Another travel story from Ken...

Before I post anymore pictures, I need to tell you a story. It’s a story that’s funnier now than it was when it happened. It was mostly just annoying when it was happening. Although...if I was being honest, I’d have to admit there was always a part of me that was thinking, “This is going to make a funny story for my blog.”  Be prepared...it's a bit on the long side.  But it makes me laugh so...

Most of you know me well enough, so none of what follows will come as a big surprise. Most of you probably don’t know my friend Liz very well. If you did...you REALLY wouldn’t be surprised by what’s about to follow. I don’t mean that in a bad way...it’s just that we BOTH tend to attract...mishaps, I guess you could say. It’s not our fault...it just happens to us. This wasn’t the first time...and I’m sure it won’t be the last.

Now granted...we didn’t exactly plan our little trip to Turkey very well. We both had reasons to be there at the same time, so we thought, “Hey, let’s see some of the sights together.” That was kind of the extent of our planning ahead. In our defence, we live on different continents, so it was tough to make plans. In the end, we managed to be there at the same time, and that was pretty much the most anyone could expect of us. If you’ve read this, then you understand completely...or at least you should. Occasionally one of us (usually Liz) would write and say, “You know...we should really figure out what we want to do in Turkey.” To which I would reply, “Yea, we really should.”

And then we’d go back to whatever it was we were doing before that little conversation.

All that to say...we ended up doing a little last minute planning and changing of plans. On the second day of our time in Istanbul we decided to cut it short and fly down to another city on the south coast, Antalya, and spend a couple of days there. I got out my handy little Lonely Planet book and found some things I wanted to see that were a little off the beaten track. I found an amazing deal online for a rental car, and what looked like a cool little hotel...so we were set. I wrote the rental car guy and asked him to meet us at the airport.

Again, in my defence, I figured he’d take us to his office to sign the paperwork and that he’d probably have a map we could have to help us find our way around the city. I also figured he’d have an idea where our hotel was and could give us directions. What I didn’t expect was for him to fill out the paperwork on the trunk of the car and be gone before we really knew what was happening. Which is exactly what happened.

So off I went back into the airport to see if maybe the gift shop had a map or something, since we really didn’t know much about the city. Or really even where the hotel was. I could kind of picture it in my head from the map online when we booked it, but for some reason I figured I’d be able to get online and look up the address, so I hadn’t written it down.

I did kind of find a map. I say “kind of” because it sort of looked like someone had just sketched it out on a piece of paper and photocopied it to sell to stupid tourists who didn’t arrive very well prepared. I’m sure there must be a market for such maps ‘cause I can’t imagine I’m the only one who showed up in an unknown city with no address of the hotel and no real idea of where he was going.

For some reason I had it in my head that Antalya wasn’t a very big place, like 30,000 people. So I didn’t think it would be that big of a deal finding our way around. I mean...how tough could it be right?

Yea, so it turns out Antalya is almost a million people. It’s kind of like arriving in Vancouver with no map and no address to where you’re going and then just planning to drive around randomly and hope you find your hotel.

Actually it’s exactly like that.

I think what messed us up from the gitgo (that is a word, I looked it up) was that I thought the airport was north of the city when, in fact, it was more to the east. So when Liz kept saying that we should go more to the west, I thought she was crazy. In the interest of preserving our friendship, I tried to keep my mouth shut, but inside I was like, “Seriously?” In my defence (I keep saying that), even knowing our starting out point, she still led us on a merry little chase through some backwoods country outside the city. =) Ha ha...love ya Liz.

The great thing about Liz and I is that we can laugh in the midst of our misery. We stopped at a gas station for help at one point (they didn’t help much) and Liz tried to get out of the car. She pulled the door handle, but nothing happened. So I searched around for the electric locks and hit the button. She tried again, and nothing happened. This went on for awhile, me locking and unlocking the door...Liz pulling on the handle. Until finally, Liz pulled the door handle...and then pushed the door. Hey, guess what?! It was open the entire time...it just didn’t occur to us to actually push on the door. Yea...that had us laughing so hard we couldn’t speak for awhile.

The other thing that messed us up on this little adventure was the lack of street signs. And where there did actually happened to be a street sign? Well...it was written in a foreign language. Turkish, I guess. So the names all looked like Gundogmus and Kazimkarabikar. See, you’re laughing...but those are actual street names in the city. At one point I was like, “I think we’re on Sokakta.” Liz diplomatically informed me that “Sokakta” was actually the Turkish word for...street. So, that didn’t really help. When we did actually see a street sign, I would try to chant it phonetically while Liz tried to find it on the map. Yea...that didn’t really help either.

At any rate, we drove randomly around the city for over FIVE HOURS trying to find the hotel. It’s not that random driving was ever part of the plan. But that’s how it worked out. Failing finding the hotel, I’d have been happy to just figure out where the heck we were on the map. Every forty five minutes or so, I’d be like, “Uh yea...we’ve been here before. I’m not entirely sure how mind you, but...we’ve been here before.” Of course we did stop and ask for directions a couple of times, but somehow we managed to get the only two little old ladies in the city who didn’t know how to read a map. Or...at least our map.

By now we were getting pretty grumpy. We saw another hotel and figured they would be able to help us. Liz went in and then came out laughing. She was like, “You know how we thought we were here?” and she pointed at the map. “Actually...we’re over here.” And she pointed to another spot a couple of inches across the city from where we were. I have to admit...I was a little surprised by how far off we were. It was kind of impressive. We knew our hotel was in the old part of the city, and now with a correct starting place we were actually in the right area in just a couple of minutes.

I turned off the main road, behind a motorcycle, onto a smaller, cobblestone street, and in my excitement of finally knowing (more or less) where we were...I just kept follow the motorbike guy. Even now, thinking back on it...I’m not sure why I did that. He just seemed to know where he was going, and that confidence (after five hours of being lost) kind of sucked me in. He made another quick right hand turn onto an even narrower street...and I turned in right behind him. Strangely, this new street was only a little bit wider than the car...and it had big curbs on either side...and train tracks down the middle.

Now understand, I was pretty tired and it’s not every day you accidentally drive onto the train tracks of one of the city’s trams. So it took a moment before it finally sunk in. By the time I realized what was happening, it was too late to try to back up. All I could do was keep going and hope and pray like a wild man, that we didn’t meet a train coming from the other direction.

That was probably the scariest four minutes of my life. It felt more like forty. My knuckles were literally white from gripping the steering wheel, and I could feel sweat pouring off my body. It didn’t really help that Liz was in the passenger seat chanting, “Oh dear Jesus! Oh dear Jesus!”

Obviously (since I’m writing this) we managed to get off the tracks before getting pasted by an oncoming train. We eventually passed a place where a bike path crossed the tracks, and it was wide enough for me to turn onto and then get back onto the main road. Every time I think about this (now...) I start laughing. I can just imagine people walking by and seeing a little grey Toyota go flying past on the tram tracks with two white people freaking out in the front seats.

We circled back around and this time made the correct turns and managed to get into the old city. It was the craziest thing...one minute you’re in a modern city and the next, you’re suddenly driving through a medieval village. It was literally a maze of tiny, little, twisty, one way streets, barely wider than the car...and going in every which direction. These people definitely never heard of the grid system. But it was very pretty, and very cool. I wish we’d had more time to look around. Like five hours more time...

After that, the evening was much more relaxing. The little hotel was great, and after getting settled, we sat by the pool, listened to some cool live music and had our supper of fresh grilled fish.

The next day we were off on our adventure drive up the coast...

This is a video of driving in the old part of the city...