Today we leave Turkey. Halicarnassus and Bodrum shrink sweetly astern.
Ahead lie Greece and Kos.
It's not entirely the spoiled tourist town that our guidebook makes it out to be, though there is plenty of that. Whole streets of jewelry stores, souvenir shops, and natural-products-made-in-Greece stores (soap, olive oil, honey, herb mixes), cafés and restaurants with identical menus pictorially illustrated. But also bougainvillea vines that werap over entire buildings; fresh octopus hanging on the line to dry so that they can be grilled for dinner; and clean, narrow streets.
It's a little more than one week into our trip, and Dan is finally starting to slow down. We sit and enjoy a glass of wine in a café in the main square, and for the first time we feel like we have plenty of time.
Some ways you can know that you're in Greece, not in Turkey any more:
It is, as it turns out, Good Friday. A storekeeper gives us two small chocolate Easter eggs with our wine purchase and wraps the wine in colorful Easter paper. Firecrackers can be heard sporadically everywhere. We cannot get a reservation for dinner at the restaurant our hotel manager recommended because it is entirely booked: a seating for 240 people after church. Late at night, we hear the long music of church bells whose ropes are still pulled by hand.
We eat dinner at an outdoor table at the Kalymnos Restaurant, a place so friendly that the waiter, seeing I am chilly, lends me his own jacket. He says he wants my experience to be comfortable. As the sky darkens, we watch the street scene, consisting of rather sparse comings and goings of pedestrians and vehicles. It appears everyone is still in church. We hear distant singing, the harmonious notes of holy music. The singing grows louder, until our street is engulfed in a solemn procession escorting Christ to his tomb.
And here we thought, leaving Turkey, that we would no longer be called to prayer. But the numinous breaks through always into our lives. May you have a good rising!
Click here to see an interactive map of our trip
Follow this link to start again at Istanbul
Return to Bodrum
Onward to Rhodes