Thursday, September 17 Trabzon
A roller coaster serpentine five hour drive up and
down mountains, around mountains and through mountains. The scenery was
breathtaking in some locations if you weren't too dizzy form the twists and
turns in the road to be able to take it in. I napped for part of the first
half of the trip and don't know what I missed but I suspect not much or someone
would have awakened me. LOL. Once
again the landscape was quite varied from the usual barren hills, to rich farm
lands to verdant hills to spectacular rock formations. As per usual there
was road construction everywhere as they continue to blast away the mountains
and remove tons upon tons of rock.
When we finally found an open restaurant for lunch I
thought I was hungry for the first time in six days so ordered
"meatballs" the same as Omer and Mehmet. They were made of
ground lamb and were quite good. I only ate a few being afraid to put too
much into my stomach. That turned out to be a good plan as it didn't take
long for my gut to object but not to any major degree and a couple of Tums
helped.
The closer we got to Trabzon and Black Sea the more
lush the vegetation became and even palm trees began to appear. For the
first time here there were also flowers growing in many places.
Except for the view from my room I haven't seen much of the black Sea so far but
believe that comes tomorrow.
Since I had finished yesterday's book Omer went out
looking again and returned with the only two English books the store had:
The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn and The Man in the Iron Mask. LOL
Oh well that will do me until I find something better in Istanbul or at the
international Airport on Monday. He also got my Turkish phone working so I
was able to call home for the first time. A power outage had apparently
fried the modem at home so my wife has been unable to read or send e-mail and
has had to hear about my adventures form other people. She did try going to the
library but all computers were occupied by teens.
Yahoo! No more long drives. Just around
Trabzon tomorrow until plane time at 6:00...