Friday, January 30 Tire, Zeus Cave, and Dilek National Park.

Packed up and drove to Tire (Tee-reh), an "off the beaten path" rural town that is too far from the coast and the cruise tours for many tourists to have bothered with. What a great little stop it turned out to be. The drive was nice (it was bright and sunny out), and though the Lonely Planet tidbit of info didn't really help us figure out where to go once in the town, it did wind us up a steep road to the top of a hillside where we could see out over the town and plot our walk through to see the old 15th century mosques. There was a family walking up the steep windy road; I was not jealous.

The roads in the town were narrow and Brian masterfully drove us right down one to one of the mosques only to discover it was a dead end. No problem, we'll just back out. Aeden provided "vroom vroom" sound effects and giggled at driving backwards. I was glad I wasn't the one driving, we'd still be there backing out slowly!

The comment popped up at some point that we hadn't heard the call to prayer at all in Kusadasi. It took just over a day to miss it, and as soon as we heard it again we said, "OK, now we're still in Turkey." It felt like we had gone to a different country, where most people speak some English and there's not a call to prayer broadcast 5 times a day. But then we visited Tire and were reminded where we were.

We parked the car and wandered onto the mosque's grounds. The weather was perfect and it was nice to be out and about with little agenda. There was a man there sweeping and tending to things and he invited us inside. He pointed out the original pieces of the structure, gave us some brochures on mosques (in French), and sat Aeden down on his lap while he showed us some old pictures of the mosque and its congregation on the computer. He played some recorded music and the girls danced around in the open space. I don't know if that was OK or what, but they had a nice time and he didn't seem to cringe at all. Just a little bit later we heard him singing over the loudspeaker system while we were walking...it was nice.








We wandered around some more and soaked in the reality of living in a town like this without running water in your apartment, with chickens on the roof next door, and with no mega-super-deluxe grocery store down the block. Brian and I agree that part of us would like to try living in a town like this, but we definitely do like having the luxuries we have--like running water even if it is not drinkable.

There was an old tractor parked on the street and Aeden got pretty psyched up to "drive" it. While he was busy test-driving a man came by and introduced himself and chatted (as best he could with no English) with Brian and invited him up to his apartment to say hello and see the view from his rooftop.





Everywhere dress-up is fun, even in white bridal gowns...the girls were delighted! Makes me want to ship off Lacey and Maren's dress-up clothes for these kids to play.



We met Dalma on the walk into town, and now saw her again on the way back to our car. Here she is posing for a picture, and proud grandma watching from the window:




After Tire we drove back through Kusadasi and picked up some lunch snacks at the little Migros and drove south to Zeus Cave for a dip and I sat back and almost cried at how amazing a day we were having. The girls were swimming in the blue water, Aeden was increasingly urgent in his pestering to get into the water, and it was overwhelmingly good. What a lucky family we are to be together and here in such a beautiful place.



Next we stopped at Dilek National Park to go to the beach. We waved at Greece across the water and took a dip in the Aegean. I was sure we would be the only ones in the water in the winter, but a Turkish family on holiday showed up and the two guys ran screaming into the water and dove in for a quick swim yelping and hollering at the cold. It was funny to watch and hear. Clearly not from those parts and having to take advantage of the time at the beach, cold or not. I was busy changing the kids out of their soaking clothes and into another set of clothes with a makeshift dressing area at the back of our car's trunk. Naked kids alert! We were nice and tired and headed back to the hotel just before sunset, stringing about all of clothes to try and dry them out for the next day.

The beach:



We also got to experience the fun of squat toilets again at the National Park. My girls need some practice still, and we'll leave it at that.

This morning we got pulled over by the traffic police, but then waved on before they even spoke with us. Luckily that turned out to be the only time we even came close to having a snag in our driving tour, though each day had many opportunities for excitement, whether a "trafik kontrol" slowdown (mostly trucks were pulled over), a dog or sheep in the road, or some other car driving in an "interesting" way.

More neat pictures from our awesome day in the album:

Tire, Zeus Magarasi, Dilek Milli Parki (Aydinlik Burun)