Dalyan

I decided to head straight for my favorite place in south Turkey. And now I'm here. Except for some iffy weather (it is, after all, October), things have been wonderful. I'm reviving my tan and trying hard to go broke before I reach Istanbul. The other day, it was cloudy/slightly rainy in the morning, so I decided to walk to the beach. Usually, you take a boat. It's a lovely, half-hour jaunt to the beach. All along the way, numerous British old people call out all the birds they've spotted. Never a dull moment. But if you want to walk to the beach, it's 15 miles (22km) round trip. I felt I was up for it.


Along the way, their were some nice vistas (if you're into that sort of thing) and other natural whatnots. I actually made it almost there, but some very nice Turks from Denizli gave me a ride for the last two miles. Thanks, nice Turks! Here's proof that I saw the sign for Iztuzu Beach:

And here is the beach itself:

Since there was rain that day, it was almost completely deserted. I walked a ways, sat down and read my book. Then I walked around some more and saw some funny signs:

I don't think there's a single sign in English in this country that doesn't have at least one typo in it. This one suffers from improper translation:

Out of control?? It's not like cats are marrying dogs and Serbs are dancing with Croats. This is the scene:

It looks quite in control to me.

After photographing the funny signs, I walked back. A very nice Turkish guy stopped to give me a ride back to town, but I decided to hoof it on my own. To tell the truth, I felt like quite a blob after all that eating and drinking in Ukraine. My favorite thing is called salo. Technically, it's bacon, but more realistically, it's smoked lard. Gross to hear about, delicious to eat. Cousin Arsen's wife had given me some for the trip and I'd just finished it off. So this trip was also to see whether I was gonna have a heart attack from all that fat. I did not. On the way back to town, I made that goat movie below. Remember me at Oscar time.

Although not nearly as overrun by tourists as it was last May, the breakdown is the same: the overwhelming majority is British (mostly Midlanders, North-of-England and Scottish), followed by many Germans, some Dutch, a few French, a rare Italian or two and an even rarer Spaniard. I have met no Americans so far. On the beach and on excursions around, there are lots of Poles and a fair amount of Russians. Like last time I have no idea where they stash these people at night, but I have to say this: when the Poles are at the beach, the prettiness quotient goes way up. And that's nice. Anyhow, that's it for now!