Long Overdue

I got an email from my brother with no body just the subject reading "Looks like your blog is starting to lag..." Apparently Micheal reads my blog! Starting to lag may be a bit of an understatement though since my last post was from events that took place over a month ago. So here it is, my high light reel for the last moth.

Mediterranean Paradise
I met up with Rebecca and her friend Colleen again, but this time in the south of Turkey, along the Mediterranean coast for a four-day boat cruise.I did pretty much the exact same trip with my mom, brother and sister ten years ago. Lizzy and I actually turned 13 on one of those boats! It as just as beautiful as I remember. On our first night in Olympos we met a group of Turks who helped us convince the Turkish military police to let us go into the park, through Lycian ruins leading to a stunning beach. The beach was a bit windy, so we jumped into the warm, extremely salty and buoyant sea. We could see the phosphorescence and the stars so completely clearly that it felt like you were in one big tent of shimmery darkness. It was the perfect start to our week on the Mediterranean.

The next four days were spent swimming, eating, reading and then repeating those activities. The three of us realized quickly that of the 17 people on this beautiful wooden sailboat, we were probably the youngest and definitely the most giddy. Every morning we woke up on the outdoor sleeping deck, more from temperature than light, and immediately changed into suits and jumped in the water to cool down. The trip was set up to be of the most perfect mixture of exploring, lounging and eating. One day we climbed to a castle on top of a hill, another was spent at Butterfly Valley (this is the second time I've been here and not seen a single butterfly, apparently there is a pretty short window) where we used a slightly sketchy rope to pull ourselves up the slippery cliffs to the top of the waterfall. Each and every meal of the trip was fabulous thanks to our wonderful cook Hakan, a guy in his mid-twenties who spends his summers feeding tourists on the sail boat and his winters fishing in the Sea of Marmara.
Here are a few of my pictures:

These are ruins of what they think was a Hamam (baths). 

Butterfly Valley!

This is the traveling Gozlme boat selling crepe-like wonders. My favorite was chocolate banana. Also, the man on the boat kept trying to convince me to run away with him (and I suppose his mother who does all the cooking). 

This is our Captain and his daughter who we picked up on the last day.  

Colleen also wrote a blog post about this trip and she's a pretty incredible writer and photographer so if you'd like to read more about our Mediterranean excursions here's the place to do it:  http://prekrasno.wordpress.com/2013/09/02/mavi-tur-blue-cruise/