Day 1: Driving along the Northern Bodrum Peninsula

We are staying in the Bodrum area (particularly in the hills overlooking Bitez Bay) at our friend Oya's house. Bodrum is a small seaside village located in Southwest Turkey on the Aegean Sea. Although Bodrum is mainly a tourist town, there is a small fishing industry as well as an anual harvest of tangerines which means you can get fresh seafood at the restaurants here. Bodrum is also well known for it's nightlife. I may have to test this claim at some point during the week!

Below is the view from Oya's balcony this morning (April 1st). As always, pictures do not do the scenery justice. I will be posting pics of Oya's house (condo) in the future so you can get an idea of what modern living in Turkey is like.

Breakfast in Turkey is fairly different from the American breakfast, but so tasty and healthy. The 'odd' ingredient...vegetables! Below was my breakfast today: simit (sesame seed bread), roasted red and green peppers, various olives (grown at Oya's family's olive orchard), various cheeses, walnuts, bread with sour cherry jam (I'm bringing some of this stuff home!), tomato, cucumber, and parsley....served with tea, of course.

After breakfast, we drove along the northern half of the Bodrum peninsula and stopped at various seaside villages (Torba, Turkbuku, Gundogan, Yalikavak) to enjoy the views. The first picture was taken at Bodrum Amphitheater, which still hosts concerts and seats about 13,000 people.

Unexpected adventures are the best! We discovered the cliffside graves below after we left Torba and decided to get out of the car and check them out. In the last picture, Oya is helping me down from a grave. Being the curious cat that I am, I had to climb up to see what was beyond the opening. There were 3 more chambers, each with 2 graves per chamber. Cool stuff.

We had lunch on the beach in Turkbuku and I met a new friend. He bites.

We ended our excursion at our turnaround point in Yalikavak with tea at the marina.

I intended to post this post yesterday, but struggled with the blog format. It's not user friendlyat all (mainly when it comes to adding in the pictures)...ugh! I finally gave up at 1am last night....put myself to bed and 'wrote' blogs in my head until I fell asleep. It's funny how my mind thinks in blogging mode now. However, when I'm actually writing a post, it goes to mush due to the pressure of trying to entertain (and frustration dealing with uploading the pics). It has literally taken me hours to write this one simple post. Rediculous!