In Which We Take a Holiday from Our Holiday

“Hey. Let me take that for you,” a voice comes from behind me.

We live our lives, Zac and I, out of a backpack each – with a camera bag and tote bag for daytimes/flights/bus journeys – and, FUNNILY ENOUGH, my pack always ends up being the one with all the really heavy stuff in.

Y’know. I dive. So I’m used to stumbling into the water with 25kg on my back.

And, when Zac’s kindly donated his computer and all his books, I’m carrying close to a full set of scuba gear.

Obviously, I don’t do this often, or for long distances, particularly not in the Middle East in August. (Is Turkey the Middle East? Well, probably not, but I’ll revert to that later.) But in this instance, I’m fully loaded.

“Thanks,” I say (at least, I hope I do), without looking round.

And it takes at least 45 seconds to realise that, umm, the chap who took my pack is actually my friend.

*facepalm*

No! No! No more ruins, I beg you, NO MORE RUINS.

We’ve come here, to Kușadasi, Turkey, not, primarily for the wonderful ruins of Ephesus, but to hook up with our Facebook friends turned real friends, Jeff, Kristy, Declan and Kiera.

And here they are! And not only are they full of fucking beans – not having spent 24 hours in transit from Tel Aviv (although Kiera has been bitten by a dog) – but it is really, really nice to see them.

Bring it on! We’re going to do pool, perhaps some beach, and very little else for the next four days. Which is, to be frank, what Kușadasi is all about. Well, that and, at the arse end of town, cruise ships, “Tattoos” and “Genuine Fake Rolex Watches”.

Yes. I know. From the prevalence of signs offering “Genuine Fake…”, I can only suspect some very special legislation.

Because you don’t get much more trustworthy than the “Tesco Free Shop”.

Kristy, though, is showing ominous signs of an unvacationesque – or very vacationesque – enthusiasm, and generally exhibiting the energy levels of someone who holds down a seriously high-powered job and has a family travel blog on the side.

“So,” she says. “There are three sites near here…”

“Yes,” I say, feebly. “I think they’re Miletus, Didyma and…”

I can’t remember the third one, but I know Zac’s not going to like it. And, frankly, even though I have ur-memories going off in the back of my head about Miletus (didn’t I write an essay on this once, like twenty years ago? Weren’t they key players in the Delian Wars? Delian League? Delian something, and wasn’t there a famous early Greek philosopher???…), I’m not even sure I’M going to like them, either.

The thing is, this being Turkey, they’re almost certainly far better than anything we’ll see in Greece. But we’ve been in the Middle East since March, which raises our bar for ruins pretty darn high.

“So we could do that in one day, couldn’t we?” says Kristy. “That’s pretty easy…”

“I thought we were going to have a few days of nothing?” Jeff intervenes.

“Yeah,” I say. “You know, Zac is a little ruined-out. He doesn’t even want to see Troy, let alone Ephesus.”

“But there isn’t anything in Troy, is there?” says Jeff.

“No,” I say. “But it’s TROY. And, I think they have a wooden horse.”

I think this place closed due to lack of neon.

I studied the esoteric combination of Latin, Greek and Philosophy, which makes excellent preparation for interviewing for, and indeed acquiring a career in, the British Diplomatic Service, the British Parliament, the British Civil Service, plus any of a range of rapacious corporations or evil merchant banks, but has few obvious real world applications once one is past the first flush of youth and not doing any of those things.

Unless one wants to teach Latin (done), tutor Latin (done) or can somehow blag one’s way onto translating a film script into Latin (also done, along with tutoring Ancient Greek and Philosophy, and translating a TV script into Ancient Greek)…

Anywise, about the only real world application I can see right now is that, having read Homer in the original, I am damned if I am going to leave Turkey without dragging my son round Troy misquoting hexameters at him.

“Yeah,” says Kristy. “Actually, the kids are a little ruined out as well. We didn’t actually make it to the second theatre at Ephesus.”

Zac and Declan are in full MineCraft flow, discussing the finer points of Creepers with all the passion that Turkish gentlemen of a certain vintage devote to backgammon.

“No computers!” I bellow. Then, progressively feebly. “There’s a lovely pool, right there. And a LIBRARY. A LIBRARY, Zac! Take a look at the library. Take a look at the…. Oh, never mind..”

Breath-holding competitions. Always a great idea.

It’s actually rather lovely, where we’re staying (Villa Konak, should you be in the area). It’s an old-fashioned place set around a series of courtyards and gardens, complete with pool, pool table and ping pong table.

And it’s super cool to be hanging out with friends.

The adults catch up. Kids game and splash in the pool. Adults splash in the pool. All is good.

Work keeps rearing its ugly head, but for whatever reason I can’t engage and focus…

Well, I blame the library, in fact. I’d like to say that I gravitate to solemn works of Turkish literature, but I’m not in the Orhan Pamuk zone – after 24 hours travel getting here, preceded by a week of driving around Israel and Palestine – I’m gulping down trash fiction as a way to switch my brain off.

Eschewing variations on kebabs, full English breakfasts, and one place which, mesmerisingly, offers Mexican, Indian, Chinese AND Turkish cuisine all from one kitchen, we find a decent restaurant near the port, and binge on sea bream, sea bass, sardines, stuffed mussels, disappointing samphire, and too much Turkish wine, while the kids, deprived of computers, take refuge in a myriad kittens and industrial quantities of Turkish ice cream.

Yes, I will be having all of that, thank you.

And the question of what to do raises its ugly head. “We saw two water parks coming in here,” says Kristy.

“Two?!” I say. “Seriously?! Did they look good?”

Coming in is something of a euphemism. As we learnt in Lebanon, navigating old Eastern Mediterranean towns is an absolute nightmare of steep cobbled streets, terrifyingly tight turns, narrow roads that really should be one-way but aren’t, and wide roads that really should be two-way, but aren’t. Adding to the excitement, drops tend to be unshielded.

Kristy and Jeff have spent 90 minutes in that particular zone without resorting to violence or child abuse. (Which is not to say that all of us, adult and three skinny children, will not sit very, very quietly in the back seat while navigation discussions are in progress.)

“I think Zac would love a water park,” I say. “Is it that one?”

“The one with the world’s longest slide ASTERISK?” says Jeff.

“Does it look big?” I say. (We’ve encountered some seriously unsatisfactory waterparks in our travels, most recently on the shores of Galilee, and in fact the waterparks of Hanoi, Saigon and the Gold Coast do set a high bar.)

“It looks big,” says Jeff. “They both look big.”

Yep. NEXT!

And so it is decided. We will spend one day at the waterpark with the world’s longest slide ASTERISK, one day in the national park down the road, which has beaches, wild boar, and one of many, many Caves of Zeus in this neck of the woods (there are almost as many Caves of Zeus in the Eastern Med as there are fragments of the True Cross in Christian churches), and one day doing nothing.

Or, in my case, working. Or, in my case, actually totally thinking about working – not to say intermittently panicking about NOT working – but really mainlining Patricia Cornwell and Ruth Rendell while on an Efes drip, and thinking about taking some photos.

In fact, it’s really rather like being on holiday — from our holiday…