I woke up around 09:00, sun blaring in my eyes. The hostel room is great but man it could use some blackout curtains. Added "cheap dark fabric" to today's list. I'm in this spot for a week. Its a private room in a hostel, best of both worlds: community and privacy. Mainly just room to spread out. I've way too much crap for a dorm room. When I traveled on foot with a single rolly bag hostels were a good fit; and in the case of Istanbul it worked well only cos I usually had one other roommate who was also a backpacker with a ton of crap. Were all six bunks filled it would have been hell. I wrote about all the crap, wrote a cost to benefit analysis. Carrying around the camp gear I have the burden of carrying the stuff around minus any benefit from it. Benefit being freedom from room schedules and the cost. By staying in rooms I have the burden of cost and schedules but the benefit of warmth. The confounding variable of the CBA is "season/seasonal". Another might be "Region". Budget is a variable that plays within the two CVs.
I'm staying longer at each stop. This reduces the burden of carting my shit around. Transit days are a bastard in this traffic, in this smog, with these drivers, on these cobbled or rutty roads.
I'm planting it here in Antalya through Jan 8 which is as long as I can foreseeably stretch my dollars. Its a great place to hang put for a winter month. Its exactly what I wanted when I sketched this plan together back in the U.S.. It's sunny, seaside, mountainous, and damned affordable. I presume the tourist biz is whom I should thank for playing up the old village charm. I don't care if its authentic. After what I've seen I'll take cute lazy seaside resort thousands of years old with cafes.
I went to look at a place I tentatively booked for the month. I wanted to check the air quality. I'm serious. A mile makes a difference. By the water is the cleanest air. The three miles from the water the place is could be hairy. I'm staying there for a month, possibly, I need to open my windows. My next blog will be about smog - how its the readon I bussed it here instead of riding and how I wish those who bemoan government regulation and the EPA could live in this place for just a fucking week. There isn't even a place that money could buy to insulate one from the smog of the country's interior. But that's another blog. With pictures.
After my errands I came back to do stuff. I wanted to see the sunset. I had not been to the seaside yet even though its five minutes away. I headed out to where i figured it would be. I'm in the "old city" so its a maze of little alleys. No idea where anything is but I had enough of looking at screens for the day.
I was delighted when I turned a few corners and found a magnificent scene, pictured below in whatever order blogger dot com chooses to arrange my uploads.
The barrel things atop the buildings- at first I thought they were some kind of funky urban decor as the ones I first saw were brightly painted. Now that I see them almost everywhere I reckon they have some HVAC purpose?
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