6 in 6: Turkey

Cities Visited:

Mersin

Antalya

Dalaman
(well, just to get to the airport so I'm not sure that really counts...)

Mersin Marina

One day in Mersin, Turkey, my friend Tessa (she's from the Netherlands) and I decided that we should go on another bike ride together.  We had done that once when she first came on board in Cyprus and we had made a deal that we would ride bikes in every place we came to.  We've only been twice...

We decided to go on our day off but that day off, it happened to be raining.  A lot.

We went anyways.

We stayed along a very nice path that went along the coast with the water on our left and the city buzzing on our right.  After getting completely soaked, we took a turn down some semi busy streets.  We came to a get together of sorts which kind of looked like a little market with different stalls of food and picnic tables (all covered because well...it was raining).  We dismounted our bikes, out of respect of course, and walked ourselves and our bikes around it.  I have almost never felt so out of place in my life.  Here I was, a blonde American girl soaked by the rain in a bright green jacket walking around Turkish people in their traditional Turkish dress.

We didn't stay long.

As I said, Tessa is from The Netherlands.  They bike there a lot.  So she basically has no fear on a bike in the middle of the road.  Even if that bike has no brakes.  Which hers did not.  (Insert Kellie's laughter at the thought of what happens next in the story...)  We were making our way back to the ship so we headed towards the water again (that's the nice thing about living on a ship in a marina.  If you get lost, find the water and you'll be able to find the boat again...)  We made it back to the main road so all that was left to do was get to the other side.  However, there wasn't much of a cross walk.  So we just decided to go across at a random spot when we could find a break in the traffic.

The break came so I went first and was able to easily cross and pop my front bike tire up the curb and continue on.

What a nice day on the Mersin coast looks like...it didn't
look like that this day...

As I did this, I heard Tessa yelling something behind me along the lines of, "I have no brakes!" as she came closer to the curb.  So I looked back as she rammed right into the curb, luckily not quite flying over the handle bars.  There was much laughter.  (And not just from me.  She was laughing too.)  She was able to finally stop (well, obviously because she hit the curb and that's kind of an almost automatic stop right there) and she made it to where I was and there was only minimal damage to the bike.  Just the chain coming out of place a bit and a big chunk of plastic coming off from somewhere unknown but it was fine.  It was an old, rusty bike anyways.

Again, still raining which added to the comedy of the situation.

All was fixed and we continued back to the ship.

A few days before this, it had been discovered that the supermarket nearest to us was selling strawberries at about 2 Lira per kilo, which is about $1.00 per kilo.  That's a cheap price for that amount of delicious strawberries.

As Tessa and I were on our way back to the ship, we passed by this store and decided to get some strawberries to treat ourselves for the adventure we just had and to have a snack for the movie we were going to watch.  So she stayed outside with the bikes as I went in to get a big box of strawberries.

Again, it was raining so I was incredibly wet as I walked inside.  A bit out of place, yet again.

With strawberries purchased, we concluded our journey, dried off, put on warm clothes, probably made some popcorn, and enjoyed a movie with a box of strawberries.

A good way to spend one's day off.