My girlfriend joined me in Istanbul and for a week we were both sightseeing and doing research meetings and so no time for blogging. Now we're on an organic farm near Izmir volunteering and up early working then scrubbing off manure smell and so little time for blogging. I will write a proper post about the farm shortly but for now here are pictures from Buyukada, the largest of several islands in the Sea of Marmaris reachable by municipal ferry from Istanbul.
The island should be on a fixer-upper real estate reality TV show. There are no private automobiles allowed and so on our way up to the Greek monastery at the summit (see the view in pic #2) we passed crazily designed mansion after crazily designed mansion, every one with an often-bizarre personal touch. I actually didn't even think to take photos until we were hurrying back to the pier to escape an imminent thunderstorm so these are none of the most interesting ones we saw, but these pictures give an idea of the realty paradise that is Buyukada.
Also here is my lady doing abs in a woodland fitness center halfway up to the monastery:
Aya Yorgi Monastery. Here's a documentary about it:
http://www.cultureunplugged.com/play/9488/BELLS--THREADS-AND-MIRACLES
They made the most of some steep slopes--lots of terraces and some gravity-defying benches:
The architecture is fantastic. Beautiful! Is this mostly a vacation island or do people live here and commute to istanbul?
ReplyDeleteMostly a vacation town (although we got lost briefly and ended up seeing the backstage of crumbling little huts and squalid cramped conditions for the horses that pull visitors’ carriages around): the population goes from 30,000 in the summer to 7,500 in the winter. So I could probably rent a grand place with a balcony for dirt cheap as a writer’s retreat during the off-season when dissertation time comes. A bit of history: the Byzantines deported convicts to the islands in the Sea of Marmara, the largest of which is Buyukada. The population remained mostly Greek during Ottoman times and then mostly fled during “population exchanges”/ethnic cleansing in the early republican era, causing the islands to fall into disuse in the 30s until they became a popular vacation spot for the new political elite in the 40s. I wish I knew which eras the different architectures are from.
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