29th October is when the Turkish celebrate the forming of the republic. I was here last year but, as I was flying back to the UK the next day, I don’t think I got involved in any way. This year, I decided the best thing was to avoid the crowds. A local FB page is encouraging everyone to join in a parade in their cars and there isn’t to be a pedestrian parade, because of the pandemic.
When I was in Kusadasi yesterday, in the rain, I saw a Turkish navy vessel in the bay and another moored up at the port. My initial thought was it was somehow connected with Greece’s efforts to extend their maritime borders and Samos does seem to be creeping closer to the Turkish coast 😮 ha ha – it’s an optical illusion, apparently to do with the weather at this time of year. I soon realised the Navy vessels were here preparing for today’s celebration.
After yesterday’s abortive attempt to do 6k+ steps, I was
determined not to let the rain stop me today.
I took my brolly, just in case, and wore leggings rather than shorts as
it was a bit cloudy and cool this morning.
I decided to go to the beach. It usually isn’t too busy during the week at
this time of year and I also thought more people would be heading in to town or
even having family celebrations. The
beach is a very long stretch of coast and at various points known as Long
Beach, Star Beach and Diamond Beach and possibly other names. I parked up at the Diamond Beach end and set
off walking. Suddenly, a loud, rousing song
started playing. At first, I couldn’t
work out where it was coming from then spied a loudspeaker on a pole at the
side of the road. I’ve assumed it was
the Turkish national anthem, I’m not sure what it sounds like . It was certainly a good beat that I could set
a fast walking pace to. Many of the
houses along the front were flying huge Turkish flags, mainly by hanging them
out of the upper windows, some had them on flag poles and at various points
along the route, bunting in the form of Turkish flags, were festooned across
the promenade.
Because of yesterday’s torrential rain, there were a lot of
puddles on the promenade and some of the gardens were water logged. The gardens aren’t part of the houses but large
areas set out between the estates and the beach. They are all grassed; some have floral bushes
and trees and some have children’s play equipment or even adult exercise
equipment. The water logging was quite
serious in some areas but I’m sure it will all soon drain away.
Unsurprisingly, compared to previous days, there was no one
on the beaches and sunbeds were stacked up out of the way, although I did pass
three gents setting up chairs and a table under a cloth parasol at the edge of
the sea. There were some people walking,
mainly elders like me getting in some exercise.
It started spitting rain and eventually I decided I’d better get the
brolly out. As I continued along, an
elderly lady with a walker came from one of the estates on to the promenade. She was definitely celebrating, dressed in
red and white, wearing a long sleeved red top with an Attaturk T shirt over the
top, red trousers and a red cap and had a Turkish flag hanging down the front
of her walker. I’d have loved a photo of
her but didn’t want to be rude.
At just over 3.6k steps I arrived at Turunc restaurant and
stopped for a cay. Luckily, I got there
just before the rain changed from spitting to torrential. Initially, I was sat outside because it
wasn’t cold but it became that heavy it was splashing on to me so eventually I
moved to an inside table. At the outside
corner of the restaurant, water was pouring down in a narrow but torrential
stream. For that ferocity it must have
been funnelling from the whole of the roof. By the time I’d had two glasses of cay and a
good read of my Kindle, the rain had stopped and I started the walk back. A few more people were out and the sun even started
to peek through the clouds. At one
section of the beach, a chap was setting up what looked like it might be props
for a wedding or a post wedding photo shoot.
There was an arch at the edge of the sea, he was creating a walkway to
it from the promenade, had loads of lanterns, rolls of white net and a roll of
red carpet. As I write this at 6pm local
time, the rain has held off although there are still black clouds overhead and
I was thinking how unlucky could you be in this area to have it rain on your
wedding day! Having got back to the
apartment the grotty weather made it an opportune time to wade through my pile
of washing that needed ironing before heading to the onsite restaurant for
dinner. As ever, the meal prepared for
me by Guray was absolutely delicious; a plated of mixed meze followed by tender
lamb chops with caramalised onions and a few proper chips – not too many –
washed down with two glasses of red.
Hopefully tomorrow it will be dry and sunny, although the
forecast has shown that from now on daytime temperatures won’t be much above 20
degrees.
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