I went exploring today!
Well... I went exploring this evening. I went sleeping today. By which I mean I didn't really 'went' anywhere. I had every intention of getting up early. I went to bed early and everything. Then I woke up. And didn't want to get up. And woke up again, and still didn't want to. And woke up and went to the restroom, stared at my toothbrush for a good minute, and decided going back to bed was a better idea. I blame jet lag.
So anyway, I finally left the house around four and found out that it takes between 45 minutes and an hour to walk from my apartment to work. So that is probably going to become a thing that I do, because I can't imagine a better way to start the day than a couple mile walk through what I must admit is a beautiful city. There are parks everywhere. I thought about continuing to explore, but the sun goes down around 5:30 and I didn't want to get caught out too late. In the end, that was a good decision, because several hours later I was hopelessly lost.
I had decided when I came upon the far end of the big park near my house that it would be a nice place to walk through. I was headed to the other end anyway, and why not walk through the park with all the trees and water features instead of through the streets with all the houses that look the same? Well, because there are wild dogs, that's why. Don't worry, I didn't run into the wild dogs. For the first little while I was starting to think they had left the park for the winter. My boss had told me about them when I mentioned wanting to run there, but I hadn't seen hide nor hair of them. And I still didn't see them, but someone must have, because a little ways into the park I started to hear a bunch of raucous, angry barking. So I walked a bit faster and eventually it stopped.
It was actually a really big park. Like, I knew it was big, but this thing was gigantic. I must have been walking through it for an hour. On the upside, soooo many stairs! Because the park, like most parks in Ankara, is at the bottom of a valley. It's difficult to build in valleys, so instead the Turks planted parks. Brilliant, right? At around the hour mark, the path I was on started to turn, and I started hearing dogs in front of me instead of behind. And the sun was down, and I didn't really fancy meeting wild dogs in a nearly empty park at night. So I took one of those staircases back up to street level. Or... a street level. I had already learned that Ankara is just a series of one giant hill after the other. It's a great workout!
At the top of the stairs however, I was distracted by yet another set of stairs. I like stairs, so sue me. And I took it, and started wandering in what I thought was the right direction towards my house. I had already memorized the major streets in my area, so I figured I had to run in to one of them eventually. Well, I didn't. So after an hour of wandering through residential streets without a single major roadway insight, I finally pulled out my phone. My phone is a lifesaver. It has this nifty little GPS button in google maps that I can press and it tells me exactly where I am. I could have told it exactly where I wanted to go too, and it would have told me how to get there, but I still had some pride left. So armed with GPS, I quickly realized that I had not come out of the park where I thought I had come out of the park, and was, in fact, in an entirely different part of town than I had thought. Thank goodness Ankara is so safe, eh?
So my map reading skills led me back to, you guessed it, that distracting set of stairs at the spot where I exited the park. Turns out, had I looked in a direction that was not the stairs, I would have seen the bridge over the park in the direction I wanted to go in the first place but couldn't find a street in which to take me. Alas, at least I burned a ton of calories! And now I know which way not to go if I ever do go running in that park. Once over the bridge it was an easy walk home. I even stopped at the grocery store to pick up some essentials like soap and chocolate and things. And they had salep!!
Salep, for those of you who followed my travels to Jordan, is the same thing as sahleb, just in Turkish. And here, rather than having to get it from a street vendor, or making it from a disgusting boxed mix like they had in Egypt, it just comes in a carton, like milk. And you pour it out, and stick it in the microwave, and oh my goodness it's so delicious and I am going to drink it for three months straight and no one can stop me.
The only items I wanted but did not get were contact solution and fabric softener. I was surprised to find upon moving in that I actually have a dryer, which I didn't think existed in the Middle East? Well, I mean, I knew it existed, it's just super uncommon. They're even rare in a lot of Europe. Anyway, I have one, and the store, true to form, had liquid fabric softener, but none of those fluffy dryer sheets I like. I'll keep an eye out, and if worse comes to worse I'll just buy the liquid.
That's it for today I think. I made my first omelette in my big, fancy kitchen for dinner. I forgot the onions and garlic though, so it wasn't quite as delicious as I would have liked. I don't have any pictures really from my walk. Like I said, I don't like looking like a tourist. The one picture I have can be found at this blog, which I will also be updating, though I don't know how frequently. It will be solely pictures of Lil' Squish in places that make me smile though, so it might not be of great interest to anyone.
Until my next post, iyi akshamlar! (Note: That is spelled incorrectly, but this blog doesn't seem to like the Turkish alphabet, so whatever.)
Well... I went exploring this evening. I went sleeping today. By which I mean I didn't really 'went' anywhere. I had every intention of getting up early. I went to bed early and everything. Then I woke up. And didn't want to get up. And woke up again, and still didn't want to. And woke up and went to the restroom, stared at my toothbrush for a good minute, and decided going back to bed was a better idea. I blame jet lag.
So anyway, I finally left the house around four and found out that it takes between 45 minutes and an hour to walk from my apartment to work. So that is probably going to become a thing that I do, because I can't imagine a better way to start the day than a couple mile walk through what I must admit is a beautiful city. There are parks everywhere. I thought about continuing to explore, but the sun goes down around 5:30 and I didn't want to get caught out too late. In the end, that was a good decision, because several hours later I was hopelessly lost.
I had decided when I came upon the far end of the big park near my house that it would be a nice place to walk through. I was headed to the other end anyway, and why not walk through the park with all the trees and water features instead of through the streets with all the houses that look the same? Well, because there are wild dogs, that's why. Don't worry, I didn't run into the wild dogs. For the first little while I was starting to think they had left the park for the winter. My boss had told me about them when I mentioned wanting to run there, but I hadn't seen hide nor hair of them. And I still didn't see them, but someone must have, because a little ways into the park I started to hear a bunch of raucous, angry barking. So I walked a bit faster and eventually it stopped.
It was actually a really big park. Like, I knew it was big, but this thing was gigantic. I must have been walking through it for an hour. On the upside, soooo many stairs! Because the park, like most parks in Ankara, is at the bottom of a valley. It's difficult to build in valleys, so instead the Turks planted parks. Brilliant, right? At around the hour mark, the path I was on started to turn, and I started hearing dogs in front of me instead of behind. And the sun was down, and I didn't really fancy meeting wild dogs in a nearly empty park at night. So I took one of those staircases back up to street level. Or... a street level. I had already learned that Ankara is just a series of one giant hill after the other. It's a great workout!
At the top of the stairs however, I was distracted by yet another set of stairs. I like stairs, so sue me. And I took it, and started wandering in what I thought was the right direction towards my house. I had already memorized the major streets in my area, so I figured I had to run in to one of them eventually. Well, I didn't. So after an hour of wandering through residential streets without a single major roadway insight, I finally pulled out my phone. My phone is a lifesaver. It has this nifty little GPS button in google maps that I can press and it tells me exactly where I am. I could have told it exactly where I wanted to go too, and it would have told me how to get there, but I still had some pride left. So armed with GPS, I quickly realized that I had not come out of the park where I thought I had come out of the park, and was, in fact, in an entirely different part of town than I had thought. Thank goodness Ankara is so safe, eh?
So my map reading skills led me back to, you guessed it, that distracting set of stairs at the spot where I exited the park. Turns out, had I looked in a direction that was not the stairs, I would have seen the bridge over the park in the direction I wanted to go in the first place but couldn't find a street in which to take me. Alas, at least I burned a ton of calories! And now I know which way not to go if I ever do go running in that park. Once over the bridge it was an easy walk home. I even stopped at the grocery store to pick up some essentials like soap and chocolate and things. And they had salep!!
Salep, for those of you who followed my travels to Jordan, is the same thing as sahleb, just in Turkish. And here, rather than having to get it from a street vendor, or making it from a disgusting boxed mix like they had in Egypt, it just comes in a carton, like milk. And you pour it out, and stick it in the microwave, and oh my goodness it's so delicious and I am going to drink it for three months straight and no one can stop me.
The only items I wanted but did not get were contact solution and fabric softener. I was surprised to find upon moving in that I actually have a dryer, which I didn't think existed in the Middle East? Well, I mean, I knew it existed, it's just super uncommon. They're even rare in a lot of Europe. Anyway, I have one, and the store, true to form, had liquid fabric softener, but none of those fluffy dryer sheets I like. I'll keep an eye out, and if worse comes to worse I'll just buy the liquid.
That's it for today I think. I made my first omelette in my big, fancy kitchen for dinner. I forgot the onions and garlic though, so it wasn't quite as delicious as I would have liked. I don't have any pictures really from my walk. Like I said, I don't like looking like a tourist. The one picture I have can be found at this blog, which I will also be updating, though I don't know how frequently. It will be solely pictures of Lil' Squish in places that make me smile though, so it might not be of great interest to anyone.
Until my next post, iyi akshamlar! (Note: That is spelled incorrectly, but this blog doesn't seem to like the Turkish alphabet, so whatever.)
No comments:
Post a Comment