Today Linda, Randal and I took the small dolmus (small bus) to town for food shopping at the Tansas Supermarket.  It was hot enough to wear a t-shirt and shorts. Tonight I’m in flannel and a sweatshirt.  When the sun goes down and the breeze comes off the water, it gets really cool; three blanket cool.  We have heat on the boat but really don’t need it with all the blankets and everything closed up.  Here are some photos from Marmaris.  I still have to finish writing about our travels here, but thought I’d mix in some local stuff too.

Ru

Marmaris First Days

Marmaris is a real tourist destination with the waterfront crowded with shops, bars and restaurants. But if you get back off the main road and start to interact with the people who actually live here, Marmaris becomes a neighborhood where you go to the Thursday market for fruit and veggies and flowers for a treat, the computer shop where they tried everything they could think of to test out our Indian dongle before we buy a Turkish sim card for it, and the same chicken wrap shop because they “know us now.” Like Cheers where everyone knows your name. It doesn’t take long to before you’re treated like an old friend. Too good to be true? Maybe, but so far it seems to be so.

Our starboard view at sundown.

Our port side is an arbor covered walkway and then rows of yachts on the hard where cruisers do boat work most of the day so it gets pretty noisy. It’s sort of like living in a fancy boat yard. We haven’t met any new people yet but that will come. Lots of cruisers speak lots of other languages. Lucky for us many also speak English. Linda and Michael are about a five minute walk from us on one of the more central docks. The marina has a large paperback library so there is no need to buy popular fiction which is good. The books are two deep on the shelf and in no kind of order. The labels on the shelves indicate that once upon a time they were arranged by author but then everyone gave up and now it’s just browse until you find something you want to read. Right now I have books waiting but it’s nice to have the library available. You just take them and return them when you’re done. We have a bag to donate so I’ll walk them over tomorrow.

Our agent in Turkey.

Sonar handled the paperwork for all of our boats. Sevenstar suggested an agent who wanted hundreds of Euros so Randal stopped in Soner’s office to speak with him and found the price should be way less. Bill and Chris also had been given Soner’s name but Randal was really the first to approach him and tell him about the 16 of us. Soner was well organized and caring. He made sure things went smoothly. The BBC Everest was docked at the same port that ferry boats use so he made sure we would have access to check on the unloading progress. Early the second day of unloading a cruiser went to the Marmaris Port to get onto his boat on the BBC Everest. The Port Authorities stamped is passport out of Turkey because a ferry boat of people returning to Rhodes (Greece) was going through the security gates at the same time and Turkish Immigration thought the cruiser was with the group and the cruiser thought he was supposed to give them his passport… Could have been a mess but Soner took care of it. We were actually in Soner’s office listening to him on the phone taking care of the problem. We were there as were Bun and Anita from Passage and Soner suggested we wait about 20 minutes for the ferry to leave so we’d have no problem. Soner’s office is on the waterfront and he invited us all to stop in any time for a rest and some tea. And if we have problems while cruising anywhere in Turkey to call him. Soner is young, hip, and very Turkish! Very welcoming.

Bridge of the BBC Everest

We spent several hours up there the first day waiting to see what would be. We were all standing around outside and the Captain invited us up, and up and up and up. It was way up. By 4 pm when we still didn’t know when we’d be unloaded but were sure it wasn’t that day, Randal and I went down again and walked back to our Dost Hotel and checked back in.

Looking down from the bridge at DoraMac

She is the back one on the left with her green hull and her tan canvas front window cover.

Last Thursday we visited the "Thursday Market" near our hotel just to look. We’ll return there this Thursday to load up on fruit and veggies.

The tomatoes are just wonderful and are served for breakfast with sliced cucumber and olives.

Most Turkish women dress as we do but many also wear more traditional clothing and cover their heads though Ataturk, the founder of modern Turkey banned the Islamic dress code for women.

The pink ladies.

Lots of these bread cabinets everywhere. And tea is also served everywhere in the lovely Turkish tea glasses.

I love their long skirts and scarves. The flowers and strawberry lady!