• Italy
• Greece
• Turkey
  • July 10: Kusadasï, Selçuk
  • July 11: Selçuk, Bodrum
  • July 12: Bodrum, Pammukkale
  • July 13: Pammukkale
  • July 14: Gorëme
  • July 15: Gorëme
  • July 16: Gorëme
  • July 17: Bursa
  • July 18: Bursa, Çannakale
  • July 19: Çannakale, Gallipoli, Istanbul
  • July 20-22: Istanbul

On the map it seems like no distance at all from the island of Samos to the port of Kusadasï on the Turkish coast, but somehow the trip ends up being two hours of water transit. To kill time, I thumbed through Alisdair's Lonely Planet guide for the Middle East, which was almost comical in describing the particulars of travel in some of the more inaccessible countries. Take for instance the section called "Air Travel" in the Iraq chapter: "Before the airport closed, it was possible to fly into Iraq. That is no longer the case." Damn. Have to change plans now :).

Arrived in Kusadasïand made it through the red tape at customs with far less hassle than I remembered from the last time I had arrived here. Alisdair said his goodbyes, and in true hardened backpacker style he hefted his pack and started walking down the road. I would have liked to follow him as he rounded the bend to see if he would keep up the act or give in and catch a taxi. I had no doubts that he was just as lazy as Sally and me, but he still kept up the pretense. It must be a down under thing. We walked out of the border control and in the direction of the bus station and we were no more than a foot across the road when we were set upon by a tout for a pension in Selçuk, which happened to be our final destination. This guy was relentless. Since we were heading there anyway, we humored him and said we would "look at his place", which conveniently got us to Selçuk for free even if we didn't end up in his pension. Mercenary tactics, sure, but I'm not usually overflowing with sympathy for touts. I know, I know, they have to make a living, but there have been some over the years that went way out of bounds with their aggressive pitches and dogged determination to drag you off, kicking and screaming, to whatever hostel, carpet shop, or bar would pay the 10% overhead to get the tourists in.

It was this guy's lucky day, since the pension he was touting was actually decent and central, and they came down from $10 to $8 for the double room after some haggling. Sally gave me some grief about trying to extort the pension owner, until I told her that in all likelihood there would be an attempt at some point to move us down the road conveniently to his brother's carpet shop, where the $2 would pale in comparison to the profits potentially in store for him there. This was the running deal in Selcuk.

We slept a long while to make up for our sleepless night on the ferry, and I dreamt of small white dogs being wrapped in carpets and chucked off the sides of ferries. When we woke up we set out to run some errands and I discovered that one of the main bank chains, AkBank, accepted American Express at the ATM. Money problems solved.

We headed up the Aysoluk hill past the old aqueduct and water basin, past the Basilica of St. John to the castle, which as expected was closed as it was past 6PM. However, as fate would have it, we were befriended by a twelve-year-old local boy who had been hanging around outside the castle, probably hoping to snag some nosy tourists such as ourselves. Soon he was motioning for us to follow him and we did, on a footpath which wound around the back of the castle. He broke off the path when we were out of sight of the road and we began to ascend almost straight up on the steep hill that ran up to the tops of the castle walls. It was steep going, with some mild rock-climbing and precarious leaps involved, but when all was said and done we were, lo and behold, inside the castle walls.

The boy led us out onto the castle grounds, really just a big enclosed courtyard, to an old chapel and around to the old mosque. We went in with him and he led us through a small opening in one wall which was the entrance to the claustrophobic, ancient spiral steps of the small minaret. Out we popped through a crawl-hole onto the roof of the mosque, where we had a great view of the castle grounds and the city bathed in the warm tones of the setting sun. On our way out of the castle we happened across some park rangers, who rather than show alarm instead grinned and nodded us, then spoke rapidly but amicably with our little guide, probably asking for 50% of the take. We headed home, watched some football, and hit the sack.

Woke up at 9AM to check out of the pension and made preparations to see Ephesus before leaving Selçuk in the afternoon. Had breakfast with four Australian girls, two pairs of sisters traveling together, and we all commiserated about traveling with siblings and what a pain in the ass it was. Sally got her first taste of Vegemite, and she was a good sport about it, but she gave up after the first bite. Don't blame her. Vile stuff, that.

We caught a ride out with the pension owner to Ephesus, and as with last time I was floored by the magnificence of this ancient city. if you think you'd enjoy walking down a 2000-year-old street, or wandering off and reading Greco-Roman stone tablets from 100BC, then Ephesus is the place for you. It's a mind blower.

Waited for about an hour for our pension guy to show up. We ended up catching a dolmus bus back into town and I was rather relieved as I knew that a ride back to town from the pension guy would involve a pit stop at the carpet shop (one of the Aussie girls had already enjoyed this particular mode of hospitality) and I was in no mood to be an ass. We huffed it from the bus station back to the pension, running into some friends from Santorini along the way, picked up our luggage, then hurried back to the station. Bought our tickets for Bodrum and we were dragged seemingly a half mile by the bus company guy, and then waited by the side of the road for over an hour for the bus to pull in. The bus ride went as bus rides rarely do, that is to say uneventfully.

Once at Bodrum we walked out of the bus station and down the street for a mile or so towards the waterside, a pleasant area of town full of parks, walking streets, and the odd castle. After a brief and painless guidebook consultation we arrived at the Sevin Pansiyon, almost stumbling upon it by pure chance. We took a look and after a bit of dickering I got it down to $13 from $16. Walk back downstairs and chat with some girls who mention that one of their friends just came from Selcuk a couple of days before, and that she had been sitting in an outdoor cafe there when she heard gunfire. Apparently a Turkish guy was walking up and down the street killing all the Kurds he could see. She was right next to a restaurant where the man walked up and shot a man and his son while they were eating dinner. Everyone fled of course, but the locals calmed down when they realized, to quote the girl, "that he was only killing Kurds." Oh, well then, jolly good. Only killing Kurds. What a world. We grabbed a brief supper of delicious doner kebab and turned in.

Saturday morning we checked out of the Sevin Pansiyon, stowed our gear, and went to have a look at the Castle of St. Peter, wherein lies the Museum of Underwater Archaeology, which sounded promising. We boggled at the sheer volume of 5th century BC artifacts recovered from the ocean floor, and then we scoffed at a rather cheesy implementation of an English Torture Chamber. Don't ask me why it was there, maybe there's a kit that museums can buy and there was a sale one week, but it really was pathetic.

Time came to catch the afternoon bus to Pammukkale and we were seated all the way at the front, across from the driver's side. It didn't take too much intuition to glean that the bus driver was none too fond of Sally's bare legs nor of her place at my side. We met an affable French backpacker named Frederique, but aside from him we were the only backpackers on the bus.

Five hours later we arrived in Pammukkale and we were literally overwhelmed by a mountain of pension touts that descended upon the bus before it had even come to a full stop. Pammukkale's claim to fame until recently has been to come and wade in the natural calcium cliff pools, but ever since the UN pressured the government to close off most of the pools to public access and make them protected areas, word has gotten out and now most travelers make Pammukkale a day trip at best.

Sally and I were not so lucky, as we had arrived too late to catch the overnighter out of town. So we followed the owner of the Hotel Venus back to his pension and settled in. We went back out on the town, which was as dead as dead can be: row after row of restaurants with no diners, shops with no shoppers, pensions with no boarders. We ate a solitary supper, the oppressive silence seeming to stifle all attempts at conversation. There were no, repeat no other backpackers around. We made a sullen, early retreat to the Venus Hotel, where we both had the unpleasant experience of getting locked in the bathroom. Venus' charm was in dire need of replenishing: if you could get out of the bathroom, what awaited you in the shoddily assembled rooms were shallow, sunken beds adorned with pillows so lumpy we began to wonder if the coal mine down the road was selling off surplus to the hotel owners. Once the lights went out a cloud of mosquitoes descended and kept us awake until dawn, when inexplicably the hotel stereo system came to life and began blaring bad pop music, loud enough even to drown out the call to prayer. We were not happy campers by the time we finally gave up and admitted that Venus had beaten us, the bitch.

We checked out of the Venus with weary relief, left our bags and headed up the hill, hiking a rough path up to the travertines, which were splendid. Apparently we missed the main entrance and had just blundered up the hill like idiots, right into the pools. We made a great point of taking as much time as possible to do everything, as the overnight bus to Cappadocia would not be leaving until 7PM, over eight hours away. We tromped around in the sole open pool for a bit then made our way up to the old Roman hieropolis, the amphitheatre, which Sally and I pretty much had to ourselves (a fringe benefit of coming to a deserted tourist attraction). We were all over that amphitheatre, and even though I feel a twinge of guilt playing around in 2-millenia-old ruins, we did some rock climbing and boosted ourselves up onto the great front facade of the structure. Once again we were amazed at the inscriptions and artwork laying around, seemingly discarded, any one of which would have made it into a museum at home.

At last, after much dallying about, time came to catch our overnighter to Gorëme, in Cappadocia. It was the usual overnight bus, fitful sleep in cramped quarters and the almost Nazi-like application of the overhead lights to announce, just as you were dozing off, that it was time for another mandatory food stop, and if you were really lucky, the bus would be washed in the middle of the night, for no apparent reason. It was all worth it though, for as the bus rolled on into the predawn hours we were greeted with the sight of the moonlit Gorëme valley, an ethereal landscape of naturally-formed volcanic cones and hillocks that you would swear came out of some sci-fi movie (in fact, parts of Star Wars were filmed here).

We arrived in Gorëme and proceeded up the road to the Köse Pension, a magical, magical place. A friendlier hostel you will never find, and I've been to a lot of hostels. Sally and I arrived before the sunrise and huddled in the cold until a vision of heaven on earth named Emily opened the door on the front porch, set down a gorgeous little puppy named Fergus, and said "Oh dear, have you been out here long? Come in, dears, get some tea in you and warm up! Would you like some breakfast?" One quickly got the impression that a very familial atmosphere pervaded the Köse Pension, as well as an overpowering sense of calm.

Sally and I had a very easy day, recovering from the bus ride, and getting our bearings. We ran into Fiona and Jody from the Pink Palace, and we sat in as Jody bought a carpet from a large shop across the river. It was relaxing to watch the whole carpet song and dance with no pressure to buy. The carpet sellers had a willing subject, and were more than happy to let us perch in the corner and observe.

Dinner at Köse was friendly and talkative, especially, great god how especially, in contrast to the isolation we had experienced in Pammukkale. Sally and I decided to sign up for a day tour of Cappadocia on Tuesday. We had a quiet night, a few beers, and turned in early.

This morning we arose for our tour. Sally and I got out the front door spot-on 9:30AM, and piled into a dolmus alongside a friendly Kiwi named Jamie, a soon-to-be minister from the Brox, and newly-dating couple comprised of a Canadian boy and a shy, unresponsive English girl. All four of these fellow travelers had, until recently, lived in the same kibbutz outside of Tel Aviv, and were now taking time to see some of the Mediterranean region. We picked up a few more people in town and headed out, our first destination the Pigeon Valley, which was a prime example of the volcanic turbulence that has produced Cappadocia's unique landscape. The valley got its name when, in centuries past, the residents had carved nooks into the soft rock in hopes of attracting pigeons, more importantly pigeon droppings, which were used as fertilizer. One of our group commented that perhaps a visit to Shit Gorge was not the most inspiring way to start a tour. I kept an open mind.

It was a good thing, too, since we next came upon Derinkuyu, one of the famous underground cities of Cappadocia. Here was a truly mindblowing experience. Around the tenth and eleventh centuries the native Christian peoples of the region used these underground cities as refuges from all manner of invasion (indeed, the tour guide went to such great lengths to describe the different invasions in the area that one began to feel that, for a time, it must have been difficult to tell who you were supposed to pay taxes to). The city we were in extended down over 250 feet into the soft volcanic rockand was a three-dimensional labyrinth of cramped, twisting tunnels connecting thousands of cavelike rooms; definitely not a place for the claustrophobic. We marveled at the elaborate and redundant security systems in place at every entrance to the city, with rolling boulders and rock traps reminiscent of something out of Indiana Jones.

Next we moved on down the road an hour or so to the Ihlara Gorge, which was your standard-issue river canyon, except that in this case the river had carved out the canyon from the soft volcanic Cappadocian rock, and the resultant landscape was not to be believed. In the middle of a scrub desert, one descended into the Gorge, and the farther one went down, the more you felt you could not possibly still be in Turkey, for at the bottom, along the riverbed, was the most lush and verdant forest you could imagine. Look above the trees, however, and you'd see the eerie, otherworldy, smooth sandcastle walls of the Gorge, looking as if they had been melted with some great blowtorch. For three wonderful hours we walked, gaped, and occasionally rested along the soft banks of the river.

After our hike through the Gorge we ate a leisurely lunch and piled back into the dolmus to our next destination, a "photo-stop" at Selime, an old abandoned cave dwelling network built into a cliff at the top of a steep hill. We were supposed to just get out, stand at the base of the hill, take our pictures, and get back in the van. However, for some reason, a couple of the kibbutz guys and I decided to run like madmen up the hill and have a look at the caves for ourselves. Sally stayed behind, nursing a severe case of Delhi Belly, and she said as soon as we took off the driver started cursing; apparently every other group takes off up the hill and it takes ages to get them all to come back down.

The reason it takes people so long to come down is that basically what you have is a giant adult-sized jungle jim, replete with secret passageways between hidden caves, and vertical tunnels leading to destinations unknown, all disguised as an serious archaeological site. I don't know about that, but I certainly did have fun. After about 20 minutes, I found a steep tunnel up into the mountain that emerged on the top of the cliffs, at the base of another cave village, this one hidden from view of the road. I called up the kibbutz crew and we all were giddy with the joy of discovery, all not believing that we were the only people in sight. Before we knew it, we had spent 45 minutes at the "photo stop", and those still in the dolmus were angrily honking up at us to hurry it up. When we all finally filed back into the van, the guide grumbled at us and shook his head.

Soon we moved on to see a Karavanseray, a stopover on the caravan route that was used in Seljuk times. Quite nice to see, and sure enough it was only a matter of time before we found more things to climb on. We moved on to a tour of a pottery shop in Avanos that was built into a series of caves. The pottery was really stunning, and, of course, they made it known that some of the pieces could be had for a price.

Our tour ended with a beautiful sunset at the Valley of the Fairy Chimneys back in Goreme. The sight of the orange sunlight filtering through those bizarre and organic rock formations was indescribable, but for the first time on the trip I truly regretted my pre-trip decision not to bring a camera. How many once in a lifetime shots had I missed?

This morning was spent making some necessary phone calls home and arranging our bus ticket to Bursa, and lastly picking up some much-needed antibiotic treatments for our recurring Delhi Belly. I have had dysentery in the past and with such an experience behind me (no pun intended) I feel I have to make every effort to nip these illnesses in the bud as soon as I can. Although, having a bit of the runs is par for the course East of Europe proper - as one traveler wrote next to the mirror in the Kose Pension bathroom, "Happiness is a dry fart in India."

We spent the day wandering the Goreme Open Air Museum, which was a bit of a disappointment after the previous day's spectacular cave dwellings. We did wander as far off the track as we could, and through the ceiling of one cave dwelling, a chimney beckoned to us. The chimney continued up, tunneling through the rock and up into another level of caves. Throwing caution to the wind, I raced up the extremely steep, hardscrabble tunnel face and was about thirty feet up when I realized that I had no clear idea of how I was to get back down from where I was, much less the next level. I turned and realized that I might have a problem - the pebbly tunnel wall would probably not help me much if I started sliding, and there was a hole at the bottom of the tunnel that was a ten foot drop onto a hard rock floor - not really something I was relishing. I inched down very, very slowly, slipping here and there, and sending little cascades of pebbles and dust down past Sally and through the hole in the floor. I was fortunate to get out with just a couple of bruises.

At 5:30PM we caught our overnight bus to Bursa, about halfway between Cappadocia and Istanbul to the northwest. Now I know that as a traveler I have every right to expect uncomfortable bus trips, but I have always been amazed at how clean and well-run the buses themselves were, even if they weren't exactly punctual, and how nice the staff always was. Still, all things being equal, I found something to complain about on this trip - I got obsessed with all the stopovers along the way. I actually started to keep a running tally, and I figured that for every hour and a half we spent in motion, we spent another half hour stopped off at one or another truck stop or eatery. I became consumed with the inefficiency, and I fumed, and of course everyone else on the bus was completely nonchalant, as they should have been. We rolled on, and stopped, and rolled on, and stopped, and rolled on again, all through the night, all the way to Bursa.

Bursa's main bus station is so vital to the city that it has grown over the years to the size of a small metropolitan airport. We got off our bus at 5AM and took the shuttle bus into the "center" of town. However, it became apparent to us as the shuttle pulled to a stop that their idea of the "center" of town must have been based on a purely cartographic approach, as there was nothing even remotely helpful looking in sight. We, being the hardy travelers always, promptly hailed a taxi and were whisked away to our intended hotel.

We were dead tired when we finally hobbled into the well-appointed but smallish lobby of the hotel, and the woman looked at us sympathetically, as if we were going to break down sobbing right there. In fact, we were in relatively good cheer at that point, but all semblance of joy was masked by exhaustion. The receptionist told us that they were full at the moment, but that a room would free up at around 7AM, at a cost of $40. We parked ourselves in the two chairs in the lobby and struggled mightily to stay upright, if not fully conscious, for the next hour and a half. We perked up as 7AM came and went, but we got no indication from the receptionist that our situation had improved at all. Desperately tired, we watched as the shift changed and the new clerk dryly turned to us and told us that "perhaps" a room would be available at 10:30. I don't know if I meant to, but I am pretty sure that something in my subconcious emerged and gave the woman a look that made her rise up off of her stool as if to defend her post. Sally and I, too tired to argue, gathered our things and walked out of the place without a word.

We walked up Bursa's main street (Ataturk Caddesi, named after Kemal Ataturk, father of modern secular Turkey) and through the auspices of the Lonely Planet guide located the Hotel Camlibel up the street, a more modest affair at $26. We slept soundly throughout the morning.

In the afternoon we set out down Ataturk Street again and ate in a 200-year-old restaurant said to the be the originator of iskander kebab, Turkey's de facto national dish of spit-roasted lamb in a yoghurt-tomato sauce served over a falafel. May not sound like the best thing in the world, but let me tell you it was a highly addictive dish. We stumbled out of the restaurant, loosened our belts, and hopped into a dolmus to the top of the hill behind the city. From there we walked to the Green Tomb, a beautiful Selcuk monument to Sultan Mehmet. From there it was a short walk to the Yesil Cami, which is said to be the first pure Ottoman mosque in Turkey. Within the mosque we met a gregarious Turk named Omur, who showed us around the interior of the mosque. Omur is a sometime resident of New York who comes back to Bursa for a month or so every now and then to tend to his family's 400-year-old business, carpet and antiquity restoration. Omur speaks English fluently as a New Yorker would, and struck us as a no nonsense guy. Still, as a backpacker I couldn't quite take him at face value at the beginning. I was wondering if he had an angle.

Angle or not, he showed us some things we would never have seen without him pointing them out. There were some very cool engineering features of the mosque, the most prominent being the ancient marble cylinders built into the wall and mounted on an axle, so that one could walk up and give them a spin. The idea was that if Bursa ever suffered an earthquake, one could test the structural integrity of the mosque by trying to spin the columns. If they stuck, it meant that the walls were beginning to give and, more importantly, if you were the unlucky bastard who drew the short straw and had to come in to this deathtrap, that you had better start running, and fast. Stuck columns would be Allah's sign that prayer would be more fruitful out in the open for the time being.

Soon Omur invited us back to his business for tea. As we were walking back to his business I tried to work out if we were going to be taken in some confidence scan. From Western eyes, I was naturally suspicious that an English speaker would be hanging around in a mosque idly waiting for a tourist to come in, then just happen to invite us back to his place, and not want anything out of it. I consider myself a good judge of character, and Omur seemed like a standup guy, but one hears too many tales of drugged tea as one heads east to be entirely trustful. Still, I had to balance the small chance of monetary loss or perceived danger with the prospect of having a truly unique experience. Or, as Tom Cruise succinctly put it, "Sometimes you just have to say, 'What the fuck.'"

So we followed Omur down the hill to the business, where we saw his shop workers re-mending a positively ancient rug. Well, his story held up so far. Upstairs, in the surprisingly tidy and elegant offices (which had recently been featured in a CNN travel piece), we sipped our tea. I must admit I sipped mine a little gingerly. Here was the true test; I wondered what I would do if I began to see stars.

But it was all the paranoia of a fool; Omur was on the up and up. Alas, he was just being a nice guy, and I felt no small measure of shame at the thought that I had doubted his earnest attempt at friendship. We talked and talked with him, for hours it seemed. When Sally mentioned that she had a bit of the runs, Omur did not miss a beat. "Yoghurt and dried tea leaves, guys," he advised deadpan, "will have you shitting bricks in a day."

Time came, and we left him to his work, thanked him for his hospitality, and headed down to the local covered market, and the Silk Road Caravanserai on the way. Ducked out after some browsing and a shoe shine, and we went in search of yoghurt. A small store turned out to be the yoghurt motherlode. Yoghurt varieties aplenty, and a copious supply of Ayran, the surprisingly delicious yoghurt drink. We went back to the hotel, acquired some tea leaves from the staff, who seemed to know exactly what we were up to (they patted their stomachs and sighed), and, as per Omur's instructions, mixed the raw tea grounds into our cups of Ayran. I leave it to your imagination to how vile this concoction tasted; suffice it to say that when Sally and I saw the faces we were each making, we collapsed into paroxisms of laughter with typical ill timing, as we still had mouths full of yoghurt and tea grounds, which were sprayed all over the room with the flair of dried biscuit crumbs shot out of a hairdryer.

We slipped out to grab a burger at a McDonald's clone and returned to watch some of the Turkish tabloid news. There was repeated footage of some huge explosion engulfing a factory, and Sally and I each admitted that we would have liked it if that had occurred close to Bursa, so that we could say we had barely escaped death or some such nonsense.

Friday morning we set up our bus ticket to Çannakale and grabbed some breakfast before attempting to get to the bus station to catch our noon bus. I say attempting because A) I did not know what not one but two separate buses in sequence were needed to get us all the way out there, and B) I think I bought three different but equally useless tickets (including a Lotto number) before happening on one that actually worked for the first bus we needed. Blind luck prevailed in the end, and we arrived at the station greatly relieved to have conquered the not-quite-infamous Bursa bus system. Actually, we were the first people we had ever heard of getting lost in Bursa, but infamy has to start somewhere. Soon enough we were on our way to Cannakale.

Five hours later we hopped out at Çannakale and made our way (with the aid of the trusty Lonely Planet guide) to the Yellow Rose Pension, which Omur had recommended highly. We settled into our small room and had a look around. I mean, it was small. The person on the top bunk could bump his ass on the opposite wall climbing up the ladder. On the other hand, the room had a private bathroom - whose privacy was granted by way of a shower curtain hung across the room. Definitely not the place to have gastrointestinal problems. At night we went down for the traditional "night before the tour" viewing of "Gallipoli," the Mel Gibson film that moved every ANZAC in the place to tears.

In the morning, true to form, we piled our stuff into a bus and joined a tour of the Gallipoli battlefields across the strait from Çannakale. Our tour guide for this excursion was TJ, a stout, squat Turk who seemed to be possessed by the true spirit (and voice) of the Australian "Crocodile Hunter" himself, Steve Irwin, down to the hushed, overawed and melodramatic bursts of emotion. It was eerie, but TJ was as friendly as they come, and he had a bit of a name for himself; he had recently been written up in the Let's Go guide and the New York Times.

Out on the battlefields we trudged, mostly in silence, through the trenches and fields which defined this, the epitome of pointless warfare. In fact, the battle was so universally revolting that one of the centerpieces to the whole tour is a monument erected by Kemal Atatürk, which reads:

"Those heroes that shed their blood and lost their lives...
You are now lying in the soil of a friendly country.
Therefore rest in peace.
There is no difference between the Johnnies
and the Mehmets to us where they lie side by side.
Here in this country of ours....
You, the mothers
Who sent their sons from far away countries
Wipe away your tears.
Your sons are now lying in our bosom
And are in Peace.
After having lost their lives on this land
They have become our sons as well."

All of us who sat before that monument were moved to the edge of tears by it. I can see why the Turks revered this man so much, and indeed still do.

I was a bit put off though, when TJ told us, perhaps to nip any offenders in the bud, that certain members of tour groups in the past had seen fit to remove the bone fragments that litter the fields and slip them into their daypacks as casually as one might a stone from a beach. Many of us, myself included, had picked up various fragments over the course of the day, until at one point TJ had rushed over and asked us not to disturb the remains, which when put in that light made us all blanch with shame. But none of us could comprehend actually taking bones as souvenirs. That was over the line.

At the end of the day we hopped our bus to Istanbul.

The original journal ends here, but our stay in Istanbul was pretty uneventful, with one exception. Our frustration at the constant but low-level ogling Sally got finally manifested itself one day crossing the bridge over the Golden Horn. Our only incident of physical violence was one we instigated! But perhaps that's a story for another day...