Wow. What a day in such a short period of time. We woke up around noon, already promoting a late start. We had to travel to a place called Bostanca (bo-stan-juh)… to get to an island called Buyuk Ada (big island). To do this, we had to a take an array of busses, a total of three. Before we got on the third bus, we had some fish sandwiches, which we got by the shore, not too bad. By the time we made it to the port the boat left out of, it was 3pm. We met a guy on the boat who lived on the island, he showed us a good place to eat later that night as well as a local bicycle place where we rented our bikes for the day. The only things allowed on this island are horse drawn carriages, and bicycles. It was a little after 4 now, giving us 3 hours to conquer the island, and we did.
It was a hefty up-hill battle for the first few miles, but we can already tell this island is going to be beautiful. There are beginnings of forests all around us, and the view of other islands and the shoreline through the trees is breathtaking. That would only be the start of our awe. Once we made it decently up the hill, there is a church, which is perched a top the giant mountain we have been climbing. We locked up the bikes and took a good 25-minute walk up the steepest hill you can imagine. What a work out… But the harder the walk got, the better the views got. Once we got to the top, it was just too amazing for words. We went inside the church to look around for a while, and then continued exploring around the top of this mountain. I went out onto some rocks out in the distance, in the middle of the forest, and was blown away by the views. The pictures are great, but don’t do nearly justice to what I was seeing! Brent came out and joined me, and we got a view self-timer shots from other rocks, I was basically running for my life to make it back to the rocks we were sitting on once I hit start! This was one of, if not my favorite place I have been.
It is around 6:30 now, the bikes have to be in by 7:30, and we have a good 7 miles left to still ride. Luckily, it was mostly down hill! We started along the path, and stopped at a few places to get some awesome pictures. But mainly just coasted down and enjoyed the rest of the day. Ironically enough, a film was being shot on part of this bike path! It was a great background, can’t deny that. We flew down the hill, had to dodge multiple horse drawn carriages, as well as a few horses who were free roaming in the road! We managed to get the bikes back at 7:27, just in time! Then we headed to find some food… everything seemed over-priced here, so we got a 1.50TL pidé and split it – and held out until we got back to the mainland. The boat ride back stopped at every other island, but let us skip two of the busses we took on the way there, a fair trade-off.
We went into a popular local restaurant for dinner, got three different types of food and split them. Two were churro looking deals, with one having crème in it, and the other having some sort of meat..the other being more of a chimichanga look, but having potatoes in it. They were not bad, my favorite was the one with meat in it. For dessert, we got a pastry, which tasted like a sugar cookie with no sugar on it – and a chocolate filled pretzel looking thing. Omnomonom. One of the workers sat down with us and we struck up a conversation, he offered us tea and we sat and talked for longer. Good guy. From here, we headed home on a midibus, a miniature bus. Once we got off and started the walk home, I guess another wind of dessert came into view. Into a pastry shop we went, picked up two other types of pastry, as well as two little bite sized ones. All were good, and I am definitely going to put on some pounds here. My diet is bread and dessert. Yikes! But, it is so good ;).
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