26/1/25
Frankie was up a lot during the night. Jonathan slept through, fairly exhausted from his own ordeal the night before. It was fairly clear to both of us that we wouldn’t be leaving Altinoluk today either.
We lolled around in bed till the middle of the morning before cementing a third night. Fortunately there wasn’t much to do in this town. There was a cool canyon that it would have been good to explore but we couldn’t see everything. Rest was in our best interests.
We went out at about noon. There were lots of people out for a Sunday. Frankie fancied some coke. People always say it helps. It’s cheap here too, probably too cheap. No such thing as a sugar tax in Turkey. We went down to the sea. Lots of people were out enjoying the sunshine. All wrapped up in winter coats of course. It was a ‘brisk’ 16C at least.
After sitting around for a while we went in search of chips again. We wanted more. On the way we went into a dried nuts and fruit store. When we went in a woman was having a furious argument with the shopkeepers, seemingly about dried mulberries. We reassured the shopkeepers (there were three) that we couldn’t understand a word. It visibly helped them relax and we all laughed. We bought some dried mulberries, apricots, mulberries as well as mulberry fruit roll-ups stuffed with hazelnut paste. Yes, they were good.
This time the kebab restaurant we went to looked more fancy. The chips were twice the price of yesterday’s, 200 Lira, but there were probably twice as much in each portion. When we got back to the hotel we felt relieved that they also tasted twice as good.
There hadn’t been any hot water, only tepid, the day before. Every time we asked we were told ‘5 minutes’. We persisted to ask today. Eventually the man came up, tested it, and seemed to acknowledge a problem. He knocked 5 minutes later and told us it should be okay. We tried the tap, it was hot, but when we went to shower it was just warm. We succumbed to a less than satisfactory shower.
There was more lolling all afternoon. We watched more of the Night Agent and sat around on our phones. Checking Polarsteps and reading about bridges over the Bosphorus, from the pontoon bridges built by Xerxes in 480BC, to the 1915 Çanakkale bridge. The latter is the longest suspension bridge in the world and is named to commemorate the defeat of the Allied forces by the Ottoman Empire. We didn’t really know anything about the battle at Gallipoli, but from Polarsteps we gathered than Quinn had been really vigorous about exploring the battle areas there. That’s because he’s from New Zealand and they focus a lot on it at school as well as celebrating ANZAC day. It’s like Remembrance Day in the UK.
Surly They Won't Make It 