and walked out proudly. "Laugh it up, asshole!" he said to me with his hands in the air. And laugh it up I did. It was probably one of the five funniest things I've ever seen in my life, and I laughed all the way down the street to the ATM where the next hilarious thing happened.

Actually this one wasn't nearly as hilarious, and at the time, it was somewhat frightening. I got some money out of the ATM, only to forget to take my card as I walked away. Fortunately there was a group of nice Turks behind us who got our attention and I retrieved my card without it being eaten by the machine or, heaven forbid, stolen. That was pretty stupid, but once we were in the clear, it was pretty funny. If I'd lost that card, then we really woulda been up shit creek.

So we walked from Selcuk to Ephesus, which was only a couple kilometers. On the way, we stopped at the remains of the Temple of Artemis, which was once one of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World. Unfortunately all that remains of it is some rubble and one column, but I actually found that really awesome, and it led to some musings about what American ruins tourists will be exploring two thousand years from now, and what will be left of them.

Ephesus was just as awesome as I remembered it, and Peter and Matt had a grand old time walking around it too. It was a beautiful day, and in spite of it not being tourist season yet, there were a shitload of people there, especially Asians. So many Asian tourists in Turkey! We left the main center of Ephesus and continued walking around, exploring some of the other ruins nearby which I'd missed eight years ago. It was a really nice time, and we even snuck into the off-limits section of some ruins, though they didn't make it very hard for us to do so.

We decided to start heading back to Selcuk to catch our bus. We thought we had plenty of time to do so, but we had to walk around the hill against which Ephesus is set, and it took us longer than expected. If we'd walked, we probably would've made it, though it would've been close. Initially we decided to get a cab, but there were none to be found, so we decided to hitch-hike. I'd read a little about hitch-hiking in the Middle East in the Lonely Planet, and while the book didn't recommend it, it said that it's most of the time very safe and much more common than in the States. So we stuck our thumbs out, or rather we pointed at the road, which is the way you hitch-hike in the Middle East since putting your thumb up is considered vaguely offensive. After a couple cars went by, a family in their truck pulled over. I leaned in the window and said "Otogar," which is Turkish for bus station, and the driver motioned to the bed. We hopped in and off we went. It was awesome! The best part was there was a little kid who was making faces at us from the cab the whole time. We got to the otogar with plenty of time to spare, and we felt oh-so-resourceful too.

Getting back into Izmir, we grabbed something to eat before our overnight train to Ankara left. Once again we had to take a bus to the train, but once we were on, it was pretty comfortable, though we were all still a little miffed that we'd failed to nab spots in the sleeper. We made it though. The train was of course a couple hours late, but we weren't too upset. What I was upset about was the fact that the Lonely Planet has maps of tiny ass little towns in Turkey that no backpacker would ever have to deal with and yet it has no map of Ankara, the capital of the country and it's second biggest city. Needless to say we had a little trouble finding our way around, but once we got the metro worked out and found the center of the city, which turned out to be very close to the train station, we were okay. First we went to an internet cafe, where we discovered that Peter's mom hadn't put any money in yet, and that $500 that had saved our asses in Izmir had been my mom just putting some money in because she was concerned and wanted to make sure I was doing okay. I hadn't told her anything about Peter's issue, and the money had gone in before I sent her that email. Of course, that morning, she got the email and thought that the $500 hadn't been enough, so she rushed over and put another $500 in. Peter's mom, it turned out, wanted to wait for his father to get back from a trip out of the state before she dealt with Peter's money. I guess Peter didn't make the gravity of the situation clear enough to her. He did after that though, and the email he sent kept her up all night worrying. It was definitely a bit of a SNAFU, but we made it out alive and stayed liquid and after that, all of our parents, Matt's included, were so worried about us that we had plenty of money. Pretty ridiculous.

So we went to see a couple of Ankara's sites. We started with the Museum of Anatolian Culture, which basically chronicles everything that has gone down in the region from the dawn of humankind onward. It was really sweet actually. There were cave paintings and goddess mother statues (the fat little fertile chick), Hittite reliefs and relics, Greek pottery, Roman statues. It was probably my favorite museum of the trip and one of my favorite museums I've ever been to.

From there we headed up to the Citadel, where Matt got hassled by kids for money and we were afforded a beautiful view of all of Ankara. When we first entered the city, my opinion of it had not been very high. It seemed kind of dingy and fake compared to Istanbul, but after the museum and the citadel, I liked it a lot more. So we headed back down the hill to the metro, which we took to Ataturk's Mausoleum, which looked really sweet, and I felt like we owed it to the guy after seeing his picture so much all over the country, but we were too late and it was closed. We got some dinner and went to wait for our bus to Goreme, our gateway to Cappadocia. I sat in front of two very friendly Dutch women who were also going to Cappadocia, and I got to speak very terrible Dutch to them and talk to them a little about travel in Europe and the Middle East until we were hushed by the "flight attendants," for lack of a better term. The buses in Turkey are ridonk. They really have flight attendants, or people who basically fulfill an equivalent function. You get a snack and some water, and they come around with disinfectant with which you wash your hands and your face. Also, they always show a movie or the news. Crazy! We got to Goreme pretty late and went straight to our hostel, where we were staying in a cave! I had been really excited about this, but it proved to be somewhat disappointing. It seemed more like a damp basement than a cave. Oh well. It was nice enough.

When we woke up the next day we found ourselves totally unequipped to resist the temptation of renting mopeds, so we did. And it was probably the best decision we ever made. We each paid thirty lira and got the scooters for five blissful hours. First we rode them over to the Goreme Open Air Museum, which is the region's main attraction. Cappadocia is tough to describe. It's kind of a place you have to see and experience to appreciate, but basically the terrain looks like something you'd see in a fairy tale. It's the kind of place that makes you wish you understood geology. There's all these weird natural rock spires and caves and stuff, and about a thousand years ago or so, people started carving churches and houses into these caves, and so now it really looks like something you'd see in a fairy tale. I just pictured all these midgets and fairies running around the place. It was pretty cool. It may have deserved more time than we gave it, but we were really excited about getting back to the mopeds, so we left after maybe forty-five minutes. Cappadocia is a huge region, and we decided just to drive around exploring. The roads were pretty empty, so it was just very relaxing cruising around and looking at the whacky scenery. We also took the mopeds off-roading a little. Probably not the best decision, but we had a great time, and we didn't break anything, neither on the bikes nor on ourselves. After driving around for a couple hours, we decided to climb some of the whacky looking hills. It turns out that part of the reason the rocks are molded into such strange formations is that they're very soft and easily broken and shaped, which made climbing the cliff faces incredibly difficult. You'd grab onto a rock to pull yourself up and the rock would just crumble into a million pieces, and then you'd start sliding down. Plants were the key, as they gave the soil some integrity, but many of the plants were sharp and pokey, probably to keep people and animals from dislodging their root systems while climbing them. Peter and I had some trouble as a result, but Matt scurried up the hill like he was born and bred on it. I gave up after a little while and I wanted to get more out of our mopeds before we had to return them anyway, but Matt went for the summit, which turned out to be farther away than he had thought. He made it though. On the way back out, we had to do a little off-roading to get back to the on-roading, and Matt made a turn too fast and fell off the moped. Not a huge deal because we were all falling off here and there, but just as he did it, a big tour bus packed with people drove by and they all laughed at him. It was great.

So we kept driving and saw a few more things before returning the bikes. We were pretty exhausted after a day of driving and climbing in the hot weather, so we went to get some dinner before the most dreaded commute of the trip... a twelve hour bus ride to Antakya, right on the border with Syria. Originally we'd planned to stay two nights in Goreme, but I'd thought Antakya was closer than it in fact was. When we found out how long it would take us to get there, we decided to take the overnight bus. There was some misunderstanding with our tickets when we transfered in Kaysari, but we got that cleared up. The bus ride was of course pretty uncomfortable, though I was surprised by how much sleep I got. We got to Antakya around 8 AM and hopped on a bus headed to Aleppo, our first destination in Syria, should we get that far. Of course, since we were Americans, we had to forfeit the Syrian part of our journey because we would take so long at the border, and there was a chance we might not get in, though it was heartening to find that the ticket salesman and the drivers batted no eye when they saw we had American passports and we were going to Syria without a visa.

It only took forty-five minutes or so to get from Antakya to the border. Oh, and by the way, Antakya is the biblical Antioch, where Christians were first called Christians, so there you go. We got to the border and said goodbye to Turkey, got our exit stamps, and I was relieved to read the terms of the visa and see that we had thirty full days since the issue of our Turkish visas to return to the country and use it again, which meant if we got refused entry to Syria, we wouldn't have to buy a new Turkish visa. And so we walked to the Syrian border and into the offices to apply for our visas. Our time in Turkey was over, so we hoped.

Don't Worry, Our Plane Didn't Crash

So in case this blog is your only contact with Peter and me, which it probably isn't, and probably no one is even reading this anymore, but just in case, we are okay, our plane made it back, and our readjustment to American life has been far easier than either of us would have expected. I guess that makes sense though. Peter spent most of the past month living and working back home in Maine whereas I pretty much headed right for Boston where I got a job driving a boat in the harbor. It's pretty sweet. I really do mean to finish updating this blog, and I have half of the Turkey entry in the bag. It's just a matter of motivation. So if you are still holding out for more, it's coming. Hold tight. Maybe some day Peter will even write another entry, though I don't know how likely that is.

Hope you've all been well.

THIS is what Peter has been doing instead of blogging...

http://www.starcairo.org/

...and I guess it's pretty good. But still... GRRRRRRRRRRR!!!!!!

In other news, we're in Luxor. Peter's flight got in a-okay around 2ish in the afternoon, and we checked out Karnak (not all it's cracked up to be, so we thought) and the Luxor Temple (cooler than I expected!). Tomorrow, it's Ancient Thebes and the Valley of the Kings, and then, back to Amrika!

The Ancient Egyptians Built Some Cool Shiznits

All alone at the Aswan High Dam... just me and the miraculously dammed Nile. No one to take pictures of me but... me.

So I'm in Aswan, about to leave for Luxor where I'll meet Peter tomorrow. Just got back from Abu Simbel, which was badass. Also saw the Temple of Isis at Philae, which was also badass. Also saw the High Dam, which was badass in a very impressive engineering sort of way. Peter would've appreciated it more. Traveling alone is lonely. Ever notice how they contain the same word, "lone"? It's also in the word "clone," and "baloney" if you spell it that way. Is that the way you actually spell it? Maybe we'll never know.

No, but it is a little lonely, but it also has its benefits. I get to stink up my hotel room. Take siestas whenever I want to. Eat what I wanna eat! YEAH!

Also, how come no one is voting on the poll? It's the most legit poll ever. You should vote or Peter might feel bad. I'm the only one getting votes so far.

Finally, I really can't wait to come home. I want a peanut butter and jelly sandwich like woah.

Done with Cairo, not with Egypt

For an idea of the scale, keep in mind that Egypt is twice the size of France, just a little bit smaller than Alaska, and bigger than Texas, Oklahoma, and Arkansas combined.

Hello everybody. Sorry for the delay in the posts about the big trip, but it's gonna be a little longer still. Finals and packing owned my life for the last week or so, plus we spent last weekend at the desert, which was very time-consuming. Immediately after finishing all my work, I headed out of Cairo. I was lucky enough to have all my finals assigned before the finals period, which means I get to use that time to see parts of Egypt I've been too lazy to get to until now. Yesterday I took a train to Alex and then a bus from there to Siwa Oasis. Siwa is one of Egypt's most beautiful and interesting oases. It's in the very Northwest of the country, only about 50 km from Libya. The culture was totally isolated from Egypt for most of its history, and they still speak their own language, Siwi (which is a Berber dialect... not even related to Arabic), in their personal interactions. Anyway, it's a pretty cool place so far. This afternoon I'm going out on a desert safari to the Great Sand Sea. While the Black and White Deserts which we visited last weekend are probably the most interesting deserts in Egypt, the Great Sand Sea is what one thinks of when the word desert is uttered. It's basically miles and miles of gigantic dunes and very fine sand. I'm pretty pumped.

After I finish in Siwa I go all the way back to Cairo, this time via Mersa Matrouh, to take an overnight train to Aswan, way in the south. I'll stay there for a day, then head even farther south to Abu Simbel, a fantastic ancient Egyptian temple that was totally relocated brick by brick when the Aswan High Dam was built forty years ago and Lake Nasser was created. Abu Simbel is about 50 km from the Sudanese border. I'm really going directly from one corner of the country to the other. Pretty krazy. But it's gonna be great. After that, I'll head north to Luxor where Peter is flying in to meet me. Unfortunately, he didn't get so lucky with his finals schedule, and they go right up until two days before we leave. He has to fly or else he wouldn't get the chance to see Luxor, which is an absolute must. It is right next to the ruins of Thebes, one of the great capitals of Ancient Egypt. So we'll spend a night and a day there and then fly back to Cairo, shoot over to our apartment, grab our stuff, go back to the airport, and fly home. Our flight gets into Boston around 2:30 PM on Wednesday, June 4. I really can't believe how fast this all happened, and that I've said goodbye to all my buds already. It's pretty sad, but I'm excited to come home, too.

Anyway, I gotta go enjoy myself in Siwa while I can. I'll get more posts up soon after we return, in shah allah.

Ελλάδα

The blue is the train from Athens to Thessaloniki, the yellow is the buses from Thessaloniki to Katerini and Dion, the green is the train to Istanbul, and the red is the border.

So here it finally is: the long-awaited blog entry about our trip. Actually this is just about Greece. It'll probably be a little while before we get everything up to date. A lot has happened since we touched down in Athens more than a month ago. And trust me, it's all blogworthy. So you know, the most time-consuming part of these entries is getting all the pictures in and making them look nice, and since time is of the essence in these last few days we have in Cairo, I'm killing two birds with one stone and just attaching links to each of the photo albums I've posted on Facebook of our trip. The blog entries won't look quite as pretty, and you'll have to open another window, but this way you get more pics and I save time. Here is the link to Greece's.

The night of our departure was filled with frantic packing while simultaneously trying to book my mom a hotel in Cairo, write out postcards (which many of you hopefully received), as well as finish "To Helwan and Back." I managed to get everything done except for the last one, and we headed out around 11:30 PM for the airport. By the time we finally got on the plane, all three of us were beyond exhausted, and none of us really have any memory of the flight. We just passed out and the next thing we knew we were on the runway in Athens. We got off the plane and wandered confusedly through the airport until we found the metro into town. We finally made it into Athens around 7 AM or so, and we went straight to get breakfast in Kolonaki Square, which was more expensive than I remembered it. After that we wandered through the national gardens until we came to the Temple of Zeus, which was much more impressive than I recalled. Greek ruins are cool. From there we hit the Olympic Stadium (the old one), Hadrian's Arch, and then the Acropolis. We failed to consider just how heavy our backpacks would get, and carrying them around with us as long as we did that day was a mistake we would not repeat. By the time we made it past the Parthenon (impressive as usual), our backs were aching horribly. We wound up stopping several times at the agora and at the Temple of Hephaestus. I don't believe we visited either of those when I was in Athens the first time, and that's really too bad, since they were probably my favorite part of the city this time. After our whirlwind tour of Athens' most impressive ancient sites, we stopped to get some lunch at another place that was too expensive. I guess that's just what happens when traveling after living in a place as cheap as Cairo though; everything is too expensive. At the restaurant we met some New Yorkers who have a place in Bethel, which is where Peter has his ski camp, for those of you who weren't aware. Small world experience number one.

After lunch, we headed to the train station to pick up some tickets. We'd already bought the ones that evening at midnight to Thessaloniki, but the international ticket office was closed. Now that it was open, we went to book our tickets for Saturday night, but unfortunately they were sold out. As a result we had to shoot for Sunday night, which meant we'd only get one day in Istanbul. On the bright side, though, we'd get an extra hour with Kasia in Thessaloniki. We bought the tickets and made our way to the Archaeological Museum, but we got there too late, so we went to the next best center of learning: an internet cafe. Like most cities, the major sites in Athens shut down around dinner time, which meant we had to figure out something else to do until our train at midnight. Athens is in a big valley, flanked by mountains and dotted with abrupt hills, some of which we decided to climb. First we went up some random little hill which was pretty neat and had a nice view of the city, but that was just warming up. After that we walked across town to Mount Lykavittos, the highest point in the city. The climb took longer than it should have since we didn't really know the best way, but after forty minutes or so, we reached the top, just in time for a pretty amazing sunset. We could see the entire city: the Acropolis, the Olympic Stadium, ships moving back and forth by the port of Piraeus. It was pretty nice, but it got really freaking cold as soon as the sun started to disappear.

So we came back down... via a monorail! It actually sucked real bad. Biggest waste of three euros of my life. From the bottom we decided to try to walk back to the Acropolis area to get some dinner, and after much searching, we found a cheapish place. Food was definitely expensive in Greece, but it was amazing. I love souvlaki and gyros and whatnot. After dinner it was time to head to the train station, so we decided to take the metro, which would've gotten us there in plenty of time... if it had been RUNNING! It was around eleven and the whole metro was already shut down! We realized that it was too far to walk, so we'd have to take a cab... which of course were impossible to find. I mean, there were plenty, but they all had people in them. Just when we were really starting to get nervous, we nabbed one and made our train no problem.

The ride should have taken five hours, but we didn't get to Thessaloniki until seven or so. Peter and I both slept pretty well, but Matt didn't manage to get any sleep, so when we finally made our way to Kasia's apartment, he collapsed on her roommate's bed. It was great to see her again, especially for Peter, and we just hung out and shot the breeze until she had to go to class. We tried to plan our time there, but most of the plans we made at that point fell through, namely climbing Mt. Olympus, which it turns out is covered in ice in April, so the trails aren't even open. Oh well. Kasia went to class so Peter and I took naps as well. We woke up later that afternoon and Kasia had made us lunch, which was wonderful. After bumming around her apartment for a while and getting cleaned up, we decided to go out... which we didn't succeed in doing for another couple of hours or so. We got together with some friends of hers, Alyssa and Rob. Alyssa is a very nice and extra hospitable girl who also goes to Northeastern, and Rob is one of the most ridiculous people I've ever met in my life. He's from Norway and is just consistently bizarre and hilarious. Perhaps the most perfect anecdote about him pertains to his sock habits. He has a separate pair of socks for every day of the week, and each day says its day on it. We met him on Friday, and he was still wearing Thursday's socks, since he had gotten drunk the night before and not woken up until the early afternoon. Kasia told us a story about how one time he got in a fight with his girlfriend and broke a glass on her head. Later, telling Kasia about the incident, he claimed that the whole relationship was doomed anyway. He told her, "our relationship was fragile, like the glass."

Anyway, we finally got ourselves together and walked all the way downtown along the harbor, which was really beautiful. It's a much cuter town than Athens is, though it didn't seem to have as much to offer. When we finally found the taverna Kasia had in mind, we were blown away to find that it really did in fact offer the deal she had told us about: all you can eat [em]and[/em] drink for ten euros. Amazing! Needless to say we ate and drank our share, and everything was phenomenal. Afterwards we wandered around some more, stopped in a bar but found we were too tired to move, and so we returned to Kasia's pad to go to sleep. The next day we devoted to seeing the city's sites, which consisted of some neat Greek and Roman ruins as well as a few pretty badass Orthodox churches. To top it all off, we hit up the Museum of Byzantine Culture, which got some big award recently for being an awesome museum in Europe or something, and it was. We were constantly reminded of the region's importance to one of the world's great conquerors, Alexander the Great. He was from Macedonia, of which Thessaloniki is historically the capital. This became an interesting trend of the trip: the fact that as far as we traveled, there were several empires that each at one time had ruled all the area we traversed: Alexander's Macedonian Empire, the Roman Empire, the Byzantine Empire, and finally the Ottoman Empire. As a result, as diverse as the places we went were, architectural marks can be found the whole way from each of those four empires. Crazy!

In spite of a decent night's sleep, we were apparently still pretty exhausted from our traveling, so we decided to go back and take a nap at this point. It was around 5 or 6 PM, so we hoped to pass out for just an hour or so. Before we knew it, the morning had come and Kasia had left for her crazy spring break trip (she went to Italy, Spain, and England... also awesome). We woke up early to get going, as we planned on taking the bus to Dion, a very well-preserved ancient Macedonian city at the foot of Mt. Olympus. We got all our stuff together and were terrified to realize that Peter couldn't find his debit card. After searching crazily, Peter realized that his card looks identical to Kasia's, and he'd left it out the night before. We reasoned that she had most likely grabbed it thinking it was her own. And so began our real financial difficulties. Matt had his identity stolen a few months ago, so he's been working off money his parents have been wiring him here and there. Along the trip it would be tough to work out wirings, so we decided just to have his mom deposit money into my account. With Peter's card gone, the three of us were now all going to be relying on my card, which at the time didn't have enough to last us more than a couple days. Peter thus decided to call his mom and wake her up to ask her to put a good chunk of his money into my account so that we wouldn't get stranded a few days down the road.

And so we headed off to Dion. We first had to take a bus to Katerini, the nearest major town, and then a city bus to Dion. The ruins themselves were really well-preserved and beautiful, and it was neat to know that this ancient city was the place where Alexander gathered his troops and held a celebration before heading out on his great campaign, but the biggest attraction was definitely Mount Olympus. It was amazingly gorgeous. It really is no wonder that the ancient Greeks believed that gods and goddesses lived up there. The pictures we took cannot even begin to do justice to its majesty. I really wish we had been able to climb it, and after seeing it, climbing it became a definite goal of mine. It was also very nice to see some significant greenery. It was a beautiful day, and a good end to our time in Greece. After we finished there, we headed back to Thessaloniki and hopped on the train to Istanbul. It was a fantastic ride, and it really made me wish we could take sleeper trains everywhere. The train left around 8 PM, and we got to the Turkish border in the middle of the night. We bought our visas and then got back on the train, hoping to wake up and be in Istanbul.

A Quick Update

Hello loyal readers. So my mom made it home safe and sound. It was really great to see her, and it seems as though she really enjoyed herself here as well. It's nice to get a little repose from the constant traveling and sightseeing of the last three-and-a-half weeks, though. School is winding down soon, and I have a lot of work to do, but not too much. I'm hoping to travel all over Egypt during the next few weekends before I come home. I've still got a lot to see.

In other news, I finally got the chance to update To Helwan and Back with pictures and fix the typos and generally pretty it up. The text is essentially the same, so if you've already read it, don't worry about that, but you should definitely go back and see the last few pictures. 'Cuz they're AMAZING.

Also, this article is about a month old, but it's a must-read. Now you'll all understand if Peter and I come back and have trouble hearing things. Makes me proud.

Sorry it's taken us so long to post something significant about our trip. I got back and had a lot of work to do on top of my mom being here, but stuff has cooled down a little now, so I should be able to pop out at least an entry or two about it this weekend, though we are planning a short trip to Port Said. I'm gonna be catching up on this blog until July!

To placate you all, I've included a video of my mom getting on a camel at the Pyramids. Teeheehee.

Cairo Sweet Cairo

Sorry this is a little belated, but rest assured we did in fact make it home safe and sound. Israel was fun, if not particularly well priced, and the bus rides through the Negev Desert and the Sinai Peninsula were pleasant enough. My mom and I spent the day getting her acquainted with Al-Qahirah. We went to the Pyramids as well and rode camels, which we both enjoyed a lot. Today is also my birthday (I guess not technically anymore), so we went out to dinner and the boiz back home were awesome enough to get me an absurdly fantastic half fruit and vanilla, half chocolate cake. Pretty mumtaz.

Mother Dearest

Chillin' at the Church of the Nativity. Apparently Jesus was born just beneath us.

So my mom got in with no real problems yesterday. We spent today seeing all sorts of sights in Jerusalem as well as Bethlehem, which it turns out means "House of Meat" in Arabic. Weird. Anyway, tomorrow morning we go see the Dome of the Rock on the Temple Mount, ilhamdullillah, and then it's off to Cairo. We leave Jerusalem at 10 AM, and we should get in to Cairo around 11 PM, I think. It's been a lot of fun, but I'm ready to take it easy, or at least slightly easier.