Two On Tour

Living in style in return for feeding the cats

Friday 14 June: Güllük

And so back to Bodrum to look after Gordon and Freddie, Ashley’s cats, while she spends two weeks in Colombia to attend a wedding.

We wake up in Antalya to a magnificent view of the Taurus Mountains towering over the west of the city.

As our beat-up taxi pootles us to the nearby otogar, Mirkelam’s ‘Hatıralar’ is playing on the radio. It’s cheesy as a mid-90s rom-com, but the strings of my heart still go ‘zing’.

It’s an often beautiful but slow eight-hour ride to Milas via Fehtiye, where I keep an eye on the street just in case Ceran happens to pop up. (She doesn’t, of course.)

We’ll arrive at Ashley’s early next week. First, we have a weekend in a serviced apartment in Güllük, a low-key resort that seems to attract an almost exclusively local clientele, half-an-hour’s drive from Bodrum. The development is a family business, and our landlord, Uğur – a Sheffield University graduate – drives to the nearest coach stop in Milas to collect us. We arrive in Güllük just before dusk. The apartment is just fine: after two weeks of hotel rooms, it’s good to have our own place again. Simple pleasures such as shopping for groceries are back.

Saturday 15 June: Güllük

What bliss to have our own place again. Neither of us goes outside for even a moment today. Eating at home. No sightseeing to do (we could, but we feel absolutely no need). I spend the day editing a couple of application letters for Ian, doing a bit a work, and catching up with a bit of life admin before we watch the second match of Euro2024 (Spain 3 Croatia 0). Many more days like this, please…

Sunday 16 June: Güllük

Except for a short mid-afternoon stroll to buy some essential groceries, once again I don’t even leave the flat today. It’s furnace-hot outside and after all the scuttling around Cappadocia followed by two long bus journeys, all we really want to do is to stay indoors and chill. In the evening, England get their Euro2024 campaign off to a tenuous start with a 1-0 win over Serbia.

Monday 17 June: Bodrum

After a lunch of hamsi tava on the Güllük waterfront, our landlord Uğur drives us to Ashley’s place high above Bodrum. We’ll be here for the next 17 nights to look after her flat and cats Gordon and Freddie, plus Colin—a stray who’s taken to hanging around the patio. Ash leaves for Columbia on Thursday. Until then, we’re all here together. Ash drives us down to the sea for a swim—initially bracing, but bearable.

Tuesday 18 June: Bodrum

Ash and I working in the same room for the first time in 20 years:

After lunch, we drive to Gümüşlük at the end of the Bodrum peninsula. Despite the scorching heat, we head out of the village to explore a nearby area where there was clearly once a human settlement: the beach is littered with fragments of what Ash reliably informs us is 2000-year-old earthenware.

Tuesday 19 June: Bodrum

Ash and I get up at 6am to walk up the hill that looms between her flat and Bodrum proper. It’s pretty exhilarating up there with the whole of Bodrum below, before the heat of the day descends.

After this initial flurry of activity, none of us goes anywhere for the rest of the day except for a quick dash to Migros to stock up with as many groceries as possible for the next two weeks. Temperatures are nudging 36 degrees in the afternoon this week. By day at least, going out is something to do only if it’s unavoidable.

Thursday 20 June: Bodrum
Ash leaves for the airport at lunchtime. At first, it feels strange with just the two of us looking after the flat and the cats. I’m busy editing the FB Magazine, but when I knock off around 4pm I start to relax and enjoy all the space we now have. In the Euros, England perform shockingly poorly against Denmark. We’re fortunate to walk away with a 1-1 draw. But all this will soon be forgotten, of course. It always is.

Friday 21 June: Bodrum

Our first full day of looking after Ashley’s flat and cats. It is HOT out there. Neither of us leaves the flat all day. We’ll just sit up here on the hill until the groceries run out…

Saturday 22 June: Bodrum

Apart from a solo 6am walk around the neighbourhood, we only leave the flat to walk down to Gümbet (and back up!) to watch Turkey get hammered 3-0 by Portugal. Although the photo below suggests otherwise, I’m pretty weighed down with work right now: I finish the Faculty of Business magazine today; back onto the KTEO report tomorrow.

Sunday 23 June: Bodrum

The heatwave is over, but we nevertheless stay in the flat all day. I only leave to carry the rubbish down to the collection point five minutes down the hill once the sun’s lower in the sky.

Monday 24 June: Bodrum

I’m working full-time on the KTEO QC report right now. In the early evening, we stroll down to town to get groceries, eat, and make a second appearance at the Jukebox pub quiz in Gümbet. We manage a respectable third out of eight – not at all bad for a two-head team. As we plod back up to Ashley’s flat, a deep yellow full moon is rising.

Tuesday 25 June: Bodrum

Another very quiet day. I’m now within sight of finishing the KTEO report. We book our flights to Sarajevo in October. A new adventure begins to take shape. In the Euros, England draw 0-0 with Slovenia to wrap up their group stage. Everyone’s complaining how pitifully dull they are.

Wednesday 26 June: Bodrum

I’m still working full-time. We walk down to Oasis mall to renew our SIM cards and stock up on groceries. Looking ahead to our autumn travels, we start browsing accommodation in Bosnia while hilariously watching plucky Georgia beat Ronaldo’s Portugal.

Thursday 27 June: Bodrum

Still working hard. But I’m looking at about HK$20k in income this month.

Friday 28 June: Bodrum

A day trip to Kos. We both feel very comfortable back in Greece. Just seeing the flag makes me feel warm inside. Its particular shade of blue makes it so easy and soothing on the eye after two months of the brash in-yer-face red of the Turkish flag.

The winding alleys of Kos town are rather pleasant and not unlike Paros. At the covered market we stock up on everything from bath sponge to coffee/ouzo liqueur. Everyone seems comfortable speaking in English. It would be unfair – and hardly in the spirit of adventure – to declare this as something automatically in Greece’s favour. But it does somehow convey a sense that Greece is simply a more worldly, outward-looking place than Turkey.
The Bodrum peninsula looks stark and bare compared with the largely forested mountains of Kos. We wander into the residential part of town and agree that we could well come back for a few weeks some other year.

Back in Bodrum, we’re driven back to Ashley’s by the most idiotic, irresponsible, speed-fixated, cockwomble of a taxi driver that I’ve ever had the misfortune to encounter. On somehow arriving home without multiple fractures, I give him a mouthful of abuse in broken Turkish. But I feel better for doing it.
We spend what’s left of the evening watching YouTube videos about travelling in Bulgaria – now less than four weeks away…

Saturday 29 June / Sunday 30 June: Bodrum

Two very quiet days at Ashley’s. Feeding the cats. Watering the plants. Adding some new music to my iTunes library for the first time in several weeks. And watching Euro2024, where despite another dreadful performance for 89 minutes, England somehow overcome Slovakia 2-1 in extra time in the Round of 16. I finish Elif Shafak’s ‘The Bastard of Istanbul’, and move onto a memoir of growing up in the final years of Communist Bulgaria.

Monday 1 July / Tuesday 2 July: Bodrum

Two more very quiet days. It’s July now and my thoughts are beginning to turn to arriving in Bulgaria in three weeks. I’ve started learning a few Bulgarian words, and I’m reading a memoir of growing up in Bulgaria in the 70s and 80s.
Monday night is our final quiz night at the Jukebox: third place again. Not too shabby. On the Tuesday night, we meet up with Bahar, who I haven’t seen in nearly quarter of a century. We spend a fantastic evening catching up with each other’s lives.

Wednesday 3 July: Bodrum

Our final day in Bodrum. Another quiet day feeding Gordon, Freddie and Colin, doing a bit of work, and taking my first wobbly steps to learn some rudimentary Bulgarian. Soon after midnight, Ashley arrives home after a long trek back from Bogotá. The flat is hers again. It’s time to move on.