Day 10: The Little Things

This day was not terribly different from the day that preceded it, which had not been the norm thus far on our trip.  

The breakfast was largely the same as it had been daily.  A couple of slight differences: fried eggs, seasoned with a red pepper-type flake that we'd seen consistently used to season meats; and, a fruit which a cactus had produced.  The cactus fruit was soft, sweet and delicious, but also full of smallish, hard, black seeds. For a short time I tried to remove and cast aside the seeds, then I just said "what the hell" and let the whole thing slide down my throat. Seren had said it was a very healthy fruit, so what could go wrong?!

Without much else to write about (swim/snorkel; lay out; read/write; eat; repeat), we can cover the weather. On this particular day (and the others in Kas were not different), it was 95 degrees Fahrenheit out by midday, with a high of 97 degrees, humidity at 50%, and a "feels like" temperature of 110 degrees.

Snorkeling this time revealed a bigger fish with slightly different variations of the same neon and other colors as my favorite fish spotted the day prior and even bigger groupings of tiny fish.

We tried to get as much sea and sun time as possible on this day, since it was our last in Kas and on our coastal itinerary in general--the following day, we would drive two-plus hours to the Dalaman airport, hand in our rental car, and fly back to Istanbul.

After we'd gotten our fill of the sea and our skin was an imperfect flaming red color, we made our way to town for dinner.  This time with our eye on the actual Bahce Balik Restaurant we'd intended on going to the evening prior. We ordered similarly here--grilled octopus and stuffed calamari in addition to a few mezes (the highlight of those being the marinated sea bass).  This time, Becca and I were in agreement--this was the best grilled octopus we'd ever had.  Number one with a bullet.  A real pleasure.

After dinner, we set out to find a dessert cart called "Mama's Kitchen" for lokmas.  Lokmas are, fittingly, grape-sized balls of fried dough that are then tossed into a simple syrup and sprinkled with cinnamon.  Sounds simple. Sounds like the ingredients are dirt cheap. But, oh my--each one popped with flavor--the simple syrup exploded out of the dough (as a grape would pop) and mixed with the cinnamon and the fried gooey goodness and it was truly and somewhat surprisingly delectable.

Throughout dinner, we'd noticed black smoke billowing up and filling the blue sky over center of town.  As the lokmas popped in our mouths while we walked through the marina, we saw a gathering of people staring out toward many flashing lights and flames engulfing a good-sized sailboat.  Other boats and ships were spilling out of the marina hurriedly and firefighters sprayed continuously at the boat on fire, but the pyre kept burning and the flames were soon coming out the portholes.  Clearly, this day was neither pleasant nor low key for everyone.  We finished off the lokmas and kept walking.

When walking back, we did a status check and made sure we got the cash and water we'd need for the next day's journey back to Istanbul.

It was 87 degrees outside still after 10 pm, and it "felt like" 89 degrees.  We were sweating endlessly, it seemed.

In the night sky, the sliver of the moon illuminated was reminiscent of the flag of this country which has so fully embraced us and in which we'd been so happy and comfortable.