13 Feb

Day 10 – Turkey

 

We were going to Turkey today!  Stephen’s family actually lived in Turkey before he was born, so my in-laws were extra excited about this stop.  We were all (except Dad and Mom now) on a Disney excursion today.  We wanted to go to Ephesus and nothing looked easy about getting there on our own.  So we found an excursion that went there, a small village and included lunch. 

I woke up at 7 this morning and we were all at Parrot Cay at 8.

Look, juice! I don’t always have coke for breakfast. Coke shortly after breakfast, sure. Just not always coke FOR breakfast.

Our tour meeting place was Rockin’ Bar D.

We exited the ship with our tour group and found this:

Hello, Turkey!

There’s our bus!

Every seat had a bottled water and a little bag of gifts:

Water, in case you weren’t sure what that looks like:

We rode to Ephesus while our guide introduced himself and told us some things to expect. Once we got off, he gave us all our tickets:

Inside!

Inside we would walk a little and then stop while the guide talked. Then we walked some more.

Ephesus was full of cats!! They were everywhere!

Much of my morning was spent seeking shade. Our guide was pretty good about stopping in shady places, but if he didn’t, I would rather find shade then listen. My word it was hot.

The Library:

An archaeologist at work:

Shade!

This amphitheater was amazing. They said it would have held around 25,000 people. The story of Paul and Demetrius in the book of Acts happened here.

Ally and I found shade:

While we were sitting, something very cool happened.

Three guests (from the cruise I’m pretty sure) stood on the stage area and sang “How Great Thou Art”. Everyone stopped what they were doing and listened or joined in. When they finished everyone clapped. It was very touching!

In this picture they are the two men and woman near the top right of the flat area:

After we were done there, we walked to see a live show that was put on by the cruise line every 15 minutes:

Looking back at the amphitheater:

We got back on the bus shortly after that and drove to a little village of Sirence. Our guide told us to take 45 minutes to explore and then we would meet for lunch. Shoot! I really could have done lunch first, but okay. We wandered:

Lookie here!

Now this looked yummy!

The market:

Before we got to the restaurant, Ally got stopped:

They directed us to some tables. Not a bad view, right?

Bread!

Here’s the buffet:

Ally’s lunch:

Chase’s:

A nice combo of their lunches – mine!

After we ate, guess what we found if we stood in a certain place in the corner of the restaurant? That’s right! Wi-Fi!

We also had a nice talk with our guide while we stood there.

Next was an unadvertised stop, or so I thought. I knew that most excursions included a stop at a Turkish rug store, but I thought they were close to the port and optional. Ours really wasn’t optional because we were nowhere near the port. I wasn’t too worried about high pressure sales because I had no interest in carpets. I would have no idea what to buy and I’d be afraid I’d get it home and realize I had picked an ugly one!

So the word “no” would be easy to come by.

The demonstration started with a very interesting talk on how the carpets were made.

It was cool! Then we went downstairs to the showroom where a very interesting phenomenon occurred.

This was the biggest no-pressure-but-totally-full-of-pressure sales pitch I’d ever seen. It started with the owner getting us all tea and cider, chatting with us, talking about where we were all from, etc. He was smooth as silk. He gave us the normal speech about how some people discounted their carpets, but theirs were already discounted heavily, and because of the quality, really couldn’t be discounted more, yada yada yada.

Here’s our group of non-buyers.

Then four guys in green shirts started bringing out carpets. And I was sold with the first one.

Is that gorgeous or what?!!!! They brought out more and wanted us to walk on them:

And more and more and more:

When he finished there were dozens of carpets out there. And then the salesmen descended.

There were probably 20 groups of people on our excursion and there was easily one salesperson per group. They worked the room like pros being friendly and waiting for someone to express even the slightest interest. I loved that first carpet so much, but I knew it was probably a $10,000 carpet. So I was good and avoided all eye contact with sales people.

My in-laws expressed non-interest interest, and were whisked off to a sales room before you could say boo. I watched the sales people for a little while and Stephen and brother-in-law made their way out.

When the kids and I were ready, we were directed through a different exit. An exit through the biggest jewelry store I’ve ever seen!! We wound through room after room that was about this size:

The sales people took one look at how fast I was walking and the fact I had two teenagers with me, and didn’t even try. It was like a maze that took 5 minutes to find our way out of!

After we’d been on the bus waiting for a while, my in-laws reappeared and confirmed they had, in fact bought a carpet. For them it was a bit of a memento from their time in Turkey. They also promised to will it to me one day, so I was good with that.

Finally, we were back on the way to the ship. There she is!

When we got off the ship, the kids saw a Nike store in port so the three of us went there while everyone else got back onboard. After some browsing, we stopped in Starbucks and bought a Frappuccino in the hopes of using their free Wi-Fi. No luck. We discovered if the Wi-Fi worked by entering a code that they had to text to you, it did not work. We never got the text even after trying multiple ways to enter our phone number and country code.

The view was nice though!

We also stopped in a candy store and bought some amazingly fresh gummy bears. I wish I’d bought a couple pounds more!

Chase did buy a FC Barcelona hat at the duty free store.

While we were in the terminal, there was an officer from the Celebrity ship docked next to ours asking everyone who passed if they were on Celebrity. Right as we passed him, a man came running up yelling, “Yes!! I am!!” The officer immediately turned and started walking with the guy and got on his walkie saying, “I’ve got him”. The man was apologizing profusely for being late. They were literally pulling up the lines seconds later as they rushed on the ship. Dude. I would have been so stressed.

We went back to the room for a few minutes to drop of bags and found our bathroom had flooded again. We called maintenance and went to dinner.

Animators again tonight, and Mom came! All of the IV drips and antibiotics were definitely helping. She didn’t have much energy, but she felt okay.

Mom told us how in the hospital they called her “The Pneumonia”. She could hear them in the hall saying, “The Pneumonia is in room 3” or things like that. Of course we all thought that was hilarious and she was henceforth known to us as “The Pneumonia”.

Bread!

Tonight Ally ordered fried crab. Well she had no idea the crab was going to actually look like a crab. She was so shocked when it came out, that she started crying! Like she had personally killed a crab! Of course, my heavily medicated emotional mother joined in and they both laughed and cried and laughed and cried. The rest of us just laughed.

My red meat:

Dessert!

Photo bomb –

We checked in the room before the show.

Tonight’s show was a local dance troupe.

I haven’t said much about the shows lately because they’ve all been Disney’s usual standard of great. Tonight was – something else entirely. This show was so bad. It was like a middle school talent show. No, I’ve seen some better middle school talent shows.

It’s not that the dancers were bad, it’s that they were completely unspectacular. I’m not sure they did anything that I couldn’t do. And it went on and on and on. Between each dance, a narrator with sketchy English, came out and red off an index card about what was happening next. I mean he read off a card. And apparently he hadn’t practiced, because he didn’t always know what the show said. There was a guy on the side taking pictures whose hands you could see coming out from behind the curtain. It was amateur hour all around.

Some people actually got up and left.

Normally the cruise director comes out after the show to say thank you, encourage more applause for the performers and remind us of upcoming events. Tonight there was no cruise director. He couldn’t face us.

We were all pretty tickled by the whole thing when we stood up to leave.

I went up top for a coke afterwards and the kids went to see Miracle on Funnelvision:

Look who was in the lobby!

How adorable is this?

Bedtime! Tomorrow we’re back in Greece!

 

Our 19-Day Mediterranean Adventure – Greece, Turkey and the Search for Free Wifi

Day 0 – Crazy Days Before Departure! 
Day 1 – On Our Way! 
Day 2 – London Layover 
Day 3 – Embarkation!  
Day 4 – The Beauty That is Monaco 
Day 5 – La Spezia aka the Road to Pisa or Florence 
Day 6 – Rome Baby!
Day 7 – Sea Day Fun! 
Day 8 – Introducing The Pneumonia 
Day 9 – Athens and the Inside of the Hospital Onboard!
Day 10 – Turkey 
Day 11 – Mykonos and the Start of a Countdown to Get Back to Mykonos 
Day 12 – Sea Day and Palo Dinner 
Day 13 – Segways in Malta! 
Day 14 – Last Day Onboard 
Day 15 – Disembark and Barcelona 
Day 16 – Travel to London
Day 17 – London Baby! 
Day 18 – Harry Potter Heaven