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I consider Karen and her Dad fairly adventurous so when it came time to sign up for a Turkish bath they were the only takers. They headed down to an 18th century bath at Cagaloglu Hamami and Mrs. Krumholtz and I stayed at the hotel. When Karen returned we got the full rundown how it worked and this is it. You walk in one entrance to select your services (self service bath/steam, bath, massage or the works). Karen took a look at the photos and opted for self service bathing and a massage. Karen was quick to point out that she was not to excited about having someone scrub her but Dr. Krumholtz, the most adventurous of them all, signed up for 'the works'.
Women and men bathe in separate locations and Karen was led down a hallway into a small entrance and deposited into a group of five large Turkish women. Karen was still looking for the self serve line but got shuffled into a small room and was told to disrobe. Karen put on a towel and according to the guidebook the towel was to be wrapped tightly to avoid nudity which is not considered fashionable. The small room is locked and Karen follows one of the large ladies into the main bath area, a marbled circular room with a large domed ceiling - very Turkish. There are marble basins attached to the walls with elegant hot and cold taps. Karen was handed a metal bowl and was quite surprised when the large Turkish lady ripped off her towel and hung it on a pole. Karen was standing there naked and followed the program pouring hot and cold water over herself for twenty minutes. It appeared that Karen would get through it until the large topless Turkish woman approached and motioned her to the slab of marble. At this point Karen is reaching for her towel and is trying to calculate how to make a dash for the small changing room and a quick exit. The large topless lady had obvious seen this fear before and prodded Karen to the massage table. She began scrubbing, rubbing and kneading Karen for thirty minutes. After this was all over Karen was as shiny as a new penny and was allowed to put on her clothes. A quick tip for the large Turkish woman and Karen was out the door with soaking wet hair looking for her Dad. It sounded like a unique Turkish experience and I am sad that I missed it - Not!.
The day has arrived and Karen's parents are heading back to Florida. It has been a great two weeks and we are really going to miss having family around. We picked another hotel and decide to hang out in Istanbul for a couple more days and get some travel writing done. After a week in Istanbul it was time to move on and we decided to head to Cappadocia in central Turkey. It was a short 12 hour overnight bus ride and we figured we could handle a long bus ride. We checked with a couple of travel agents and got quotes of 4,500,000 Turkish Lira quoted two out of three times. If I haven't mentioned Turkey has had a little problem with inflation and 250,000 Lira equals $1 US. We purchased two tickets for tonight's bus ride.
We grabbed lunch at Med Cezir, our new favorite restaurant and planned on walking the rest of the day. We got a disturbing e-mail from Karen's parents that said the bank account was dangerously low. We will have to figure that out later and for now we will try to stick to our budget which means more overnight bus travel in our future. We set out walking and ended up in the Taskim district which looked like a lot of fun. They had numerous cinemas, shopping, cafes and bars. We decided to see a movie and settled on "Wild Things" with Matt Dillon and Kevin Bacon. The movie theater was very small and was carved out of an old shop and the screen was only ten feet across. The really funny thing was that they had assigned seats that filled up on the back row. We made a mad dash for a Taxi and headed back to Sultanahemt district for our overnight bus ride.
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| This page last changed on 27-Apr-2006 23:30:38 EDT by 70.171.24.221. |
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