Wednesday, January 28 Drive to Kusadasi, a resort town on the Aegean, right outside of Efes (Ephesus), where 5-6 cruise ships come to port each day during the summer and flood the area with tourists.

Our planned 7:00 departure turned into 8:15 by the time we got the carseat readjusted for Aeden and headed out of town. As soon as we hit the open road and were out of Ankara the freeway emptied out and driving for Brian became much more normal, save the occasional tractor and wagon or scooter putting along on the shoulder.

He realized what driving in Ankara is like: leaving a big event's parking lot--no lane lines, everyone in a hurry, and every car inching forward for any little inch it can gain, just to meet up again at the next stop.

It felt amazingly nice to be out in the open air and see some green and have some space around us. The empty and/or broken down buildings didn't seem quite so bad out in the rural areas.

The roads were much better than we were expecting and Brian was nervous setting out on the driving excursion, but assumed he'd be fine. We were better than fine and were very happy out on the road here. In between billboards in Turkish (and there weren't that many), you could be anywhere in the world in a rural place...eastern Oregon or Washington, sometimes California, anywhere. It is amazing what your mind will do in an effort to connect things and make things seem more similar than different.

The stretch between Ankara and Afyon is full of marble cutting plants. Huge blocks of marble stacked up in gigantic lots of different sizes, shapes, and colors.

Lunch at McD's in Afyon. How predictable. Plenty of Turkish food to come over the next few days of course... What was not predictable was how much English the staff knew. Far more than in Ankara (yes, I'm observing English language ability in an area by their McDonald's staff).

We didn't see the turn-off to the main freeway heading south from Izmir to Kusadasi, so we wound up in downtown Izmir right on the harbor. We made it onto a highway that runs parallel down to Selcuk and Kusadasi (we compared it to Highway 99 vs. Interstate 5), which gave us a little different taste of the area then just speeding by on the freeway would have. We saw a gigantic Ataturk face under construction on a hillside, Mount Rushmore style, except being poured of concrete (like everything else in Turkey) bit by bit, not carved into the stone cliff. By this point we were pretty tired of being in the car, though we should have stopped for a photo.

We had some trouble locating our hotel in Kusadasi. I called the hotel two different times for directions and was, shall we say, frustrated by the response of, "We are here, across the street from (insert Turkish name I can't understand). We are right here." I practiced my diplomacy skills with the receptionist in trying to refine the directions and was able to make out a restaurant name nearby and at least understand which side of the road to look on. We finally made it there by stopping at a taxi stop (for the second time) and asking a driver to drive me there and Brian could follow. But instead of hopping into a car, a driver came out and walked me down the street and pointed up at the hotel that we'd just been driving circles around...very bad signage. We made it to our room with just enough time to squeeze in a glimpse of Spongebob Squarepants (dubbed in Turkish), go to dinner, and head to bed.

Thankfully our room and hotel turned out to be pretty close to perfect for us--not too pricey, breakfast and dinner buffets included, nice enough to not be gross, and a suite so we had a little room to move around in, not just wall-to-wall beds. And we had a great view of the harbor and "big water" which we hadn't seen for so long, we cheered when we caught a first glimpse of the Aegean Sea. Oh, and we got to complain that it was humid in Kusadasi and everything felt damp--wonderful for us western Washingtonians that have been drying up in overheated buildings and buses in Ankara! Chief complaints about the hotel: hard mattress on the bed, internet connection non-existent in our room, and sheets not comfortable (waffle weave towel blanket things for top sheets that didn't reach the edges of the bed and a wool blanket on top of that). The pool was not heated and quite green for the winter, but Lacey just said, "Fine, we'll just swim in the ocean."

We did not take any pictures today. While on the drive I thought about it, but honestly I was overwhelmed with feeling so great out on the road and making sure to be a second pair of eyes for navigating and keeping us safe on the drive.