Idyll

July 11, Saturday / Cirali: Our first fully leisured day here at the beach. It's pretty sweet. We arrived yesterday after an hour transfer out of Antalya and a winding descent down to the sea.

Cirali really is not a town; it's a beach. The only town part is a few shoebox size stores in among the little hotels, pansiyons and campgrounds bellying up to the beach. Most of the hotels also have restaurants right behind the beach – so life here is designed to be lived in your swim suit (maybe).

And that is pretty much all you need to know about today. The scenery is great. Our hotel is situated in this garden about a five minute stroll down a stone and dirt path to the beach. The gardens (see photo) are spectacular. The beach itself is mostly rounded pebbles at the shoreline but it drops off to eight or ten feet deep within about a yard or two of the shore. The water is wonderfully clear.

So, these days are pretty much devoted to rest, reading, naps and ocean swimming. The room at the hotel provides some nice air conditioning when the heat of the day is really roaring. There is some humidity but its broken by a nice ocean breeze. We have breakfast in the garden up here – perhaps tomorrow I will try making some of that tea from some local herb (maybe sage) that grows up on the mountain. The water is warm – nothing like the Puritanical challenge of the New England swimming I am used to – but very pleasant. The long chairs and umbrellas are free (from the hotel) and there is always a cold beer at one of the cafes behind the beach.

The only challenge, really, is not getting sunburnt – but my eight or ten tubes of spf 70 seem to be holding up well- as is my Orhan Pamuk novel, My Name is Red, a intrigue of love, murder and the philosophy of art, set in 17th c. Istanbul. I tend to like fiction with philosophical/theological undercurrents. It takes place in the world of the Sultan's miniaturists, illustrators and book guilders.. Islamic tradition forbids the creation of idols, which broadly interpreted means the very existence of image making is broadly suspect. This is why the Ottoman aesthetic runs to calligraphy and geometrical design. You should see some of the wood carving patterns you see in all the old palaces and mosques; it's really eyecatching – this seemingly chaotic variation of shapes and lines that spring up out of the simplest principles overlayed on each other.

So, that's about all I have to say about that. Maybe I'll include an extra photo this time as this is definitely a more visual and less conceptual sort of place.

Most Remarkable Thing: OK – it's time to praise salad. What the Turks do with vegetables is wonderful – it really eclipses the parade of grilled meats here. This evening we had this mix of green beans, carrots, beans, in a light oil based tomato dressing. They like to always add a little bit of heat to their salads and vegetables, so they do a lot with peppers. Then there is that roasted eggplant with a little oil and garlic slices – and the always perfect parade of tomatoes and cucumber (my shaman vegetable) that is always on the side of everything. I wonder if US customs is ok with olive oil? At times it seems as if the entire Anatolian peninsula (except for those mountains I described yesterday)is one big vegetable garden. This would be an easy place to get meat out of your life. I had a vegetable pide (think a long eye shaped pizza ) for dinner- covered only with roast vegetables.

Photos: Above is a nice shot of the garden outside our bungalo. Below see Cirali beach, looking north.